Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,29
his companion as the car jostled over crisscrossing tracks. He was painfully aware of Sebastian’s warmth, and the memory of the touch of his hand yesterday kept returning.
He shouldn’t be here. Every moment he spent with Sebastian made him feel easier in the man’s presence. Which in turn heightened the possibility of discovery. If he was found out before he’d finished the map, all of his hopes for himself and Noct would be dashed, probably forever.
Yet he couldn’t seem to stay away.
He’d spent the early hours of the morning trying to decide whether he should tell Sebastian about the thing in the library. Its anger toward him as a binder certainly seemed to tie in with Kelly’s disappearance, stolen books notwithstanding. But would Sebastian believe him—and even if he did, would that belief help, or just get Sebastian into danger?
Sebastian believed in curses and blood oaths, both of which could be real. But that didn’t mean he knew anything about true magic. People believed all sorts of things, after all. One of Ves’s fellow workers in the Boston Public Library bindery had soundly berated another man for daring to whistle inside, claiming it would invite in the devil. The fact that a third man had slipped and broken his arm three weeks later was considered incontrovertible proof that he was right.
If Sebastian believed him, but then fell back on some folk custom to try and banish whatever lurked in the library, it would either have no effect…or, worst case, succeed in drawing its attention.
Today was Sunday. Ves would be gone by Thursday morning. He wouldn’t be around to protect Sebastian.
Sebastian nudged Ves with his elbow. “You seem lost in thought.”
Ves turned to him, then wished he hadn’t. They were far too close, Sebastian still leaning into him, their arms pressed together. He smelled so good, of books and vanilla and musk, and Ves had the mad urge to press his face into Sebastian’s hair and breathe deep.
Which was insane, of course. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to draw back from the warmth of the other man’s arm. “I’m just thinking back to some of the things I picked up in the rare book trade,” he lied.
Sebastian frowned and drew back. “I didn’t know you’d done such work.”
Blast. “Mr. Quinn is aware,” Ves said hastily. “I know the reputation the trade has among librarians, and it is deserved. But I don’t condone stealing from the public on behalf of the rich.” He smiled thinly. “Or even of stealing from institutions which serve the public good, such as the Ladysmith.”
Sebastian relaxed slightly. “Then I’m even more glad I asked for your assistance, if you have some knowledge that might help in the matter.”
“If I have to call upon any connections I formed in the trade to track down the missing book, I shall. Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Are these people dangerous?” Sebastian asked. “What if the two men who followed me are connected to the theft in some fashion?”
“While not impossible, it is unlikely,” Ves assured him. “These are people who stick to the shadows and avoid confrontation whenever they can.”
After growing up on Grandfather’s tales, the rare book trade had seemed so tame. Stories of theft and betrayal were passed on in whispers, as though they were somehow shocking. But Ves had never met a man among them who’d cut the throat of a friend to get his hands on an incomplete volume. None of them had performed the rites on the hill to call up forces from beyond the earthly realm, or broken the minds of informants until they went screaming to the madhouse.
Amateurs, Grandfather would have called them.
He’d taken especial pride in his copy of the Liber Ivonis, pieced together from no less than three incomplete copies, one only a fragment of five crumbling pages. It had taken Grandfather almost forty years to find those three copies, or so he claimed, and he’d done murder to get each one.
In comparison, Ves’s time in the rare book trade had been downright peaceful, working among dilettantes whose greatest aspirations were to make money and stay out of jail. Men who scoured public libraries for a first copy of Poe’s Tamerlane, rather than attempting to destroy the world.
“Speaking of the men who followed me,” Sebastian said, peering pensively out the window. “Our stop is next. What if they’re still surveilling the apartment, waiting for me to return?”
“We’ll go at least one stop farther than we need to, in case they’re