Capitol Magic (3 page)

“Jane, I don't think —”

But she cut Montrose off. “I need a job, David. Now that I've left the Peabridge.”

Clearly, this was a familiar discussion between the two of them. “I thought we had agreed… In any case, there are lots of jobs —”

Again, she interrupted. “And this one is perfect. It lets me use all my librarian skills.”

I had the distinct impression that David Montrose, Hecate's Warder, was not interrupted by many people. But I also understood that he made special allowances for his witch.

“Jane —”

“David. I'll be fine here. Just as soon as you and Mr. Morton let us get back to work.”

The warder's throat worked. He obviously longed to tell her that she was wrong, that she needed to submit, that she was required to leave with him.

But she merely stared at him, hazel eyes meeting grey. There was determination in her stance, a rooted stubbornness that did not require the benefit of words.

Finally, Montrose shrugged and turned his attention to James. “I think we're being told to leave.”

I saw James's own resistance. He still believed that these intruders were a threat to the Eastern Empire, to the secret workings of the Night Court.

But I knew otherwise. I had
felt
otherwise, the instant I met Jane.

I took a step closer to the librarian. “The sooner we get to work, the sooner we'll know the extent of the problem with the collection.”

James started to protest. He started to say something to me. Then to Jane. To Montrose.

But he wasn't a fool. He knew when he was beaten. With a perfectly arched eyebrow, he said to me, “I wouldn't want to delay your getting to work.” And then he turned toward Montrose. “Shall we?”

He gestured toward the door. The sound of footsteps faded quickly as the men retreated upstairs.

Jane was shaking her head when I recovered enough to turn back to her. “I don't get it,” she said. “How is it that every single person can arch one eyebrow, except for me?”

I laughed.

I could have wasted time, apologizing for James. I could have taken a break and explained what I was, how I had been awakened to my life as a sphinx. I could have asked a million questions about Jane's powers, about Montrose.

But instead, I hefted a box of papers onto the massive table, and I started to explain what little order I'd been able to impose on the collection.

* * *

Nearly eight hours later, I slipped back into the Old Library. I had left Jane surrounded by books, scrolls, folders, and piles of paper, hoping that she could make sense out of the call numbers scrawled on the valuable holdings. Now, I wanted nothing more than to find that the witch had worked her magic with my collection of legal materials.

Strike that.

I wanted more than that. A lot more. I wanted to know everything Jane knew about organizing information.

I was jealous that the witch had skills beyond my own. I was frustrated that I had needed to call in someone else, embarrassed that I had not been able to make things neat and clean and orderly without outside assistance. I felt the disorganization of the Old Library like a twitch beneath my eye—constant, annoying, unable to be controlled.

I knew that pull was my sphinx nature asserting itself. My most obvious supernatural quirk was the absolute compulsion to impose order upon the physical world around me.

I opened the door cautiously, afraid that I would interrupt her work. I needn't have worried. Jane was poring over a ledger, running her fingers down two columns of entries. She shook her head when she got to one point, grimacing in distaste or confusion. Blindly, she reached for another notebook, scanned more columns of information.

As I watched her work, my fingers itched. I wanted to collect the random pages that covered the table and tap them into neat piles. I wanted to separate pencils from pens, red ink from blue and black. I wanted to scoop up plastic paperclips and settle them into a single neat cup.

I settled for clearing my throat and closing the door with a distinct thud.

Jane was clearly oblivious to my sphinx craving for order; she made no effort to neaten her workspace. Instead, she ran her palms over her face as if to rub away the shadows of fatigue beneath her eyes. She worked her fingers through her red-shot hair and sat straighter in her chair, twisting once to her right, then to her left.

“I'm so close,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “It would all come together, if we had all the materials here.”

“All the materials?”

“According to these catalog volumes, you're missing about five percent of the collection.”

Five percent? That would be several hundred books. There was no way that much of the collection had disappeared. Not on my watch. Not with my compulsive need to keep the shelves in order.

I hooked a chair with my foot, nudging it to a right angle with the table before I sat next to Jane. “Wait a second. What catalog volumes? I couldn't
find
any catalog volumes.”

Jane pointed to several piles of books. Some were bound in leather, with the wavy pages I knew were parchment. A couple were covered in plain black cloth. Closest at hand were a half dozen cardboard-covered theme notebooks, the type that could be bought on sale, two for a dollar, at any office superstore.

“These were locked inside that chest.” Jane gestured to a massive footlocker that filled the bottom shelf. Its sides and corners were reinforced with brass, and its heavy lock hung open.

“Where did that come from?” I gaped at the trunk. There was no way I could have missed it during my countless tours of the Old Library.

“I don't know where it came from originally,” Jane said. “But it was hidden by a pretty strong distracting spell. If you ever noticed it, your attention was dragged off to something else in pretty short order.”

“But how did
you
find it?”

She held up a disk, the width of her palm. Flawless and clear, it was curved like a lens from a telescope. “Rock crystal,” she said. “When I realized there had to be a record of the library's contents somewhere, I decided someone must have hidden it away. I had my familiar bring me this crystal.”

I looked around the room. “Your familiar? Where is it?”

“Not it,” she smiled ruefully. “He. And I took him away from a Mardi Gras party, so he insisted on getting back as soon as possible.”

“Mardi Gras was two months ago.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he brought me the crystal, and I found the records. This book explains the classification scheme.” She held up a volume the size of a pocket paperback. Gold and turquoise glinted from its wooden cover. “It's complicated,” she said. “Each book is marked to indicate the year it was written, the year it was brought into the collection, the title, the author, and the subject matter. But all of that is placed in a rotating cipher. You'd never be able to translate it without the tables here.”

I nodded to tell her I understood what she was saying. At the same time, I swallowed hard, surprised to discover how relieved I felt. There was a
reason
I had not been able to make sense out of the books. There was an orderly, mundane explanation, not related to magic, to my sphinx abilities. Or, as I had very much feared, to my lack thereof.

I'd had six months to adjust to the idea that I wasn't actually human, that I had ancient blood pulsing in my veins. Six months to push my sphinx mentor, Chris Gardner, into teaching me about my heritage. Six months to grow annoyed at his bottomless patience. His precision. His incredibly slow pace of instruction. His quiet acceptance of the relationship that had grown between James and me, despite the very real pull Chris and I felt to each other.

I suppressed the growl that rose in my throat whenever I thought about my tangled love life.

“Okay,” I said. “So, you found the trunk, and you rescued the catalog. You cracked the code. But five percent of our books are missing?”

Jane reached for a stack of catalog volumes. Bookmarks fanned out from the pages, rippling like feathers. Selecting one at random, she showed me a handwritten note that was wedged hard into the bound edge of the book. “Three volumes loaned to the Southern Empire library. August 4, 1862.”

“They're going to owe some serious overdue fines,” I said wryly.

Jane quirked a smile and reached for another book, another marker, another card. “Seven volumes loaned to Hecate's Court. January 4… I can't quite make that out. 1747?” She winced. “I guess my fellow witches aren't great library patrons.”

“So that's the system? Just write a note on a card and shove it into the middle of the catalog?”

She nodded. “There are loans to other Empires. A few more to Hecate's Court. Several dozen to individuals. I'm afraid there are several mistakes, though. One name shows up, over and over. The first loans are medieval texts, dating back to the thirteenth century. And the most recent ones are from just a few years ago.”

A chill walked down my spine, and I had a queasy premonition of how Jane would answer my next question. “The name,” I said, barely able to voice the words. “What is the name?”

“The spelling is different on a lot of the cards. Someone was really atrocious at keeping records.”

“Just tell me. Who is it?”

She looked at me oddly, and I realized I must have sounded like a madwoman. “As near as I can tell,” she said, “the person with the vast majority of the missing books is named Richardson. Maurice Richardson.”

I felt every one of the five syllables, twisting my belly like the fear I had felt when I first met the ancient vampire.

But there was more than fear. Jane's pronouncement shattered the neat order of my world. All the control that I had exercised over the Old Library, all the organization that I had imposed in the Night Court files—it meant nothing if Richardson had taken such a large part of our collection.

It was worse than that, though. Jane's words made me realize that I was not properly prepared for my job. I didn't have the tools I needed, the most basic instruction to function as a full-fledged sphinx.

And I was missing that information because Chris had refused to teach me. Sure, he had promised a lot, offering up enticing tidbits about our sphinx nature, about who we were, about what we could do. But each time I pushed him for more specific information, he put me off. He told me that I needed to focus on my job at the Night Court, that I needed to become more familiar with vampires.

I knew that part of his reluctance was some twisted form of chivalry—he was giving me freedom to pursue my relationship with James, whatever that might be.

But there was more to it than that. I didn't know if he didn't trust me. Or if he didn't trust himself, to be my mentor. Or if there were other forces at play—edicts from the Eastern Empire itself, from the supernatural creatures we served.

All I knew was that I was aching to know more about my sphinx nature. I was desperate to discover who I was, what I could do. And now, an opportunity was laid out before me.

An opportunity, but a threat as well.

I folded my fingers around the edge of the table and ordered myself to take a trio of deep breaths. Maurice Richardson was in custody. He was awaiting trial for everything that had happened six months ago. There was no way he could reach me, no way he could harm me. But maybe, just maybe he was giving me the chance to become the sphinx I was truly meant to be.

I squared my shoulders and sat up straight. “Maurice Richardson stole those books from the Eastern Empire. And I'm going to get them back.”

CHAPTER 3

JANE

I SHOULD HAVE known that David would be waiting for me back at the Peabridge cottage. He sat on one of the hunter green couches in the living room, his legs extended before him, his hands behind his head. When I saw him, I was tempted to step back outside, to lock the door and flee.

Instead, I collapsed on the opposite couch and let my head loll back.

I was tired. Exhausted, actually. In preparation for my stint as a night librarian, I had taken a nap the afternoon before but now I felt as if I'd pulled the all-nighter from Hell. I ran my tongue over my teeth and cringed at the film I found there. I would have stumbled in the bathroom and grabbed for my Crest, if that hadn't seemed entirely too much like work.

David was going to yell at me. He was going to be furious that I had dismissed him the way I had—and in front of dangerous strangers, to boot. He was going to remove himself from serving as my warder ever again. He was going to tell me that everything we'd been through was a mistake, that we shouldn't have had any past, that we weren't going to have any future. He was going to stand up, walk out the door, disappear down the garden path, and I would never, ever see him again.

“Want some breakfast?” he asked.

Oh.

Just the word—breakfast—reminded me I was starving. I nodded, and he led the way into my kitchen. He moved with the familiarity of a man who had conquered those cupboards years before. In less than ten minutes, I was sitting down to scrambled eggs and toast, with a sprinkling of real asiago. (Where had he found that in
my
fridge?). He raised a box of oolong teabags, but I shook my head. Stirring caffeine into my exhaustion would be a mistake.

I gulped down half the meal before I dared to meet his eyes. “What?” I asked, unable to parse the thoughts in those grey depths.

“I thought we had an agreement. I thought you were going to start teaching new witches, show them how to share their powers.”

Of course, his words brought back the memory of excitement, of the discoveries we'd made in my basement eight months before. Then, I had been nursing a catastrophic degradation of my powers; I had nearly lost everything that made me a useful witch. I'd only found my way back to full strength by working with my mother and my grandmother, by weaving our astral energy together.