Chapter 3 – Morganville's History Book
Filing through the chaos of bodies, Shane and I looked for any sign of Hannah Moses. Twenty minutes of hopeless searching left us talking to the police officers Travis Lowe and Joe Hess.
"What do you mean, she's not here? Then where is she?" Shane demanded.
Detective Lowe replied, "Look, we don't know for sure, but she said that she wants to start looking for Amelie as soon as possible. First we have to clear out the street – which isn't going to be easy – and then we're going out to investigate."
"But if you haven't seen Hannah anywhere, then chances are she's off doing something to help the case. Other than that, we've not heard anything," Detective Hess added.
"Okay, thanks," I said, and began to walk away. Then I added, "Would it be okay if you could keep us up to date with any new information?"
"We're going to be busy until Amelie is back and safe in Morganville, but if we get a chance then we'll get the information to you somehow," Detective Lowe answered.
"Thank you very much."
Shane guided me through the crowd, keeping his hand on my shoulder so he didn't lose me in the heavy crowd of people.
"What do we do now?" He asked.
"Honestly? I don't know; let's get back to the house and we'll take it from there." I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as a number of people came barging our way, but I had a destination and I wanted to get there as soon as possible. Feeling my cheeks burn with future worry, I touched my ring with my right hand; my finger following the curves and designs. The intricate sapphires joined together to make the physics symbol. No matter what happened, I would always have Shane and Eve and Michael. We stuck together.
Then I had an idea.
"Come on," I said, speeding up.
"What's the rush?" Shane asked me, and then he saw my face. "What?"
"Just come on!"
Three minutes later, the Glass House appeared, and Shane and I ran through the hall to find a commotion of vampires and teenagers.
"Should I get their attention or...?" Shane whispered to me.
"No. I need to go upstairs and grab something. Just make sure Eve doesn't plunge a stake into Oliver's heart." The scene in front of them was of Oliver shaking a pile of paper in Eve's face and Eve grabbing the sheets, throwing them onto the floor and slapping him in the face. "Okay, stop them; if you can."
I ran for the stairs and took two at a time to reach the top. In my bedroom, I found the book that I had bought from the bookshop a while ago. I had always meant to take it to Amelie, but I had never gotten around to it. Probably a good thing now, but if Amelie knew... Well, Amelie could be anywhere with anyone at this precise moment. This was the only lead we had, it would have to do.
After taking the book out of the bottom drawer, I hurried back down the stairs to a full blown fight between Eve and Oliver, both Michael and Shane trying to separate them, Myrnin chattering nonsense, which probably had to do with the history of warfare and the science of how aggressiveness is generated, whilst circling the current battle – and from the looks of it, Eve was winning.
"STOP!" I screamed, silencing the room so much that if a snowflake fell onto the floor, you would actually hear it hit the ground. I slowly walked down the stairs, now wishing I hadn't grabbed the attention of every other person in the room. Now Eve was halfway through punching Oliver, so her arm was floating in midair. And Shane and Michael were at either side of the fight, faces filled with seriousness. Myrnin sat down on Michael's armchair hanging his head to one side and holding himself with a posture as if he were a king; he too was looking at me, but with a sort of expectance in his eyes. Oliver's face, though, showed the expression of having been extremely irritated by a blue bottle fly (which if Eve turned to see right this moment it would make her immensely annoyed). Eve, instead, was getting annoyed at me.
"What, Claire? I'm beating this guy, and I must say I have wanted to do this for a long, long time."
"Oliver, Myrnin, guys... I think I might be able to get something about Amelie's past in this book, or at least something that will help us find her."
Hopping to the bottoms of the stairs, I strode over to the sofa and sat down, letting Amelie's book sit in my lap. The first page I opened was of the picture of Amelie when she was younger; the one I had spent more time looking at than the others, because it looked like Amelie. A younger version, but that made sense, since it had been taken centuries ago.
"I bought this book from the bookstore along the road from Common Grounds. I always meant to give it to Amelie but I didn't get around to it. I'd forgotten I had it until I just thought about it." As I turned the pages, I saw all of the pictures that I had looked at before, and remembered one that hadn't really stood out to me at the time. I flicked passed what felt like hundreds of pages before I stopped at one in particular.
There, on the page. It was a bookshelf; just a regular bookshelf with regular books on it – except one. The cover was made of brown leather, and it looked filthy in an old book sort of way. But this wasn't just any book. This had the Founder's mark on it, and if you looked really closely, you could see the word 'Journal' written at the bottom. I looked around the picture and knew exactly where the picture had been taken, I recognised the bookshelf actually.
This was the shelf that they kept all the records of people in Morganville on, the one that I had visited often back when I had first come to Morganville.
"I think it's time we took a little trip to the TPU Library."
"Why?" Shane asked.
Then Michael, "What for?"
Then Myrnin, "What have you found?"
Then Eve, "What's going on?"
And finally, Oliver, "Did you find Amelie?"
Michael walked away from the finished fight and looked over my shoulder where the picture of the bookshelf lay. Michael's breath was strangely hot, which was when I realised how cold it was in the house. I hadn't noticed until now, but like always, the Glass House connected with the emotions of the residents (and just now wasn't the best time). Actually, if you looked at each individual really closely, you could see the white puff of air that spread around them after they breathed – well, the ones that actually breathed.
"Amelie was around for a long, long time – so long that we don't know exactly how long. But during all of that time..." I began.
"She would have been through lots of, as Myrnin said, difficult situations," Michael finished.
"Exactly!" I shouted. "One journal wouldn't have been enough – if she kept journals, that is. And that means that, where she may have burned one, there may still many out there. And this picture shows that there is one less than a mile from this house."
"Texas Prairie University Library," Shane said, finally clicking to what they had just said.
"Duh! Why didn't we think of that earlier?" Eve exclaimed.
"Because the best place to hide something..." Oliver started.
"Is in plain sight! Oh, she is a smart thing, Amelie," Myrnin stated, nodding his head as if he had just watched a fish do a front flip on a trampoline – he was clearly impressed.
"Can we go now?" I asked.
And in a chorus of voices – both human and vampire – was a, "Yes!"
Locking the door, we made our way – yet again – through the crowded streets. Eve's voice muttering disbelievingly in the background, "I was out here half an hour ago and it was completely deserted."