Hope for Wholeness
Two Months Later
Dru led us to the secure portal of Gate Seven deep inside the nine bunkers that made up the St. Augustine Special Collections Library at Florida University, even though most patrons had no idea that any of the secure areas past the main area, Gate One, existed. Only a few scholars by appointment patronized Gate Two and Gate Three, where the books were rare but had not been assessed as dangerous. Gate Seven was a communications hub with all the latest military-grade, high-tech gear that connected us to other Daeganean libraries around the world, though not the Scholar’s Library as it no longer existed.
I’d spent the last two months working side by side with Emry and Dru to catalogue an additional five thousand rare books that had been salvaged from the destruction of the Scholar’s Library in Dublin. Most were ecclesiastical volumes, thanks to the persistence of monks who had believed the world was coming to an end and collected as much knowledge as possible and preserved it. That day would come again, hence libraries like the one Dru managed and protectors like me, charged with not only keeping these books safe but ensuring that they were still around to pass down knowledge the next time the world was to end.
As Raven had promised, he had sent along another book that reported Ireland to be the lost island of Atlantis, calling out its specific dimensions and matching them to Ireland, as well as tales of flooding in Ireland over several years, so great that many believed that the island was sinking. To them, the water was rising, and there was no difference in flooding and sinking. The book wasn’t dangerous though, so it had been archived in the Gate Two. Raven had sent it purely for my reading pleasure because he knew I’d like it.
Dru punched the CANCEL button on the keypad next to the Gate Seven entry. “Lilah, what is wrong with you today?” Her eyes flashed at me. I hadn’t seen her this stern since the day Charlie had come back from Ireland begging to keep his job.
“Sorry. I was thinking about Ireland, and Atlantis, and… and Cill Stuifin.”
Dru’s expression softened. I’d mentioned to her once or twice about the stories my mother had told me, bedtime stories about medieval places and dark age times. I’d never mentioned the name of the town that had disappeared in the wake of an earthquake.
Dru inhaled sharply. “You didn’t look, did you? At Cill Stuifin?” The annoyance in her eyes had turned to something more than concern—fear.
I shook my head. Though even if I had and had fated myself to die within seven years or seven months, I knew that it was still possible to live again, thanks to a resurrection ritual in The Key of Hell and Death. No, I no longer had a death wish, but I also didn’t fear it anymore.
“Good. Good!” Dru nodded enthusiastically, her shoulder-length hair bobbing up and down. She looked older today. Funny, how she did that. Sometimes she looked forty and other times well into her fifties. It all depended on the stress in her brows, and those crinkles almost always had something to do with me.
“You’ve seemed… preoccupied recently.”
I shrugged. I knew better than to mention how hard it was to come into work every day and see Charlie sitting at his desk almost side by side with me, neither of us speaking to the other. Even worse, I hated when he left his desk for any period of time because that’s when his screensaver kicked in, a wedding photo of him and Mrs. Torrelli, now known to all of his shocked friends and coworkers as Rune Peterson.
I hated that photo. Her in a flowing white dress, him in a tux, and an Elvis impersonator in the background, courtesy of whatever quick chapel had taken him in without all the proper documentation and declared them man and wife. The look on his face in that photograph was strange, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. There was something both trapped and disconnected about his eyes. But on her face, there was no toothy grin of a bride but rather her cheeks tucked into a smirk.
Dru brushed an escaped tendril from my forehead and looped it over my ear. I’d French braided my hair, but I’d done a messy job of it. Still, her gesture wasn’t an admonishment for my sloppiness but instead an act of compassion.
“I know how hard it is, but it’s got to be this way for now.”
“But why?” I wailed. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Why do I have to look at him every day? And that photo! And having to see them together all the time with her gross public displays of affection that I don’t believe for one minute!”
Dru sighed and gave me a quick hug. “I’ve already told Rune—”
“Bambi,” I corrected.
“Yes, Bambi, but I can’t very well call her that. We have to play along. You know the old saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? Better we know what Bambi Torrelli is up to.” Then Dru herself smirked. “We also have the chance to feed erroneous information to her by way of Charlie. Besides, I am rather enjoying keeping Charlie on his toes.”
“But Dru, that day I walked in and found her sitting at my desk after she brought him pizza….”
“She’s not allowed back into my library, but she is a student at the university now. The head librarian had no idea that I personally would not permit her in here. But I’ve told the head, so stop worrying. That won’t happen again.”
I forced my jaws to untighten. If only Dru knew how much torture it was to be in Charlie’s presence every day.
Dru pressed her lips together. “Don’t think that he doesn’t care. He does. I can tell. That screensaver wedding photo that you see every day isn’t there to hurt you.”
I grunted.
“It’s there to remind him of what he’s done, and yes, maybe to please her on her single visit to your domain. But it’s also there to try and convince everyone of how happy he is. Reach out with your empathic gifts, and you can tell that it’s all a mask.”
I hadn’t reached out empathically at all toward Charlie. For my own protection, I didn’t dare. I kept an invisible wall up between him and me. I was positive that my presence was as excruciating for him as his was for me.
Dru fumbled with her badge again. “Okay, enough with that for now. I need your head in the game. I have an assignment coming up for you, but I don’t have enough detail yet. Just a matter of time. This meeting today is to go over some threats we’re hearing about in Europe. It appears people are still trying to find The Key, but there’s a new book that’s possibly just as dangerous.”
“Oh?”
“From what we know, The End of Ages is a book about the end of the world. It must be rewritten every hundred years or its prophecies come true.”
“That’s easy. Just destroy it.”
Dru frowned, as if the idea that destroying a book could ever be a good thing was painful—the hazard of being both a librarian and a medieval literature professor. Then she shook her head. “Legend has it that destroying the book will only hasten the prophecy. A new edition is necessary. Sad thing is, I actually had it in my possession a few years ago and didn’t take it seriously. I misinterpreted the republication as a fraud and thought it would detract from the legitimacy of my Special Collections Library. Now it’s turned up in France. Or at least it’s reported to be. If we can prove that it’s the right book, I’m going to need someone to pick it up and courier it back here.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what that meant. I needed a break from Charlie and his nonsense. Dru was trying to make life easier for me while still keeping an eye on Charlie.
The keypad clicked beside her, then the vault door. Dru laughed. “You look way too enthusiastic about taking a vacation. Or at least, that’s how we’ll spin it if our intel proves correct.” She walked in ahead of me, letting the door close behind her, in accordance with the “no piggybacking” procedures. I smiled to myself as I fumbled with my own badge access key.
I swiped the badge and punched in my numbers, waiting for the soft whirr and click. Whatever was inside Gate Seven that Dru had to show me must have been serious if it warranted a discussion at that level. The vault door clicked, and I tugged at the handle.
Dru was already seated at the head of the conference table when the heavy door closed behind me. Eagerly, I slid into the chair beside her. She smiled at me and looked over my head at the same instance I felt a familiar presence in the room. I flattened my fingers against my lips to hide my smile.
“Hello, Lilah.”
Raven.
⁂
THE END
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All the stories in the universe of the Secret Lives of Librarians can be read in any order, unless specified in a numbered series.
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