Not Your Average Hot Guy Read online

  “No,” I’d said, clutching the giant brick of a book to my chest. “It has that old-book smell. This is the perfect touch. It’s worth thousands to us already.”

  “Fine,” she’d said. “You and old books. Get a room.”

  “Ha,” I’d replied.

  Not that she’s wrong. Every time someone lays a finger on it, I want to stop them. But I would never admit that. The grimoire is necessary to the story in the room. So what if I feel a bizarre sense of ownership over it?

  The plague doctors touch it reverently at least, all of them seemingly, while spooky candelabra guy stays off to one side. Until, at last, Solomon approaches for his turn. He sets the candle down on the table beside the book, then closes the cover. He picks the grimoire up, hefting its weight on his hand. Then he lifts the candle with his other hand and says something I can’t make out.

  I check and discover they’ve spent ten minutes to get this far.

  “Better get cracking,” I say, before I realize one of them is pushing the faux tomb around on its tracks. I sit up straighter. “What? There’s no way—”

  But I watch it happen. I watch as the tomb slides around, and they push it up flush against the wall, where it clicks into place. The empty space left below is the hidden exit. A few steps down, then along a dark hallway and back up again, and boom, they’ll be in the upstairs hall. Out. Escaped. In ten minutes.

  “No. Way.” My face pinches with disbelief. “No. You didn’t solve it.”

  They didn’t even solve one of the mini-puzzles to get to the big one at the end.

  This does not stop the billowing cape-wearers from descending through the exit. I could swear Solomon Elerion looks at the camera again, almost in challenge, before he steps down holding my book.

  “Nope,” I say. “Too bad for you we don’t allow cheaters, buddy.”

  Before I can think better of it, I’m out of my chair and running down the stairs from the control room. When I get to the hallway that leads to each room’s entrance and exit, I spot a confused Mag at the far end. I hesitate, knowing I should open the Chamber of Black Magic’s exit and confront them—but truth is, I’ve never been down there. I designed it because that was the scariest thing I could think of, subterranean and dark. My two secret phobias when put together.

  Mag doesn’t know what happened, that they cheated. But it won’t matter, there’s no time to explain. Mag will know there’s no possible way they made it out in such a short amount of time.

  In seconds, the party is flowing out the door.

  “Hold it right there,” I say. “We have cameras in the rooms. I know what you did.”

  They form a river of awful cape-wearing cheaters between Mag and me.

  “You don’t know anything,” Solomon says. He has my book in one hand and the candle in his other, flames licking the air. “Step aside.”

  “Callie, what should I do?” Mag asks.

  The other cape-and-mask wearers press against the wall to let Solomon approach me. Trembling, I look past him to Mag. “Lock the front door.”

  I sound braver than I feel. I feel like I’m out of the control room and thus out of control. What a night for Mom to be gone. She’d probably tell me to let him go.

  But I can’t bear to. “You are not leaving with that book. I’ll call the cops. Mag, lock the door.”

  Mag goes to do it. I get even less brave when I finally understand what kind of lumpy candle Solomon Elerion is holding.

  Lumpy because it’s a blob of flesh that used to be someone’s hand. Desiccated, old, maybe as old as the grimoire he holds in his other one. If such things were real, it would even explain how they got in and out of the room. My skin goes clammy, because my reading on occult topics is plenty extensive enough to recognize …

  “A Hand of Glory? Am I supposed to believe that’s real?” I ask.

  “Yes, it’s a real one,” Solomon says. “Not only that. It’s the first. Why do you care if we take the grimoire?” He pauses. “Are you a guardian?”

  I blink. I’m sweating. The hallway seems to close in around us.

  He’s telling me that the gross relic in his hand is a real Hand of Glory, the hand of a murderer who died on the gallows. The hand that “did the deed.” And, oh yes, I search my random-fact-retaining brain, the hand is combined with the fat from the dead person to make the candle one that will burn. Its power? Supposedly to open any door.

  Like they did. You saw it. There’s no other way they got through so quickly.

  His lips curl into a smile. “I’ll ask again … Are you a guardian?”

  “I—I can’t let you take the book.” My words are an iceberg lumbering from my throat.

  “I don’t see how you can prevent it.”

  Maybe Mag’s busy calling the cops and I can distract him until they come. “What would you do if you could go back in time?” I babble, trying not to look at the burning hand or inhale too deeply. “Because I’d have rubbed this house with unguent from the gall of a black cat, the fat of a white hen, or, um, the blood of a screech-owl. Compounded during the dog-days, obviously.”

  Only I would immediately go to facts from another old book, another grimoire, the Petit Albert from 1722. It details how to make a Hand of Glory and how to protect yourself from one.

  Solomon’s head tilts, the beak-like nose of the mask slicing the air. “You are a guardian. How else would you know these things?” He shakes his head. “Whoever did the reconnaissance on this place is fired. Bring them. They’re guardians. This one at least.”

  “Wait a sec,” I say. “What do you mean, ‘bring them’?”

  But I understand soon enough when two of the masked people advance and stop on either side of me. Solomon leads the way to the front door and out, and I struggle as they grab my arms and drag me along behind him. Mag, brown eyes drowning in fear, waits at the threshold when we reach it, flanked by two more of the group.

  “This is a mistake,” I explain. “Really. No guardians here. You can take the book. I should’ve let you from the beginning.”

  Mag asks, “What is going on?”

  “You called the cops?” I ask, hopefully.

  Mag shakes their head. “Should I have?”

  I consider how to answer. “We’re being kidnapped by some kind of cult.”

  “Oh,” Mag says faintly. “Right. So that guy is holding a gross old hand?”

  “Stop talking,” the woman holding my right arm says. “Give us your phones.”

  Mag and I exchange a look, then fish them from our pockets and hand them over. The woman sets them on the countertop. Then we’re grabbed again and pushed through the door.

  “Wait!” I plant my feet on the parking lot pavement, with enough force to make the guy holding my other arm stumble. We have to leave some sort of something that might be a clue to our whereabouts. “Let me at least lock it and put up a sign. We have more customers coming.”

  Before they can say no, I wriggle my arms free and run back inside. I could lock the door and leave them out there. But … I’m no hero and I can’t let them take Mag alone, can I? No way. I can’t even get one of our phones into my pocket.

  I can scribble a note while the two masked people stand watching and then tape it to the glass door and flip the lock. It contains a lie, meant to be a hint for Jared.

  CLOSED FOR FAMILY EMERGENCY

  WE REGRET ANY INCONVENIENCE

  Although when Jared does show up, he’ll call Mom. Is that so bad?

  Yes, it is. I didn’t even make it through the first night successfully. She’ll never leave again.

  Though that’s probably not as bad as wherever the black murder van they push Mag and me into is taking us.

  * * *

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have said the blindfold thing,” Mag whispers.

  “You think?” I whisper back.

  I hear the strain in their voice. I can’t see them though, because I nervously babbled some more that it wasn’t smart of our captors to l
et us watch where we’re going. Which led to rummaging around and some kind of cloth wrapped around our heads. They haven’t bound our wrists, but we were assured they will if we try to remove said blindfolds.

  A huge understatement to say this is not shaping up like the weekend I planned. I pray that Jared or someone will find the note and get us out of this insanity … somehow … and back to safety, where we can pretend none of this ever happened.

  “Sorry,” Mag says. “That was snarky.”

  “Snark is allowed.”

  “Quiet!” a woman barks.

  “You guys are really unpleasant,” I inform them. I can’t imagine the situation getting worse at this point. The moment I say that I do though. Unpleasant isn’t the half of what’s possible. These are evil people. Evil people have taken us.

  I picture us never getting away. Mom showing up after Jared calls her to find the business abandoned, my cryptic sign on the door. Will it take him two hours to notice we never showed up at home and go investigate? Will that be too long?

  No. There’s no point to that kind of thinking. Yet. Pay attention, I tell myself. It’s the best clue I give anyone at the Great Escape.

  So I focus. I listen. I track the changes in our speed the best I can. I count the number of turns we take and how far apart they are. My best guess is that we got on New Circle and drove a fair way, then got off and drove until we entered a rural area. We could be anywhere in our county or the next one over. Or the next. Why do TV and movies always make figuring this stuff out so much easier?

  Right, because it’s not usually a book nerd and her fashion- forward best friend.

  The van stops, finally. The door slides open, and I reach beside me to find Mag’s hand. I give it a squeeze. “We’ll get out of this,” I say, though I have zero reason to believe it’s true. “I promise.”

  Now I’m lying to my BFF. Banner day in the Johnson household.

  Mag whispers back, “You can’t promise that.”

  They’re not wrong, but … “I did though.”

  “Quiet,” Solomon Elerion says. I recognize his voice. “And stay that way when you get out.”

  If he wants us to be quiet that must mean there are people around to hear. My shoulder is grabbed and I’m hefted up out of my seat. Then my feet are on solid ground.

  “Mag,” I say, and wait for them to respond, so I know they’re out and on the ground too.

  “Callie?”

  “Run!” I rip off my blindfold, and have a moment to blink and get oriented before I stumble forward. Mag does the same, but of course the plague doctors are on top of us again.

  It doesn’t even matter.

  I look around.

  The only thing out here is woods and more woods. And, as they turn us, a house.

  Big and gothic. Two stories of decaying mansion that must have been gleaming white and pretty once. Night sounds rise around us, loud, underscoring how in the middle of nowhere we are.

  But something about the house strikes me as familiar.

  “I was just testing you,” Solomon says. “Rookies.”

  “Guardians,” I say on a gamble, because I don’t like the tone of “rookies.” Rookies might be expendable; guardians sound important.

  He shrugs and after a vague nod we’re being carted toward the house. Someone flips on the porch light and unlocks the door, and they bring us inside.

  As we come in, there’s a wide living room off to one side and a parlor on the other. And a set of stairs, which is where they take us.

  Not before we get a look at the parlor though. It’s been emptied of furniture and a large pentagram has been traced out in what looks like reddish dirt on the floor. Candles, fat and black, line the windows and edges of the walls, unlit as yet. Occult symbols are traced within the star in black and white.

  “Wait.” I snort. “You’re Satanists or witches or something? You know that stuff is a hoax?”

  “Sure.” Solomon Elerion sneers beneath the beak of his mask, then removes it. His face is long and pale. He stares at us with bottomless eyes. “Like the Hand of Glory was a hoax.”

  I am forced to concede the point with my silence. He still has my book in his hands.

  We’re taken up the stairs and pushed into an empty bedroom. Empty except for one thing, anyway. There’s a painting left on one of the walls, a very Hieronymus Bosch knockoff filled with cavorting and dark revelry—and given that I named my dog after the painter who specialized in scenes of torment—I remember it. Now I know why the house is familiar.

  The “chosen” ones shut and lock the door and Mag and I face each other, then take in the bleak landscape. There’s what looks like a closet door and one window. Besides the painting, that’s it.

  “This is where we got the grimoire,” I say. “We came to the estate sale. I remember that painting.”

  “Nobody bought it?” Mag says with a squint. “It’s pretty good.”

  “That’s the weird thing about this situation?”

  We smile weakly at each other, but it’s covering up a world of emotions and too many questions without answers and a kind of fear that’s like numbness.

  “So I didn’t see this coming,” Mag says.

  “I did in my crystal ball of strange Satanic cults,” I quip. “How do we get out of here?”

  “You don’t think they’d, you know, sacrifice us, do you?”

  Thanks for that idea, Mag. I hadn’t gotten there yet.

  “I’m sure I’m chewy. All that sitting,” I say. “Not good for the ritual cannibalism.”

  “At least you’re still funny.”

  We nod at each other.

  “If only this had rules and we could solve it.” I hesitate. “It probably does though. We just need to figure them out.”

  “Right,” Mag says. “It’s a start. And Jared will figure out we’re gone.”

  “He will eventually. Time to do the ‘top to bottom’ on this room,” I say, referencing stage one in approaching every escape room.

  We’re both quiet as we circle the space. Mag opens a closet, filled with a few leftover pillows and knickknacks but not much else. I check the windows and find them not only nailed shut, but painted shut too, with black paint. “Subtle.”

  I try the door, rattling the knob. No one tells me to knock it off, so I guess there’s no watchdog outside.

  “We could break the window.” I consider the height. The ground is at least thirty feet down. “And leap to our death.”

  “Next option.”

  “Okay, so they came to our place for the book. It was obviously what they wanted.”

  “Good point.” Mag sits down on the floor, leaning against the wall. “What is that book?”

  “It’s a grimoire. It, uh, supposedly summons the devil. Or the devil’s right-hand man … Or is it left-hand man? Anyway.”

  Mag’s eyes are wide. “But you said that stuff is fake. A hoax. Downstairs.”

  “I thought it was.” I pause. “I think it is.”

  “I don’t want to know what a Hand of Glory is, do I?”

  I consider it seriously. “No, you really don’t.”

  Then I bend down to examine the lock on the door more thoroughly. “I might be able to pick this.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” I went to a lock convention with Mom that had demos and games where people competed to get through them fastest. I sat through boring seminars where we learned about various locks, and practiced a few times at home. This one’s old.

  “If I had something to pick it with.”

  Old lock, old door, old house. If one of us had muscles, we’d probably be able to bust through it. There’s a slim chance we could do it together. Before I can suggest it, the door flies open.

  “You’re needed downstairs,” Solomon Elerion says, two of his minions beside him. “As guardians, we’ll want to present you as gifts.”

  Downstairs is closer to the front door. And I’m out of ideas. “Yes, of course,” I say.<
br />
  I take Mag’s hand and squeeze. They squeeze back. Neither of us is alone, whatever happens.

  Solomon makes a mocking “after you” gesture and we walk out and down the stairs side by side. The air in the old house is stale and cool. Like we’re in the waiting room of a hospital or a cemetery. All is darkness on the stairs, the lights off now, the flicker of the candlelight ahead the only thing we have to see by.

  “You’re really into creating an atmosphere, aren’t you?” I ask, but I feel a grudging admiration. I find myself pretending this is an escape room. Some secret gag. A whole new kind of game.

  I wish.

  When we reach the parlor, everyone else has their masks and capes on, still. There are more of them. I count thirteen. Solomon Elerion gestures for us to stand near an old fireplace. Far from the door.

  The thick grimoire is open in his hands and, as he intones the words, some of the others do things with incense burners and candles and what appear to be drops of blood around the edges of the circle.

  Mag and I stand, our grip on each other’s hands tightening as horror sinks in. Deep.

  At last, Solomon claps the book closed with a sharp crack. It’s echoed by lightning and loud thunder outside. The bones of the house creak and shake around us, and there’s a growing darkness and smoke in the center of the pentagram.

  Someone is here who wasn’t before.

  They did it.

  They summoned the devil’s left-hand man.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LUKE

  Rofocale sets down his bone pen and goes still for a moment. “It’s time. But again, these situations can be … fluid. Are you positive you’re up to this? You’ll be careful?”

  Careful. I don’t laugh. Somehow. “Careful is my middle name.”

  We both know it’s actually Astaroth, because he’s the former good angel, now bad angel, who introduced my father to my mother.

  “I’m being serious, Luke.” His gray visage is as judgmental as it gets. The effect is compounded by the imposing stone behind him, and the giant desk in front. “You have to be serious for once too.”