pay no attention to the frustration behind the doors

Book stores, the ghost girl thought, as she snuck through the alleys and roads that led to the secluded little bookshop, really were the most relaxing medium of escape. It was cozy and safe and secluded and not at all close to the dorms, or the school's library. Or Roland, for that matter - no, she refused to think about how much that hurt.
Onto the matter at hand - she'd realized, as soon as she'd stepped out of the dorm, after Roland had left - she needed a place to go. A place where she couldn't yell and scream at anyone.
Fortunately, this bookshop that she'd been visiting over the past week was comfy and cozy and very, very old, and the owner knew her now - if not by name, then by face alone. And luckily, books didn't have tangible feelings. She could be angrily analytical as she wished. Or offensively odious. The adjectives didn't matter.
"Hello," she whispered to the owner of the bookshop, who merely nodded and pointed her to a door way in back with a grin.
Aswan stole a glance back at the door, then at the owner, and nodded, before walking down the aisles of bookshelves to go through the door. As she went, she felt increasingly lonely. She considered calling her horseman friend, just to have someone she wouldn't possibly hurt - but then, she reasoned, she'd hurt him too. And she was sick of hurting things. Why couldn't everything just be logic, like notes and books?
Onward she forged, until she reached the door.
A moment of hesitation.
And then she turned the handle, hoping to lose herself in fictional worlds, at least for a little bit.

@Keen

She wasn't alone.
Aswan slowly turned to the cheerful, booming voice with a sharp but clearly-attempting-friendliness kind of glance. "They usually are," she murmured, almost to herself. "They must have come in with new stock recently..." Atlhough now that she thought about it, it made absolutely no sense why the owner had sent them to the back - and why, when she looked back, he had the most eerie smile she'd ever seen... no, it was her impending paranoia.Her studies were making her blind to social cues again.... right?
She sighed. Now she had to invite this woman to come with her. "There is a hallway with some doors on the other side of this door - if you'd like, we can go in together and perhaps retrieve another book for you." Suspicious as it may have been, she had a sneaking suspicion that there was a prize for her once she got out. Which, presumably, was to be very quick and very easy.
Hesitating a bit for Bea's response, she opened the door fully, and held it out tentatively for Beatrice. "Here, come with me."
Honestly, if she could go alone, she would have - but of course that would be rude. Still, she felt like if she lashed out again, someone was going to get hurt again, either emotionally or physically (if she could even do physical damage at this point - she was practically transparent by this point.)

@Keen

The ghost girl nodded slightly, pressing her back against the nearest wall (which turned out to be a corner - a sharp but low hiss of pain under her breath) so the admittedly giant Béatrice to slide on by. "By all means."
Well, it sounded like by all means, but the expression closest in her mind was me first!
No, she corrected in her mind, that was selfish and ignorant, that expression. "Perhaps there are valuable research papers... or something of that ilk," she mused to herself, trying to sound cheery-ish. "Or another, larger library." Because, she'd learned, magic could, in theory, do that - though she'd yet to see it in practice. Besides, if both her and the large woman..? (She didn't seem at all human to the girl - which interested her) wanted more book choices, then they had definitely come to a mysterious place. She wasn't sure if it was the right one, but the satisfaction of knowing brought the cat back... right?
Once Béatrice had slid by and opened the mysterious door (and actually walked in, much to Aswan's.... disappointment? Could she even call it that? No, there had to be a better adjective), Aswan, too, entered the room, mentally memorizing the little details of it. How the wood seemed ancient but well cared-for. How far the hallway went on - surprisingly far, for a hallway of this construction. How each step Béatrice took, another floorboard creaked or croaked - even her light footsteps made a few creaks.
Either way, whoever had built this hallway, with or without magic, was very smart, or at least very advanced in their craft. A bookshop inside a bookshop (if it even was another bookshop)? Who would have thought of it? It had no practical uses she could think of.
"I've seen this hallway somewhere," Aswan ... well, she didn't lie. She more like half-truthed. She'd probably seen it before - but that was because it looked identical to about a hundred other stock photos of hallways she'd found on the Internet. If she was being honest, she didn't even recall the door ever being here....
"Somewhere," she reaffirmed. "You can go ahead if you'd like - investigate just how far down this hallway leads. O-Oh, and do tell me if you find any books on ghost traditions or customs."
With that, she breathed in, and turned the handle of one of the doors closest to her.

@Keen

While Béatrice investigated the hall, Aswan took to carefully examining each of the... many... doors that seemed to line the inside of the hallway. Some of them were small, others about the size of gates, and still others you could have fit a car or two through with no problem at all. One even appeared to be a mouse's door - well, judging from the size. It could have been a faerie door too. Normally she wouldn't have considered that, but anything could happen in Manta Carlos. Moreover, the doors were confusing as heck. For one, how was she supposed to fit inside a mouse-sized door? And the gate-sized one? And... some of the hallways behind the doors, when she peeked through the gap between them - some of the hallways curved right back around to another door leading into the same hallway she was standing in right now.

Another thing about this hallway that, "Yes, I have seen something like this before," - if it was a bookshop, or book storage - it wasn't very well-lit at all. Confusing, to say the least. At least there was a little bit of light, although, granted, the little light the lanterns provided seemed to amplify the atmosphere of trepidation around the two. Not good for a bookshop, unless they sold only crime novellas or something of the sort. Actually, Aswan could sort of picture that - a smoky, dark scene with only a few lights for comfort, snuggled in the corner with a good book and a mug of hot green tea...
Okay, so it wasn't as bad as she thought. Still. She was having a bit of trouble navigating in the relative dark of the hallway.

Well, at least the large woman she'd met seemed to make enough noise for Aswan to keep track of where she'd gone, she reassured herself.
Until, strangely, they almost faded out and the woman made an announcement. She couldn't see an ending?
Even after all that walking?

Yikes. The yell bounced off the wood and against Aswan's ears. It certainly was loud enough. Managing a frown, she sighed and turned around, carefully retracing her steps. By some logic, if she retraced her steps, she'd be able to lead herself out of here and back home?
One step, two steps, three steps - bump.
Was that a door she'd just hit? Yes, it was, and - this is the part that scared Aswan a bit - the color, shape, size... the door was nothing like the one they'd entered through, even thogh she'd retraced her steps easily and carefully.
Her eyebrows furrowed, and she cocked her head at the door, trying to apparently either will it out of existence or solve complex math problems on it.
What the heck?

@Keen

"I am where we last met up."
Aswan offered little more than a noncommittal grunt in response, instead choosing to examine the door she'd been looking at for the past minute or so.
What if she opened it up?
The ghost considered this option. Pros: it would fulfill her curiosity about the door, it may have provided more information about the doors themselves, it would probably be harmless, it would complete her hypothesis/experiment process.
Cons:...?
It was quickly decided, with a flick of her wrist and a twist of the handle, that she would enter the door. The door made a loud creaking noise (as she figured it would) and it was considerably heavier than Aswan previously thought, considering its smaller size. It was about half her height, so she needed to crawl (or crouch) to get through it - and that she did, crouching down and crawling through the door, pushing the door out of the way. She thought she saw something big and bright when she reached the other side, although it was obscured somewhat. It looked familiar....
As she finally got up and brushed herself off, she looked around, and her blood seemed to run cold (if she had blood, that is.) She looked even paler than normal.
Right in front of her.... Beatrice, peeking through each door, to much the same effect. Aswan, with an impossibly scrunched facial expression, turned and looked back to the door she just came through, except now it was normal size and a completely different shape and color!
"That - that's physically impossible! I passed through that door not two seconds ago!" she exclaimed, pawing at the door now in front of her. "It should still be there. That one was tiny. Considerably heavy... so how - how?! How did it disappear?" Looking around for the aforementioned door, she seemed to be more bewildered than ever before.

@Keen