Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,1

to draw breath. He retrieved a newspaper from his suitcase, signaling an end to the conversation. Ves suppressed a smile of triumph.

Moore settled himself, unfolding the paper. The front page occupied him through the stop in Revere, but as the train pulled out of that station, he angled it in Ves’s direction. Ves glanced down and saw Moore was indicating the daily update on the speed and visibility of Halley’s Comet.

“What do you think about all this?” Moore asked. “That French astronomer says we’re all going to die when the earth passes through the comet’s tail next week. That it’s the end of the world.”

“It isn’t,” Ves said shortly.

“But how can we be certain?”

Ves turned away without answering. Because he knew what Moore—what most people—didn’t.

The end of the world was supposed to have happened eight years ago. And it had been Ves’s purpose to help bring it about.

“He wouldn’t have just left,” Sebastian said as he put down his bottle of beer.

Irene sighed, and Arthur groaned loud enough to be heard over the noise of the crowd. Over the years they’d worked together in the library of the Nathaniel R. Ladysmith museum, they’d developed the tradition of going to The Silver Key bar for drinks at least twice a week to wash the dust from their throats after closing. Ordinarily their conversation ranged from baseball to whatever film was playing at the Nickelodeon, but for the last two months only one subject had been on Sebastian’s mind.

“Not this again,” Mortimer Waite said, the corner of his lip raised in a sneer.

Sebastian tried not to glare. Mortimer had become engaged to Irene over the winter holidays, when they met at one of his family’s parties. Ever since, he’d taken it upon himself to assume he was invited wherever Irene was, whether he was actually wanted or not.

“People leave, Sebastian,” Irene said, far more tactful than her fiancé. Irene Endicott was short, plump, brown-skinned, and the most fashionable person Sebastian had ever met. She wore her sleek hair in a shocking bob that she claimed was all the thing in Paris, and the cut of her skirts was slim enough to show off the roundness of her thighs. At work, she kept to the sober colors suited to their profession, but as soon as they left she’d donned a bright red hat topped with enormous plumes. “Even librarians.”

“They disappear,” he corrected.

“He had been thinking of finding a different profession,” Arthur Fairchild said tiredly. He was paler than Irene, though not nearly as pale as Sebastian, his hair in messy curls and his worn sack suit well out of date. “All of his things were packed up and gone. His landlady received the key in the mail, and Mr. Quinn his resignation the same way. I agree it was abrupt and out of character for him to simply walk away from his position at the library without a word, but these things do happen.”

“He probably ran off with a woman,” Mortimer said disinterestedly. “Or a man.”

Sebastian took a swig of beer. “Kelly O’Neil was born in Widdershins. He wouldn’t have just moved away. You of all people ought to know that, Mortimer. Your family has been here since the 1690s.”

Mortimer only shrugged and swirled his wine in his glass.

Irene frowned at Sebastian. “Why are you so upset about this? You weren’t friends, were you?”

The emphasis she put on the word “friends” indicated she meant something quite different. “Good God, no!” Sebastian exclaimed, affronted.

“I suppose O’Neil had some taste, then,” Mortimer murmured in a low voice.

Irene shot Mortimer an annoyed look, then turned back to Sebastian. “I’m just asking. If you weren’t sleeping with him, why are you so upset he left without a word?”

“Because he wouldn’t have done that. Not to me and Bonnie. After Mother died, he came around every few days to see how we were doing.” Kelly had been Mother’s assistant, when she worked in the library’s bindery, then succeeded her as binder and conservator after her death.

Of course, Mother had originally hoped it would be Sebastian, not Kelly, who came after her. He’d refused. They’d fought over it—one of the only times his mother had ever raised her voice in anger to him.

When Sebastian proved intractable, she’d passed her experience on to Kelly instead. And now he was gone, too, taking that knowledge, that link to the past, with him.

“Sebastian thinks this is one of his little wooden puzzles,” Mortimer said with a smile that bordered on a smirk.