Page 90 of Librarian

“You were eleven. Old enough to remember.”

“All of it,” Leo confirms. “But my grandfather took me in without a fuss. He was…efficient. That helped, in a strange way.”

I force open my eyes, my heart twinging at the pain barely concealed in his voice. I barely have time to take in the dust-cloth covered furnishings and the thick cobwebs across the ceiling before Lambert is right in my face.

“Boss!”

That one word rings in my skull, drawing my attention to the renewed throbbing behind my temples.

“Ooompf.” I didn’t anticipate being crushed against his chest with this level of enthusiasm. The hug is so desperate that I have to wait for him to loosen his hold to ask, “Where are the others?”

Because wherever we are, it’s not Orkney.

“We…haven’t heard from them.” Lambert draws back, tossing a concerned glance over his shoulder to where Leo is perched on a window seat, his silhouette cast in deep shadows by the light streaming in through the net curtain.

If I had to guess, I’d say we were in the living room of an old cottage. The dust cloths covering a lot of the furniture are old, and a fusty odour clings to the sofa I’m lying on. A fireball floats in the fireplace, providing warmth, but outside, the rain and wind are lashing the windows.

“Enforcement was attacking Fort McKinley,” Leo explains. “Someone was sabotaging the wards, so we figured it was best to get you out of there.”

I jolt upright, hand blindly reaching for my grimoire. “Why didn’t you start with that!? We have to go back, they?—”

“It’s been over an hour,” he says. “We should hear something concrete soon, but we can’t return. If you’re awake, that means Mathias’s whereabouts are unknown. He could be headed there, and with the wards down, you’d be defenceless.” He doesn’t say it vindictively, and his logic is sound, but my ire rises anyway, only to dissipate when he pinches his nose and asks quietly, “Is my grandfather alive?”

“Your cousins arrived midway through the ritual,” I say. “I never saw what happened to him after Mathias stopped chanting.”

The lich hadn’t been expecting company. The element of surprise might have given them the advantage they needed to rescue the older parriarch.

Or they may all have been slaughtered.

Leo lifts his phone, sighs, then puts it back down again. “Someone will send news soon.”

“Surely they should’ve contacted us by now.”

I struggle to my feet, and Lambert catches me when my knees buckle. I snarl under my breath. Thankfully, my second attempt at standing works.

“Dakari knows where we are,” he reassures me, arms still out, ready to help if I fall again. “And they have their phones. We’ll hear from them soon, boss.”

That doesn’t make me feel better. An hour with no contact is too long. If not for the stupid dagger?—

“I could use your expertise in warding the cottage,” Leo suggests, when I’ve been quiet for too long. “These ones haven’t been renewed in decades, and your magical signature is…”

A dead giveaway if anyone is searching for us. I swallow and nod, reaching for my grimoire. “I’ll obscure it.”

It’s busywork, important busywork, but busywork just the same. Leo conjures a stick of charcoal and holds it out. An olive branch.

I reach out slowly and take it, hoping they mistake my hesitance for lingering weakness.

Internally, my mind is whirring.

Leo…chose protecting me over his family. He’s been hiding in a cottage, keeping guard over my unconscious body when he could’ve transported straight to his grandfather’s side the moment I warned him about the danger he was in.

That means something, as much as I know it shouldn’t.

And when our fingers brush at the exchange, my heart skitters despite my determined efforts to quash it.

Then the moment is gone, replaced with quiet, studious resolve. The two of us work our way around the room, leaving Lambert to fiddle with his phone on the sofa between us like a living barricade.

A brittle kind of familiarity settles over my shoulders as I etch deep black lines over the floral wallpaper. Many long minutes pass before I recognise the feeling as an echo of the peace I used to experience working beside him in the Astrology Room. It’s so faint that even a single word might shatter it.