The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,61
her mouth, then closed it. Her lips paled into a fine line and she busied herself with wiping the ink off her fingers onto her skirt. “This is quite unnecessary,” she muttered as she swept up the vials in one hand and strode to the door.
Probity made a show of stepping aside with a sad shake of her head. “That’s the librarian’s call, not yours.”
If Claire’s footsteps faltered, just once, she covered it by turning stiffly back to Lucille. “Thank you for your cooperation.” And she swept out the door.
Brevity made to follow but hesitated. Lucille was being tended to, and the other damsels only cast her a reproachful look before slowly drifting back to their small groups. Brevity deserved their judgment, she supposed. She was responsible, for all of them. It had never felt like such a weight until today.
Probity caught her gaze and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You are the rightful librarian,” she said quietly. There was a fervent belief in her voice, one Brevity couldn’t find in herself. She clasped onto it and strode into the darkness of the stacks.
* * *
* * *
CLAIRE WAS WAITING FOR her, leaning up against the wall under a silver section placard that read MODERN NONCANON TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS. Her arms crossed like a shield in front of her chest, her head turned upward, studying the bobble of the faerie light. Brevity had always found the silvery way it lit the shelves enchanting, but now it painted Claire’s face like frost, making her seem like a cold, removed thing.
“What happened?” Brevity asked, tight and controlled.
Claire blinked placidly at her, though a nervous energy twitched her ink-stained fingers. “Nothing to alarm yourself about. I am following a line of inquiry that needs a sample, and Lucille volunteered—”
Heat rose in a spike in Brevity’s chest. “She didn’t volunteer. They never volunteer!” She bit down hard on her lip as Claire’s expression dropped. Brevity shook her head. “No books volunteer for your scalpel. Especially not the damsels; they know the risk of being shelved. Whatever Lucille did—”
“You think I attacked her?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time!” Brevity threw out her hands. “Boss—Claire,” she corrected her slip. No, Brevity was the librarian now. She had to do her job. Protect the books, even from Claire’s misgivings. She was keenly aware of the weight of Probity’s worried gaze on the back of her neck. Guarding, also judging. “I kinda thought—Hero and all—you’d come around. Figured some stuff out.”
Claire flinched as if she’d been struck. “I don’t need to figure things out.” She pulled two vials of ink from her pocket, wielding them like a key. “I know unwritten books; don’t presume to chide me just because now they call you librarian—”
“I am the librarian.” The words surprised Brevity, the sureness with which they appeared on her lips. But it was true; it was true. The books looked to her; Probity came to her to collaborate on behalf of the Muses Corps, not to Claire. No one expected Claire to protect the books, to fix the gaping empty spaces in the shelves of books lost in the fire. And when she failed, it wasn’t Claire who would suffer the painful silence of the Library. Brevity drew herself up. “And as the librarian, I require you to explain your . . . ‘line of inquiry’ and why damaging one of my books without permission was necessary.”
My books. Without permission. She sounded like Claire had sounded as librarian. Those were cruel, unnecessary barbs. Brevity had known that when she’d said it. Claire stared at her with an alien expression. Loss, Brevity realized too late. As long as Brevity had known her, Claire was a creature of certainty, even when she was dead wrong. She never looked lost, adrift. Even as her expression shuttered, reassembled into something more familiar, it felt wrong.
All of this felt wrong.
“It should be obvious enough to a librarian.” Claire’s words were clipped and sharp as glass. She held up one vial in one hand, then the other. “This ink is of unknown origin and had a . . . peculiar response when applied to the logbook. You yourself argued for experimentation, if you’ll recall. A sensible course of action is to compare it to the primary source of ink we understand: the wounds of unwritten characters.”
“Understand” was an overstatement, in Brevity’s opinion. Librarians knew how to correct corrupted text, how to herd the text around the page of an unwritten book to