Page 49 of The Library at Hellebore

“Actually.” Rowan took an extensive drag from his cigarette, his spare hand cupped over the cherry to shelter it from the wind. Someone who wasn’t looking for signs might have thought his expression bored. “I think we could help.”

He waggled a gloved hand in the moonlight.

“Magic, turbo-speed syphilitic touch,” said Rowan. “Also, three people are better than two when you’re trying to distract something’s attention. If you agree to help us, we’ll help you.”

“I didn’t—” I swallowed my next words. I resented being volunteered but I resented being caged in Hellebore more. Here were two people promising me a way out and as much as the situation sounded like it was too good to be true, I couldn’t look a pair of gift horses in the mouth.

“Yes, I’ll help,” said Gracelynn.

Gracelynn was now staring at Rowan not with pity but a pained recognition, the look of someone who’d had the misfortune of bleeding themselves on the same road.

Faced with compassion, Rowan did what I was learning was custom for him: he snarked harder.

I looked back to our new acquaintance. “Anyway, I think he’s offering to kill the Librarian for you.”

“Or just cause it a urinary tract infection. I could do that. I have no idea if our dear old curator of the world’s knowledge is even capable of dying, but if it is, I promise you it’s dilly-ding-dongdeadas a doorknob,” said Rowan.

“I don’t need it dead,” ventured Gracelynn.

“Listen, I respect your commitment to pacifism or whatever you’d like to call it,” said Rowan. “But there is no reasoning with the Librarian. Trust me, I’ve done my research. It’s the Librarian’s way or the highway. Unless, of course, you kill it—”

“But can’t we…” Gracelynn searched for the words. “… disable it? I don’t know. This doesn’t seem right.”

“We’re wasting time,” I said. My brain examineddilly-ding-dong deadand decided there would be no commenting on the phrase for fear there’d be a repeat, so I turned the whole of my attention to Gracelynn. “Either decide you want to get your spouse out or let us go do what we need to do.”

“It’ll be fine, I promise,” Rowan said. “Chances are the Librarian, being the learned being that it is, is going to know exactly what I am and go,What? A deathworker? In my stacks? Heavens no! I will do everything I can to get him out!” He grinned, strutting over to drape his coat over Gracelynn’s shoulders, a kindness delivered with such remoteness, it was almost like his arms and hands were piloted by someone else, someone with no relations to the hubristic jerk in command of his mouth.

“Come on. I haven’t drunk any scotch in weeks.Whenwe get your partner out of here, I want a bottle of scotch. Hell, make it a whole goddamned crate.”

I wish I could say that we did the intelligent thing of scaling the library and maneuvering to a higher level, finding access through the window of some obscure archive, which we opened by cannily picking the locks. Similarly, I wish I could say we dismantled the service door and walked in through there like competent thieves. While I’ve never felt any compulsion toward honesty, there’s something tragic about a lie so blatant, you’re too ashamed to give it air. Which is, really, a roundabout way of explaining we went through the front door.

“You’re really making us walk straight inside. Like, straight in,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time, trying to keep pace. Rowan had about eight inches of height on me, most of which seemed to have gone entirely to his legs. Gracelynn jogged stoically behind, bogged down by their endless skirts.

Rowan, oppressively lanky, did not slow for us. “Nothing says confidence like taking the front door.”

“Nothing sayssuicidelike taking the front door,” I repeated,bounding up the wide, flat steps, and thrusting myself in front of Rowan, arms out.

He crab-walked three steps to one side and then three to another, rubbernecking unnecessarily around the top of my head. I mirrored him like an inconvenienced pedestrian before realizing the clownishness of it all, and stopped, a fist resting on my hip.

“Do you have a death wish or something?” I demanded.

“What? No. But, like, do any of us really have a choice when it comes to death? Do we not all eventually get folded into the arms of oblivion? It’s really just a question of when, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but did you want to dietoday?”

“Of course not. Come on,” said Rowan, and it annoyed me to discover I couldn’t convince my body to turn back. “If there were any other routes into the library, I’d be using those. Unfortunately, there aren’t. I’ve looked, trust me. There’s only one entrance.”

“That doesn’t seem smart, to have one way in and out.” I palmed his breastbone and pushed lightly, leaving Rowan to pinwheel several steps back down. He was astonishingly light: bird bones under a wrapper of skin.

“Well, it’s so heavily warded, we’d explode into chunks right here if we thought about trying a different way in. Hellebore spared no expense at making this a fortress.”

Or a prison,I thought.

To my horror, he bounced back up to me andchucked my chin,his mouth coming so close to my earlobe, my skin warmed with his breath. “I promise if the worst happens, I’ll say you two were my hostages, and you had nothing to do with this all, and you can run away and tell everyone I wasincredibly sexy and you were turned on watching me be a hero.”

Rowan pulled back. He smiled like whatever he saw in my face—his was sheened with the orange light gushing from the open and unwelcoming doors—was a benison, and resumed his march into the library’s vestibule.

Gracelynn came gasping up to my side. They wore Rowan’s coat like a mantle, draped over their shoulders, giving them the look of an overgrown robin, or a vulture gory with its last meal.

---