The Collectors' Society 01 (27 page)

Another shot sounds below. Todd, bleeding and deranged, throws himself right at Finn. But my partner doesn’t even bat an eye—he headbutts the barber before kicking him backward. “Did you delete those Timelines?” he rages when Todd sprawls before him. “Did you personally destroy the catalysts marked on your fucking target wall?”

Todd’s laughter is terrifying.

“You bitch!” Rosemary is hissing, tearing my attention back to my assailant. She yanks out my dagger and throws it to the ground as she surges to her feet.

Wrong move. I immediately counter her, sweeping her fresh legs out from beneath her. And then I’m straddling her scrawny body, slamming her head into the hard wooden floor. She howls, kicking, but I’m stronger than I look.

A hand shoves my chin up; fingers try to close in around my throat. I’m undeterred, even though spots float before my eyes. She’ll have to squeeze harder if she wants me out. When her scrambling turns frantic, I manage to tug over my blade.

As much as I want to shove it right into her windpipe, I flip it over and slam the butt against her temple. I need information. “What do you know of Wonderland?” She howls, and I repeat the action, harder than before. “How did you know of the catalyst in Mansfield Park?”

She spits on me. I spit right back.

A fresh surge of adrenaline has her finally shoving me off. Behind us, Todd is crashing into the armoire we hid in. Finn’s right there on top of him, throwing a pair of punches to the chin before kicking him so hard the barber slumps to the ground. “Did you murder all those people for fun? How did you know about the catalysts?”

Blood spurts from Todd’s nose and lips, but, outside of his maniacal laughter, says nothing.

Where are Finn’s guns?

I don’t have time to look, though. Rosemary tries to take me down again, the bō staff reclaimed. She may be fast, she may be flexible, but I’m better. I let go of a roundhouse kick, sending her sprawling. And then I grab her shirt, hauling her up. “How do you know of the Society?”

She’s demonic with her laughter, and for a moment, I could swear she was a Wonderlander.

“AF, situation compromised,” Wendy is saying in our ears. “Security system override unnecessary. Extraction in T-minus three minutes.”

“I’ll kill you,” she snarls.

How cliché of her. I slam her down, bringing my elbow down on her temple. Blood trickles from a split lip as her eyes roll back. “Better people than you have tried.”

Finn clicks the button on his ear right as one of Todd’s blades make contact with his leg. My heart swells over how he doesn’t flinch. Not once. “Copy.”

But, like a robot, Rosemary is miraculously back on her feet. So is Todd. Both are bleeding far worse than either Finn or I, but it’s not a good sign that they can fight so easily through the pain.

It took me a good two years to learn how to do so.

Finn throws another punch at Todd’s battered face as Rosemary rams my stomach with her surprisingly hard head. But, somehow, Finn’s there to catch me before I fall.

“Two minutes to extraction, AF,” Wendy says.

Finn kicks Todd squarely in the chest, sending him flying back a good five feet. It’s my turn to throw a punch, and when Rosemary goes down, she doesn’t get up so easily.

Finn and I sprint toward the window. He kicks out the pane and shoves me out first. “Climb to the roof,” he says just seconds before Todd yanks him back into the room.

I scramble to get to him, but my partner yells, “GO!”

Against my better judgment, I’m up the few metal stairs that it takes to get to the roof. A helicopter comes swinging into view, and for a moment, I’m immobile because Mary’s in the pilot’s seat. The A.D. is next to her, dark glasses obscuring his eyes.

A ladder drops. I hesitate, especially when I hear the sound of yet another gun shot.

“ALR, get on the helicopter. Departure in T-minus forty-five seconds.”

Panic laces through me. I won’t leave without Finn. I won’t. I fumble for my blades, but both are in the attic.

“ALR,” Wendy says more forcefully. “Get your scrawny ass onto the helicopter right now.”

Another gun shot, followed by a scream and then a crash. Sirens blare in the distance. I’m halfway to the ledge.

“ALR, get on the helicopter right now.” It’s a furious Van Brunt.

I’m about to tell them what they can all do with themselves when a hand appears at the junction of room and stairs. And then, a second later, Finn appears.

My heart clutches again. He’s bloody, but he’s here.

I climb the ladder.

“H
OW ARE YOU FEELING?”

Finn glances up from his laptop, clearly startled to find me leaning against the doorframe to his bedroom. He’s spread out across his bed, propped up on elbows and shirtless, and sinful thoughts fill my mind.

I know how it feels to be kissed by this man now.

I really should have just stayed away and left well enough alone. A thousand rationalizations peppered my thoughts once we got back to the Institute the night before, ones that made sense.
It was the heat of the moment. Stakes were raised. Our adrenaline was already spiked. I shouldn’t be feeling this way. It was a momentary lapse in reasoning. We’re partners, nothing more.

But other thoughts made sleep difficult. Was he hurt worse than I thought? We’d both visited Victor to have our wounds looked at before sitting in on an hour-long meeting during which Van Brunt and the Librarian had us relating every last detail of our time in Ex Libris’ attic. We were given morphine shots (under Van Brunt’s orders—both of us protested but were overruled), and over the course of the hour, it became apparent the drug made Finn more than a bit loopy to the point he started to slur his words together and doze at the table.

It was then I demanded we table further discussions until the next day.

His brother and father eventually dragged him upstairs to his flat to sleep it off. I’d trailed along (under Mary’s watchful eyes), but morphine and the like are akin to alcohol to me. Things blur, but I’m more than capable of functioning under such duress. But I laid awake, reliving the night’s events.

I kissed him. He kissed me. Guilt tore holes within my chest. Worse yet, Todd and Rosemary know who I am and plan to target Wonderland next.

I’d rolled over on my side and stared out of the window. The moon was fat and round and bright, reminding me of far too many nights I used to stare at it and wonder what the next morning would bring. And there I was, wondering that infernal question once more, as I tried to make sense of the evening’s events.

Hairline fissures grew in the shields I’d carefully built around me over the last six months.

After I got dressed this morning, I couldn’t help myself. I told myself it was because I wanted to see how he was doing, but the fact was, I simply wanted to see
him
. So, I knocked on his door and he’d called out for me to come in. Now here I am, in his bedroom and his flat for the first time, wondering if I’d hit my head too hard hours before, because I’m surrendering to the attraction between us, aren’t I?

He closes the laptop and gifts me with a smile Mary once noted to be a panty-dropping grin. It’s an apt description. “Sorry. I thought you were Victor. If I’d known it was you, I would have gone and answered.”

The muscle in my chest thumps to a stronger rhythm. I cross my arms, hating that I can’t seem to control these reactions. Too bad I wasn’t paired with a cruel, stupid man. “It’s fine. I’m a big girl who knows how to open doors by herself. It’s terribly scandalous, but what can one do? A lady doesn’t always have a man around to open doors, after all.”

“Those with manservants do.”

My laugh is a burst of surprised air. “Alas, I no longer have those in employ.”

He rolls off his bed and slowly wanders over to where I’m standing. Golden sunlight spills through the slated blinds on the windows, leaving strands of his honeyed hair glinting. I’m struck once more by just how beautiful he truly is.

I clear my throat. Lick my lips. Ask again, “How are you feeling?”

His eyes settle on my mouth, of that I’m sure. “Good as new.”

“No pain?”

He shakes his head. “You?”

“None. I’m not the one who got stitches this time, remember?”

He glances down at his leg. He’d objected last night, but Victor had insisted. Honestly, I’d sided with the doctor.

“What were you doing?”

“The Librarian had some questions, so I was amending our report.”

The rhythm in my chest changes, becomes more forcefully strong. “It couldn’t have waited until later? You need your rest.”

He lifts an arm and plants a palm on the wall just above and to the left of my head. Our bodies are inches away from one another—not as close as they were in that closet, but with such a lack of space that the heat from his body meets mine and the delicious smell of this man fills my senses. “I slept for eight hours, which is longer than I have in probably five years.”

It’s bloody annoying how my cheeks flush. Even more so annoying is how ridiculous I feel for even coming in here. “Your body needs to heal.”

“My body is fine.”

Is it ever.

I’m ready to take the necessary, wise step backward, when a hand comes out to curl around my arm. “Wait.” I watch his chest rise and fall with a measured breath. “I’m glad you stopped by. We need to talk about what happened.”

We need to talk . . .

Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but the words
we need to talk
feel dire in just about any Timeline. And shameful, too, when shame shouldn’t be an issue. “Honestly, Finn. There isn’t much to discuss.”

His head tilts, and for such an intelligent man, there’s a bit of confusion in his eyes.

“Things like this happen.” Ignoring the lump forming in my throat, I shrug.

“Not to me, they don’t.”

I’m genuinely surprised. “I assumed that you and Sara . . .”

He shakes his head. “What? Why would you—?” But before I can answer, he rolls his eyes and swears softly under his breath. “Mary, right? She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Sara and I weren’t like that.”

The adage about assumptions Mary told me about recently rings loud and true in my head. I do feel a bit like an arse right now. A delighted one, but an arse all the same.

“The entire time she worked at the Society, she had a boyfriend in her Timeline,” he adds. “But more importantly, there was no attraction between us. So, no, Alice. Things like this do not just happen—at least to me.”

The windows are open, but the room seems to lose a bit of its oxygen. “They do with Mary and Victor. Or at least, they did.”

“We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about us.”

Us.

Two letters combine to make a tiny word whose connotation is massive. There is an us here. He and I, we’re partners. We are also part of the Society and have a shared sense of being misunderstood characters in beloved books. But when he says this word, when these two letters combine to make a single syllable from his mouth, it feels more than that. It feels both broader, more significant. And yet smaller and exclusive all at once.

Us
is a heady, dangerous word.

He lets go of my arm, only to trail his fingers across my shoulder. I shudder at this soft touch, tremble at the look in his eyes. “Do these things happen to you?”

I wish I could offer him the same answer as he gave me. I wish I could say
no, this is unique
, because it is . . . And yet it would be a lie, too. But before I can say anything, he tells me, “Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

My voice is husky, like I have no control over it any longer. “It doesn’t?”

He touches my face, tilts my chin upward. And then he shakes his head again. “The only thing that matters right now is if what happened last night between us in that armoire meant something to you.”

My defenses are peeled back and I’m left vulnerable in his wake. Part of me insists I’m to tell him no—no is the safest answer. There would be awkwardness for a bit of time, true, but we could get over it. We would move on. Eventually, if I chose to stay on with the Society, it would become a long-lost memory that rarely revisits its owners. We could laugh about it in the future, scoff over how we let ourselves go during the most inopportune, inappropriate time ever.

But the thing is, it did mean something to me.

I am attracted to him. Desperately so. I’ve tried not to be—heaven knows how attraction in the past has led me to ruin, but it’s here all the same. And kissing him did me no favors, because it only fanned the embers until a flame was ignited.

I tell myself:
This time could be different
.

I rationalize:
It’s not like my past can be changed.

I fear:
I lost everything before.

And yet . . . I hope.

This attraction . . . it’s different. There are obstacles, yes, but they are nothing like those I stumbled across before.

He waits patiently for my answer, as if we’re not expected downstairs to finish the meeting he fell asleep in, or that our absence would be noted. He waits with one arm planted on the wall next to me and the other cupping my cheek.