Page 95 of Librarian

I look up, feeling wetness dribble from my nose. The bars are still there. They never went away. It was just a trick.

“So noble.” Mathias shakes his head. “As if I’d let either of you touch me when the key to my ailments is almost within my grasp.”

He lifts the dagger, lips moving on an incantation I cannae catch past the blood rushing in my ears. My muscles willnae move. They’re still paralysed from the current that just tried to fry my brain stem.

Benny collapses beside me, breath wheezing out with a gasp. He clutches his chest like he’s having a heart attack.

By the time I can make my fingertips twitch, the older man is sprawled face-first on the stone beneath us, groaning hoarsely.

“I’m almost there,” Mathias muses. “Perhaps I’ll be able to drain you again before your daughter kills you. It might be enough.”

I dinnae think he’s really talking to either of us, but I glower at him anyway. “Fuck you.”

Mathias raises a brow. “How vulgar.”

Then he turns the dagger on me.

My magic rips out of my chest, down my arms and through my palms in a rush of lava that scalds my veins. I jerk, cursing hard enough to turn the air blue. My heartbeat stutters under the rush.

I must pass out again, because when I come to, Mathias is standing directly outside our cell, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt.

“If only I had the time to properly tease apart the threads of the bond you share with the Librarian. It would be much easier to simply funnel the building’s own reserve straight back into it.”

“Shut up,” Benny wheezes. “You could barely control it long enough to immobilise the others in Scotland. One tiny distraction, and you lost it.”

Mathias rolls his eyes. “And now I have a subject on which to practise.”

He turns on his heel. “Try not to upset my staff while I’m away. I’ve even brought on someone special to watch over you.”

The half-chuckle should’ve clued me in, but when a new pair of shoes shuffles into view, I’m still somehow expecting a living being.

The skull of the man in front of us is partially caved in at the back. His eyes are white and glassy, and his head has fallen to one side like it’s too heavy for him to hold up. Then there’s the stink. Rotten.

A single fly lands on the runeform carved into his cheek, and he clumsily bats it away.

All of those things are why it takes me a minute to recognise him. Robert married into the clan a few years ago, and from the looks of things, he’s not been dead long. Well shit. I guess we know how they got inside the wards.

It’s the same trick he pulled with Eddy. We’ll need to check everyone regularly—fuck. I need to tell Laura her husband is dead.

“A babysitter.” Benny shoves backward onto his arse. “How thoughtful.”

I cover my nose, falling into place beside him. “How do we get out of here?”

The revenant that was once Robert lets out an angry hiss, lashing out at the bars.

“I don’t believe our friend is fond of conversation.” Benny leans his head back against the wall, his breath still shallow and pained. “Let me think about it. Or maybe…nap on it.”

Nap? Now? Shit. Does he have a concussion or something?

“Hey, no going to sleep.” I reach out and shake him lightly. “C’mon. This isnae the time.”

He sighs. “Nothing good comes from being poorly rested. We have no grimoires, there are no obvious methods of escape, and yet…I suspect your Librarian has her own methods of finding her bonded, does she not?”

The last is barely a whisper, and my ears heat even though he cannae possibly know about the cage. The fact that Mathias and the enforcers didnae find it is probably a testament to Kyrith’s skill, but I’ll never live it down if it comes out that my girlfriend knew how to find me thanks to my chastity kink.

Better to let them all believe it was the bond to the Arcanaeum.

“Sleep, if you can. Conserve your energy. Stars know I’ll need mine when Pierce gives me an earful for what I just did.”