The Holdup
We approached the bookshop from the side, keeping to the narrow shadows the early afternoon sun threw against the brick. Savannah’s postcard charm had curdled. Every tourist and every carriage that passed was a witness we didn’t want.
As we drew closer to the rear wall, voices squeezed through—raised, tense. Two men, one clearly Jerome. And a woman, her tone sharp and impatient.
Raven led the way, angling us toward the rear alley where we’d first met Jerome. It looked different now—darker, the roofline bending the sunlight just enough to turn shadow into cover. The bicycle, once propped neatly against the fence, had been nudged closer to the wall and now sat half-concealed beneath what might have been an overgrown gardenia.
I pressed my ear to the wall, shutting my eyes to concentrate. “They’re threatening him,” I whispered. “Even from out here, I can feel how scared he is.”
Raven gently tested the back door. Locked.
He reached up and, with a smooth, practiced motion, pulled two slender hairpins from his topknot. His dark hair tumbled to his shoulders as he bent over the lock, face hidden in the shadows. What looked like simple hair sticks were anything but. They were hair daggers, a favored tool among the priests of Daegan. Useful for keeping a priest’s hair out of his eyes, sure, but also for picking locks, and if necessary, opening throats.
According to rumor, they could even open portals.
Breaking and entering? Probably their most boring use.
Despite the tension, I found myself smiling.
“I can do that if you want,” I whispered. I watched his fingers work the mechanism while the voices inside the shop grew louder. “Dru taught me how to pick locks and crack safes.”
“Of course, she did,” Raven murmured, not looking up. “What else would a medieval literature professor teach in her spare time?”
“She was doing exactly what we’re doing now before she ‘retired.’”
“Dru will never retire-retire,” he said just as I did, and we traded a quick, strained smile.
The lock clicked softly. Raven replaced the hair sticks in a hasty topknot, then eased the door open just enough for us to slip inside. He went first.
Inside, the shop was dim. A few lights glowed behind the counter and in a small office at the back, but the stacks themselves were cloaked in heavy shadow. Tall shelves formed a maze of narrow aisles, broken only by the occasional glint of Depression glass catching what little light remained.
We stayed low, threading between the shelving units on the balls of our feet.
Up ahead, three figures stood near the checkout desk. The imposters hadn’t made it far. Jerome was cornered just past the register, back against it, shoulders tense. The red-haired woman clutched a wrapped parcel, almost certainly the stolen book. The man beside her was tall, sandy-haired, and heavily tattooed, ink winding from his elbows to his knuckles. He leaned in close to Jerome, voice low but unmistakably threatening.
“I know you’ve got more,” the man said. “I want them all.”
“The book for Doctor Saint Augustine was the only one promised.” Jerome’s voice held, but just barely. I could feel the panic rolling off him like heat from a busted radiator. “You already have it. Now please leave, and I won’t call the police.”
The man laughed. Not with amusement, but with contempt. “Do I look like I’m going to let you call anyone?”
I felt Raven stiffen beside me. That wasn’t Rune’s usual style. Subtle sabotage, sure. Threats of bodily harm? Not unless absolutely necessary. This guy had veered off-script, and he wasn’t pretending to take orders anymore.
“If one book’s worth that much,” the man continued, turning toward the shelves with a hungry glance, “how much do you think the rest of these are worth?”
Jerome lifted a hand, palm out. “Most of these aren’t valuable. Ten, maybe thirty dollars each. Used trade copies, not collector’s items. The one you took was the only rare acquisition on-site. That’s what Doctor Saint Augustine arranged.”
The man stepped in closer, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t play me. You’ve got more. Something stashed in the back. Private inventory. Off the record. I know the type.”
He tossed his keys to the red-haired woman without taking his eyes off Jerome. “Bring the car around back. We’re not leaving with just one book. Not when this place is shelved in gold.”
Then, turning back to Jerome with a slow, deliberate smile, he added, “Is there a rear exit where we won’t be seen?”
Every instinct I had went live at once. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Jerome was never meant to be in danger. The feather had been a message. Taunting, yes, but not deadly. But Rune’s people—whoever they were now—had decided to go off-script. Greed had unmoored them. And whether Rune knew or not, her network had stopped playing by her rules.
Raven’s hand touched my arm. Light, steady, a reminder to stay grounded. I nodded once. We crept deeper between the stacks, closing in on the trouble ahead.
We were nearly to the edge of the office when it happened.
The red-haired woman, juggling the wrapped parcel, a set of keys, and a book she’d lifted from a nearby shelf, fumbled. The keys hit the floor with a metallic clatter.
She bent to grab them but dropped the book instead.
Then her head snapped up, and her eyes locked onto us.
“Priest!” she shrieked, stabbing a finger toward Raven. Not at his face, but at his messy bun and protruding hair daggers, both telltale signs of the Order of Daegan.
Her gaze zipped past Raven to me, but there was no recognition in it. No flicker of alarm. No telltale flare of vengeance. Either she didn’t know who I was, or Rune hadn’t warned her I’d be here.
That gave me a brief, unexpected edge.
I, on the other hand, knew exactly who she was. Not from the hair, obviously dyed, but from the bone structure. The shape of her mouth. Last time I’d seen her, she’d been shivering in a hooded tan coat in the courtyard at Dublin Castle, waiting for Rune. She’d been blonde then. Lovey. Rune’s sister? Marco’s sister? Something familial. The same Marco who died when Raven’s family library had imploded to keep its dangerous texts out of the wrong hands.
She didn’t know me. But I knew her.
Whatever she thought of me, my empathic gifts told me she wasn’t worried about whether I was a threat.
But the sight of Raven terrified her. Before she could stop pointing, she was already scrambling for the keys and book and running for the door.
The sandy-haired man spun toward us, and the charm Jerome had described was nowhere on him. I saw the box cutter in his hand that I hadn’t noticed before.
Raven’s hands were already in motion as he stepped out from behind the bookcases. He grabbed the hair daggers from his topknot, hair falling fast to his shoulders. Raising one dagger and clasping the other, he cocked his arm to throw.
One look at Raven, and the man ran the math on his odds.
He shoved Jerome hard, sending the older man stumbling backward into the tall, overstocked bookcase.
It happened fast.
The bookcase groaned, tilted, then crashed in a roar of wood and cascading pages. It struck the next shelf, which slammed into another. A brutal chain reaction. Heavy oak and centuries-old volumes came down, each stack crashing into the next, thundering through the shop. Somewhere in the din I heard the bright, delicate shatter of glass—one of the Depression-era displays giving way.
Straight at us.
I turned to run, but I was trapped between the falling shelves and the wall, with nowhere to go.
Raven froze, dagger in his grip, imposter within his reach. Then he saw the arc of the falling shelf. The sheer speed of it.
In the half-second he had, he made the choice.
He dropped the blades and lunged for me instead, slamming into my side as the nearest bookcase came down.
We hit the floor hard. His body covered mine, curling protectively as splintered wood and hardbound volumes thundered down around us.
Dust hung thick in the air. Torn pages settled in slow, uneven drifts. Somewhere, a bell jangled, and a door slammed, and everything went quiet. We were buried in a pocket of space between fallen shelves, just barely spared.
Or maybe magically spared, knowing Raven.
I lay pinned on my back beneath Raven. Not hurt. Just emptied of air.
Raven hovered above me, his hair falling into my face as he braced against the weight of the books above us. His lips brushed my cheek—an accident, but my whole body caught on it. Under my palm, the Walking Lightning rune at his wrist ran warm through his sleeve, the current of him loud and alive.
Was that for me? Or the danger we were in?
“You’re not getting off me,” I managed to say, “until you admit you manifested this.”
He exhaled a shaky laugh. Relief, adrenaline, and something else my empathic senses picked up. Something that matched the sudden flutter in my own chest.
The floor of the bookshop was hard, but I didn’t totally, completely hate…this.
“Are you hurt?” was all he said, his voice husky.
In the crush of books and bodies, I let my guard down for half a second. Just enough to realize: I trusted him more than I should. More than was safe.
“Let’s just say that if Dru walks in right now, we’re going to have a very awkward staff meeting.”
He shifted, bracing one arm to hold the shelf above us like a table, creating space. I heard Jerome’s voice, muffled and pained, then felt the weight of the books lighten as he started pulling them away.
I was still breathless when he rolled off of me.
Not from the impact. Not entirely.
Raven offered a hand to help me up. I took it before I could think better of it. His skin was warm against mine, the energetic circuit between us shorting awake the way it always did when I let my guard down too long.
I let go fast.
He didn’t say anything. He never did. Not when it came to that. And maybe that’s what made it worse.
I wasn’t built for people like Raven. People who didn’t push, who showed up without demanding a toll.
Because if someone like that ever saw what was really inside me—what Charlie left behind, what Rune weaponized—there’d be no armor left to hide behind.
So I straightened my cuffs, dusted off my pants, and cleared my throat.
“I’ll go after them,” I said.
Because the longer I stayed in this moment, the more I wanted to believe it meant something.
And I knew better than that.
But by the time I hit the sidewalk, they were already gone. I had failed Dru, and there was no way to undo that now.
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