⊹ Book 2 of the Aldergrove Duology ⊹
{ONC 2023 Shortlister}
Desperate to see his dead mate again, Sebastien makes a deal with the Devil. But the price he has to pay is much more complicated than simply handing over his soul.
...
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⤠ ≻ ◈ ≺ ⤟
Things were worse than this morning. Sebastien stared through his car's windshield from the space he'd parked and watched the people making their way up and down the street. Most of them were coughing—some worse than others—and an ambulance was waiting outside a townhouse just down the road from him. He watched the paramedics carry someone out on a stretcher, and the weeping, grieving family followed them.
It made him think of Clementine. All the sick people; the families crying over their lost loved ones. This was the kind of thing that afflicted Clementine's village, wasn't it? The poisoned air made one person sick, then it spread to two, three, four other people...and before the week was out, everyone was infected.
How long would it be until Alderon was wiped off the map, too?
Sebastien sighed quietly and got out of his car. He followed the sidewalk to the end of the street and crossed the road. Between a bakery and a record shop was the only library his loop of the town helped him find. It was an old, converted townhouse with a shop sign hanging over the door with several small stained-glass windows and a cat flap.
The large windows on either side of the door displayed a different selection of books: fiction on the left and non-fiction on the right. Sebastien eyed the non-fiction window; there were several spell books and grimoires, as well as science-theory and alchemy-theory, too. Maybe this place would have what he needed.
He headed inside, and when the door opened and closed, the bell above it chimed loudly. The old librarian behind the register glanced over at him, and when he headed into the non-fiction section, she went back to whatever she was doing.
Sebastien located the science-theory shelf. There were several huge leather-sleeved books, but he couldn't see anything that might cover corpse-reanimating diseases.
With a quiet sigh, he eyed each book; he felt hopeful when he found a medical journal filled with studies on illness in ethos beings, but once again, there was nothing about corpses being able to run around.
He put the journal back and moved around to the other side of the shelf—
"Oh," someone gasped.
Sebastien stared at a blonde-haired guy who could be no older than he was; he stood just a few feet in front of him, and in his hands were three thick, old books. But when he took a moment to read their spines, Sebastien saw they were medicine study and alchemic grimoires.
And then he looked at the boy's face. It was a little stubbly and there were shadows under his eyes...his light blue eyes. Sebastien was struck with dismay; he knew this human wasn't Clementine despite looking quite like him, but a part of him seemed to hope that it might be the boy he loved.
