The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey Read Free Book Online Page A

out to open one, Dorrie seized his arm. Somewhere nearby she’d heard a faint stirring, almost a whispering. “Marcus, don’t,” she hissed, frozen, her heart banging.
    He shrugged her off. “Chillax. It’s a library. We’re just browsing.”
    â€œYeah, in somebody’s locked safe. C’mon, we’ve still got to find a way out.”
    Marcus ignored her, flipped open the volume, and began to leaf through its pages. He held a page up at an angle to catch the light better. “321 PLE—whatever that is—January 27—okay, got that.” His eyes drifted down the page. “Check this out… ‘On this 14th day of November, 1725, in Cambridge, England: Foiled, a plot to murder Thomas Woolston, author of The Moderator. Lybrarian: Dame Henrietta Banks. Keyhand: Colin Headly.’” Marcus snickered. “It sounds so James Bond. The whole page, the whole book is full of these little—”
    He got no farther, for at that moment a figure staggered upward into view on the other side of the table, his long hair a wild cloud of tangles, and the remnants of a dirty and torn cloak hanging askew off his cadaverous body. His chin glistened with wetness and gelatinous globs.
    Screaming, Dorrie and Marcus reeled backward to the accompanying sound of thick paper tearing. The gargoyle of a face across from them broke into its own piercing cry, its scarecrow arms flying upward, releasing a fusillade of oranges. Dorrie felt herself pelted with them as she crashed backward into the iron barred door. The figure flung his upper body across the table, arms outstretched.
    Tripping and sliding on the oranges, Dorrie and Marcus streaked for the nearest doors and exploded through them. On the other side, they pounded down a long, carpeted corridor papered in violently fuchsia bouquets, which became a curving stone stairway that wound upward in dizzying circles. It ended in another corridor, this one tiled in green and white diamonds. Hearing a crash from down in the stairwell, Dorrie grabbed Marcus’s arm and they fled to the left, passing closed curtain after curtain.
    Suddenly, whizzing past a curtainless stone archway, Dorrie glimpsed a heavy man in a brown robe hunched over a desk, a short fringe of hair hanging low on his otherwise bald head. Fear stabbed through her as she imagined him leaping off his stool to join the chase. Dorrie and Marcus ducked through an open door farther on and scurried past racks of what looked like half-used rolls of paper towels. Another door let them into a bright, bare corridor—this one grandly floored in polished marble.
    Exhausted, Dorrie wrenched open a plain-looking wooden door and slipped through it with Marcus right behind. They pushed it softly closed behind them and slumped down, their backs against it.
    â€œNow that was a research emergency!” panted Marcus.
    Dorrie slowly took in the room. A cheery fire burned in a little brick fireplace, lighting up a collection of old-fashioned-looking couches and chairs. Glass-fronted bookcases lined the room on three sides. A marble mantel hung over the fireplace, and upon that stood two carved busts, one of a man’s head and one of a woman’s. In front of the fireplace, plates of steaming food sat alongside a pitcher on a low table. Dorrie was about to peer beneath the table to make sure no one was lurking when she caught sight of something white and floppy in Marcus’s hand.
    She felt the blood run out of her face. “That’s not from the—”
    â€œBook?” Marcus finished, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “More or less.”
    â€œYou ripped a page out of the book!”
    â€œNot on purpose!”
    Marcus collapsed in a sprawl on the floor, the page crumpling beneath him. “I need a nap,” he groaned. “A year-long nap.”
    â€œDon’t squash it!” hissed Dorrie, expecting to be discovered any moment. “Roll it