small leather pouch out of the hidden space. Kate tugged the cords from its drawstring neck and a small book slid out of it onto the shelf. She could smell its age, and she wondered how many other hands had touched it; how many people had died to keep its words a secret. Its cover was exactly as she had seen it within the veil, stretched in old purple leather with ancient silver lettering that still sparkled in the candlelight.
WINTERCRAFT
The spine creaked and snapped gently as she opened it, sending brown fibers drifting into the air. The old paper was crinkled and cracked, the pages clinging to the spine by the thinnest of threads, but the ink was still dark enough to be readable.
Kate read the only words written on the first page.
Those Who Wish to See the Dark,
Be Ready to Pay Your Price.
A shout of surprise echoed up from below, and it was only then that Kate sensed how high she was above the ground. She clung to the ladder for safety and looked down. “Artemis?”
It was too dark to see anything. She stuffed the book back into its pouch, grabbed it and the candle in the same hand, and clambered back down the ladder as fast as she could.
“Artemis?”
“Kate, no! Stay up there!” Artemis cried out in pain.
Kate stopped twenty rungs from the bottom, close enough to see Silas’s gray eyes looking up at her.
“Your warnings are unnecessary, Mr. Winters,” he said. “I have no interest in taking your life. All I want is the book.”
Kate climbed down the last few steps and saw Artemis curled up on the floor with Silas standing over him, one boot pressing down on his injured ankle. “Stop! Don’t hurt him!” she said.
Silas’s sword shone deep blue as he stabbed it into the library floor beside Artemis’s neck, splintering the ancient wood and sending shards of it across Artemis’s face. “Give me the book,” he said, lifting his foot from Artemis’s leg and pressing it against his neck instead, forcing his quivering throat closer to the blade.
“It’s yours,” said Kate. “Take it!”
Silas held out his hand. Kate passed the pouch to him and he checked inside it before tightening the strings again and tucking the precious book into his coat.
“Now we leave.” He wrenched his sword out of the ruined floor and grabbed Kate’s hand.
“Leave her alone!” cried Artemis, struggling to his knees, trying to heave himself to his feet as Silas dragged Kate away. “You’ve got what you wanted! Leave her. Please!”
Silas kept moving, pulling Kate along past the bookshelves and moving quickly through pools of light cast by people working on a platform overhead. Kate looked back at Artemis’s face until it was swallowed by the darkness. Her candle blew out and she let it fall to the floor, listening to the blood pounding in her ears as they raced between the shelves. Silas may have gotten what he had come for, but she was leaving something far more precious behind.
Silas stopped suddenly as they came up against a solid wall. Kate could feel the coldness of the stone and Silas’s hand upon hers as he forced her palm against it.
“Ask it to show us the secret way,” he ordered, his voice vicious and cold. “Ask it how to get out.”
A sharp point stabbed into Kate’s skin and the sound of a moving spirit wheel rumbled through the wall. The tiles rattled into place around her hand and the floor shifted beneath her feet.
Silas pulled Kate back as part of the floor slid to one side and revealed a shaft thick with cobwebs, with rusted metal hooks marking where a ladder had once been. Kate could smell water. Deep water.
“There’s no way down,” she said.
Silas peered out over the edge of the hole. “Only my way.”
Then, without warning, Silas pulled her to his chest, engulfed her in his arms, and jumped.
Chapter 16
The Thieves’ Way
Kate and Silas plummeted down through the hole and plunged feet first into deep black water. Kate’s blood pulsed deafeningly in her ears and she fought hard to swim up to the surface. Her heavy clothes pulled her down, but she kicked hard and burst, gasping, out into the air.
“Artemis!” she sputtered, as the secret door ground back into place above her head.
Kate struggled against Silas’s grip as he dragged her up onto a wide point of stone that jutted out into the calm river, and then the shock of the cold water hit her, making her