The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Fortuitous Error

We took off immediately for Bigfork. I didn't want to be twiddling my thumbs while I waited for the elders' response. I knew it was going to be no. My protective detail—Everett, Mark, and Ginny—followed me. Electric Avenue, the main drag, and the street beside it sat flush against the mountainside, so we could run from my family's city, past Swan Lake, over another mountain range, and up to the edge of Bigfork. There was a break between stores and houses just off Electric Avenue where we could walk onto the street as if we'd just gotten out of our car or emerged from a vacation rental condo. It was a convenient little spot.

"They're not going to help us," I said, as we passed the tea cottage and rounded the corner of a street I knew like the back of my hand.

"What makes you say that?" Ginny asked me.

"If they were going to, they would have agreed to it by now," I said as we passed a souvenir shop and crossed the street.

"That's jumping to conclusions. Let's wait to hear a no before we act like we already have," Everett warned.

"They never talk about Salem. And there's something Lizzie doesn't want said," I reasoned.

"But Lizzie is our greatest ally among the crazy fourteen," Mark said lightly. "She shouldn't be any trouble at all."

"You underestimate her. She's also the most guarded," I said.

"She was like your mother," Everett said.

"And best friend!" Ginny added.

"So? It's not like you can't love someone who is strong-willed. I never once talked about Salem, Massachusetts with her. Not once. I lived in a four-hundred-square-foot house with her for nearly a century and a half, and it never came up once. She doesn't talk about history, she doesn't talk about herself. And she never does anything she doesn't want to do. If she had our backs in there, she would have said something," I argued.

"So you think we're on our own," Everett said.

"I do," I said. We reached the fourth store on the right of the small street we were walking down, a brick-and-glass storefront with an updated and yet still fading green-and-white sign bedecking the top of the door that read Books and Ladders. I stopped in front of it, the dim cling of wind chimes in my ears from the few hanging down from the overhang above the windows. They had icicles hanging off them. It was the first time I'd been here since I left four years ago.

"This is the famed bookstore?" Everett asked.

"It is," I said, as I pushed through the door. I ducked under the beads hanging from the inside doorframe and made my way into the tiny shop, the Winters behind me. They looked around, perplexed and a little disappointed. The store was narrow— no more than fifteen feet across— but it was deceptively deep, with several small rooms like this one behind it. Books lined the walls from floor to high ceiling, and there were old-fashioned library ladders in each row. There was some order to the sections, but still the place felt in disarray. A few homey, mismatched armchairs had been stuck haphazardly in corners where they could fit without obstructing the walking paths. In places, stacks of books littered the floors. Faded and worn oriental rugs covered the old wood floors, overlapping so that you couldn't tell the floor was wood at all. Eclectic mixes of lamps had gathered over the years, giving light to each cozy nook. The air smelled like old books. If there were ever a place that felt like home to me, this was it.