I was right back to where I’d started: frustrated, angry, and tired.

Maybe I was on a wild-goose chase. I wasn’t supposed to be in this library, and what I’d found hadn’t led me to any of the answers I’d hoped for. Part of me was tempted to call it a day, lock up the library, and hope my uncle never found out I’d been in there. It couldn’t be too much longer before he got me into that school. And the thing that went CRASH in the night would have to get tired of tormenting me eventually.

Why was I doing any of this?

I’d started a blog post apologizing to everyone for wasting their time when I came across something new. It was a clue from a book like the others, but it was not like the others.

Records you seek are behind time’s wheel.

Not a name. Not a history. Not witches.

This wasn’t a clue; it was direction.

Time’s wheel. Something else I hadn’t heard of, but the phrase was simple enough that I was sure I could figure it out. And I didn’t have to do it on my own.

I said it out loud, as if to reassure myself that this was the right way to go.

“Records you seek are behind time’s wheel.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw I had a new text message.

Stop.

I looked to see who it was from. The message vanished. It had been there. A text that only read Stop. And now it was gone.

Maybe the ghost haunting my phone was a friend. Maybe it was an enemy. Either way, I wasn’t stopping. Not now. I was closing in on something vital, closing in fast.

Eleven

I doubted i would HAve figured it out on my own.

From the triskelion to the face of the grandfather clock, the library was filled with wheel-like objects. It turned out the clock was in fact just a clock. The triskelions were part of window decorations, which meant behind them were the grounds of the estate. I only wanted to start digging up my uncle’s garden as a last resort.

Before I had to find a shovel, Anthony and Becky rescued me, pointing out that one of the symbols I’d sketched was the pagan calendar. With a little more digging—I was still grateful I wasn’t doing the literal kind—I learned that the pagan calendar is also often called the witches’ wheel of the year. As much as that information was useful, it made me shudder. More witches. I wished I could find a clue that was, like Traci said, about rainbows and happy stuff. Then again, I was pretty sure Dante didn’t see any rainbows on his trip through hell.

The wheel had been carved onto one of the wooden columns on the second floor of the library. I looked at it for a while. Weird words were carved around its circumference: Mabon, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc. Anthony had written that they were the eight major holidays of the year. Inside the first circle was another circle. These symbols I recognized as astrological signs.

Great. More puzzles. I was guessing I’d have to line up the astrological signs with specific holidays. Maybe I’d need to invest in a telescope. I ran my fingers over the polished wood, tracing one of the wheel’s spokes until my hand reached the intricately carved compass rose at its center. When I touched the rose, I thought I felt the wheel move.

I put more pressure on the wood. The rose caved, retreating within the center of the wheel. Ignoring the sudden jump in my pulse, I pushed steadily until I heard a solid click.

What had been an invisible line along the edge of the bookcase column widened, revealing a gap in the wood. I slid my fingers in the space and pulled. With a soft groan the panel swung open, revealing a hollow chamber inside the column.

My heart was trying to climb out of my throat as I peered inside.

More shelves were hidden in the dark space, and they weren’t only filled with books. Jars filled with what I could only guess was formaldehyde neatly lined one shelf. My guess was formaldehyde because of the objects floating in the jars. One looked like a rat fetus. Another held a heart. My own heart now had serious competition from my stomach for trying to relocate somewhere outside my body.

I decided to stop looking at the jars and gazed at another shelf.

The objects I found were just as disturbing as the jars. A whip rested next to a sickle-shaped blade. Beside these were a mortar and pestle and still more jars, but these held dried herbs, not next week’s biology dissection assignment.

The top shelf was stacked with books. These books, however, weren’t the known works of literature I’d found in the rest of the library. They were obviously much older. I took one of the books from the shelf. It was large, and I rested it on the floor so I could easily look at it.

Whether a biology text or some kind of bestiary, its contents were strange. It had no title or table of contents. Each page was filled with notes and illustrations that didn’t make any sense. I recognized some of the creatures as the same types that filled the gardens outside in statue form. In the book, however, they were laid out like speci-mens. Sometimes drawn in full form, others dissected as if the author intended his readers to desire close inspection of the mythic beasts.

The most unusual illustrations appeared at the end of the book.

One page featured a man in a style that reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” and on the opposite page was not a man, but a wolf drawn in the same style. The next dozen or so pages of the book held variations on the same theme, man and wolf. Sometimes completely separate, but sometimes the images were blended in forms ranging from grotesque to simply frightening. Though weird and morbidly fascinating, I didn’t know how it connected to the clues we’d found in the books. Not wanting to get off track, I set it aside and pulled down another book.

Like the first book, this text was obviously very, very old. The title jumped off the cover in letters so black it looked like someone had stamped it there with a branding iron. I felt my eyes go wide as I read the words.

Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes

“I know this,” I said. A chill, like fingers brushing along my neck, made me jump at the same time I whirled around because I thought I’d heard something. A sound like a long, sad sigh had filled the room. My gaze swept the library, one, two, three times, but I was alone.

The bright, gemstone colors from the stained glass windows were giving way to the thick pour of twilight. I didn’t want to be in the library after dark. I returned the animal book to the shelf but took the second text out of the library when I returned to my room.

If this book was what I thought it was, I’d stumbled on a gold mine. I didn’t mean literally—this text was much too precious to sell, and I was proud if my family had been smart enough to hang on to It. It almost balanced out the gigantic ick factor of the jars, whip, and knife that had also been hidden in the column.