Still in the Library

Stone sighed and pushed back the drawings he had been reviewing. Flynn, Baird and Jones had left hours ago, returning to the old castle in hopes of searching the grounds while the weather kept the tour group contained. Jenkins and Cassandra, with help from Master Christoph, had been poking around tomes that spoke of soul cages and how they could be opened without destroying either the captured souls or any would-be rescuer. Stone had resigned himself to staring at the castle drawings again, hoping to make something out of the blueprints that the rest had not already noted. "Okay, let's review what we know. Based on Arthur's memory of his visit, there should be a secret passage to the basement / dungeon behind a door in this back area of the castle. But if that is accurate then why hasn't someone already found it? The plans show every OTHER door in the place, including ones that do go down to the lower levels. But not one that is anywhere near the kitchens. Maybe Arthur got it wrong? It has been hundreds of years since he was exploring that hall as a boy. It's possible he got his directions mixed up."

Jenkins shook his head. "Doubtful. Arthur's sense of direction has always been uncanny. I can't imagine he'd be that off no matter how young he was or how long ago it was."

"You really don't think he can do ANYTHING wrong, don't you?" Stone said, waving at the plans. "But the facts say that door just isn't there."

Cassandra frowned. "You would think anyone doing restoration on the building would have noticed a random entrance to the basement and made a point of showing it on the drawings submitted to the city planners."

Master Christoph, old necromancer, looked up from his scroll with a smile. "Or maybe someone didn't want, if that entrance was found, to risk having tourists traipsing through dark, dank cells that probably reeked of mold and rats. From what my King has told me of this world, its people are very litigious. Lawsuits filed by sick or frightened foreigners would not bode well for a buddying tourist trap."

Jenkins closed the ornate book he had been pursuing with a thud. "What if the Grimoire isn't even in THIS castle but was, as Mr. Stone postulated at the start of this search, sent to the Countess's illegitimate son in Wallachia? We may be searching in totally the wrong area."

Master Christoph shook his head. "While I suspect that is a possibility, it's not the most likely one. While I understand that illegitimacy wasn't quite the "sin" in this reality that it later became, the family would not have trusted such a weapon to someone they did not have total and complete trust and / or control over. And, from what little I've read about the woman, the story of this child is only a speculation with no facts to back it up. He may or may not even have existed at all – much less been in a position to become the guardian of such a dreadful tome. I would be more inclined to think that the Book of Shadows we are searching for is in still in Čachtice castle and hidden from prying eyes by a well-placed spell of concealment."

"One that lasted five hundred plus years?" Stone asked, skeptically.

"The ancient castle that was the home of the Fae Royal house prior to the Devil's war on Heaven was concealed from the view of the darkness that over took our lands for far longer than this book has been in existence" the old man replied, somberly. "It was only when my King and Queen united with the Master of the Dragon temple that the spell was erased."

"Maybe THAT's the problem" Cassandra said, an excited note to her voice. "Maybe something has to happen for the book to be revealed, something that hasn't occurred yet."

"Which would explain the bodies of the missing women have not been found" Jenkins agreed. "Either their lives are needed as a sacrifice to reveal the book…"

"Or, Master Knight, they are being kept in reserve so that their souls can be inserted into the book when it is found, to… charge its batteries? I think that is what Master Khan would call the action… am I correct?" Christoph looked around at the horrified expressions on the Librarian's faces with a sigh. "This quest is dark, almost as dark as some we undertook to free the Fae lands. Best we find a way to the end before any more innocents are sacrificed for the sake of power and vanity.'

"Amen to that" Stone muttered.

At Čachtice castle

Flynn walked aimlessly around the great hall, keeping the tour group's guide in sight as he examined the walls. From where he was standing he could see Baird doing the same thing, walking around the edge of the room, keeping the van driver squarely in her sights. He wasn't exactly sure where Jones had disappeared to and hoped that wherever he was the young thief wasn't getting into more trouble that he could get out of. "A vain hope" the Librarian muttered to himself.

"What's a vain hope?" a cheery voice replied beside him. Jones appeared, holding a bag of chips in one hand and a soda can in the other. "Hoping for more than chips and drinks? Cause you're kind of out of luck there, mate. Only other thing this bunch brought with them was a bunch of limp sandwiches I wouldn't wish on anyone."

"Feeding your stomach isn't high on my list of priorities right now" Flynn hissed, finding a quiet corner to occupy as they talked. "Did you find that door that Arthur talked about?"

"Nope – and I managed to sneak past that pair watching over us and go from here all the way back to where the plans said the old kitchens were. Didn't find anything. Didn't even find a door down to the basement level – which is strange cause a place like that you know HAS to have a basement."

"Odd" Flynn mused. "Arthur said the door was behind a hanging cloth of some kind…"

"Which has probably rotted away after five hundred years" Jones said, calmly snacking away on the chips. "So…where's the door?"

Baird motioned from across the room for the two men to join her in the entrance to the castle. "Just got a call from Stone" she said once the Librarians were gathered around her. "He says Master Christoph believes that there might be a spell on the book to keep it hidden from anyone likely to try to find it."

"Which would explain why Jones isn't able to find the door to that torture chamber" Flynn replied excitedly. "I'm betting the book never left the room Arthur first saw it in and now that spell is covering any trace of it from us."

"Great – so we need to know what magic spell would make the door become visible before we can get close to the book" Baird grumbled. "Nothing is every easy with these assignments."

"It's been hidden for hundreds of years – how do we find the right spell to make it visible to us if no one else has?" Jones asked, watching as the two young English women he had been talking too started to drift towards the huge stone fireplace.

"We keep our eyes on the people who brought us here" Flynn replied, peering over Baird's shoulder at their tour guide. "I have to believe they may know more about what's going in then they are saying."

"Considering they aren't saying ANYTHING other than strand us in an old and drafty castle I'd would normally say that's kind of a stretch" Baird said with a shrug. "But I'm with Arthur on this one – it's too coincidental that the people involved in the tour have the same names as two of Countess Bathory's servants."

"Could just be family names" Jones protested.

"Could be" Baird admitted. "But right now – I'm not sure I'm willing to risk anymore disappearances on coincidence."

Across the room, the two young women Jones had been following around, Cindy and Candice, examined the old stone fireplace critically. "Lovely workmanship" Candice commented. "Pity they will have to tear it out and rebuild it to bring it up to code."

Cindy shrugged. "Pity it's not lit – we could use the warmth." She glanced across the room briefly at Flynn and Baird, watching as the young Aussie traveling with them positioned himself to watch their guide and her driver. "Wonder where they disappeared to."

Candice shrugged. "Maybe they just went outside for a breath of air."

"Oh Please!" the young American girl replied in annoyance. "One minute they were standing in a corner next to the castle entrance then they were gone with no trace. Next thing we know they had reappeared beside the door into the castle. They weren't there a minute before – the door had been opened for a minute I would have seen them if they had been just outside. So where did they go?"

Candice looked down at her cellphone with concern. "No signal – so we can't update our web group about what's going on."

"Can't get a message to Lucy Lyons either – and that worries me." Cindy's voice had lost its bubbly enthusiasm, sounding more and more nervous. "I wish we had contacted her before we left the inn."

"What could she have done for us?" Candice replied practically. "She's in the U.S. and we're here – not like she could have sent reinforcements."

"No – but we could have asked her about that professor Carson and his wife. There is something about them – something I'm not sure about."

Candice glanced over at the trio, still standing in the entrance to the Great Room. "I thought you liked the little Australian student traveling with them."

Cindy flushed slightly. "I do – but he's not telling us the whole story either. Remember what the group said after the last two women disappeared from our tour group? Trust no one but your partner."

Candice fished a tablet from inside her jacket and briefly check a file on it. "That's not important now. We have to find that door into the Countess's torture room if we're going to prove our theory about what really happened five hundred years ago. Come on, the diary said the door was just shy of the kitchen area."

"It also said it was veiled" Cindy replied with a shrug. "How do we find it if we can't see it?"

"I have an idea about how to deal with that" Candice said thoughtfully.