The Collectors' Society 01 (46 page)

“I’m clearly missing something,” I say to no one in particular.

“Brom’s story.” Mary hooks an arm around my shoulders. “It’s about a Headless Horseman who terrorizes an idiotic schoolteacher. Only, there never was Headless Horseman. It was Brom in disguise. He went by the most ridiculous name when he was a teenager. Brom Bones. Can you imagine?”

I stare down at the head of the Collector’s Society in shock. This man, this calm, in control man who won’t even call people by their given names, terrorized a schoolteacher and went by the name of Brom Bones?

“The jerk was trying to steal his wife,” Mary continues. “Well, she was his girlfriend then. So, he and his friends decided to pull a prank. Brom dressed up as this urban legend and scared the guy straight out of town.”

He’d told me once,
“Not a day goes by in which I don’t reflect upon the documented follies of my youth, of how abhorrently irresponsible and petty I was in my actions and behavior.”

Why, that stealthy man.

I find myself smiling along with the rest of them. “When Katrina found out,” Mary adds, “Brom got an earful and an ultimatum. It was his first and last time masquerading as something he wasn’t. Although, I suppose he’ll never live this one down now. Perhaps it’s best Katrina isn’t here.
She
certainly wouldn’t have let him live it down.”

“Mary Lennox,” Victor says as he pulls her closer, “you’re awful.”

She lifts up on her toes and kisses him. “I try my best.”

We spend the rest of the day there, and are rewarded shortly before dinner. Brom wakes up. Not one to waste time on trivial matters such as slit throats and assassination attempts, he motions for a whiteboard and marker Mary had the A.D. bring over.

He writes:
Did you get the catalyst?

Truth be told, I am surprisingly unsurprised that this is his first question.

“Yes,” Finn tells him.

Debrief

“You just had surgery,” Finn says, but his father holds a steady hand up before tapping on the word. Like the good sons they are, they tell him all about our adventures in Wonderland. Well, most of them, anyway.

Once that’s finished, he writes:
We need to hit the ground running. We cannot afford a single other Timeline deleted.

Of that, we are all in agreement.

He erases his message and writes a new one.
Tomorrow, we begin a new hunt.

And so we will.

A
S MUCH AS FINN and Victor want to stay with Brom all night, the elder Van Brunt begs Mary and me to take his sons back to the Institute. He writes:
They snore
.

I allow him this bit of fun at his sons’ expense, even though I know better—at least where it concerns Finn. It takes some cajoling, but his children agree to leave on the condition their father is to expect them in the morning.

Van Brunt gives them a thumb’s up just as his eyes drift shut.

I hold Finn’s hand the entire cab ride back to the Institute. We don’t talk, but there’s no need to. I rest my head against his shoulder, and finally, for the first time in days, he allows himself to relax, even if just by a little.

Later, when we reach our flats, he speaks. “I need you.”

He’s exhausted, yes. So am I. But this is more important. “I need you, too.”

His hands drop to my waist. “Can I finally kiss you now? I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.”

“I believe you kissed me earlier.” Even still, I curl my fingers in his wrinkled shirt so I can pull him closer. “Remember? And there were all those times I kissed you in the shower. We’ve been kissing all evening, to be honest.”

He shakes his head. He looks so tired, so vulnerable in this moment that I can practically feel the strings between our hearts knotting themselves into tight braids. All I want to do is make things better for him.

I kiss him then, one he cannot mistake as anything other than what it is. Slowly, hotly, letting my tongue find his. He and I were never very good at waiting for the appropriate moments for whatever it is that is going on between us. Right now, he ought to be focusing on his father, even though there’s nothing he can do while Van Brunt is still in the ICU. I ought to be heading downstairs and questioning Rosemary. She and I have many things that need to be said to one another. Together, we ought to be laying out a plan to track Todd down. Sleep should be had, to ready us for the coming days.

But right now . . . right now I think I need to kiss this man more.

We go inside my flat this time, barely ensuring the door is shut and locked behind us. Our clothes form a trail to the bedroom, and soon we become those stars he told me about, orbiting one another. He is a gravitational pull I do not think I can resist. One I do not want to resist any longer. Binary stars, he said. I like that.

“Your crown is in here,” he says as soon as we hit my bed. And then, just a second before my mouth finds his once more, he says, “I’m glad.”

We kiss. We touch. We relearn one another’s bodies. We suck, we lick, we stroke, we tease, we yearn. When he pushes into me, we both gasp on cue. We move in perfect synchronicity, and when we explode, we do it in unison.

Tomorrow, we will head out as the partners we are. We will do our best to find Todd. Assignments will be doled out, missions set into motion. We will be tireless as we work together to ensure the safety of Timelines filled with people who have no idea that this man is my north star, or that I am his, or that there are madmen out there who wish them harm. We will take over for Van Brunt until he is back on his feet again.

Tomorrow is the start of our future.

But tonight—this moment—is our present. And I refuse to waste a single second of it.

Curious as to who was featured or mentioned within
The Collectors’ Society
?

Here’s a list of some of the people and the books they came from.

Abraham Van Brunt (AKA Brom Bones); Katrina Van Tassel

Featured in the short story
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
, found within
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
by Washington Irving

Alice Liddel; the White King; the Mad Hatter; the March Hare; the Caterpillar; the Cheshire-Cat; various other Wonderlandian animals and peoples

Alice in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
by Lewis Carroll

The Bertram and Price families

Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen

Emma Knightley

Emma
by Jane Austen

Franklin Blake

The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins

Gwendolyn Peterson (AKA Wendy Darling)

Based loosely upon
Peter and Wendy
by J. M. Barrie

Henry Fleming

Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane

Mr. Holgrave

House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer Abroad
by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer, Detective
by Mark Twain

Jack Dawkins (AKA The Artful Dodger)

Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens

Mary Lennox

The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Sara Crewe

A Little Princess
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

S. Todd (AKA Sweeney Todd)

Based loosely upon
A String of Pearls: A Romance,
most likely written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest

Victor Frankenstein Jr.

Based loosely upon
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
by Mary Shelley

B
IG THANKS AND HUGS are sent out to my editor Kristina Circelli, my publicist KP Simmon, and my assistant Tricia Santos, all of whom helped make this book the best it could be. Thanks are also sent out to the very talented Victoria Alday for designing the gorgeous cover and logo for
The Collectors’ Society
, Stacey Blake for her magical formatting skills, Bridget Donelson for proofreading, and Joanna Ireland for her impeccable Latin.

Jessica Mangicaro, Andrea Johnston, and Tricia, I am so grateful for all the love, time, and feedback you’ve given these characters and their stories.

To the ladies of my lovely street team, the Lyons Pride, your support of me and my books means the world to me. Vilma, Cristina, Caitlin, Ana, Kathryn, Megan, Jessica, Chelsea, Rebecca, Kiersten, Maria, Tricia, Whitney, Tracy, Sarah, Amy, Leigha, Nicole, Erica, Heather, Cherisse, Autumn, Meredith, JL, LeAnn, Bridget, Lindy, Gina, Amy, Brandi, Rachel, Ciarra, and all the rest . . . you guys are the best. Seriously. I love dishing books with you guys.

No book of mine could ever be finished without the love and support from my family. To my husband and children, thank you for continuing to share me with my characters. I love that my kids will talk about them with me like they’re real people. To my dad, thanks for listening to me plot out the book and offer up suggestions. And thanks are sent out to you, too (yes YOU), for coming along on this journey.

An enthralling mythological romance two thousand years in the making . . .