Shelf Awareness Novels & Stories

I read aloud from the list. Levi scanned the shelves and pulled it down. “Got it.” “Shadebell.” Another jar joined our basket. “Crimson Thyme and Wolfsfoot,” I added. He moved efficiently, like he knew this place well. Finally, I looked at the last item. “Starlace.” We both scanned the shelves. Nothing. Levi frowned. “Not here.” We approached the counter. An older man stood behind it, flipping through a leather-bound ledger. He looked up with a warm, sort of tired smile.

She could hear him breathing behind her. The vault was in the basement. Temperature controlled. Locked behind two doors. She punched in the code, heard the mechanisms click open. Inside, the air smelled like old paper and preservation chemicals. Shelves lined the walls, holding centuries of forbidden knowledge. “This is where you keep Les Plaisirs?” he asked. “Third shelf. Climate controlled case.” He moved to look. She watched him. The way he moved. The focus in his expression when he examined the manuscript through the glass.

He descended the sloping floor into the auditorium, to stand before the first wall of mattresses. The stacks reached about six or seven feet, each mattresses varying in thickness. Each mattress was also affixed with a tag, on which, in neatly printed script, was listed the price and the brand. Each tag was also annotated as either ‘new’, ‘hardly used’, or ‘used’. The tags themselves more than anything else made the whole situation feel surreal. So utterly prosaic. Mundane. Normal. Neatly printed letters and numbers. Shane wondered, as he walked in either direction, if the neatly hand-printed sales tags would slowly morph into insidious messages of evil and malice, made all the more horrible

After a few steps he regained his balance, and straitened up; but he no longer was proud. Ishmael did not know where to start. The vault was indeed enormous. There was shelving that was nearly arranged in rows. Each row contained 8 shelves, and each shelve had five tiers. There seemed to be about twenty rows in total! That was in total eight-hundred tiers, that would have to be glanced over. This was not counting the items that were at the base of the walls on pedestals and also the items hung on the walls. ….

Truths too dangerous to leave unguarded. A floor-to-ceiling shelf stood at the center of the vault, stretching wide and tall. It wasn’t just a shelf. It was a keeper of centuries. Documents stacked carefully, ancient scrolls sealed beside modern files. Everything catalogued, arranged in an order only a few Alphas were trained to understand. I moved toward it without hesitation. My hand went straight to the section where the document was usually kept. The one tied to Ashenhowl. The one I could not afford to lose.

she uttered more. Leigh quickly looked around. There is a working table on the side and a shelf with books of different thicknesses but almost in the same color. There is also a glass cabinet with varying sizes of trophies and a mini living room in the middle of this room. And wow! That's a lot of medals and certificates hanging in frames that almost fill the other side of the wall. And because of what; Leigh saw, she quickly covered her mouth with her hand in the blink of an eye.

Neither was a good way to go. Raina stayed silent. Leif stuck close to her side, step for step. She glanced around, then stopped by an unassuming shelf to the left side of the warehouse. She was about to move it when Leif beat her to it. The shelf wasn’t light, but the big CEO had crazy strength. Still, he seemed worried about hurting Raina and said, “Step back. Don’t get too close.” At a time like this, Raina didn’t argue. She stepped aside.