The Hidden Library Read online

  “I didn’t imagine it to be glamorous.” A smirk curves her lips. “I just imagined you looking delectable upon a horse.”

  “You’ve seen me on one, remember?”

  Her nose screws up, and it’s fricking adorable. “That’s different. I’ve seen plenty of men on horseback in Wonderland. I haven’t seen a true-life cowboy.”

  I shrug, as if to insinuate she’ll just have to keep on waiting to see one, and she giggles. Something in me shifts, though, and I find myself telling her something I don’t talk about anymore. “I did do a lot of pretending when I was a kid,” I admit quietly. “I liked to imagine I was anybody but who I was.”

  She’s thoughtful as she studies me. “Most children do.”

  For the next half hour, I say nothing further. I just keep driving until well after the sun sets and night wraps around us. But all of the past is like an itch I can’t help but scratch, and maybe Victor has a point after all.

  I pull off to the side of the road. Turn off the car and the lights. Unbuckle myself and turn to face her. Somehow, the darkness helps me pluck at the truth.

  “Alice, I’m going to be honest here. My childhood sucked. I can’t really put it any other way than that. I grew up dirt poor, the son of the town drunk. It’s not like I had a house to live in—I was lucky to find barns to sleep in in shitty weather. Most kids would have nothing to do with me, or at least their parents told them they couldn’t. My most significant friend was a freed slave, and spent a good deal of time on the lam. I didn’t go to school or church. To say I was ignorant and stupid would be putting it mildly. I got into more trouble than a kid really ought to. Several people tried their best to,” I flash air quotes, “civilize me, only to come away sorely disappointed. It wasn’t until Brom and Katrina took me in did I . . .”

  I look away. It’s started to rain, and fat drops splatter across the windows. I feel like I’ve been skinned and left raw and exposed, like I’d been all those years I sat on a shrink’s couch and laid myself bare.

  It’s idiotic. I know it is. I’m nearly thirty years old. I have not one but two college degrees. I am not that ignorant, illiterate kid anymore from one of the worst, most racist time periods in American history possible. And yet, I still feel that person inside me, clawing around, searching for some kind of asinine adventure to go on, and it scares the shit out of me.

  A click signals her seatbelt has been unlatched. The next thing I know, Alice has crawled across the console and is straddling my lap. Her hands go to either side of my face as she stares down, her eyes serious as they take me in. I can’t help but wonder what she sees. Is she no longer imagining a cowboy, but a stupid, dirty kid?

  She’s a queen. And me . . . I’m . . .

  “I—”

  She puts a finger against my mouth and then kisses the space just to the left. Another kiss follows, this time to the right. And then she moves her finger so her lips can meet mine.

  Goddamn, can Alice kiss.

  My hands wrap around her upper arms and tug her closer. Forget truth time. This is way better. Her tongue is in my mouth, and when it touches mine, I can’t help but moan like some kind of sixteen-year-old punk who can’t control himself. But Alice doesn’t seem to mind, because slowly, slowly, she runs her tongue alongside mine and forces another moan out of me.

  We’re in a car, on the side of the road, on the way to acquire some ridiculously expensive books for the Institute, and I’m already debating how far I can go with this woman without getting us arrested for public indecency.

  She sinks down against me, rocking back and forth, her fingers curling in my hair. My hands drop to her waist, and then lower still, to trail up her bare legs and just under the hem of the one of those boho dresses she favors. I like these dresses of hers. They’re incredibly hot on her, especially since she’s got legs for miles.

  She bites my lip. I just about lose my mind.

  We somehow make it to the backseat. We really are like those sixteen-year-old kids, aren’t we? My hand is up her dress, fingers sliding beneath the waistband of her panties, and she’s unbuttoning my shirt. Every so often, headlights flash by us, slashing through the rivulets lining the windows. I ought to put a stop to this now, get us back on the road and wait until we get to the bed and breakfast we’ve got booked by the dealer’s, but like that itch I can’t help but scratch, I need her right now.

  I tug her panties to the side at the same moment she gets my shirt open.

  She presses a kiss against my chest. Her fingers move to my pants, and I swear, when they brush up against my dick—already hard—I have to bite my lip to stop from finishing this before we even get started. “Slow down,” I whisper. I slide a finger in, my thumb finds her clit; she’s wet and warm and feels like a goddamn dream.

  The buttons undone, she pulls me out and squeezes gently. I can’t help but buck when she begins to stroke me. We match each other’s pace, me pleasuring her, her pleasuring me, and before long, the windows fog up. She says, voice husky, “We can go slow later tonight.”

  The stroking stops so she can tug my pants down a bit farther. And then, before I can say—do—anything else, she positions herself over me and thrusts downward.

  She gets her wish. I couldn’t slow down if I tried. Together, we thrust and push and find the perfect rhythm that leaves her writhing above me and me in heaven below her. I cup one of her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress, running my thumb across the nipple and resume stroking her clit with my other thumb. It’s her turn to moan, and it’s fantastic, just so fucking gorgeous to listen to. When she comes, and it’s soon, she throws her head back, shouting my name as yet another pair of cars sends their lights crisscrossing across ours.

  She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

  I push one, two, three more times and follow her over that edge, her name now on my lips. I think it’s the fastest I’ve ever orgasmed.

  Afterward, she leans down and kisses me slowly, taking her time to trace my lips with her tongue. She says quietly, “I love you, Huckleberry Finn Van Brunt. I love all of you. You are my north star, remember?”

  I stare up into her eyes, my breath caught in my throat. I manage, I gasp, “Binaries. We’re binaries.”

  In the darkness, I can still make out her wry smile. “Indeed we are.” And then, before I can say anything else—like how absolutely crazy in love I am with her—she puts another finger against my mouth.

  She kisses the space just to the left again. And then the space to the right. “I already know, Finn.” And then she opens the door and exits the backseat, only to reenter the passenger seat up front, leaving me lying there on black leather with my pants down and my dick out and wet and satisfied and my heart ready to burst.

  AS WE DRIVE UP the long stretch of rough, winding road that leads to the rare book dealer’s property, I ask Finn, “Do most of the dealers the Society works with live in such secluded locations?”

  He turns down the music we’ve been listening to—something he refers to as indie rock, and claims I will learn to love if I can only admit there is more to music than the classics. “Some. Antiquities dealers and collectors can be eccentric, if you know what I mean.”

  The collectors I knew in Wonderland were most definitely eccentric. I’m reminded of the White Queen and of her expansive array of morbid dolls that often serve more as hunting trophies than actual playthings. No doubt she would delight at adding me to such a collection.

  The house we’ve traveled to is quite large and beautiful in a sleek, alien, yet modern way. Made of roughened wood, frosted glass, and burnished metal, it’s surrounded by neat hedges forming a maze. Farther back, dense trees beyond what I assume to be a field populate the distance, leaving the scope of visibility minuscule amidst the velvety blackness.

  “Have you met this dealer before?”

  Finn shakes his head as I stare down at the dossier file on my phone. Gabriel Pfeifer, it reads, specializes in first edi
tion books and objects associated with authors.

  Knowing what I know now, it all seems rather distasteful. What does that even mean, objects associated with authors?

  “We are here solely for the pair of books, correct?”

  Finn turns off the car. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “You mean, do I travel distances to fetch books for the Librarian?”

  I nod. There’s that word again. Fetch.

  He shrugs. “Not a lot. We typically rotate through who is going to go get what she needs since she never leaves the Institute.”

  I shrug into a coat, as the air is brisk with the scent of snow. Finn also slips his on, and I surreptitiously ogle him in it as we walk up the brick path toward the frosted glass door of the house. As shallow as it is, I cannot help but continually admire his physique, whether it be in well-fitting coats such as the one he’s currently wearing, or in nothing at all.

  Thank goodness for detours.

  As if he knows what I am thinking, he lifts his eyebrows up right as he presses a small white button off to the side of the door.

  I simply smile lasciviously in return.

  The door swings open, bringing with it a surprise. Gabriel Pfeifer is none other than Gabe Lygari.

  Frabjous. Simply frabjous. What are the odds?

  The blasted man’s eyes light up. “Has the rabbit hole finally brought the elusive Alice to my doorstep?”

  Well, if this isn’t patently awkward and irritating. And also confusing, considering.

  “I believe we are here to see a Gabriel Pfeifer,” I say coolly. “And yet a Gabe Lygari stands in his place.”

  The enigmatic man chuckles. “As are many of us, I am a man of many names. But rest assured, both are applicable. I take it you two are from the Literary Preservation Institute? What a delightful coincidence.”

  “We are.” Finn matches my coolness. His memory, apparently, is quite good even after a number of cocktails and excitement over fights. Even still, introductions are made; bland pleasantries are offered.

  Lygari—or is it Pfeifer?—opens the door wider and steps to the side. “Please, come in from the cold. Reports say it will snow tonight. The roads leading into Bücherei can be treacherous if one doesn’t know them well.”

  Once inside, he takes our coats and carefully hangs them up before leading us down a short hallway just off the side of the foyer. At the end is a set of large, ornately carved and painted doors decorated with golden knobs.

  “Bücherei is German for library, right?” Finn asks. I know him well enough to hear the faint trace of suspicion in his voice at seeing this man here, although I doubt Lygari does.

  Our host’s smile is indulgent as he extracts a large, old-fashioned skeleton key out of his pants’ pocket. “Good catch. When I first bought this expanse of land many years ago, I knew it could go by no other name. Here, let me show you why.”

  As he slides the key into the keyhole, I gaze up at the carvings. Gruesome in image, they depict people of long ago in a variety of seemingly terrible situations. There is a wolf dressed as a woman, eating a girl in a red cloak. Another scene showcases two ladies slicing bits of their feet off, a translucent slipper nearby. There is another with a witch shoving children into an oven, and yet another with a woman sitting at a spinning wheel, her pricked finger dripping blood. Scene after scene run the lengths of the doors.

  I do not favor them one bit.

  A number of clicks and whirls sound before Lygari removes his key. The doors open silently, as if invisible hands lead their way. “This,” he tells us, “is the heart of Bücherei.”

  It strikes me that the bulk of Lygari’s house is just as he calls it—a library. Countless rows of books line the walls from floor to ceiling in an immense, three-story-high gallery. Sitting upon mosaicked floors depicting more monstrous scenes like those upon the doors are glass cases filled with more books and a variety of seemingly unrelated objects.

  “I’ve been collecting books my entire life,” Lygari is saying as Finn and I take in our surroundings. “You could say that my entire life revolves around them. As does, I would assume, yours.” He pauses, then add, “Being part of a preservation organization and all.”

  Above us is a painted fresco depicting a dark forest, violent waves crashing upon cliffs, and a mountain complete with a cave. Glowing eyes stare forbiddingly down upon us.

  “I house my entire collection here at Bücherei,” he continues. “Or at least, the only one that matters. There are some books and paintings in my Manhattan apartment and offices, but they are nothing more than second-rate offerings.”

  I repress stark uneasiness as I glance away from a tiled scene several feet from us that illustrates a crone offering an apple dripping with what appears to be poison to a young woman. To say the room is unsettling would be putting it mildly. What kind of person would surround themselves with such images?

  A hospitable one, I’m loath to admit. Lygari offers us mulled wine already waiting upon a silver cart off to one side, alongside a variety of canapés. “Forgive my poor service.” His smile turns apologetic. “I’d given my housekeeper the night off before I knew the Institute would be sending representatives out.” And then, boldly, “Imagine my delight at our running into one another not once, but twice in two days, Alice. And after a good couple of months of me trying to find you, to no avail. How interesting is it that both times have been in libraries?”

  Did I say hospitable? Surely, I meant unbearably boorish and more than a wee bit stalkerish. I turn to Finn and say flatly, even though I already know he does, “Perhaps you remember Mr. Lygari from a dance club we both found ourselves in earlier in the year?”

  Lygari chuckles, his blush insincere at best in the face of my rigid reminder that I am wholly uninterested in pursuing anything between us.

  Finn sets his glass down upon the rolling tray. “We truly appreciate your hospitality, but as you pointed out, it’s forecasted to snow, so we’d like to get on the road as soon as possible. Are the books in question still up for sale?”

  Lygari sips his wine as he studies Finn. “Of course.” He lowers the glass and motions toward a nearby glass display case. “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a hoarder. There are some stories I have multiple first editions of, and not because I’ve forgotten I’ve acquired one already. Such as this one.” He moves toward the exhibit. “At last count, there are five first editions of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway within Bücherei’s walls. And that was after I gave away several to employees.”

  I peer into the case. There is a black typewriter posing next to a pair of books—one closed, its bright blue and brown cover facing us, and another propped open, its yellowed pages filled with ramblings about sharks.

  “It’s Hemingway’s.” Lygari taps on the glass. “If I’m not mistaken, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea on this very one.”

  Finn says nothing as he stares at the typewriter, but his eyes narrow significantly.

  “I—” Lygari chuckles once more. “Forgive me. I know you two are eager to get on the road, but I have so few visitors here at Bücherei. I’d love to show you some of my more impressive acquisitions if you don’t mind? I promise not to keep you too long. It’s just . . . this is part of my lifelong work.”

  I fully expect Finn to refuse him, but the suspicion on my partner’s face morphs into what can only be described as carefully constructed interest. “We can spare a few minutes.”

  We’d like to frankly get out of this ghastly so-called library, but I suppose I can grudgingly understand why Finn wants us to look around. Bücherei isn’t what we were led to believe it was based on the Librarian’s report on Lygari.

  Over the course of the next half hour, Lygari tours us around his personal library. It is, according to him, nearly six thousand square feet and houses roughly a quarter of a million first- and second-edition books. It’s only for what he calls truly significant stories does he go out of his way
to hunt down author artifacts. There are multiple typewriters, pens, journals, writing tables, chairs, and various odd documents and books found in cases throughout the gallery. For an author named Charlotte Brontë, he has a tiny manuscript in booklet form he claims was written when she was a mere fourteen years of age. For a man named Leo Tolstoy (Leon, he sniffs, is the correct name), there is a pencil with electric lighting. For another named F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is an inscribed flask. When we stand in front of a large case with a drop-leaf table in it, two books with familiar names stand upon it: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both are by a Mark Twain.

  My attention swerves sharply back to Lygari.

  Finn stares silently at the books as our host delightedly prattles on about how difficult it’d been to acquire the table—it’d been gifted by the author’s daughter to a museum that didn’t really want to let go of it. But apparently everything has a price in this modern age, because here the table sits, inside a glass case in none other than Gabe Lygari’s house, and much of me wants to smash through the barrier and break the table into kindling.

  I watch Lygari’s mouth as he tells us about it, to suss out a hidden agenda. Coincidences, at least those I’ve experienced in Wonderland, have never been things to trust.

  “You know,” Lygari says, “I have something you might like to see, Alice.”

  Considering this unpleasant surprise, I rather doubt that.

  He leads the way toward a case on the far side of the room, and based on the red covers with golden pictures, I have no doubt which books lay within. Now it is my turn to view which items he scrounged from a long-dead author, only now I can succinctly understand how Finn must have felt moments before. My stomach cramps as if a strong fist was shoved against my belly.

  There are photographs decorating the area around the books. At least a dozen, and all of extremely young girls in varying poses that seen more lurid than innocent.

  “Some people think Lewis Carroll was a pedophile,” Lygari muses as we stand before the case. “I’m not so sure, though. There’s a certain charm to the photographs, don’t you think?”