The Hidden Library (25 page)

No—not faints. Victor’s immediately on the ground with her as she convulses. Her eyes roll back and her arms twitch. “She’s having a seizure,” he tells us.

We all just sit there, not knowing what in the fuck is going on. Because,
Wendy
is the mole? Wendy is giving out information to Peter Pan of all people, if that’s, in fact, what she was even doing?

Maybe I really am going crazy. I’m going into empty houses looking for libraries that don’t exist, for catalysts for books with Timelines I don’t know exist, and one of my oldest, dearest friends looks like she’s been sharing secrets with Peter fucking Pan of all people.

Quiet horror fills the room as we wait until Wendy’s body slows its shaking. Tiny choking noises escape her; there’s white spittle ringing her lips. Victor is calling her name, but she’s not answering.

“Use the spray!” the A.D. yells.

Victor doesn’t even look up from her body. “From what I can tell, the spray is more for things like cuts or physical injuries, not internal ones. We don’t know what’s causing the seizure, or what could happen if we try to use the spray on something other than a physical wound.”

“How did you find this?” I round on my father and the Librarian. “What even made you suspect this was happening?”

“They’re editing.” Brom is utterly unapologetic. “When I tried to take him down, before he attacked me, I saw Todd with a pen that appears far too similar to our own. That cannot be coincidence, Finn.”

Why is this the first I’m hearing of this?

“It wasn’t easy to find proof.” The Librarian says this like she’s talking about the weather. “But once we discussed the situation, I was able to locate a number of discrepancies with documents. I contracted a discreet liaison from another Timeline to look into the matters for me. Time jumps and corrections in surveillance videos were difficult to detect until we knew what to look for. Edited call logs, whose keystrokes traced back to Gwendolyn, had to be hacked. Society equipment that the registers show are in storage, gone without any indication where.”

“This is bloody bullshit.” The A.D. looks just as blown away as I am. “Wen—she’s one of us!”

“What liaison?” I demand. When my father and the Librarian merely look at one another, I’m firmer in my request.

Eventually, my father says flatly, “Marianne Brandon.”

What?
“Marianne is a Janeite! She’s from Georgian England where the biggest inventions in technology had to do with—shit, I don’t know! Probably something to do with carriages!”

“We’ve been discreetly training Mrs. Brandon for years.” He doesn’t break eye contact. “She’s been a field agent for some time now, and her technological know-how rivals, if not supersedes, that of Ms. Darling’s.”

My brother is just as startled as I. Even more so. Marianne has . . . Jesus. Where the hell does she hone this skill? It’s not like the early 1800s in rural England had the Internet!

“I know this is a lot to take it—”

I don’t let my father finish. “Is it your assumption that Peter Pan is a suspect in the Timeline attacks?”

“We don’t know. This is the only video Marianne was able to recover. All the rest were successfully scrubbed, and all that’s left is a series of timestamp jumps to indicate anything amiss. If our suspicions are right, there are a dozen such jumps. Who knows what could have happened during any of those time periods? Some lasted not more than sixty seconds. Some lasted upward of sixty minutes.”

Victor finally looks up from Wendy. “No matter what she has or has not done is irrelevant right now. I need to get her upstairs and in the medical wing.”

“You didn’t tell me.” My words ring in the small office. “You put me in charge of the Society while you were out, and
you never told me any of this.
What the hell?”

“I’ll help,” the A.D. is telling Victor.

“I’m supposed to be the great successor. You’ve groomed me to run this fucking place from day one. And you couldn’t tell me any of this? You kept me in the dark about your suspicions?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“You sent Wendy with me earlier. To Pfeifer’s. Why would you do that if you thought she was the mole?”

“We needed to see if there were any communiqués sent out indicating the change of location. There is fear that our whereabouts have been passed out ahead of time, enabling our foes to catch us off-guard. How else could Todd have found you in not one, but two different Timelines?”

I stare at the Librarian and wonder how she can just say something so flatly, so . . . I don’t know. So clinically, when there is a woman we’ve known for years on the floor, having a seizure, and another upstairs, paralyzed.

Fuck it. Fuck them. I’m—I need to get out of here. My brother and the A.D. are already carrying Wen through the door, and I’m here, arguing with two people I always looked up to about how they’ve being keeping secrets from me.

The Librarian tries to block me as I leave. “We have yet to discuss the failed retrieval.”

Is she kidding? “You try stealing something from a library that doesn’t exist. Hell, maybe it’s hidden,” I snap. “I don’t know. More power to you if you’re able to do what I can’t. Or—wait. Did you already know that that was going to happen to me today? Maybe you can tell me why the only thing in that damn house was this.” I pull out the photo I’d found in Pfeifer’s house and fling it on the table.

My father picks it up, surprise flickering in his bright eyes. “Finn, I know you are upset, but there is much to discuss. We—”

Now he wants to talk? “I’m going to help get Wendy upstairs. And then I’m going to interrogate Todd and figure out what the hell is wrong with Alice.”

The Librarian gently touches my arm. “You may not like what you hear.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “It wouldn’t be the first thing today that’s sucked, would it? This whole day has been filled with a bunch of shit I wish I’d never heard.”

She actually looks hurt. Forget her, then.

“My mother is dead,” I say in a low voice. “The woman I love is upstairs, paralyzed. My friend just had a seizure, right before our eyes. And the guy behind it—at least one of them—willingly let me capture him today.”

They simply stare at me. But I’m right. Todd avoided the Society for months. He allowed himself to be cornered in a small room, and although he fought back, it was nothing like our previous struggle in the attic of Ex Libris.

I want to know why.

I’m out the door and running my security card through the scanner to get the hell out of the Museum when the Librarian calls out, “Some secrets are hidden for a reason, Finn.”

Then maybe it’s time to blow them open sky high.

F
INN IS IN A state. Wendy has just been brought in and strapped (strapped!) down to one of the beds in the medical wing. The tiny area is now crowded with so many patients.

Marianne has rolled me into the room, considering she knew I wanted to be present during Todd’s questioning, but the moment Finn sees her, she shrinks back in the face of his vehemence.

Her voice is steady when she speaks, though. “You know, don’t you?”

“Not now, Marianne,” he snaps.

“But—”

“He said
not now!”
Victor barks. He rounds on the kind woman who has been taking care of me since my arrival. “Honestly, though, he’s right! How in the bloody hell could you keep this from us?”

Something is off with Victor. He’s—he’s manic, almost. And what has Marianne failed to admit?

She steps to the side of my wheelchair, so I can just see her out of the corner of my eye. “I would think—”

“Marianne, a word of advice.” Mary says as she leans against the wall by the door, uncharacteristically serious. “Shut up right now.”

And then, from Todd as he lays in his bed at the other end of the room, sung in a high-strung, warble-y voice:

“Second star to the right,

and then, ‘till morning, straight on.

Bonfires alight,

we’ll dance until dawn,

burning pages and worlds to ashes,

odes of wreckage, set to song.”

Rosemary takes over, her voice, crystal clear and as beautiful as before, her eyes closed:

“Come, little children,

harken to true home,

lost no more,

forever scribed in wise tome.

Chaos is fleeting,

significance understood within poem.

Embrace the truths of eyes,

past the fires and gloam.”

A good five seconds of stunned silence from the rest of us settles the room, but Finn breaks it. “Speaking of shutting someone up, sedate her.”

“Gladly.” Victor digs in a bag Finn has brought and extracts several vials and a pair of syringes.

A door opens behind me. Finn barely looks up from the vial he’s picked up. “Don’t get in my way.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Van Brunt says. Says!

Finn injects a hypodermic needle into the rubber end of the vial. “Mary, record the interrogation.”

She’s quick with her answer. “Naturally.” Her phone is slipped out and turned on.

After rummaging around several drawers and cabinets, Victor dumps a number of items onto a rolling silver cart. Rosemary screeches bloody murder as she watches him approach. Without prompting, Mary helps pin down the raving woman while the doctor sticks a needle into her arm.

Soon enough, her fight leaves her. Her eyes droop. The screeching ceases.

“Did your girlfriend tell you about this?” Finn holds up a syringe for Todd’s viewing. Victor has already moved to his bed and is now in the process of holding Todd down for Finn. But the villainous barber doesn’t struggle against the doctor one bit. He calmly lies there, as if nothing was amiss with this picture.

“You mean your little truth potion?” Todd’s blackened teeth flash. “I know lots about it.” And yet, he doesn’t seem bothered by this, either. “Which little world did you find it in?”

Mary wanders back over to where I am. “Too bad we don’t have popcorn.” And then, leaning down so I can see her smirk, “Although, popcorn might be dangerous for you, seeing as you can’t really chew.”

Oh, ha ha.

Finn doesn’t answer any of Todd’s questions. He merely plunges the needle into Todd’s chest, right into his heart. The villain gasps; his body spasms up into an arc. As if she knows I need a better view, Mary pushes the wheelchair I’m confined within closer to where he’s now convulsing.

It’s a pretty, pretty sight.

“How much dosage did you administer?” Mary inquires as the fiend’s eyes turn white.

My partner merely shrugs.

“I’m just kidding. I really don’t give a flying fig. Overdose away.”

It doesn’t take much time before Todd’s body slumps back down upon the mattress. Spittle decorates his mustache, and he appears as if he’d just run a thousand kilometers and wasn’t given any chance for rest. But his glazed eyes are open, wearily so.

Finn stands next to the bed, arms crossed. “Tell me your name.”

“Sweeney Todd,” the man slurs.

“Tell me your real name. The one you had at birth.”

“’S my name.” Dulled laughter burbles out of him, adding to the froth already decorating his whiskers. “Sweeney Patrick Todd.”

“Bullshit.” It’s Victor. His voice is unnaturally loud in the room. “Sweeney Todd was hanged.”

Glazed, dark eyes swing toward the doctor. In the same warbling, off-key voice from before, he singsongs nonsensical words about shaving, pies, and gallows. And try as they might, no line of questioning leads Todd to reveal any other answer than this one.

His name, as he knows it, is truly Sweeney Todd.

“What specifically did you do to Alice to make it so she can’t speak or move on her own? Drugs? Injections?”

I’m surprised that Finn has switched to this so quickly. He has an excellent opportunity to grill this brute on his heinous actions, and instead, he’s asking about me.

There’s no hesitation. “Gave ‘er a nice injection, I did. A nice li’l concoction that made ‘er fall asleep.” Slurred as it is, his Cockney accent, which I’d previously assumed was fake, fully emerges. Back in Ex Libris’ attic, his accent sounded almost American. But now? Now I can see it was the other way around. “And then I took ‘er back to the room an’ had a nice little time, cuttin’ her soft, soft skin an’ puttin’ the wee beastie ’n her. Tiny little bugger it ’twas. Pretty, too.” He chortles quietly when his eyes find mine.

Revulsion comes at the thought of something—a beastie?—harboring within me. Hadn’t the doctor mentioned a parasite? Is that it? Did Todd infect me with a parasite? Desperately pushing that terrifying thought aside for the moment, lest I go insane with all the
what ifs,
fury flames to life. And it does so in Finn, too, although I must admit I’m impressed he does not unleash his balled fists to beat the stars out of Todd once more. Instead, he asks about the specifics of the injection.

“Now,” Todd says amiably, “that I don’ know. I was given the supplies an’ told to be careful, as there was no more beasties and drugs to be had.”

“Who gave them to you?”

Todd looks up at Finn, his glazed eyes bright in the harsh lights shining down upon them. “The lady. She was the one to give ’em to me, an’ she was the one to tell me how to use ’em right.”