A muscle in his cheek jumped. “You’re not doing too well yourself.” He brushed past me, probably to avoid the world’s fastest breakup, and walked across the room towards the wall of books I’d perused a few days ago.
He pulled a book out and a portion of the wall swung back to reveal a door. Andre opened it and flicked on a light switch just inside the door. The space beyond lit up, casting a warm glow along the stone walls.
I temporarily forgot about our tiff. Mesmerized by what I saw, I crept close. The passageway seemed to curve downwards. “Where does this lead?”
Andre took my hand. “Remind me to distract you again the next time I piss you off.” He got a look for that.
He smiled, the punk. “Why don’t we go find out?” he said, taking my hand. My heart thumped away as we walked through the narrow hallway. A staircase spiraled downwards, into the earth.
For a moment I was nervous, the memory of the damp, dank subterranean floor of Peel Academy halting my progress. Then I felt the comforting pull of Andre’s hand. He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a heated look that made my knees go weak. That wasn’t helping my progress.
We wound our way down the staircase. When we neared the bottom Andre turned back to me. “Close your eyes.”
“Andre, you know how I feel about—” He silenced me with a kiss.
My lips moved against his, and my traitorous body wanted more. As if he heard my thoughts, Andre parted my lips with his own, and the kiss deepened.
My eyelids lowered and my knees really did go weak. I wrapped my arms around Andre’s neck as he scooped me up. Distantly I realized we were moving forward, but I didn’t give the thought much attention until Andre set me down and broke off the kiss.
I raised my eyelids, first looking at Andre’s dark, beautiful eyes, then beyond them, at the room around us. I inhaled sharply. “This is . . . awesome.”
Next to me, Andre wore a smug smile, and only then did I realize he’d distracted me again.
I should’ve been more worried about the fact that Andre now knew this about me, but the room pulled at my attention. Oh, I was so easily distracted.
On all sides of us, shelves and shelves of books lined the walls, some so old that the leather that bound them had started to tear.
“A library,” I said, turning around to take it all in. The room was two floors tall, and the books stretched all the way up to the ceiling. On one side of the room rows of shelves housed even more books. “This is almost as cool as Peel’s library.” I walked away from him to check out the aisles of books closest to me.
“Almost?” Andre sounded genuinely offended.
I threw a backwards glance at him. “I’m kidding,” I said.
He folded his arms. “Good.” I had to roll my eyes.
There were only three other pieces of furniture in the room: a large suede couch, a wingback chair, and a coffee table currently piled with books.
“Why is this place a secret?” I asked, turning back to face Andre. If I had a personal library as nice as this, I’d want others to use it.
Andre shrugged. “I didn’t make the library with the intention of keeping it to myself. Rather, I needed a secret room, and when I decided how I wanted to furnish it, I could think of nothing better than to stock it full of books.”
Good point. “Was this here before the fire?”
Andre grabbed one of the books on the coffee table and went to put it away. “Yes. It, like my room, was built to withstand fire.”
“And its primary purpose is to be a secret?” I was still trying to figure out how I came to be let in on this particular secret.
Andre walked out from behind the shelves. He stretched out his hand towards the couch. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
Don’t mind if I do. I plopped down on the comfy suede couch, sure I’d never want to get up again.
“Being a leader of any group is often dangerous, but for vampires in particular, assassination means losing your soul as well as your life. So for me, a secret room—equipped with a persecution tunnel—is one way to avoid death if someone attacks my home.”
“And no one other than the two of us knows about this room?” I asked, rubbing the suede under my fingers.
Andre sat down next to me, stretching his arm along the back of the couch. “No one.”
“Not even Theodore?”
“He knew I had a secret room, but never what it was or how to get there.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You mean I am the only person who knows this place exists?” Perhaps I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but I was trying to understand what he was really saying.
The corner of Andre’s lip quirked, but his eyes were serious. “You are.”
Whoa. I mean, whoa. Out of all the people in the world, Andre had shared this room with exactly one person. Moi.
I think I squeaked at that realization.
“Are you okay?” he asked, seeing my face.
“No. I’m definitely not okay. Why would you trust me after what happened a couple months ago?”