She wrapped herself in a towel, limped to the bookshelf, and started looking for a weapon. Could you cut someone with the edge of a DVD? She found a copy of Tommy Boy, opened the case.

Empty.

She reached for Fargo.

Also empty.

He kept the discs somewhere else, left the cases for ease of selection. She moved on to the books.

She needed something heavy. She thumbed through a stack of plays and magazines, found nothing. The paperback romance novels and cheap mysteries came next. Caitlin loved both but couldn’t dig out of hell with a summer beach read.

“Hello, stupid,” she said, touching the spine of Branford’s copy of Fallen Angels, now placed alongside the rest. She sighed, then moved on for something much bigger—The Riverside Shakespeare.

Caitlin’s freshman-year roommate had owned a copy of the massive hard-covered book that contained every work attributed to William Shakespeare. They’d used the heavy tome for arm workouts.

She lugged the book over to a beanbag chair, opened the cover. No good. Someone had removed almost half the pages. A chill tickled her body.

Caitlin saw words in yellow marker, nearly invisible against the tan binding of the inner cover.

My name is Angela Chapman. I think it’s April but can’t be sure. If you find this, Embower killed me. Tell my parents I love them and that I’m sorry.

Caitlin flipped through the flimsy outcropping of preface pages before the substantial missing chunk but didn’t find any more handwriting. Instead of page 1, the remainder opened to page 707, a list of footnotes and attributions for Henry VI, Part 3. The next page opened to Richard III. Branford must have found her messages, destroyed the altered pages, and left the cover as a warning. Whatever she’d meant to leave behind he’d taken, gone forever.

Where did Chapman get the marker?

Caitlin searched the shelf but found no sign of a writing utensil. No doubt Chapman did what Caitlin would have if given a pen, and went straight for Branford’s eyes.

“Good for you, Angela.”

Chapman’s words repeated the name Branford had given himself: If you find this, Embower has killed me.

Caitlin dropped into a squat at the bookshelf; she’d seen a pocket-sized Webster. She found the dictionary, flipped to the E’s, saw nothing for embower. The pocket-sized edition wouldn’t list every permutation or rare origin. Embower hinted at an older world, but bower rang familiar. She flipped to the B’s.

Mr. Webster delivered.

Bower—from Old English būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz. Cognate with German bauer “birdcage,” Old Norse bar (Danish bur, Swedish bur “cage”).

Noun bower (plural bowers)

1.  A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.

2.  (Ornithology) A large structure made of glass and bright objects, used by the bower bird during courtship displays.