Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,15

didn’t make him a murderer. Noct was a sorcerer as well, after all.

Once inside the café, Ves ordered a coffee and pastry, then went to a table with a man sitting alone at it.

The man held a paper in front of him. His hair and mustache were both iron-gray, as was his suit. At a glance, he looked like nothing more than a perfectly ordinary, even boring, man exiting middle age: comfortable waistline, gold pocket watch, and all. His hair, which had been long enough to pull back into a tail the last time Ves had seen him, was short and trim now.

“Mr. Fagerlie,” Ves said in greeting as he sipped his coffee.

Fagerlie didn’t put down his newspaper. “It says here a man died by suicide, due to his fear of the comet’s approach.”

Ves took a bite of the pastry. The taste of fresh strawberries burst on his tongue, wrapped within layers of dough. “That’s a shame.”

“He was a fool.” Fagerlie lowered the paper to peer at Ves above it. “Comets herald the deaths of kings, not bankers from Ohio.” He paused. “In other cases, of course, they predict victory. The same comet that we can see in the sky this morning watched over William the Conqueror’s conquest of England.”

And the subjugation of the people already living there. But Ves didn’t say that aloud. Mother would never have tolerated such talk, and he doubted Fagerlie would be any more sympathetic.

“I start my new position this morning,” he said. “So I can’t linger for long. I’d like to get an early start.”

Fagerlie finally put the newspaper aside. “Well done, my boy,” he said with an avuncular smile. “I knew you could do it.”

“The job isn’t as simple as you would have had me believe,” Ves said. “The library is a…a maze. A labyrinth. It’s going to take a while for me to accurately reproduce the floor plan.”

Fagerlie sat back, smile still in place. “If it was the few rooms of some county library, I wouldn’t have needed a man on the inside to map it, would I?”

Ves ground his teeth together. A warning would have been useful, some sort of idea what he was agreeing to…but it was too late to argue now. Instead he said, “Do you want the rooms labeled as to their function?”

“Not necessary. Just bring me the map, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Fagerlie sipped his coffee. “Don’t worry. Do your part of the job, and in six days’ time the comet—and I—will set you free.”

Morning light streamed through the glass dome that formed the bindery’s ceiling. After Ves’s tour of the library the day before, unless there was some hidden nook he hadn’t seen—likely—the bindery was the best-lit room in the place.

It seemed wrong, somehow. Surely a monster like himself should be relegated to some dark corner, hidden away and unseen. The bindery was too bright, too beautiful.

If Mr. Quinn knew what he’d hired, he’d run screaming. They all would.

A piece of paper awaited on the blotter of his new desk. Ves picked it up and unfolded it to reveal a few typed lines.

Mr. Rune,

Your presence is unwelcome here. Leave while you still can.

“The devil?” he murmured aloud. His first thought was that he’d stumbled into particularly vicious intra-office politics. Or that someone was playing a joke on him. Except Rath had said Ves’s predecessor disappeared.

Then again, it seemed likely Rath himself had left the note, given his animosity.

Ves crumpled the note and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. He’d be gone in less than a week. It hardly mattered that someone had taken an immediate dislike to him.

He set about familiarizing himself with the workroom, relieved when he discovered his predecessor had kept the place neatly. Ves picked up one of the books awaiting rebinding and opened it. Inside the front cover was the library’s bookplate: Nathaniel R. Ladysmith Museum Library in a banner above an engraving of a book and skull. Beneath, a smaller banner read: W.K.I.O.

The title page bore an embossed seal with a similar design. The final blank page at the back of the book had been stamped with a simple ink stamp of the library’s name. No doubt there were tiny marks in pencil on specific pages as well, a final check to identify stolen books.

The bookplate could be steamed off. A skillful hand could smooth away the embossed seal using a hot iron and patience. Javelle water would remove the stamp, and if it left behind a spot