The Hidden Library (37 page)

“You are going nowhere except for the hospital,” Van Brunt is saying. Sirens in the distance grow with each passing second. “There is no time to root through Ms. Lennox’s medical supplies from various Timelines. We first must ensure all are safe and accounted for.” A tiny catch in his voice sounds. “The local doctors will take care of you, Ms. Reeve.”

“No.” Anxiety crawls up my throat. It’s the only word that makes any sense right now.
“
No.
”

“Ms. Reeve—”

“Whatever you are insinuating—you, of all people, should know better than to say it, let alone think it.”

Van Brunt is undeterred. “Ms. Reeve—”

I refuse to allow him to vocalize such a cowardly belief.
“You are wrong. Know this now. I will never give up on finding him.
Never.
”

Van Brunt simply stares at me.

“Lygari had a magical pipe,” I say coldly. “It is time for us to determine who is capable of altering reality with a musical instrument, and then go after him with all our might. Did you not all claim that the flying boy had pipes with him, as well? It is not a coincidence.”

Yet he does not address this. Instead, Van Brunt asks brusquely, “Did my sons have their pens with them?”

Strength, do not fail me now.
My knees wobble once more, but I remain strong as I reach down into the rubble. Finn’s pen is miraculously in one piece and yet it is still here, with me and not with him.

I have to force the words out. “Victor forgot his upstairs.”

Van Brunt does not query me as to why Finn’s is here at the Institute rather than with him wherever he currently is. But he does not have to, not when it does not matter in the least. Because, without their pens, he is reminding me that Finn and Victor had no way out of 1905/06Sōs-IAAC.

I cannot accept this.

I cannot.

More importantly,
I will not.

The urge to pluck at my hair finally proves irresistible. One by one, tiny golden strands float down as I begin formulating my plan. Lygari will be stopped. He will pay for what he’s done. Todd will, too. He will never have the chance to exit this building again alive. I will find Finn—and Victor. They will be fine.

He will be fine. Our story is not done.

I will save him as he saved me.

“She’s in shock.”

I blink and the room slowly comes back into focus. There are medical personnel here, examining Mary. There are medical personnel strapping something to my bicep and inspecting the cuts zigzagging up and down forearms. I am sitting, and Van Brunt is no longer standing with me but over where Mary is being placed onto a gurney.

The Librarian is here, though. She reaches a slim hand out and strokes my bloody head as one of the men in a blue uniform flashes a light in my eyes. And then, before I am placed within the waiting beast of a machine outside alongside a still-sleeping Mary, she leans in and kisses my cheek.

She whispers, regret and pain and sorrow lining her beautiful face, “I am so sorry, Alice. More than you can imagine. I failed. Remember to trust your instincts.”

The door shuts behind her. A siren blares above us. I glance at Mary and think savagely:
I always do.

London

“F
INN! HE’S EDITING!”

Sure enough, Todd is scribbling in a book, all the while hacking his way through the growing yet terrified crowd. People are screaming and it’s chaos once more, but there isn’t time to calm them all down. Victor and I take off after him, pushing our way through the alley.

I can’t let him edit out. Not after what he’s done.

I also can’t shoot him. There are too many innocents in the way. I can’t risk hitting anyone—I’m a damn good shot, but even I don’t think I can target him in this crowd, both of us being jostled around by terrified civilians trying to get to safety.

An explosion goes off right behind us, one that feels different from the rest. I nearly fall, it’s so strong, but dammit, he’s got his door open.

“Don’t let him get through!” I bark at Victor.

Another explosion sounds. Bright lights fill the sky; a loud buzzing drowns out any further sound. The earth shakes below us. People are dropping all around us, hands frantically pressed against their ears to stem the pain. Cats howl, their plaintive cries nearly matching the din.

I think my ears are bleeding, it’s so bad.

In the confusion, my brother leaps forward, his long arms stretching just far enough to grab a corner of the asshole’s shirt. And then I’m right there with them, hurling ourselves through the doorway and onto the hard, wet, dirty cobblestone street of a deserted alley that reeks of piss and trash. The doorway winks away, and as there are no longer any crowds to stop me, my gun is out.

Fuck it. The time for talking is done. I give no warning. I shoot the asshole in the shoulder. He roars, dropping his book and pen into a puddle that looks more yellow than anything else. But rather than stopping him like I’d hoped, his rage propels him toward us. Instead of a book, he now wields a dagger pulled from his boots.
What the hell? Where did he get that?

“Gonna slice you pretty boys up, nice and neat!”

His words are garbled. My ears still hum from the buzzing of the last Timeline.

“Finn, my gun—I lost it in the fight!” I think Victor interjects, and that only solidifies my decision.

I shoot again, right in his knee. And then in the other knee, so I know he’s in pain. Thank God for silencers.

He screams and then wobbles, but goddammit, Todd keeps coming at us. What the fuck are these people taking? Are they all high on meth or something? Between blackened teeth, he hisses, “My hands were all over her body. Did your pretty little girl tell you that? Did she tell you how she liked it?”

Oh. Hell.
No.

My shot runs clean through the middle of Todd’s forehead. He drops to the ground, blood from his arm and legs puddling beneath him as his crazed eyes stare up into the gray, cloud-covered sky. As if on cue, it begins to rain.

Hearing becomes easier and yet still painful.

I shoot the fucker again, just to be sure. This time, I aim directly for his heart. The body spasms as my bullet strikes true.
That one is for Alice, because he tried to take my heart from me.

“May I?”

I pass Victor my gun. He shoots Todd directly in the nuts.

“That’s,” he says quietly, “for our mother, you sonofabitch.”

We both stare down at his body, neither of us feeling a single shred of remorse. I can only hope he was lying to me in the end, because the thought of Todd touching Alice in any way makes me want to physically rip him apart with my bare hands. “Too bad you didn’t do that when he was still alive.”

Victor laughs quietly, but there’s no humor there. He passes me my gun so I can slip it into the holster beneath my coat. When fingers brush against my side, I wince. Shit. With all the adrenaline of the last chase, I’d almost forgotten about how Pan stabbed me. “You lost your gun?”

He sighs. “Yeah. The arsehole managed to land a good kick.” More sheepishly, “He got me right in the bollocks.”

“If it’s any consolation, Pan landed the same kick on me.”

He claps me on the shoulder. “I’m afraid it’s not the best of days for men and their bollocks, is it?”

God, I love my brother.

His fingers tighten on my shoulder. “Let’s get back to the Institute. I want to know how this one got out.”

I rub at my hair. “Yeah. About that . . . I lost my pen in the second explosion.”

His hand drops to his side.

I take a deep breath. “It went through the doorway, after Alice hauled Pan back.”

“Bloody. Fucking.
Hell.
Could this day get any worse?”

I wipe bloody fingers against my pants before Victor notices. “Do you think their pens are DNA coded? Todd had one on him.”

We both glance toward the foul-smelling puddle the pen and book now lay in. And . . . yes. The day most certainly could get worse, because the pen is blackened and smoking, a piece of it missing. DNA coding is the least of our worries.

I let out a huge sigh.

“Well, at least we can figure out where we are,” Victor says. “And go from there. Between us, we ought to know who most of the liaisons are. All we have to do is go find this one’s.”

“If we even have a liaison to this Timeline.”

He nudges my arm. “A little optimism hurts no one. Besides, the ladies are going to be hot on our trail. Like Mary or Alice ever gave up on anything.”

I squat down next to the soggy book and glance at the pages. We’re in London, by the looks of it. And . . . Hot damn. Maybe we do have a bit of luck left.

“Do you know where we are?” Victor asks.

I stand up, wincing once more as pain dulled by adrenaline now surges forward. “I most certainly do. We’re in 1905BUR-LP.”

My brother’s eyes widen comically. “Are you funning me?”

I shake my head and we both laugh. And then I flinch again as my side spasms.

Doctor he is, my brother is practically breathing on top of me. “What the hell, Finn? When did this happen? We need to get you somewhere where I can clean you up. Is this a stab wound? Did Pan get you with that weird glowing blade?” He doesn’t let me answer, though. “Does it feel like it hit anything important?”

Whether or not it did, I shake my head. First things first.

“Right then. You hold on a second so I can hide this bugger.”

Victor moves toward the body. I debate slumping against a nearby wall, but fear I may not be able to push myself up when it comes time to leave. “Search his pockets?”

“I swear, brother. You act as if this were my first rodeo.”

Victor works carefully, shoving Todd’s body behind a bunch of broken wooden crates. His pockets, regretfully, are empty save one blank scrap of paper. Victor keeps it anyway. And then he collects the remaining pieces of the pen so that Wendy—no, Marianne, can examine them if and when we can get back to the Institute.

He also takes the book, wrapping both in stray newspaper littering the street and tucking them inside his coat. The action is followed by a brief shudder—shit, I would, too, if a urine-soaked book and smoldering pen were inside my coat—but there’s no way we can leave that book out for just anybody to find.

“Let’s go find Sara,” he tells me. And then we make our way out of the alley and onto the streets.

BY THE TIME WE make our way through the London streets, the rain is coming down so hard that it’s almost impossible to see ten feet in front of us. We’re both soaked and doing our damn best to not chatter, but London in the winter isn’t exactly the warmest of places.

Finn is worrying me. He’s pale, his lips nearly white, and he’s shaking. I damn well know it has nothing to do with the temperature, either. I keep trying to get him to let me look at where Pan stabbed him, but Finn’s having none of that.
We need to get to Sara’s,
he insists.
We need to get back to the Institute. I’ve got a bad feeling about all this. Todd shouldn’t have been able to get out.

Pardon me if my bloody priority is making sure my brother is okay first.

We have no money though, no way to go anywhere safe for me to examine him. He’s got a point. It’s not like I can pull him into a pub and rip off his shirt. Police would be called. We’d have to answer questions about why we’re dressed as we are and still looking like we’ve lived through several bombings and why Finn has not only a futuristic-looking gun on him but also a hole in his side.

I cannot believe we landed in Sara Crewe’s Timeline—and in the past, to boot. Only, she’s not Sara Crewe anymore, is she? She’s Sara Carrisford. But honestly, what are the chances? Why here? Did Todd know that Sara and Finn once worked together? Or that Sara worked with the Society? Was this honestly a random choice?

Questions such as these leave me bloody nervous. Alice was right. All these coincidences don’t feel coincidental at all.

There is no way my father would have allowed Todd to leave. Thinking about this leaves me in a panic. I sent Mary back early.

God, please make sure Mary is okay.

Everything in my brain races too fast. Anxiety builds up in my chest. I’ve been rotten at taking my meds lately, and wouldn’t that be just the best? Me, having a full break with reality here in Sara’s London, especially when my brother needs me most?