Shadow Days by Andrea Cremer Read Free Book Online Page B

cold floor and pushed myself up. When I tried the handle, I found the door was locked. No surprise there. I bent over, examining the door. Getting in wouldn’t be a problem; I could pick the lock easily. When I stood up to get what I needed to open the door, something else caught my eye.
    At first glance it appeared to be decoration, an ornate carving that covered the thin gap between the two doors. As I examined the strange object, I saw that it contained some sort of bolt mechanism.
    A second lock. And one I had no idea how to get open. I rammed my fist into the door, but swore to myself I’d find a way in. Maybe I’d invite my online pals to the first-ever battering ram building party of the twenty-first century.
    When I got back to my room, my phone was buzzing. The clock on my nightstand read 7:00 a.m.
    Must be Uncle Bosque.
    I picked up the phone.
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    “Don’t.” The voice was almost too soft to hear.
    “What?” I said.
    “Don’t.” The whisper came once again before the line went silent.
    I brought up my call log. No call had been registered.
    Swallowing the lump in my throat, I put the phone on my bed and backed away from it like it was a hissing snake. Then I turned around and dug through the pile of laundry where I knew my sketchbook had been buried.
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    eigHt
    W
    smArt girls Are Hot. Especially when their brilliance helps you break and enter. Rachel had the weird lock figured out the next day. More and more people were showing up on facebook—lots of girls. I must be cuter than I thought. Everyone wanted to know what was in the library, including me. That was good. I needed the encouragement.
    A few people were worried, and I didn’t blame them. I wasn’t looking forward to facing the wrath of my uncle if he found out what I was up to. My online friends made some good points about staying out of forbidden rooms. But I also couldn’t handle trying to forget about the creepy night noises that kept me awake.
    Curiosity may have killed the cat, but life at Rowan Estate was slowly killing me. Victoria’s shouts of: “OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN
    THE DOOR!” drowned out all rational warnings from my other friends.
    I brought my laptop to the kitchen, reading through the latest comments while I made scrambled eggs. No good breaking family law on an empty stomach. What Rachel had discovered was unsettling, but not enough to rid me of an appetite.
    Scarfing down eggs doused in hot sauce, I felt more alive than I had in days. I was going to get inside that library. I would know what had been harassing me ever since I got here. So what if the lock was 53
    the nine circles of hell. Dante was a great artist, his works labeled classics, and his depiction of hell was symbolic, not literal, right?
    The Inferno theme fit with my uncle’s décor. The stairs leading to his office were set in an archway that was lined with sconces of the seven deadly sins. Put that together with the torture paintings and the maybe-demon statues and it might just be that Bosque had a medieval-hell fixation or something. And I could hardly put the blame on my uncle. What if this stuff wasn’t his at all? This was a really frickin’ old house. Any of this oh-so-precious but creepy junk could have been here from the time of its construction.
    Sufficiently fortified by eggs and Tabasco, I headed to the to library doors. I had my sketchbook with me, where I’d copied down Rachel’s notes. I’d brought my camera along as well, though I har-bored serious doubts about its usefulness if I did get inside.
    Squaring my shoulders and convincing myself one last time that this was indeed a good idea, or at least not a disastrous one, I began to turn the dial. Each one clicked as I moved them into the correct order. The circles of hell descending toward Lucifer’s abode. Limbo.
    Lustful. Gluttonous. As I thought about the levels of torment, I shivered. Miserly. Wrathful. Heretics. The air around me grew colder like I was descending with Dante and