BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
CHAPTER EIGHT

It was uncomfortably sunny for a day in Greendale, the heat burning into Daniella's brown hair and dark jeans with a vengeance. Any other day, she would have complained and overexaggerated about the tiny bit of stickiness in her clothes. Her favourite season was fall, where beauty could be found in even the deadest of things, not summer or spring where her nose constantly felt like a volcano that was about to erupt. Fall in Greendale and Riverdale seemed to be a combination of all four seasons.

Dani was too excited for the evening to be frustrated by the weather or her slightly itchy eyes; she was going on her first real date with Nick. There was something about Nicholas Scratch that made him special and different but Dani couldn't quite put her finger on it. Was it his charm? The fact that no one could make her smile the way he did? Was it that he was the only person who seemed to understand her sense of humour and rival her level of wit? How when something was bothering him, which in most cases was Harvey, Dani was the only person who could occupy him enough to let it go? Could it be how mysterious he was sometimes; disappearing and showing up out of nowhere, acting awkward and unsure when talking about himself? Or maybe it was everything combined. She didn't know what it was that she liked so much about the boy, but maybe tonight at the carnival, on their first real date, she'd finally figure it out.

She smiled at the thought of how close their first date was as she stuck her house key into her front door. The pair had gone out together enough times for it to already seem like they were in a relationship, so had they not labelled this hang out as a date, it would have been like any other day they were outside together. Dani was still beyond excited, a hurricane of thoughts in her head and a swirl of emotions stampeding throughout her chest and the pit of her stomach. She didn't even care that she was going out against her dad's orders; she had already gotten used to leaving her house, despite house arrest, to meet with Nick or her other friends. Calum was going to be home but that was no obstacle, considering he'd been covering for her all this time anyway. Tonight was going to be perfect.

"I'm home!" she announced, dropping her bag on the floor beside the wooden coat rack and walking deeper into the house. She placed a foot on the first step of the staircase and held onto the railing. "Dad?" she called out for assurance that he wasn't home and she'd be able to leave in an hour in peace to meet Nick.

Waiting for a moment to hear if there were any footsteps, Daniella's wide, ecstatic eyes wandered around the room, just like thoughts running rampant in her mind. She glanced at the one door left ajar, which she had only ever known to be locked. Why was her dad's office left open? She had never pondered why it was always off-limits, knowing that her dad was just protective of losing his paperwork and 'businessy things like that' as Dani would refer to it, but just the fact that it was left opened so wide was questionable enough to make a girl as innately curious and nosy as Dani to walk toward it.

She didn't even hesitate to walk into the one room in the house that she had never been inside before. Her dad's study was nothing like she imagined. He always seemed like a man who thought too much and didn't have the time to organize things, but Dani didn't see papers messily stacked up on the wooden desk or on the floor. The room was extremely tidy, save for a few sheets of paper on the polished desk, all with strange symbols scrawled across the front that Dani had never seen before. Drawn across all four sides of the room were different symbols. Many of them were of the same thing: a star encased in a circle.

Dani's eyes lingered on the largest of all the symbols. An enormous painted star, covering almost the entirety of the hardwood floor. A thick black circle surrounded it just like the others, but this one had more, smaller sigils, between each point of the star. The ceiling mirrored the same shape. Dani felt intimidated by the hulking shape she found herself trapped between. The dark lines were menacing in an indescribable way, sending chills down her spine and forcing the hair on the back of her neck upright.

She was drawn to the shelves on the walls, where wooden, copper, and metal, ancient-looking boxes and tools of different shapes and sizes were stacked. Opposite the shelves, was a large bookcase packed full of dusty books that must have been decades, if not centuries old.

Dani frowned when her eyes landed on a metal box– a coffin, maybe. It was large, maybe even long enough for even two fully grown men to fit inside. It had three big sigils moulded into it, each of them different, but painted in gold. The rims and hinges of it were a rusted brown and it looked so old that Dani was surprised that air that it still held together. Its massive size, dark colour, ancient-looking design– just its appearance and the vibe it emitted, in general, was enough to make Dani take a few steps back and return to the desk. She sat on the cushioned chair with wheels and as usual, curiosity got the best of her and she started searching through the few drawers. How was she supposed to not be suspicious after seeing all the equipment her father kept in his office? Dani was starting to question whether this really could be considered an office; it was more like some sort of storage room for ancient, historical voodoo.

Despite the fact that her heart already beat heavily in her chest, the way the beat of a drum and the strumming of bass at a concert would make people feel as if their entire bodies were shaking, she continued to rummage around. Everything she found within the drawers was either tiny books, each page filled with Latin words that she didn't understand, or unusual metal or wooden objects. They were seemingly ancient, dusty like everything else in the room. Many of the objects were shaped as pentagons and had sigils on either side. When Dani's hand traced over one of the sigils on the small, metal object she was holding, she almost dropped it when the sigil pushed in slightly like a button. not wanting to have to deal with the consequences of whatever happened if the pentagon was to open, she set it back down and continued to mindlessly search through the drawers.

Her hand landed on a cool metal object in the bottom drawer, and when she looked down to see what it was, she gasped, dropping it back into the drawer. Eyes wide and heart racing faster than a galloping horse, she stood abruptly from the seat, stumbling backward in shock. Dani had never thought her dad to be a person to keep a gun. Her suspicions escalated to an alarming peak when she inspecting the symbols on the pommel of the gun from afar. They were identical to some of the ones she'd seen on the sheets of paper and on the walls. Her heartbeat lightened when she retreated from the desk and began snooping through a tall bookcase.

Dani's unprohibited peeking was put on hold when her ears caught the sound of footsteps. Staring at the door, she hoped she'd just been so anxious that she had imagined the sound, but when they loudened, echoing across the hall outside, her eyes widened. Scrambling for a place to hide, Dani found herself hiding beside the bookcase, holding her breath and closing her eyes tightly as though not being able to see her dad was going to prevent him from seeing her. The pace of her heart just minutes ago was nothing compared to its speed now; all the creepy, cult-like items and symbols, the gun, and the fact that she was in her dad's office– an off-limits area– was enough to whip her into a frenzy.

"... some sort of school..." Dani managed to hear her father say despite her heart's obnoxious beating that blocked out most other noises. She found the opportunity to glance toward her dad, phone to his ear. When he looked down at the pulled out bottom drawer that the gun was in and after a moment of staring, closed it, Dani scrunched her face up and mentally cursed at herself for forgetting to close it.

"Yeah, in the woods. A boarding school, I think," he continued. As her dad glanced around the room, somehow seeming to know that something was different, maybe, or out of place, Dani bit her lip, trying at her very best to avoid breathing too loudly; she felt like she was running a marathon. "Yes, I know we don't have anything to do with them. I wasn't– listen, I wasn't planning on going there and doing anything, alright?" His tone of voice was somewhat low and impatient and Dani noticed him shake his head in frustration a few times.

"All I'm saying is that if there's a school for them there, it only makes sense that the girl would be there too," he continued to speak into the phone. His voice was laced in satisfaction rather than frustration now. "Exactly. Where the Nephilim goes, the malevolent follow..."

"What?" Dani found herself whispering what should have just been a thought.

Immediately, she stiffened and held her breath, sticking to the wall as much as she could to avoid being seen, near the edge of the bookcase. Her brain was in a muddle, trying to process what her dad was talking about, what all the weird things in his so-called 'office' were, and how to be as still and quiet as possible until her dad finally left the room.

"Did you already prepare the summoning spell?" Summoning spell? What? Dani tried to think of what on earth he could possibly be talking about. "Good. I'll see you near Sweetwater in thirty."

Matthew Monroe said nothing else, which Dani assumed meant he had ended the call and would soon leave his office, so she could finally breathe properly. She let out a quiet, involuntary sigh when he started making his way to leave the room. She hadn't thought ahead though, so when her dad locked the door behind him, she was left unsure of what to do.

"Dammit," she muttered, scanning the room for another way out. Of course, she had been able to find literally everything in her dad's drawers– even a gun!– but no spare key. Dani got more nervous when she read the time on the clock on the wall: forty minutes past four. She was supposed to meet Nick at Sweetwater river in twenty minutes and they were going to hang out for a few hours until the carnival later on at night– which now that she thought of it, was perfect. Her dad was going to be in the woods, and Nick had offered to help Dani figure out all the shadiness her dad and even Sabrina's aunts were giving off. This was the perfect time to see what her dad was up to.

Dani rushed over to the window, grateful that this was only the ground floor and not the first floor; she'd rather not have to face her fear of heights by jumping out of a window. Fortunately, unlike the door, the window wasn't locked, so she climbed out and started making her way to Sweetwater River.

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→ author's note

yay i'm so happy we're finally getting more into the mystery/action parts!

votes, comments and follows are always more than appreciated. i hope you enjoyed this chapter!