the edge of the desk. She felt the unwritten woman’s dark-eyed gaze follow her hands as she pulled out a particularly sharp-looking scalpel and needle. Color drained from Beatrice’s cheeks, her shoulders stiffened, and she faced straight ahead.
Books were squeamish patients sometimes, but that suited Claire. She turned her focus on the book and began inspecting the tension in the binding. Stress slowly edged out of her shoulders as she set into a rhythm of running her ink-stained fingers over each line of thread, progressing quickly through her inspection with long practice.
It was calming, after a fashion. Books were always easier this way. Mere paper and leather. Simple, physical, containable. But, like people, books rarely stayed that way. Stories never lived only in the ink.
Beatrice kept her eyes forward, but long, calloused fingers drummed on the desk in a patient rhythm. “You seem to have made friends. They’re . . . nice.”
“A demon, a broken hero, and an amnesiac. If you want nice, you should meet my assistant.” Claire adjusted the desk lamp for better light. “You’re in luck. It appears the headband is frayed and just needs tightening. Good. I didn’t have the time or resources to do an entire rebinding.” She began to work her tool carefully between the leather cover and the spine.
Beatrice flinched away at the creak of leather. “You trust them enough to travel with them.”
“Trust born of necessity.” Claire finished working away the leather cover, leaving a thick stack of sturdy vellum pages fused together with thread and glue. She ignored much of the binding and focused on the delicate line of frayed thread at the top of the spine.
Snipping sounds filled the heavy pause. Beatrice’s voice was barely louder than the pluck of thread. “You really won’t consider staying?”
The question was so plaintive, but the answer was so obvious. Claire shot her a frown, but the unwritten woman was too busy studying her shoes to notice. She turned her attention back to the book. “It’s out of the question. If I stay, worse things will come. Either the Hellhounds will wear down the wards, or the angels will con their way in. You’re sitting on a time bomb. There’s no use.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Beatrice’s shoulders bunch. “We planned to face down worse things once. Together.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly run away together, did we?” Claire’s voice turned acidic and harsher than Beatrice deserved, but she opted to focus on the colored knots of thread rather than see her reaction.
“And that was my mistake.”
“Yes. Seems to have worked out well enough for you.” A vicious feeling spiked up her chest. Claire struggled not to overtighten the thread, forcing her hands to relax as she worked. It helped if she imagined she was stitching Beatrice’s mouth shut.
Beatrice was quiet a moment, so quiet that Claire wondered if she’d disappeared into her book again. “You don’t know who you’re traveling with.”
“I think I know them better than you.”
“Do you?”
The way Beatrice said it made Claire’s brow furrow. When she looked up, Beatrice had her chin tilted toward the light, was watching her in profile. “If I can’t convince you to stay here, then you should know the creatures you’re calling friends.”
Claire hesitated. “If this is about Andras, I—”
“The character.”
Confusion brought Claire up short. “What about Hero?”
“Has he said anything specific about his story? The role he plays?” Beatrice studied the desk, purposely not looking at her own book. “He’s not typical, is he?”
Claire scowled and turned back to her work. She lacked any patience for petty jealousy, book or no. “He’s maddeningly annoying. I’d say that’s a prime heroic trait. That and the cheekbones.”
Beatrice coughed and shook her head. “I forget how librarians have only the external to go on. He’s fooled you by looking the part.”
Claire narrowed her eyes. “What are you driving at?”
Beatrice’s mouth tightened as she considered her words. “Looks can be deceiving. The prettiest ones are. Outside and inside his book.”
In his book? As if that mattered: characters were true to how they were written, at least at first, and granted, Hero had begun to display unusual quirks of personality, but that could be attributed to corruption. It made sense that the damage would warp him. Make him less kind, more cruel. Less noble, more grasping. Vain, self-preserving, unreliable, sarcastic—yes, Claire could list all his many flaws. His attitude was more self-serving than . . . Claire stopped midstitch and laid down the needle. Oh, she’d been