The Pickup
Rune.
I stared at Jerome, the empathic static in my skull sharpening into something certain. This wasn’t a prank or a case of crossed wires. Someone had stolen our identities—professionally, personally—and had walked away with whatever rare book we’d been sent to retrieve.
Red hair? It had to be Rune. Had to be. Who else had recent access to the library and had red hair? Even if she wasn’t allowed into Dru’s domain as of Monday night, she could still weasel information out of Charlie. Rune was an obvious choice, but if Charlie was the man with her, he was in over his head. He couldn’t be that stupid, could he, to share our assignment with his sniveling wife after Dru’s warning just two days ago? He was this close to being fired. Or worse: facing the priesthood’s punishment for betrayal. So far, Dru had kept him around because the Daeganeans thought he might lead her to one of their adversaries.
Raven and I locked eyes, and I could almost hear the same curse forming on both our tongues. We’d been beaten at our own game before we’d even started playing.
And of all people to beat us. Rune. I would definitely have preferred a nameless stranger.
“Tell us exactly what happened, sir.” Raven’s voice remained steady despite the tension I could feel radiating from him. “When did they arrive? What did they say?”
Clearly shaken, Jerome rubbed the deep grooves in his forehead. “About an hour ago. They knew the password. Said it just like you did, Miss. They had your names, knew they were here for a special pickup for Doctor Saint Augustine, said they had a room at the bed-and-breakfast place across the street.” He looked miserable. “I never thought to question them. They seemed so…official.”
“Official how?” Raven pressed.
“Professional. Confident.” Jerome gestured vaguely. “The woman had this way about her. Like she belonged everywhere. The man was charming, polite. They knew all the right things to say.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. People trust what looks official. Smooth words. Good posture. A confident smile. All the things Charlie had in spades, right up until the moment he said “I love you” and the next moment handed his heart over to a woman he said needed him more than I did. The woman who made him feel like a hero when I wasn’t the kind of woman who ever needed rescuing.
Maybe Jerome wasn’t the fool here. Maybe I was for thinking confidence ever meant sincerity.
“I’m so sorry,” Jerome continued. “They knew things about Doctor Saint Augustine that only her employees would know. Drusilla and I chat several times a month, so I always ask about her when she sends a courier. She doesn’t usually send a couple. Not really that efficient, I suppose.”
I almost choked. Dru rarely sent a couple unless it was to send someone with me. Not that I didn’t have solo assignments, but she always tried to make sure I had either backup or a dinner companion if it was anything other than routine. She was motherly that way.
“Wait.” I realized I’d missed something in Dru’s instructions. “The man. Did he show you a tattoo on his right wrist?”
“My dear, he had tattoos everywhere I could see except on his face.”
But Charlie didn’t have any tattoos. Or he hadn’t a year ago. He probably had Rune’s name and likeness inked discreetly across his heart now, but as of yesterday, none were visible. I shot a glance at Raven and shook my head, in case he was wondering how well I knew Charlie’s body.
“You’re sure?” I asked, instantly feeling dumb.
“Very. He had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The Lord’s Prayer on his left forearm. In Italian. Hard to forget.”
Definitely not Charlie.
Relief came first, then something colder underneath it—disappointment I hadn’t given myself permission to feel.
“And the right arm?” My thumb found the pewter cuff and stayed there. Charlie or not Charlie? I needed proof. And if not Charlie, then who?
Jerome squinted into the air above his head as if the answers were written there. “Uh, pictures of things. A burning church. I-I’m sorry. I’m usually far more observant. A quote, script but stylized. Long. Something about being better to be feared than loved?”
“Machiavelli?” I sputtered.
Oh, definitely not Charlie.
Raven pushed back his sleeve, revealing the Walking Lightning bind rune tattooed on his right wrist. Only priests and priestesses of Lord Daegan bore the mark of their long-dead God. These couldn’t be faked either. Spray a flashlight beam across the diamond-shaped head on legs like a sharply angled S, and the tattoo would release the sound of a chant spoken by the initiate during their commitment ceremony.
“Did either of them have this?” Raven asked, his tone careful, neutral.
I knew what he was asking: Can either of these people possibly be members of the priesthood?
Jerome peered at Raven’s wrist, then looked away, clearly unsettled. “I-I don’t think so. She didn’t. And he had so many tattoos. Drusilla’s instructions mentioned a mark, but once they gave the phrase, I assumed it was all above board.” He rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. “She doesn’t always send people with those markings. Usually, it’s that lovely Filipina woman—Matrease? About my age. We have lunch down by the river whenever she’s in town for a pickup.”
I nodded. Matrease, I knew. Gray hair like gunmetal, reflexes like a video game boss fight. She drove like red lights were a rumor and her car insurance was backed by a blood oath. Conversation with her was mostly grunts, growls, and well-placed profanity. She’d been with Dru forever, but as she aged, she preferred courier runs—less rooftop acrobatics, more tire smoke.
I was deeply, spiritually okay with that.
Matrease scared the hell out of me.
He gave a small, guilty smile. “I wish Drusilla had sent her this time. She always brings me homemade lumpia.”
I blinked. Of course, the smugglers had stolen our names, our password, and a rare book meant for lockdown, but what Jerome missed most was Matrease’s lumpia. The normalcy of it hit me sideways, like the smell of cinnamon in a burning house.
“Other than the tattoos, can you describe the couple?” I reached out gently with my empathic abilities. I wasn’t trying to manipulate him, just to read what was already there, bubbling beneath the surface. Guilt. Worry.
“Well, um, like I said, the woman had red hair. Not natural-looking, very bright. Late twenties, maybe thirty. The man was sandy-haired, about the same age. Tall. They both dressed well. Business casual.” He grimaced. “In hindsight, they seemed a little too slick, you know? But in the moment…”
“We understand,” Raven said, and I could tell he meant it. “These things happen.”
“What was in the package, Mr. Bent?” I asked.
Dru hadn’t told us. Just that it was valuable and dangerous enough for Gate 6 within the series of progressively more protective vaults inside the Special Collections Library.
“A book.”
“And?”
“Leather-bound, quite old. Threshold Passages: Gateways Between Worlds. Very rare. Only three known copies. Two now. One was destroyed in a library fire in Dublin last year. Drusilla said it would be nice to get it secured quickly.” His shoulders slumped. “And now I’ve handed it over to who-knows-who.”
Nice to get it secured quickly? Jerome Bent probably had no idea how valuable the books were he regularly secured for the Special Collections Library. If he did, he would have been as paranoid as I was to realize that there are hundreds of ways the world can end, and at least a dozen of them were already securely locked away behind a door in the library reception area marked CLOSET.
I wanted to be angry—at Jerome, at Dru for not warning us, at the universe for continually finding new ways to complicate my life. But Jerome’s distress was genuine. This wasn’t the man to blame. Who knew? Maybe it was best he didn’t know why these books were so important.
“We’ll handle it from here.” Jerome’s shoulders came down an inch under Raven’s calm. Then again, it might have been a tiny bit of magic pushed in Jerome’s direction to relieve his anxiety. “We’ll contact the professor and sort this out.”
Jerome nodded gratefully, clearly relieved to pass the problem to someone else. “Again, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything else I can do?”
“Just one thing,” I said. “Don’t mention us to anyone else who might come by. Not that I expect more imposters, but just in case.”
“Of course. Absolutely.” He nodded vigorously, then hesitated. “The book—it’s not dangerous, is it?”
Raven and I exchanged another look.
“Let’s hope not,” I said. Not exactly reassuring. But it was all I had.
Jerome gave us a tight nod, then locked the back door with fingers that only trembled a little. He wheeled his bike away from the alley wall, muttered something about a very late lunch, and pedaled off like he wasn’t sure if he was fleeing the scene or racing toward his favorite sandwich.
“The B&B’s just across the street and half a block up,”Raven said finally as we stared after the bike bumping away over cobblestone.“I parked close on purpose. Figured we might want to keep eyes on the shop.”
I stifled a laugh. I started to tell him I couldn’t think of a time when he hadn’t done something on purpose. Not that every action was planned and documented in advance. He, unlike others I refused to name, thought things through instead of acting rashly.
And he was smiling. Despite our failures, he was smiling.Not yelling at me or blaming me for something that wasn’t my fault. Nope, just smiling. At me.
“Good call,” I replied. “Although it seems we’re a bit late for surveillance. Can’t we use some kind of Daeganean time travel technology? Or maybe shift some realities so we have the book back? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Absolutely not.” His smile faded. “Don’t even joke about it. We both know too many things could go wrong, and I don’t want to risk this reality.”
“With me?”
I stepped forward without looking. Two cast-iron planters, filled with ferns and purple petunias, blocked the view of the street in front of the bookshop. Raven swept an arm across my chest, stopping me short before I could step off the curb. He nodded down the street to where my line of sight had been blocked.
“You. Dru. The library. All of it. I kind of like where we are right now. Even with our mission getting sabotaged.”
On the other side of the planters, a white horse-drawn carriage rolled past at a lazy crawl, its driver tipping his hat to a pair of tourists photographing the ironwork balconies. The horse’s hooves clopped over the street like a slightly out-of-phase metronome. I hadn’t even noticed. I’d been too distracted by Raven’s smile.
“We still need to call Dru,” he reminded me. “Let her know what happened. Start sorting out our next step.”
I nodded and fell quiet again as we crossed the street. I wasn’t angry. Not exactly. Instead, I felt scraped thin — like someone had walked off with the top layer of me and left the rest behind.
I was used to masks. Just never expected someone to steal mine so cleanly. If even that could be stolen, what was left worth protecting?
“You okay?” Raven asked, glancing at me as we walked. He didn’t push, didn’t crowd my space with unnecessary reassurances. Just a simple question that I could answer or deflect as needed.
“Hmmm, nothing like hearing someone impersonated you, and no one knew the difference,” I said with a half-hearted smile. “It’s almost like someone wallpapered over my identity.”
At the car, we grabbed our overnight bags.
“It’s just a weird feeling,” I apologized as he slammed the trunk.
His mouth quirked. “If it helps, I’m rather offended on your behalf. The real Lilah Burns is inimitable.”
It helped more than I wanted to admit.
With Raven carrying our bags, we walked together along a winding garden path to the building ahead. The B&B was exactly as advertised: charming, quaint, and dripping with Southern hospitality in the form of chintz wallpaper and antique furniture. Dru had opted for a self-check-in setup, according to the file she’d sent to our smartwatches and phones. We had the code for our room, the code for the front door, and a welcome message that explained breakfast times and the “help yourself” refreshments in the parlor.
Doing our best to ignore the rich, impossible-to-ignore aroma wafting from a sideboard lined with silver trays, we headed upstairs to our room—third floor, end of the hall, with a view of the square and, conveniently, a partial view of Bent Spines Book Emporium. If we wanted, we could sit on the balcony for the rest of the day, eat our way through warm buttermilk biscuits slathered in mayhaw jelly,and leisurely watch the shop.
It sounded suspiciously like heaven.
I punched in the code and pushed open the door. The room was lovely. Hardwood floors, a bay window with a cushioned seat, antique furnishings that somehow avoided looking fussy. Everything was just as Dru had described.
Except for one detail.
“Oh, come on,” I groaned, staring at the center of the room and dropping my purse at my feet.
There was only one bed. King-sized, certainly, with a handcrafted quilt and enough pillows to build a fort, but still…
Just. One. Bed.
“I’ll try not to take your heartbreak personally,” he said with a wink.
“It’s not you, it’s—” I stopped, suddenly aware of how that sounded. “We were supposed to have two beds. I mean, it’s fine. We’ve shared rooms before. On assignments.”
We’d even shared a bed a few times during covert operations.
“I can sleep on the floor,” he offered, setting our bags down by the dresser. “Or the window seat. I’m sure there are enough blankets stashed around to make myself comfortable. For pity’s sake, I lived on a forward operating base in Afghanistan. I can sleep anywhere.”
I rolled my eyes. Raven would never fit, even in a window seat that had to be six feet wide at least. And I couldn’t let him sleep on the floor, no matter how tough he made himself sound. I’d worn a uniform, too. The I-can-sleep-and-have-slept-anywhere argument was true, but it was never said with pride, only endurance.
Unfortunately, he was already peeking in closets and drawers in search of extra bedding.
“Raven, don’t be ridiculous. The bed is huge. I mean, huge. We can—”
I stopped mid-sentence as my gaze landed on something dark, out of place, nestled against the white duvet, between the pillows and the neatly folded quilt.
I moved closer, my mind rejecting it even as my feet kept walking.
In the center of the bed lay a familiar crow feather.
Not a keepsake like the one I’d given Charlie. Not a fond memory. Not this time.
I knew exactly what it meant.
A calling card.
From Rune.
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