The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

Yara Thornberry. “What do you mean? There’s only one key and I cemented it in that fountain decades ago.”

“No, there’s another. It was in the trapdoor of my closet—”

“Trapdoor?” Her annoyance shifted to cool, collected calm then. “It doesn’t matter. You were doing so well, Ryn Weaver, why ruin it now after everything? I was so inspired by your fear. You made it seem so real.”

“My fear is real, what are you talking about?”

“You did make for valuable entertainment on the closed-circuit security cameras.”

“Security cameras? You were watching us? At the library?”

She chuckled. “You expected privacy? So much more naive than I realized, but that plays well into your fear...and on camera. You know, you’d think I’d be an expert in terror by now, but after forty-five bestsellers, how does an artist reinvent themselves? At the beginning of my career, I competed with my peers, viciously eviscerated their successes in my head, until I realized that only hobbled my creativity. I need more inspiration, more energy, more life to work with.”

“So you created this...this game to terrorize people for book sales? You tried to bury me alive!”

Her grin twitched, as if she enjoyed the slow reveal of her sinister hustle.

“An experiment in fear, isn’t it wonderful? And The New York Public Library, the perfect facade. Settings steeped in tradition always lure just the right sort of writer...the lonely ones in search of the answers to life’s greatest questions. Average people ask: Why does love elude me?” She rolled her eyes. “Love, the greatest pitfall of all, their romantic egos behind the wheel of their life and they don’t even realize it. But not you, Ryn Weaver, you’re not a crazy romantic fool, are you?”

“What does that make you? A plagiarizing murderer?”

Yara shook her head, her smile turning up her lips like she held a secret. “Pen names are a wonderful thing, so many secrets can be withheld when we write from a place of anonymity. But murderer? Of course not. I run a floral business and—”

“The floral business? You're manufacturing and testing toxins on people! It’s practically a pharmaceutical lab down here. And what happened to the others?”

“The others?” She pushed the broom at my feet with force and I jumped. She laughed, then turned and walked to the opposite side of the room. “Dead. The dosages are never quite right in the early phases of testing.”

“H-how long have you been doing this?”

“Me?” Yara grinned. “You give me too much credit. I only built upon a dream.”

“That means the medical files...they...they tested on the kids back then too?”

Yara didn’t reply, only held my gaze with fierce intensity.

My eyes dropped to Thax’s still form, so peaceful it looked like he’d only lain down for a nap. He probably knew more, so much more than I even realized, and that’s why it was him on that steel table and not me. If Thax could talk, I wonder what he’d tell me right now.

Mind games. Dig into her psyche.

“What happened to Zara?”

Yara’s eyes hardened.

Long beats of tense energy passed between us, the room filling with a chill that settled in my spine and made me eager to escape this woman and her vortex of control.

I grinned, a sense of something bigger than myself coming over me when I breathed, “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

One elegant eyebrow arched before a slow smile turned her lips. “You are quite the surprise, aren’t you?”

I didn’t reply, but my fingers itched with the need to palm the dull letter opener in my hand, just for some sort of protection if she came at me.

“Zara suffered so much in this life; I gave her the only taste of freedom she ever had.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I saved her from herself.”

“You killed her.”

Yara’s eyes lit with anger. “I gave her everything I had!”

“You stole her life.”

Yara’s eyes danced, lips finally curling into a grin. “She stole mine.”

I swallowed, eyes lighting from Thax’s prone form to the evil that’d snuffed the light from his eyes. “Where did you bury her? Is she here?”

“Of course she’s here. No one leaves Usher, it nests itself inside the marrow of your bones like a disease. You think it was me that took Zara’s life—it wasn’t.”

“Then who?”

“It was Zara.” Her words hung heavy, dripping with meaning that I couldn’t piece together.

“She killed herself?”

“Hardly, she was too weak for that. She was too weak for Usher, too weak for Hollywood, too weak for the cellar. Evil devours weakness first. Always.” Yara’s eyes cut to Thax’s. “I did hope he’d be around a little longer, his writing was awful, but he was fun, wasn’t he?”

My heart roared in my ears, rage rushing through me at her flippant description of Thax. “He was so much more.”

“No, he wasn’t, they never are. He was just like the governess, his taste for fame was his only driving force.”

“And yours isn’t?”

“Of course not. If you don’t know me well enough by now to know that art for the sake of art is my only driving force, maybe Usher isn’t right for you after all.”

“Where is Zara? Where is Nate? Where is the last writer?”

“Right under your nose, my dear.”

I shook my head, sick of her non-answers. “I have Zara’s journal. I know you hurt her—I know what happened to the kids here that never left—Susie and Jacob and—”

“You do, do you? And why do you think I would hurt my own dear sister?”

“I-I don’t know, I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Think, Ryn Weaver. The answers have always been standing right in front of you. You thought you’d find the answers in books, that was your first mistake. Words are a poor substitute for what we can see and feel and smell.”

My mind snapped back to the closet in my room at the library, the awful stench that rose from the floorboards. “I won’t tell anyone what you did, Yara.”

A visible shudder coursed through her usually measured features. “You’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong