a guy in the corner,” Lexi confirms. “But I have no idea if he was checking you out or not. I thought he was reading.”
“Sad face,” Kat says, sweeping her frown around the room once more but then she changes the subject, and eventually Zachary manages to lose himself in the conversation as the snow starts to fall again outside.
They slip and slide back to campus, parting ways in the glow of a streetlamp when Zachary turns down the curving street that leads to the graduate dorms. He smiles as he listens to their chatter fading in the distance. Snowflakes catch in his hair and on his glasses and he feels like he is being watched and he looks over his shoulder at the streetlight but there is only snow and trees and a reddish haze in the sky.
Back in his room Zachary returns to Sweet Sorrows in his cocktail haze and starts reading again from the beginning, but sleep creeps up and steals him away after two pages and the book falls closed on his chest.
In the morning it is the first thing he sees and without thinking about it too much he puts the book in his bag, pulls on his coat and boots, and heads to the library.
“Is Elena here?” he asks the gentleman at the circulation desk.
“She’s at the reserve desk, around the corner to the left.”
Zachary thanks the gentleman librarian and continues through the atrium and around the corner to a counter with a computer where Elena sits, her hair back in its bun and her nose in a different Raymond Chandler novel this time, Playback.
“Can I help you?” she asks without looking up, but when she does she adds, “Oh, hi! Didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“I got curious about the library mystery,” Zachary says, which is true enough. “How’s that one?” he asks, pointing at the Chandler. “I haven’t read it.”
“So far so good, but I don’t like to commit to an opinion until the end of a book because you never know what might happen. I’m reading all his novels in publication order, The Big Sleep is my favorite. Did you want that list?”
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Zachary says, pleased that he’s managing to sound fairly casual.
Elena types something into the computer, waits, and types something else.
“Looks like everything else has proper author names, so much for mysteries, but there’s some fiction and nonfiction. I’d help you find them but I’m stuck on the desk until eleven.” She clicks again and the ancient printer next to the desk whirs to life. “As far as I can tell there were more books in the original donation, it’s possible that they were too fragile for circulation or damaged. These twelve are what’s out there, maybe the one you have is a second volume of something?” She hands Zachary the printed list of titles and authors and call numbers.
Her hypothesis is a good one and not something Zachary had considered. It would make sense. He looks over the titles but nothing jumps out as particularly meaningful or intriguing.
“You are an excellent library detective,” he says. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome,” Elena says, picking up her Chandler again. “Thank you for livening up my workday. Let me know if you have trouble finding anything.”
Zachary starts in the familiar fiction section. He peruses the shelves under the unreliable lightbulbs, picking out the five fiction titles on the list in alphabetical order.
Appropriately, the first is a Sherlock Holmes novel. The second is This Side of Paradise. He’s never heard of the next two, but they appear to be regular volumes, with proper pages. The last is Les Indes noires by Jules Verne, in the original French and therefore mis-shelved. All appear to be regular, if old, editions. None of them seem to have anything in common with Sweet Sorrows.
Zachary tucks the pile of books under his arm and heads toward nonfiction. This part proves more difficult as he checks and rechecks call numbers and backtracks. Slowly he procures the other seven books, his enthusiasm waning as none of them resemble Sweet Sorrows. Most of them are astronomy- or cartography-related.
His last option brings him back near fiction to the myths. Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, or Beauties of Mythology. It looks new, as though it has never been read, despite bearing a date of 1899.
Zachary places the blue volume with its gilded detailing on his stack of books. The bust of Ares on the cover