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Back Maya and the Lord of Shadows Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Acknowledgments
  33. About the Author
  34. About the Publisher

“What Maya said,” Frankie chimed in, electric currents crackling on her fingertips.

Two blue prods slipped from underneath Zeran’s sleeves. “Yup.”

I braced myself as we peered into the library. Inky blackness seeped between the two bronze mermaids. It was like looking into a vast nothingness with no beginning or end. Eli was wrong; this wasn’t anything like what we’d faced in the Dark before. This was something much worse.

Twelve

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INTO THE LIBRARY WE GO

THE LIBRARY WAS alive with all the frightening and unexplainable sounds that in normal times—and let me tell you, these were far from normal times—could make for a good bedtime scary story. Cue the menacing hisses, low growls, devious cackles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It was almost like the place was haunted, not that we were that lucky. Ghosts, we could handle. They were reasonable, mostly. I was willing to bet that whatever was in the library wouldn’t listen to reason.

White particles floated out of the inky darkness, and Winston fanned his hand in front of his face. “Dust bunnies,” he said, annoyed. “Really?”

Zeran dodged a swarm of them. “More like flesh-eating fleas.”

“Fascinating,” Frankie said. “I always thought those things were sentient.”

“Only you would care,” Winston groaned.

I got the feeling that fleas would be the least of our concerns. “Into the library we go,” I mumbled. We had no time to waste.

As we stepped inside, Frankie’s electric sparks, my staff, and Winston’s blue flames illuminated a small pocket of space that pushed back the darkness. “Let’s find the celestials and get out of here.” Frankie said what we all must’ve been thinking. I didn’t want to spend a minute longer here than we had to.

The library wasn’t just the library anymore. Cold air whipped across our faces, and I could feel the hollowness of the space, like it was a large cavern. It was growing in size even now, moving and shifting, making room for something. It was almost as if a piece of the Dark itself had entered our world.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Winston said. “The library feels bigger.”

“Under normal rules of science, maybe it doesn’t make sense,” Frankie said. “But like Maya once told me, magic explains the unexplainable. Listen to the sounds. Some are closer, while others are farther away. The library is bigger—much bigger.”

Beyond the hissing and growls, I could hear whispering, but I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. “We have a lot of ground to cover. I’ll keep a lookout for what’s in front of us. Frankie and Zeran, watch the flanks, and, Winston, you make sure nothing sneaks up behind us.” Winston groaned under his breath, but he moved so he was behind me. I concentrated on the staff and sent down a plea. “Help us find the celestials.”