Sterling

Sterling couldn’t understand why Randall hadn’t taken over the vessel as soon as he read from his book—all the others had. What made Scott so special?

“We should’ve just taken him,” Sterling said as soon as they were outside of the library.

“Yeah, because you draggin’ a pocket-sized librarian out by his hair wouldn’t have aroused any suspicion,” Connor drawled sarcastically.

Sterling growled out something unintelligible. Not in the mood to deal with Connor, he picked up his pace, walking faster towards his car.

“Where’re you going?” Connor asked.

Sterling didn’t turn around or stop walking as he replied. “To the car; where do you think I’m going?”

“Oh, so we’re going to just leave Scott here…alone?” Connor’s words were tinged with sarcasm again and Sterling couldn’t tolerate it for another second.

Spinning around, quicker than he should have done in a public area, Sterling growled, “Are you kidding me? You said we should go home and talk to the others!” He raised his voice but was able to fight the need to cause Connor actual bodily harm. Being so close to finding Randall, only to have it not work out the way he’d expected, wasn’t helping his emotions either.

“I said that to get you out of there, and to stop Scott from calling the police.” Connor rolled his eyes. Sterling was on the verge of shouting again, before Connor carried on talking. “Let’s go and sit over there.” He pointed to an empty bench, where they’d be able to see the library’s entrance.

“Then what?” Sterling asked but could feel himself calming a little from Connor’s suggestion.

“Then…I’ll hack the library’s system and get whatever info I can on Scott. I should be able to use that to do a more in-depth search of him on the web. Maybe even find out why he can read Randall’s book. While I’m doing that you can call Emmitt and let him know what’s going on.”

Emmitt was the leader of their coven—for the time being—and was probably waiting on pins and needles for Sterling and Connor’s call letting them know if Randall was at this library or not. Since Connor’s prophetic dream the night before, they’d been checking libraries closest to them, aiming to expand their search if they didn’t find Randall.

The library they’d found Randall—Scott in, hadn’t been listed as a library online. Sterling and Connor had been on their way to a café nearby for lunch after not finding Randall at the three libraries they’d already checked that morning. As they had been walking, a guy with his arms loaded with books knocked into Connor. Rather than telling the guy to apologise, Sterling asked where he’d gotten all the books from.

It was only by chance they’d found Scott, which made Sterling think it was fated to happen.

~*~

Sterling

“That’s…not possible,” Emmitt muttered down the phone to Sterling.

Sterling had just finished explaining to Emmitt about how Scott had somehow managed to find, and read, from Randall’s book.

Before Sterling could reply, Connor tapped his arm incessantly.

“This is too coincidental…” Connor stage whispered, turning his small laptop around for Sterling to see the screen.

“Give me a minute, Em,” Sterling said, before squinting at the small screen—it was a personnel document from the Salisbury Library. “What’s—” Sterling gasped, cutting off his question to Connor.

“What’s wrong? Did you find my brother?” Emmitt asked, worry clear in his voice.

“I…I don’t know…” Sterling spoke in a hushed tone, too confused by what Connor had found. “I’ll call you back.”

“No. Tell me what’s going on, now,” Emmitt demanded.

“Babe—” Sterling hissed at his own slip up. He’d been so good in the last month about not using any terms of endearment with Emmitt—ever since Emmitt’s wife’s soul reincarnated and re-joined their coven.

“Yeah…” Emmitt said quietly, “…call me back whenever,” before hanging up.

“You okay?” Connor asked.

Ignoring him, Sterling said, “Check Scott’s family tree.” Sterling didn’t know how Connor managed to find all of the information he did for their coven, but he was good at it—not that he’d ever tell the little shit that. It’d inflate his ego more than it already was.

“Good idea,” Connor said, turning his laptop to face him again.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Sterling fought back a sigh—he knew a compliment from Connor meant he was being pitied; he’d rather one of Connor’s sarcastic insults than this.

“Holy shit,” Connor gasped after—Sterling didn’t know how long. “It’s not a coincidence.”

This time, Sterling didn’t look at the laptop screen—he didn’t need to. When Connor had shown him Scott’s personnel file from the library, they saw Scott’s surname was Harken—the same surname as Randall and Emmitt. Something inside of Sterling had known—just from seeing Scott’s surname—that Scott was a descendant of theirs…and he was right.

“I don’t understand…” Connor muttered, “…Scott being Randall’s great grandnephew shouldn’t mean he can read from Randall’s book, right? That’s impossible…”

Sterling could feel Connor’s eyes on him, waiting for an answer, but Sterling didn’t have one. Staring into the distance in front of him, he spotted a little guy leaving the library, clutching a cloth bag to his chest. “I think we really need to talk to him,” Sterling said, pointing over to the front entrance of the library that Scott was slowly walking away from.

“Okay, but if you do kidnap him, do it discreetly, I don’t fancy trying to explain all this to the police,” Connor quipped.