Rival Demons by Sarra Cannon Page B

is it?" I asked.
    He glanced toward the door again, then finally
turned and met my gaze. "What I am telling you is restricted
information," he said. "I heard some members of the Resistance
talking a few days ago about a mission from which they had just
returned. They spoke in quiet voices, telling the story to a
soldier who had not been at the battle. They spoke of a hunter they
had fought in one of the many battles on the surface. Sometimes in
battle, the hunters are killed, but most of the time, if the
Resistance is able to defeat them, the hunters still manage to get
away with only a few wounds. They are very much difficult to
kill."
    I listened with patience, waiting for him to
talk about this book.
    "At this battle, the Resistance managed to
capture one of the hunters," he said. "The soldiers spoke of this
event as if it were very rare."
    "What did they do with her once they captured
her?" I asked. At this point, I was sitting on the very edge of the
coffee table, my hands sweaty with anticipation.
    "They forced her to take them to the place where
she lives," he said. "A cave of some sort high in the snowy
mountains above Gollier."
    He paused, putting one hand on top of the
book.
    "This book is one of the things they found as
they searched her home," he said. "According to the soldiers, an
entire box of books had been found there in the cave."
    "What kind of books?"
    "Spell books," he said. "And more importantly,
records."
    A chill slipped down my spine. "Records?"
    "Notes about each demon the hunter had ever
taken from our world to yours."
    I leaned back, my mouth dry. I wondered why they
would even be keeping records. "How did you get ahold of one of
them?"
    Essex shifted in his seat. He didn't answer. He
simply looked down at the book and picked at the tattered edges of
the binding.
    "He stole it," Mary Anne blurted out.
    "I am planning to return it," he said quickly.
"I only needed to see if my own father's name was included in one
of the books."
    "And was it?" I asked, trembling.
    When he looked up, the pain in his eyes was
heartbreaking. "No," he said. "My father's name was not there, but
many others from my village and the villages near mine. It must
have been a different hunter who took my father."
    "I'm sorry," I said, not sure what else to say.
"What happened to the hunter? The one they captured?"
    "I do not know," he said. "They did not say more
about her. Only that they found these books in her cave. I was too
afraid to question the soldiers about what happened. I did not want
them to know I had been listening."
    "Where did you get the book?" I asked, wondering
what other books might also be stored there. "Is there some kind of
storage room where they keep them all?"
    Essex nodded. "Yes," he said. "In the council's
meeting hall. It is a large room here where all of our books are
stored."
    "Sounds like a library," I said. "Can we not
just walk in and ask to see some of these books?"
    His eyes grew wide and he shook his head fast.
"No. Going inside the council's chamber is strictly forbidden
unless you are a scholar or a translator or a member of the
Underground's council," he said.
    "I don't understand," I said. "How did you get
the book in the first place if it's so hard to get inside?"
    "It was an accident," he said. "Or perhaps it
was fate. One of the soldiers telling the story that day dropped it
in the marketplace very near to my tent. I picked it up quickly,
before he knew it was gone. When I discovered what was inside, I
knew I must study it before I could let them know that I had
it."
    I thought for a minute, letting Essex's story
sink in. "You said they also had spell books?" I asked.
    He nodded.
    "Did they say anything about what was in those
books? Anything at all?"
    Mary Anne sat up straighter. "I think I just got
what you're thinking," she said to me. "If the hunters here live
for hundreds of years, who's to say some of those spell books
wouldn't be extremely old?"
    "Or extremely rare?" I added,