The Hidden Library Page 16

  “I’m so sorry, Alice.” His voice breaks. “God, I’m so sorry. I wish—I shouldn’t have let you come.”

  Men and their ability to turn overly dramatic in such situations. Honestly now, does he not recall how, when he accompanied me to Wonderland, he was drugged and captured himself?

  Now that I think about it, I’m a bit done with the drugging and capturing bits. This is getting a bit ridiculous—first him, with the Queen of Hearts’ poisons, and now me, with Sweeney Patrick Todd?

  Coincidences are never really coincidental at all.

  There has to be a connection between these similarly unfolding events . . . doesn’t there? My brain feels as fuzzy as the leaves in the tulgey woods. Tired. It’s hard to cleanly place the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Finn struggles to take out his pen and the miniature Institute book each team is required to carry on assignments from his pants’ pocket while an arm still curves around me, applying pressure on my wound. His body trembles against mine. Mine matches, if not exceeds, his trembling. I’m glad he’s here with me, though. His arms feel safe when nothing else does.

  Voices sound downstairs. Angry and yet scared ones all at once. Finn’s pen quickly scrawls across the page indicating Victor’s medical wing. “I’m going to have to lift you up,” he says quietly. “I’ll try to be gentle, but I can’t guarantee it won’t hurt.”

  I’m tempted to roll my eyes again, but one glance at the fear and worry in his has me blinking once instead. My heart expands and contracts in the face of the tortured, worried love shining from his eyes. I am so lucky. So, so lucky to have this man. And then my own eyes sag. Tiredness like I’ve never felt wraps around me and sinks into my motionless bones.

  It does hurt when he stands up. The sharp stab wicks my breath clean away as he hauls me over his shoulder. And then, amazingly, he bends down and grabs Todd’s foot. Just as the voices in the inn grow closer, Finn carries us through the glowing door he’s written us, leading us back into the Institute.

  THE INSTITUTE IS IN an uproar. Worse yet, Victor isn’t back from the Timeline I sent him and Mary to.

  I’d brought us directly to the medical wing. I sounded an alarm and Brom and the A.D. came in mere minutes after the door closed behind us. I let my father’s assistant take care of the sack of shit I’d dragged with us. Undoubtedly woken up by my cursing, Rosemary, the medical wing’s latest resident thanks to withdrawals, took one look at her boyfriend and promptly began screaming like a banshee. More than once, she threatened to kill us all, although I seemed to be her favorite target of the moment.

  Like I care.

  Alice wasn’t answering me anymore. Her eyes were closed by the time I got her onto a bed, and I’ll admit I legitimately freaked the fuck out. So, between me and Rosemary, I’m pretty sure my father was desperate to find some sedatives to pass out like candy. But, all the while trying to persuade me not to tear Todd apart with my bare hands (and physically blocking me from doing so—all via his whiteboard) and ordering via the A.D. to strap the asshole to a bed on the other end of the room, away from Rosemary, Brom managed to send a flurry of messages about how I’ve brought back Todd.

  Conveniently, all this also happened not twenty minutes from one of his regularly scheduled checkups. His doctor is now examining Alice, and all I can think as he peels open her eyes and peers down into them, flashing his little light and making small mmm-hmm noises, is: She cannot die. I cannot lose her.

  I cannot lose another person I love.

  My father’s old friend is from a Timeline that had an outbreak triggered by an extraterrestrial organism, and since then, has dedicated his life to studying bizarre illnesses. He’s a trained surgeon, though, and has worked extensively with the Society for nearly three decades on various cases. Although he claims the stabbing didn’t seem to hit any major organs, he rushes Alice into a small surgery room Victor crafted but rarely uses. For the next hour, as he meticulously cleans out and fixes what Todd has done with his blade, I just about lose my mind.

  The bastard has deleted far too many Timelines. He killed my mother. My grandfather. He slashed my father’s throat. He drugged Alice and stabbed her.

  S. Todd’s time is nearing an end.

  Blood and cultures are collected once the surgery is finished. Before he leaves for Mary’s lab for analysis, the aging doctor informs me he has no idea what’s wrong with the woman I love.

  All I can do is sit here with her. Hold her hand. Tell her I love her, over and over. And then come close to hysterically laughing because I should have had the balls to say these words earlier, when she wasn’t unconscious and apparently paralyzed.

  “Finn?”

  Marianne Brandon is standing in the doorway of the small room just off the medical wing I’ve had Alice taken to. There’s no way in hell I was going to let her be in there with those fucking lunatics.

  “Just wanted to let you know that Victor sent a communiqué. There have been some difficulties in procuring the medicines they’re searching for. They’re probably still a day out, at the very least.”

  I can’t be mad at my brother, though. He’s been informed of what’s going on. More importantly, Victor knows there’s something wrong with Alice. He won’t come home until he’s got her a cure.

  “Furthermore, Brom and the Librarian want to talk to you.”

  I’m reluctant to leave, but Marianne assures me she’ll send word if Alice rouses.

  Minutes later, I’m in my father’s office, pissed off and wanting to punch something again. Scratch that. I want to punch a specific someone again. And it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel, because he’s currently immobilized back in the medical wing.

  The Librarian pours herself a glass of wine. “We need you to go collect a new book.”

  “Fuck that,” I tell them. Are they insane? “I’m not going.”

  My father sighs quietly.

  “We would not ask,” she continues, “if it were not imperative.”

  I mince no words. “You keep saying that. Send someone else this time.”

  Half of her mouth curves upward. “Well, in a way, we are. You’d be going with Marianne Brandon. In addition to working with the costumes, she’ll also be assisting me with library duties. This is her first assignment outside of the Institute. She is nervous as it is.”

  I try to make my words as clear as possible. “I am not going anywhere.”

  “Marianne does not yet know how to drive.”

  Is this some kind of show where there’s a hidden camera, and some asshole who jumps out and shouts, “Surprise!”?

  My father turns to his colleague and gives the sharpest kind of nod a man whose throat is still tender can offer. She’s immediately out of her chair, ensuring the door is locked. A recorder is extracted from her pocket; when she pushes a button, a conversation begins. One that I realize quickly occurred between her and me some time ago, one about book acquisitions for the quarter.

  Brom clicks the end of the pen he’s been fiddling with. Green laser beams silently scan the room from top to bottom. Before I can say a thing, he angles his whiteboard so I might see it. We have reason to believe the Institute may be bugged.

  What. The. Hell?

  On the Librarian’s recorder, I’m arguing with her about the cost of certain books she wants to acquire. I remember this conversation. One of the books, coming from a collector in New Jersey, cost close to a quarter of a million dollars and was in truly shitty condition. There was no way I was okaying that purchase. And here we are, listening to my arguments again, and she’s smiling ruefully as she sits back down, like some kind of ghost because she makes no sound. A piece of paper is carefully, quietly extracted from her pocket. There is a message there, already written out: We have reason to believe Gabriel Pfeifer has a catalyst in his collection, albeit unknowingly. Pfeifer is currently in the city, attending a series of fundraisers throughout the week, including one tonight. You have been in his collection before. Marianne will not
accompany you. She will stay with Alice. Wendy and Jack will run logistics. Bring it home.

  I look up from the note, stunned. On the recorder, the Librarian is telling me about how Marianne needs to get her feet wet. She’s spliced new dialogue in amongst the old.

  Brom points to the paper and twirls his finger. I flip it over and find a timetable and a sketch of the item in question. Jack and Wendy are waiting for you at the helipad. Be back by dawn. Do not speak of this until you are in the air.

  My bodiless voice insists, “Fine. I’ll go. I hate New Jersey, though.”

  I nearly start out of my chair. I can’t ever remember saying such a thing.

  The paper is reclaimed. In seconds, the words melt off the page, and then the paper itself disintegrates. Brom clicks the end of his pen, and the green light ceases scanning the room. The Librarian follows by turning off the recording.

  “Don’t worry,” she says smoothly. “We will ensure Alice is taken care of while you are gone.”

  I find Marianne sitting next to Alice’s bed. She’s doing needlework, humming to herself. I ask, “Anything?”

  She shakes her head. Since coming to the Institute, she’s begun to wear her hair like anyone else in the Twenty-First Century. Currently, it’s wild and free, with just a hint of waves. And she’s wearing skinny jeans and an oversized sweater of sorts, and even I have to admit it’s bizarre to see Marianne Brandon dressed like any other woman I’d see in New York. “The doctor came in shortly after you left, though. He conducted a thorough examination of her body and frowned the entire time. It was most unsettling.”

  It feels wrong to leave. So wrong. And yet . . . I can’t just leave a catalyst out there, especially an unsuspecting one. Katrina told me once, when I asked why we risked so much to collect catalysts, that we always had to ensure the welfare of many over the few. It made good sense. While I always did my best to bring my partners and I back in one piece from our assignments, the risk was worth it to me. I’ve been shot at with both bullets and arrows. Stabbed. Burned. I’ve had to wiggle my way out of captures and fight my way out of tight situations. Each time, though, my thoughts were on those catalysts. Most people in Timelines have no idea that something so small, something so seemingly unimportant, can be the difference between existence and the void. I prefer that they don’t know. I hope most continue to live that way. Nobody wants to fall into an existential crisis and wonder if some asshole of an author made him or her up or if they’re even real at all.

  Pfeifer has a catalyst? How, I have no idea. But if he’s got one, I need to do what I do best and go and protect the people it represents. Alice would understand this. Hell, she’d be the first in line to argue that a person’s individual needs come after that of a whole. She did it for Wonderland, didn’t she? Gave up everything so her people would have a chance.

  God, she’s an amazing woman.

  I smooth back her hair and kiss her gently. If only real life was like those fairy tales Katrina read me. If only true love’s kiss woke the queen up and we lived happily ever after.

  I whisper in her ear that I love her. That I have never loved anyone else the way I love her. I remind her that she’s my north star, too. That, as binaries, I need her to fight. My gravitational pull needs her.

  And then her eyelids flutter. A sigh, a beautiful, small, contented sigh escapes her lips.

  True love’s kiss. I’ll be damned.

  Hope bursts inside me. Our story isn’t over, not by a long shot. Our story is just getting started, and no damn author is going to write it. We will. Together. We’re going to write that book she wants.

  Our ending is ours to find.

  I kiss Alice again. Promise her I’ll be back very soon. Walking away from the woman I love right now feels like probably the hardest damn thing I’ve ever had to do in a long list of impossible things. And yet, I do it anyway.

  IN THE HELICOPTER, WENDY goes over the mission specs as the A.D. steers us north. Thanks to my and Alice’s recent visit, and coupled with public land documents, builder’s permits, and architectural plans, she’s created a 3-D construct of Bücherei to help us break our way in.

  I’m still wondering how in the hell I’m going to get past those massive doors, though.

  “Interestingly enough,” Wendy is saying as I go over the scans, “none of the plans we found indicate any part of the house was built explicitly for library or museum use.”

  Huh. “Honestly, it seemed exclusively used for the library. I think there was a little to the left of the main foyer that might not have been, but from the tour we took, Bücherei was pretty much a library and nothing else. I mean, the bookshelves stretched up several floors, all rimming the central exhibit hall. It spread the entire length of the back of the house and then some up toward the front.”

  She taps on her tablet’s screen and brings up the original architectural blueprints. “I get what you’re saying, but according to these, this is your standard three-story house with a large kitchen, dining room, six bedrooms, five baths, indoor pool that feeds to a larger one outside . . .”

  The A.D. voice within our headsets crackles. “Standard, Wen? Standard to whom? Dunno about you two, but I don’t know too many gents and ladies who have themselves a fancy indoor pool, let alone one that connects to another outside.”

  He has an extremely valid point.

  The more I look at the plans, the more confused I am. “None of this is what I saw. These staircases?” I point to the scan. “Not there. These bathrooms? They were bookshelves. This bedroom, connected with a master bath?” I shake my head. “That’s almost exactly where he had a Hemingway exhibit.”

  Her nose wrinkles as she peers down at the blueprints. “Are you sure?”

  I tap on the screen, expanding the image. “This is supposed to be the pool room, right?”

  “Yeah. It has sliding glass windows that open the pool into a more elaborate one beyond. See?” She flips the page to another, of an architectural painting showing what the finalized project would look like. Straddling both land and house is a massive pool that would make the ritziest of hotels jealous.

  “That’s not there.” Or anything else on these blueprints except the front door and the hedge mazes.

  What the hell?

  “Are you sure you found the right blueprints?”

  Her hackles rise immediately. “Of course I got the right ones.” She expands the information at the bottom. The address matches the coordinates we’re en route to, but none of it makes sense. “Is this or is this not the house you went to?”

  I don’t get it. The outside looks the same, yes. The same roughened wood and frosted glass, the same burnished metal. Altogether, the enormous house looks confused about what time period it was from.

  She changes the image again, this time to something from one of those satellite programs that take photographs of every road and house. She punches in the address. There, amongst massive hedge mazes, is Bücherei. “The coordinates match, Finn.”

  I’m tired. That’s it, right? I haven’t sleep in . . . I don’t know. Not even in jail. “I’m going to be honest,” I admit after a long moment. “I have no fucking idea how to get us in then. This isn’t—it looks like it from the outside, but the inside? It’s not the house I’ve been in. And . . . the lock on the library door was pretty elaborate. It sounded like it had a number of locking mechanisms.”

  She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. I’m thinking she may be right. “You always know how to get us in.”

  I don’t know what to say. Can this day get any more surreal? I mean, I started out in a St. Petersburg jail, only to find, after searching for him for some time, Todd waiting for me after attacking Alice. My father says somebody has bugged the Institute. I’m going to a house I’ve been to before, but it’s also not the same house I remember.

  When I don’t answer, Wendy swipes back to the blueprints. “I figure the weakest link is through the pools. No doubt there will be security cameras in thi
s back area, but if we can enter via the gap between the pools—”

  “We?” the A.D. pipes up. “Is the great Gwendolyn going to step away from her machines long enough to play with the big boys?”

  She flips him off, but that only leaves the A.D. cackling. “Fine. You two will be going in via the pool’s gap. As it’s winter, the glass panes will be in place, alongside what look like storm window coverings.” She expands the image to highlight a pair of metal shutters. “There will be a water trail, but I’m hoping that since Pfeifer’s scheduled to stay in the city all week, by the time he comes back, it’ll be dried up.” Another swipe takes us back to the 3-D construct. “From your report, I’ve pinpointed several of the cameras at these locations.” She points to what appear to be various bedrooms along with a sitting room of sorts, set just off the kitchen. “Based on your description, I think I’ve figured out the make and model. The inner cameras will be no problem at all to jam for five minutes. The outer ones, though . . . according to docs I hacked, Pfeifer’s got the crème de la crème protecting his property. I’ll be blitzing the satellite signals long enough for you two to get in and then trigger another blitz for your departure. ” She grins. “I’m rather excited to try them out. They act like solar flare distortions. They can’t be traced back to a source.”

  “What’s our timeframe, Wen?” the A.D. asks.

  “You’ll have sixty seconds to get into the house before they resume. The same on the way out.” She rifles through a nearby pack. “I’ve got a waterproof bag for you to carry back the veil.”

  That reminds me . . .

  Brom and the Librarian have sent me to Pfeifer’s to collect none other than Scheherazade’s veil from One Thousand and One Nights. Historically, the Society has always had a great deal of trouble with this, well, collections of stories because there isn’t a cohesive original text we can source from. That Timeline is still a mystery to us—we’ve had no contact, no way in, no way to even prove it exists. There are dozens and dozens of versions ranging from the Ninth Century to the Nineteenth Century, and each has varying stories from the others. People know the famous stories and characters—Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba—but those didn’t even come into play until some Europeans translated and created their own versions in the Nineteenth Century. So for us to get sent in to retrieve a catalyst from a wildcard Timeline we don’t even know fully exists, one that somehow a book collector in modern day has obtained?