The Hidden Library (21 page)

He appears fine. His right hand is scabbed and mangled, but other than that he is fine. I allow myself a small bit of relief at the welcome sight before transitioning to bloodthirsty wishes for retribution and violence.

“Welcome, welcome!” Todd digs the switchblade’s tip just enough into my throat that I am assured blood drips down my neck. “We were wondering when you’d appear, weren’t we, luv?”

Finn doesn’t look at him when he speaks, though. His focus is squarely on me. There’s surprise in his blue-gray eyes; rage, too. But what gets me the most is the fear, because he knows there is something wrong with me. If there weren’t, this revolting villain’s hands would no longer be attached to his arms.

And yet here I am, molded to Todd’s side, my head resting on his despicable shoulder, standing in a thin chemise.

“Looks like you found me,” is what Finn finally says. A muscle in his arm twitches, like he’s ready to go for his gun, but Todd is quick with his response.

“Now, now. You wouldn’t want to do something that you can’t take back before you hear what I have to say, would you? Besides, our time here is limited. I cannot imagine that fellow patrons have not heard the ruckus you’ve caused.” His high, thin giggle shakes the both of our bodies.

“You want to talk? Fine. Let her go first.”

Finn’s harshly voiced order only leads to more giggling.

I wish I could say something to him. Wish I could throw my head back and knock Todd out. Wish I could snap his arm and then take the blade he’s slowing digging into me and slide it across his neck, just like he’d done to Van Brunt. Like he’s trying to do to me. Only I would not be so clumsy to leave him alive.

I wish so very many things.

It’s comical, in a sad way, to ruminate on how many times I’ve faced assassination attempts over the years. I cannot even count the number, to be honest. And still, I managed to consistently turn the tide in my favor and emerge victorious. The Caterpillar berated me afterward, charging me with reckless luck that would sooner rather than later dissipate.
No person is invincible,
he would insist.
No person is charmed.
And I believed him. Frequent visions of my lifeless body on a Wonderlandian battlefield haunted my dreams. And yet, now he is dead at the hands of the Queen of Hearts and I am drugged and unable to control my muscles, clutched to the side of a man who I easily bested before.

I will my arms to work. My mouth. My head. Even just my fingers. Move, I command my muscles.
Move.

“Are you sure this is what you want me to do?” Todd is saying to Finn.

My partner’s silent questions are the worst.
Why is she just standing there,
I can practically hear him wonder.
Why hasn’t she eviscerated this sonofabitch already?
He directs several at me.
Give me a clue, any clue as to what’s the matter with you.

I wish I could say I can speak effectively with my eyes, but I am so livid I’m positive all that emanates from me is fury. This situation is entirely intolerable.

“Let her go,” Finn says, in the most terrifying voice I’ve yet to hear from him, “and maybe, just maybe, when the time comes, I’ll show mercy when I kill you.”

Todd slowly pulls the blade back and away from my neck. “If that is what you wish . . .” And then, quick as lightning, he jams it into my side and lets go of his hold on me.

Naturally, I slump immediately to the ground. For crying out loud, will the indignities of the day ever cease?

Apparently not, because I land at just the right angle that the blade digs deeper into my side. When a spontaneous cry escapes my lips, I have to struggle to get the pain under control.

Finn is across the room, his bloody fist meeting Todd’s face and then stomach. The two men grapple for several minutes, fists flying and furniture giving way until the room is in ruins. “What the fuck did you do to her?” Finn shouts. “Did you drug her? Why is she like that? Alice! Are you okay?”

For his part, Todd nonsensically chants threats and rhymes about pies and barbers and crows and rats, giggling the entire time. Crunching transitions to wet, soft sounds. Finn’s questions continue to go coherently unanswered until the barber’s ravings cease altogether and the fiend falls onto the ground next to me.

If I wasn’t in so much pain, and if I could talk, I very well might tease Finn about how he feared he would beat the stuffing out of one person on this trip, only to come away with having done it twice.

My love is on the floor with me, my head now in his lap. Relief leaves me exhausted. “Oh, Jesus . . . Alice. Are you okay?” When I don’t answer, his face lowers until it’s just above mine. “Can you hear me?”

I let out a tiny huff of annoyance. What a patently stupid question. Slowly, I blink once.

Thankfully, he’s quick on the uptake, remembering how, when he’d been dosed with SleepMist in Wonderland, I’d asked him to blink once for yes, twice for no. He presses a kiss first upon my forehead and then one against my lips. There is a slight splatter of blood on his own forehead, one I sadistically yet gleefully attribute to Todd getting, as Mary would say, his ass handed to him.

“Can you talk?”

Two blinks.

“Are you in pain?”

I’m tempted to lie and he knows it, because he immediately qualifies, “The truth.”

I blink once, hating that I’m unable to compartmentalize the pain as easily as normal.

“I’m going to pull the knife out. I’m sorry, it’s going to—”

I blink once, hoping he knows I want him to do this for me. When he does, blinding pain electrocutes me; another strangled cry escapes my lips. Finn has something pressed against my side, stemming the blood flow.

“I’m so sorry, love. Can you move?”

Two blinks. Black spots dance above me, ones that want to take me away from Finn. And still, there is warmth in my heart.
He called me love.

“Did he drug you?”

One blink. At least, I hope I blink. The spots are growing larger and yet turning darker all at once.

“Do you know what it was?”

Two slow blinks.

Finn lets out a shaky sigh and drags a phone out of his pocket. “Can you believe they didn’t confiscate this? Didn’t confiscate anything other than my gun. Not my books, not my pen, not my phone. Didn’t even ask me about them.”

I think it’s been well established we’re surrounded by a bunch of idiots in Finn’s original Timeline. How he managed to rise above all of this and become the wonderful man he is is beyond me, but I am ever so grateful he has.

With one hand, he punches in a message. “We’re going to get you back to the Institute, okay?”

I wish I could just tell him to get a bloody move on things already. Son of a jabberwocky, I am tired. Tired and outraged and . . . and . . .

“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.

T
HE 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.”