The Hidden Library (14 page)

W
HEN WE GET BACK to the Institute, my father and Victor corral me in Brom’s office. Sawyer has called again. The Widow Douglas, the town doc says, has two, three days tops—if even that.

Brom writes on the little whiteboard he carries around with him everywhere lately:
You need to go immediately.

“Are you crazy?” I can’t even believe I have to bring this up to them. “There are interrogations to continue! We still haven’t found Todd!”

We will hold down the fort until then.

They won’t let this go, will they? I switch subjects. “Avery mentioned to me a book she’d read recently that had some kind of futuristic medicines that heal people right away.”

Brom sighs, but this perks Victor’s attention. “Elaborate.”

I shrug. One of our shared friends from our university days, Avery Lincoln, is always reading popular young adult novels. “It’s like I said. I think they’re sprays or shots—she wasn’t too clear, and I haven’t gotten hold of a copy of the book yet—but whatever they are, they heal somebody immediately. I think it would be a good idea if we get us some in light of. . . .” I try to phrase it kindly. “Todd’s abilities with a knife.”

Poor Brom. He’s still utterly mortified he let some guy get the drop on him and slash his throat.

Thankfully, my urging does exactly what I wanted it to. Victor is all abuzz about this possible wonder drug, and before long, I’ve given him the name of the book and he’s out the door in search for a copy.

Brom frowns at me.

“Look, do you want to get back to work or what? This way, we’ll have all hands on deck in our search.”

He sighs again as he scribbles:
Nonetheless, u need 2 go & pay ur respects. It will help u move on.

“Since when do you write like an illiterate teenager?”

He rolls his eyes. Erases the shortened words and replaces them with:
You need to go and pay your respects. It will help you move on.
And then he adds:
I’m tired. Forgive me my poor grammar.

“You should be resting.”

My throat was affected, not my legs! I don’t need this BLASTED CHAIR.

He probably doesn’t, but Victor and I also know he’ll pretend he didn’t just go through a horrific attack and overdo it if we don’t get him to take it easy. “Mom would make you rest.”

Sadness fills his eyes.
She would also tell you to get your ass to 1876/96TWA-TS.

“I was kidding about the text lingo. Feel free to shorten your words. Or, you know, not cuss out your son.”

Stop avoiding.

I drop down into the chair across from his wheelchair and really take in my father. My strong, smart, learned father is mostly out of commission, his head propped up and his throat still bandaged. And it infuriates me to see him like this and know that the psychopath who did it is still on the loose.

I’m fine,
he writes, like he’s reading my mind. And then:
Go. It’s hard to move on when your past is unsettled.

“I don’t see you going and apologizing to Ichabod Crane for scaring the shit out of him.” Honestly, though, it always has cracked me up that my father was actually the Headless Horseman from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

He died before I was mature enough to do so.
I regret that. You can also stop cussing out your old man.

“He and I will never be friends.”

Brom knows I’m talking about Sawyer.
No one said you had to be.

“I won’t forgive him.”

Jim would want you to.

My words are venomous. “Jim’s
dead
because of that asshole!”

My father is dogged as he writes faster.
Jim loved you. He wouldn’t want this to eat at you your whole life.

Well, we won’t ever know for sure if that’s the truth or not, will we? Because Jim is dead and Sawyer isn’t, and no apologies can ever bring back my friend or rationalize how or why his family didn’t even have a body to mourn over. “The situation was beyond my control,” Sawyer had the nerve to say when I called to confront him. “What would you have done in my place?”

That selfish justification only highlighted the difference between Sawyer and me. He saved his own skin by allowing an innocent man to be lynched and then burned. I would have rather died than betray somebody who gave me his or her trust.

Jim was, for a long time, the only person who treated me like their equal. The kindness and love he showed me kept me afloat.

I miss my friend. Desperately.

My stomach churns. Old, familiar anger sears my veins. And yet, my father continues to sit there, watching me expectantly. I’m pissed off he had to go and bring up how Katrina would have wanted me to go, or that Jim would somehow believe I should forgive the person behind his death.

Regret,
Katrina once said,
means nothing to the dead. But to the living? It’s the worst of demons, because it takes up residence inside your head and heart and whispers gleefully about your darkest pains.
Victor and I never really paid much attention to this, because what would Katrina have to regret? She was a good woman with a huge heart. She held nothing against anyone, at least, not like the rest of us do.

My biological father regretted not figuring out how to steal all my money before he died.

My adoptive father regrets dressing up like some headless ghost and scaring some schoolteacher so bad, he left town and became a recluse (a rich one, but still).

My brother regrets that he’s let biology trump love and happiness time and time again, and that for some asinine reason, he cannot symbolically overcome his biological father’s genes and reputation enough to take hold of what he wants most.

And my regrets are so vast sometimes I wonder if they’re going to swallow me whole. If only I’d been there to stop what happened. If only I knew ahead of time. If only I’d thought to suggest Jim and his family move to New York City and get the hell out of a racist, antebellum South. If only I’d told him what he’d meant to me, what he still means. If only I’d kicked Sawyer’s ass. If only I knew my mother’s Timeline was being targeted. If only she had stayed here, instead of going to visit her ailing father. If only I got to see her one last time, so I could tell her how much I love her and how that love changed my life.

She was right, though.
If only
is a beast.

Sawyer is in St. Petersburg. But so is the widow. And she took me in when I was nothing and did her best when pretty much nobody else gave two shits about my welfare. I may have loathed living with her, and resented the hell out of what she was trying to do to me, but years removed have allowed me to understand the expanse of her heart.

I can’t let another
if only
rot away my insides.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” I tell my father, only to clarify quickly that I’ll be gone, at the most, one night. “There’s stuff to be done around here. I’ve already been gone too much.”

He gives me a thumb’s up.

“First text lingo, now thumb’s up?” I round the wheelchair. “Dad, I’m worried that Todd did more to you than cut your throat. Is this like when some coma patients wake up, they can speak in a foreign language they never knew before?”

Har har.

It isn’t until we’re in the elevator do I tell him, “I’m worried about Victor. I don’t think he’s taking his protocol regularly. I’m afraid there’s going to be a whopper of a high before the crash comes.”

I’m worried, too.

“Maybe,” I say quietly, “whatever this miracle drug is can also help him.”

Brom’s quiet sigh fills the elevator. His scrawl across the whiteboard is something we Van Brunts are all too familiar with when it comes to Victor.

He writes:
Genetics.

I
N BETWEEN THE MANY meetings he’s been resigned to over the course of the day, my partner reminds me that tonight will be the first time an official status report with 1865/71CAR-AWLG is logged.

As if I could forget.

We are once more in the ballroom, indulging in a small picnic I hastily put together when I learned he’d have forty unaccounted for minutes between meetings. I’ve spread out a blanket, and with warm, golden sunlight filtering in through the windows, the specks of dust in the air around us sparkle like diamonds.

I like these moments when it is just him and me.

“I was thinking you might want to be the one to take the report?”

The cup of tea I’d been set to drink from pauses halfway to my lips. And yet, although conflicted, I calmly confirm my acceptance. The following minutes are spent on clinically stated details and a preview of what to expect. The report is done via video, and both the caller and the receiver will be able to see one another. It will be recorded and possibly viewed by other members of the Society who are working on 1865/71CAR-AWLG’s case files.

Status reports are typically short. The Society, he reminds me, has no say, influence, or an official/unofficial position in political or global matters in Timelines. The Society is at all times neutral to such things but will record events in status reports to inform agents who possibly travel to these locations. He points out I am an exception, one that both Brom and the Librarian agreed does not fall within normal restrictions due to my Queenly status. Most agents within the Society are given a caseload of Timelines they are responsible for working with. Many agree to work with their own worlds, although there are some within active duty who refuse to.

I pick at the buttery, chocolate-filled croissant sitting on a gleaming white plate before me. “Who shuns their original Timeline?”

Finn wraps his hands around the cup of coffee I’ve just poured him. “Victor, for one. Brom oversees 1818SHE-F.”

Interesting. “Has he even stepped foot in it since he was originally brought here?”

“Once. We went as a family one holiday and it was terrible planning on our parents’ behalves.” His smile is bittersweet. “None of us have been back since.”

“Do you oversee yours?”

The smile slips off his face. He busies himself with adding sugar to his coffee—a sure sign something is amiss, as I’ve yet to see Finn enjoy the beverage as anything but black. “Brom oversees that one, too.”

For a moment, he looks away, through the large pane of glass nearby, out at the white clouds lining the sky. Even still, I can see the emotions raging in his eyes and tensing all of his muscles. Finn, who has been so forthcoming over my tenure in the Society, so generous with his trust, is hiding something from me.

Once more, my inclination is to leave him to his privacy. But then I remind myself that we are a team.
The nice thing about partners,
he once told me,
is that two are always stronger than one.

He is not alone. I am here for him, good or bad.

I scoot across the blanket until I am pressed up against him. My fingers find his and lace tightly until they feel like one. I cannot imagine he is upset about my fielding the call from Wonderland. After all, he was the architect to allow me such a privilege in the first place.

His generosity, I think, is a beautiful thing.

“Talk to me, my star,” I murmur.

Quiet seconds tick by; his fingers have tightened around mine. I lean in and press my mouth against the curve of his jaw, just below his ear.

He says flatly, “I’m going to 1876/96TWA-TS in the morning.”

The jolt of surprise is unpleasant. Another assignment? At this rate, Todd will never be found.

“Someone I know is dying, and I need to go pay my respects.”

Wait—he mentioned this before, hadn’t he? When we were in 1847BRO-WH. He’d said nearly the same thing:
Someone I know is dying.
And then he’d changed direction and spoke of his mother, and here we are, nearly a week later, and I have somehow let his painful confession go.

1876/96TWA-TS is
his
original Timeline.

I lay my head against his shoulder. “I am coming with you.”

I am charting new waters here, for even though this is neither my first relationship nor my first love, things feel different with Finn. Maybe it is because we were friends first. Maybe it’s because he found his way into my trust and my heart in the kindest, gentlest way possible. Maybe it’s because when we touch, prophecies, consorts, Courts, or shuffling decks are not worries. I only feel sparks. Maybe it’s because he has seen my past, seen the ugliness and pain associated with it, and he is still here, holding my hand.

For months after I’d left Wonderland, I had given up hope that a meaningful life was within my grasp. I foolishly yet voluntarily wallowed in the belief my destiny had been stripped away from me, my purpose torn asunder. I was wrong, though. My destiny, my purpose, evolved. I met this man, and rather than chastise me for being blind to all the possibilities life still has for me, his kindness and tenacity coaxed me out of the darkness. I attempted to foolishly push him away, yet he dug his heels in.

He did not give up on me, even when I warned him he could die in Wonderland. He came with me anyway. I will not give up on him, either.

Finn murmurs, “It won’t be pretty.”