Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,49
dared. It was both necessary—as Fagerlie had reminded him, the comet’s transit would occur tomorrow night—and an excuse to hide from anyone who might be looking for him. Sebastian, for example.
It was cowardly of him, of course. Just as it had been cowardly to flee from the Rath house last night. What must Sebastian think of him?
He couldn’t stop remembering that kiss. The softness of Sebastian’s lips. The heat of his tongue in Ves’s mouth.
The flesh to either side of his spine shivered, even as his cock roused. He had to get himself under control, curse it all.
Eventually, he tucked the crude maps safely away in his vest pocket and made for the staff room. He poured a cup of coffee, nodded good morning to Arthur as they passed in the hallway, and entered the bindery.
He’d barely had the chance to set his coffee down when there came a tremendous crash from the direction of the staff room, accompanied by a cry of pain and surprise.
“What now?” Ves muttered, and rushed back the way he’d come.
A young woman stood in the staff room, cradling one hand with the other, her dress and round-lensed glasses covered with hot coffee. The urn itself lay on the floor.
“Are you all right?” Ves asked.
“I-I think so.” Her voice sounded rather shaken for a simple accident, and Ves paused in the act of kneeling to pick up the urn.
“Did you get burned?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. When she didn’t take it from him, he dabbed gently at the coffee clinging to one cheek. The skin beneath was reddened, but didn’t seem badly injured. “What happened, Miss…?”
“Cohen.” She blinked a few times, then recovered enough to take the handkerchief and set about cleaning her glasses. “I was about to pour some coffee, but…I suppose my grip must have slipped, but it felt as though some force struck the urn from my hand.”
Damn it. He and Sebastian had believed the library’s resident spirit had a problem with bookbinders in particular, but it seemed to be expanding its attacks to others now.
“May I see your hand, Miss Cohen?” he asked, since she still favored it. He’d tended Noct’s wounds over the years; the principles were likely the same for those of purely human heritage. “Vesper Rune,” he added, realizing he’d failed to introduce himself. “Binder and conservator.”
She smiled tremulously and held out her injured hand. “Amelia Cohen, Librarian. I oversee the Paleontological Collection.”
“That sounds fascinating,” he said honestly, as he inspected her fingers. Her skin was soft and her hand warm, and it felt odd to touch a virtual stranger so intimately. Or at all. “The good news is, nothing seems to be broken. You might wish to take an aspirin and rest the hand. And I’d report this to Mr. Quinn.”
She frowned now. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“No. I most certainly don’t.”
Ves returned to the bindery to find none other than Mortimer Waite tapping his foot impatiently. Waite had set a stack of books perilously near Ves’s coffee cup, and turned a pair of vexed eyes on him when he entered.
“There you are,” Waite snapped. “I must say, if you keep up this slipshod work ethic, you won’t be employed much longer, Rune.”
Vesper forced himself to walk past Waite without reacting. The journals from the day before had been pressing overnight, so he removed them and put them on the sewing table, then set about transferring the next volume to the press.
Waite clearly wasn’t accustomed to being ignored. “I uncovered some books which need conservation and minor repair while searching for any missing books. Arthur’s wild goose chase.”
It was nothing of the sort, but Ves didn’t mean to enlighten him. He only grunted in acknowledgement.
Waite growled in annoyance. “These books are from my—I mean, the library’s—Widdershins Collection. So do be careful. Many of these are one-of-a-kind items, invaluable to our town.”
Ves ground his teeth together at the implication. He left his back to Waite and turned the screw on the press. “I assure you I will.”
“I lobbied Mr. Quinn for this position to be given to my cousin, Jeffry Waite,” Waite said, apparently spurred on by Ves’s failure to respond any further to the insult. “In my opinion, it offers too much access to sensitive material for an outsider with no pedigree.”
Ves had a pedigree, and for a wild moment he was tempted to share it with Waite and send him away screaming. But that was madness, so he swallowed it down