No Hero
Charlie startled at the knock at the door. Illyria had been prepared when he and Lilah had shown up at the safe house, but she seemed both oblivious and unconcerned by the arrival of someone new. Illyria crossed the room to the door, peered through the peephole, and unlatched a series of deadbolts. Charlie recognized the woman called Nike immediately, the other blonde from the Scholar’s Library. She was dressed as she had been at the library in her black dress and pearls uniform. Up close, the two didn’t look so much alike except for their pale hair and dark brows.
“Glad you’re safe, love,” Nike murmured. She closed the door behind her and paused to secure all the deadbolts. Opening a large, nondescript canvas bag, she pulled out a familiar smaller bag.
Charlie identified it instantly as the Celtic knot-encrusted satchel that the senator had handed to Lilah at the cliff-top on Howth. He scrambled to his feet and took a few steps forward before Nike held up her palm to warn him off.
“Oh, hello, Charlie.” Nike’s tone was a mix of disgust and pity. She barely noticed him as she grasped Illyria’s forearm in an odd, quick handshake that brushed their wrists together. The handshake evolved into a warm hug and a peck on the cheek.
Oh. The greeting had been for Illyria, not him.
“Any problems getting here?” Illyria took the satchel carefully, opening the latch. Charlie glimpsed something wrapped in linen before she quickly closed the satchel again.
“No problems at all.”
“And you are sure you were not followed?”
Nike laughed. “I’m followed only when I wish to be.”
Charlie frowned, noticing for the first time that Nike sported the same diamond-headed figure on her right wrist as Illyria, Raven, and Jakin Crutchfield. It was a symbol representing the priests and priestesses of the secret order of a dead god who may or may not have been the ancient Chaldean prince who had fought for the God of the Bible and, in a single night, had wiped out 185,000 men of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army. Charlie had learned quickly not to ask questions about the priesthood. Truth be told, they creeped him out.
Most of what he knew of the Daeganeans was from some of the more mundane literature that resided in the St. Augustine Special Collections Library back in Florida—because there was absolutely no other data on this ancient religion anywhere else. According to more than one half-decayed tome in the Gate Four SCIF of Dr. St. Augustine’s library, one day Earth would be reformed and the followers of Daegan would repopulate it with the best souls of the past. There was some correlation between Daegan and the Archangel Michael, but for the most part, the religion of watchers and facilitators to Earth’s rebirth was still a mystery to him. Judging by the coolness in Nike’s glare, which was much more focused than the milder distaste in Illyria’s expression, neither priestess was apt to break any oath and tell him anything new. He was more likely to get it from Jakin Crutchfield, and he hated Jakin’s guts.
“The new assignment.” Nike cleared her throat and leaned in toward Illyria. “It’s going well?”
Illyria screwed her jaw to one side and shrugged. “Swimmingly. But it is quite temporary.”
“You have a new position?” Charlie took a tentative step, trying to insinuate himself into their circle of two. He wasn’t sure if they’d been assigned to the now-defunct Scholar’s Library, but if so, they were both out of a job.
Or did they mean the assignment of looking after Lilah and him?
Nike glanced up at him, her upper lip curling as if she smelled something bad. She squinted into his eyes as though she could see right through him, then raked her gaze over his body, all the way to his hiking boots and back up to his face.
“Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
“So you, um, have libraries all over the world?” He decided to take the edge off his discomfort with humor like he often did back in Florida. “What? Do you get stationed at the Vatican next? I’ve always wondered what’s in those Vatican archives.”
Neither woman said anything. They didn’t even exchange glances. He had an uneasy feeling that they already knew what was in the Vatican archives.
The bathroom door opened, and Lilah stumbled out, still pressing a hand towel to her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry.” She still looked a little green and both her eyes and cheeks were splotched with red.
Had she been crying?
Nike almost ran to her. She threw her arms around Lilah, who was probably two inches taller, and hugged her hard as if Nike knew something now that she didn’t before. When Nike pulled back, it was to touch Lilah’s face and wipe the loose strands of brown from her eyelashes and temples. The gesture was affectionate, maternal. Warm compared to the chill Charlie had felt from her.
Lilah, strangely enough, did not pull away. At first Nike brushed her fingertips over Lilah’s cheekbones, then across the center of her forehead just above her eyes.
“Hush now,” Nike murmured. “You’re a highly receptive empath. You pick up everything, but believe me, I can tell when you’re broadcasting, and you’re broadcasting now. Let me smooth those jagged edges and ease your pain. Raven asked me to take care of you.”
Lilah seemed to relax into Nike’s touch, but Charlie cringed. Earlier, Lilah had jerked away from his hand on her knee in the cab, yet now Nike rubbed her thumb over the spot on Lilah’s forehead that Emry would have called her third eye or her sixth chakra. Almost mesmerizing Charlie and certainly Lilah, Nike’s thumb went round and round in counterclockwise circles.
“Breathe with me, Lilah. I’ll erase some of your pain.”
Then Nike’s other hand and fingers wove into Lilah’s damp tangles on top of her head, her palm cupping Lilah’s crown.
Beside him, Illyria gasped. “Do you see that? Do you see that light? Nike is closing for now Lilah’s sensitivity to the negativity while bringing in the god-spark through her own crown and out her left hand into Lilah’s seventh chakra.”
“Er, no. I don’t see anything.” Not that he would have known what to look for.
“Most people do not. Lilah has that gift as well, but only when she chooses to use it. She has not yet. Watch. For me, I see the change of light. The white rays coming down through Nike and out through one hand and then a black energy being drawn out through the other hand.”
Nike paused long enough to pull her right hand away and fling it to the side as if she were trying to get rid of some type of goo. Red stigmata appeared in Nike’s palm as though the welts had been formed by a bottleneck of energies, but she shook the marks away.
Lilah let out a whimper. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she almost collapsed to the floor before Nike caught her and stood her back up.
“Better?”
Lilah nodded. “Better. I know what I have to do.”
She looked up at Charlie and, though the pain of the last few days wasn’t there, the sadness was. Lilah grabbed the back of the nearest chair and stood there, breathing deeply, then she tilted her forehead toward the satchel in Illyria’s grasp. “Raven authenticated The Lost Teachings already?”
“We will discuss that later. For now, we can put this treasure aside.” Illyria made a deliberate step around Charlie and placed the satchel back inside the canvas bag that had fallen to the floor. She wrapped the bag around its contents and then, kneeling next to a small, antique bureau, Illyria slipped it inside the bottom drawer, closed it tightly, and stood. As she turned around, she smiled, but even Charlie knew the smile was fake.
“Charlie, the three of us need to have some girl talk. I am sure you understand.
“Um, okay. I’ll just sit over here and read or something.”
“No.” Nike strolled toward the door, unlatched the four deadbolts, and opened it wide. “Why not enjoy a walk? Return in twenty minutes? Illyria and I must leave soon, but we need more time to work with Lilah to heal her wounds. Why don’t you go downstairs and enjoy a draft? The pub is open now. Or walk over to the Liffey and back?”
“Do you still have your key?” Illyria asked him. She paused, and the whole room seemed to hold its breath as she waited for an answer.
“Uh, yeah.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out the heavily ornamented key. He dangled it by the fob with the symbol that matched Illyria and Nike’s wrist tattoos.
Charlie fought to tamp down his excitement. This Law of Attraction thing was working better than he’d thought possible, because he’d really wanted to manifest a way to phone Rune without an audience. Illyria hadn’t handed the very thing he needed to Lilah but to him, and Nike had literally opened the door for him. Excellent!
“Yes, excellent.” Nike stared through him again. “Make sure you don’t lose that key. You’ll need it to get back in. You must have it on you at all times. You and Lilah are welcome to go out around the city all you want today, but that key will be your only way of getting back in here tonight once we’re gone.” She paused as if preparing to issue a challenge. “I mean it, Charlie. Do not fuck this up.”
“I understand.” What he didn’t say was that Nike was an unapologetic shrew. He wasn’t used to women talking to him like she did or sneering at his existence.
Illyria raised one eyebrow as if she’d heard the words in his head, and he could’ve sworn it was the mirror opposite of the eyebrow Nike had raised. “This is important, Charlie. Be sure you do not lose that key.”
“Oh, I pinky-swear.”
He dropped the key back into his pocket and stepped through the open door. He turned to tell Lilah goodbye, but as he did, the door shut gently behind him before he could get the words out.
In truth, he was glad they had kicked him out in favor of girl time. They’d made it easy for him. Twenty minutes, though. That’s all the time he had to make contact with Rune. As long as she answered the phone, it would be okay. Either Rune had to get the artifact, or he did. He wouldn’t give up the key to Marco unless he had no other choice. In either case, he needed only a few minutes with the artifact to change his future, either before he handed over the book to Rune or after she handed it over to him. If they were careful, they could both win.
He jogged down the narrow wooden staircase to the second floor, along the way sidestepping a server who looked as if she was barely out of her teens. Spiky, pink hair, cat’s-eye eyeliner, and an appreciative gaze in his direction. This last felt more familiar, and he smiled back. That was how most women regarded him, and he secretly enjoyed it. As he passed her, he glanced at her bare wrists, both unblemished. Good. He had had enough of the Daeganean priestesses for one day.
Charlie paused in the wide pub area where several patrons had found their seats. He was too paranoid to contact Rune in this atmosphere. Reaching the front door of the pub at breakneck speed, he bulldozed through. He wanted privacy, but dared not go too far or risk getting lost or being gone too long, so he wove in and out of the flow of people on the sidewalk and turned the corner next to the windows that displayed the large copper tank. It was quieter here with fewer people walking past.
He pulled out his phone, flipped it to his Fourth World app, and messaged Rune:
He’d barely hit SEND before a message popped up in his feed:
He frowned at the message. Sometimes Rune could act like a middle school drama queen. She had all the innocence of a girl on the verge of puberty and sometimes just as much immaturity, but that was why she needed him. She was an innocent who couldn’t take care of herself. Especially not against the likes of her brother. Deep inside, he knew it was his duty to save her, and he liked that idea of being her savior, just as he’d been Lilah’s savior when she’d been up to her neck in Jakin’s shit.
Just as he’d been another woman’s savior, even if she’d burned him. He rarely thought of Daphne, but the scar was still there.
Charlie shook off his annoyance. He had to be fast. He had to arrange for Rune to take possession of the key and then take the satchel while he distracted Lilah. And he had to get back to the safe house before Illyria and Nike left and he was locked out. There was no hope of making a copy of this kind of key, so he would have to work fast.
The message popped up on his screen under Rune’s avatar. Did she mean she was at the pub? Or simply answering his plea? Before he could respond, the next message filled the screen.
Charlie glanced around to make sure no one was looking, even peering around the corner again until he was satisfied that neither Lilah nor the priestesses were listening. He covered the screen so no random bystander could see it and accepted the call with one knuckle.
Rune’s face appeared on the screen, the red and purple of her bruises deeper than they had been the night before. She looked both curious and annoyed. She had combed her hair in a different direction from her normal practice, but he could see a small bloody strip on her scalp in the layers of magenta red that contrasted with her blue-green tunic. She was on a street corner, too, not too far away if that was the Liffey in the background.
“Where did you go?” Her voice was raw with emotion. “I woke up and you were gone!” Her image froze for a second and then burst back to life. “Exactly where were you?”
What the hell was she talking about? She was wide awake when he’d left the room on a quest for breakfast. And how she was using that tone with him?
“Rune, that’s not what happened, and you know it. Maybe I’m the one who should be asking the questions.”
He didn’t like her accusatory attitude. He could stay upstairs and get that from Nike, thank you very much. Then Charlie felt like a father admonishing a child. Rune was going through a difficult time, and her confused outburst wasn’t personal. He brushed away his guilt, reminding himself that his compassion for others was one of his best traits. He didn’t want to believe she’d attacked Lilah, but as much as he wanted to give Rune the benefit of the doubt, it was written all over her face.
“Rune,” he began again, “I went downstairs and waited for them to make exactly what you wanted for breakfast and brought it back to you, but you were gone. I knew you hadn’t been gone long. I thought maybe you were leaving.”
The thought had filled him with fear. He’d let himself get emotionally involved. He’d stepped over an edge that he couldn’t climb back up onto, and she had just vanished in the short space of his trip to the breakfast buffet, an encounter in the corridor with a bruised Lilah, and running back into Rune’s room before Lilah could catch him.
Something in Rune’s eyes changed, like the flicker of a light switch. Her anger softened, and suddenly she was his sweet damsel in distress again, the one who’d proclaimed him her hero.
“Aww, my sweet Charlie. I’m so sorry. I thought I’d dreamed of asking you for butterscotch for breakfast. I must’ve fallen back asleep. When I awoke again, you were gone, so I thought I would take care of everything next door without worrying you, before you came back. You’ve been so good to me.”
He squinted at Rune’s image on the screen as if doing so would somehow make it easier to understand her. She was nervous, scared—and wasn’t making sense. She bounced from one rationale to another as if trying on the right reasoning to appeal to him.
“So you were in my room—I mean, Lilah’s room—while I was fetching breakfast.”
He held his breath. Part of him knew what she was going to say, and none of him wanted to hear it.
“Oh, Charlie it was awful! I heard your ex-girlfriend next door leave right after you did, and I thought she was gone for the day like yesterday. I thought I could just slip in and slip out—”
“You took the card key to my room. You dropped it, and that’s how Lilah found it.”
“I didn’t know she was coming back.” Rune stared back at him, eyes desperate and tearing up. “She surprised me and started attacking me from behind. She must be Ninja-trained, the way she kicks. And I-I turned something over on her by accident. I don’t know how I was able to do it, but I got away from her without her seeing my face. I guess it was just the adrenaline or something. Maybe all those times that Marco has hit me when I couldn’t fight back, and she was just mean like that, and it reminded me of—”
Oh, not tears!
“Okay, Rune. I get it. You panicked and turned out to be a lot stronger than you expected to be.”
And Lilah was trained to be a fierce fighter, especially when surprised. It wasn’t that much of a leap to see how a misunderstanding could occur between two women, especially when one didn’t know she was in a love triangle with him. Lilah wasn’t prone to being a liar, but he could see how they both had their own truth about the tussle in Lilah’s room.
“Why were you in our—I mean, her—room in the first place? You’ve been snooping through my phone, haven’t you? You heard the message from Emry saying that Lilah was bringing back The Lost Teachings, didn’t you? That’s why you thought it was in Lilah’s room.”
Rune didn’t answer at first. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek.
“Oh, Charlie. I am so sorry! I’ve done something wrong, haven’t I?”
Tears welled in both eyes and spilled over. He wanted to kick himself. “Don’t. Rune, don’t.” He was a sucker for tears, and he would almost swear she’d weaponized hers against him.
“I-I’ve told you about my first husband a long time ago, and he was always cheating on me. I thought I was going crazy, but the only way I was able to prove it was, um, well, I snooped through his phone, and I had to know if you were going to go back to Lilah or if, um, if you were going to stay with me after we made such sweet love all night. I just knew you’d leave me. Don’t you know what it’s like for the person you love most to leave you when you need them most?”
He grimaced. Rune and her insecurities, and him and his indecision. They made a fine pair. He’d invested too much in their fledgling relationship, thrown away too much with Lilah and Drusilla, to have nothing. If he could make a firm plan, that might fix both his problem and Rune’s. If he tried hard enough, he could make this work and save them both.
“Okay, okay. I understand. I’m the beneficiary of your past shitty relationships. All future relationships pay for the sins of the past ones. Just don’t go snooping again. I’m a trustworthy person, and I don’t deserve that.”
He knew, too, what it was like to be left behind. If there was anything Rune could say to sway him to be compassionate to her cause, that was it. Only a month before he took the job at the St. Augustine Special Collections Library and met Lilah, he’d stood at the altar in front of a hundred wedding guests and waited for a fiancée who bolted at first look. That fleeing flurry of white lace, black against the light of the open church door, would haunt him forever. He’d always been honest with her and look where that had gotten him. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her the night before that he was marrying her to save her from herself. He understood better now why people lied in relationships.
“Rune, look. I know where The Lost Teachings book is. We’re in some kind of safehouse right now. I’m with Lilah and some of my boss’s associates and—”
“You’re with her?”
“The book is here, Rune. I just need you to grab the book while I make sure everyone’s gone for a few hours, especially, um, her. I could possibly get it myself, but I don’t want to draw suspicion.” Not any more than he already had. He needed to get Lilah far away and keep her distracted from hanging around the safehouse.
Rune’s eyes widened. The tears stopped. “Where is it? Where are you? Can they hear you? Are you alone?”
“Alone for the moment, outside. Hold on. I’m enabling location services.” He changed the settings quickly on his Fourth World app.
Rune watched her screen and nodded quickly. “Got it. Yes, I know where you are.” Her voice lifted, stronger, excited.
“Don’t tell Marco about the safe house. Please, Rune. We can do this together, just you and me. Quietly. I don’t want him barging in on, uh, anyone and hurting them.” Charlie suddenly felt self-conscious saying Lilah’s name in front of Rune. No need to provoke more jealousy. “Do you understand, Rune? No Marco. He’s Plan B, maybe Plan C if you and I can’t fix this ourselves.”
He needed to work it all out in his head. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes. He’d always, for his entire life, been able to talk himself out of punishment. He was on the verge of his first failure, if not too late already.
“Yeah, yeah. Charlie, I understand. Just tell me where the book is. I’m on my way.”
“No, not quite yet. Hold on—I’m enabling tracking on my phone so you can tell where I am at any moment. Please do the same for me so I don’t lose you again.” He paused for her to reciprocate, but her phone didn’t ping him. Not yet. “Anyway, the safehouse is upstairs in the pub, all the way to the top. Wait until everyone is gone. You’ll know when you see my tracker leave the area. Use the key to get in. The book is in the bureau on the lefthand side of the room. Bottom drawer. Canvas bag. Get it and get out of there. I’ll keep, um, everyone away long enough for you to do it.”
“But how do I get the key?”
He glanced around the outside of the pub. Nowhere safe to leave the key. Maybe inside in a bathroom? Maybe buy a souvenir shirt from the shop and leave it in the package for Rune to pick up? He couldn’t expect Rune to scale the exterior wall like Lilah would have or break in. He had a better idea. Risky, but better.
“There’s a cafe at Dublin Castle. It overlooks the courtyard. I can meet you there. At least, I think I can.” She was nodding already as he spoke. “Lilah mustn’t see you, Rune. I’m not kidding around. She knows you’re a redhead. I think she’ll recognize you if she sees you again.”
“She won’t see me. I’ll be in the courtyard below the cafe. All you have to do is casually drop that key over the rail. She’ll never see.”
“Okay, we have a plan. I need to get back upstairs before they come looking for me.”
“Charlie, sweetheart, I’m scared. What if I get caught?”
“You won’t—”
He kicked himself mentally once more. Of course, she was scared. Rune wasn’t the kind of person to show that kind of initiative.
Hmm, with the exception of the initiative she showed going into Lilah’s room.
So much of Rune’s story didn’t add up. It had, until now. But now his mind was having to work overtime to make her tales fit into an acceptable framework. He didn’t believe in intuition the way Lilah and Emry did, but even if he had, he couldn’t bring himself to listen to it. His head was a mess, and he was too far out of the crossroads. He’d made a decision, and now he had to figure out how to live with it.
Rune had assumed wrongly that Lilah had the artifact in her room after meeting up with Raven at Tara. Rune had probably been terrified then, too, but had taken advantage of the situation to fetch the artifact for her conniving brother. Rune was just a pawn in Marco’s game. Why put her in further danger?
“Rune, you know, maybe I could leave the safe house room unlocked. I think I could come up with a reason to go back.”
He liked that idea better. He could go back quickly, leave Lilah somewhere else for five or ten minutes, run up to the room, open the satchel, and somehow put himself into a quick trance, thinking good thoughts about how everything was going to work out. About how either Lilah would be understanding of his situation and forgive him and be his forever-friend or Rune would somehow pleasantly go away but still be happy. Or both. Whatever it would take to make sure that neither woman was upset with him. Using The Lost Teachings to manifest that last desperate hope was the only thing he could think of.
“That’s what I’ll do, okay? I’ll leave the safe house unlocked. And then I’ll meet you at the cathedral later.” If he could spend a few minutes in a trance with the book and leave the door open for her to take the book while he kept Lilah far away, that would be the best. “Afterward, you can hand it off to your brother, and we’ll all be done with this nightmare.”
Rune rolled her eyes, something he’d never seen her do in response to him. “I don’t understand. Are you giving me the key or leaving the safe house unlocked? Are you getting the book, or am I?”
Charlie sighed. Was he thinking clearly enough? Had he missed something? Strategizing wasn’t his forte. He’d completed dozens of assignments successfully with Lilah, but Dr. St. Augustine had always been the one to plan every last detail. Her strategic plans always allowed for flexibility, but when that happened, Lilah made the tactical decisions. He liked to think of himself as the brains for these assignments, given his graduate degree in library science, and of Lilah as the brawn, but in reality, Lilah was both.
Shit. Rune was better at devising plans than he was! Maybe it was all the possibilities that he found paralyzing. He worked better when being told exactly what to do, step by step.
Breathing deeply, feeling anxiety in his stomach as he noted that eighteen minutes had passed, Charlie went over the plan in his head. The plan and the backup plans. “Okay, how about—?”
“Enough, Charlie.” Her voice turned harsher—less damsel in distress and more boss in charge. The innocence of her face sharpened into leadership skills mixed with impatience. “Jesus, Charlie. You’ve always gotten by on your sweet personality and golden-boy looks, haven’t you?”
Charlie stared at Rune’s image on his phone. Not the first time he’d heard that, but the first time from her.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Charlie. Don’t arouse suspicion. Drop the key over the railing at the café when Lilah isn’t looking. I’ll get the book from the safe house and take it to my brother. Easy.”
Where was he in this plan, other than providing entry? “I’ve got to get that key back. And I’ve got to have five minutes with that book. Just five.” He didn’t want to explain his desperation to manipulate the Law of Attraction, but he didn’t want her to disappear on him again either. “Then you can do what you want with it.”
“I presume you’ll need more than five minutes. I’ll need you to authenticate the book before I give it to Marco.”
“I’m not sure I’m qualified to do that. Dr. St. Augustine could. Or that Raven guy. Or—”
“Charlie, simply tell me if it’s the book that the senator gave you on Howth. Don’t hurt your brain. Now go back to the safe house and do your job. I’ll meet you at St. Patrick’s Cathedral when I have the book.”
Before Charlie could say anything, Rune disconnected. No goodbyes or declarations of love or any of the usual Rune-isms.
What had he said to disappoint Rune? Lilah always blamed herself when something went wrong, but Rune blamed him.
Charlie didn’t have time to wrap his head around it now. His time was up. He slipped his phone into one pocket and pulled out the safe house key from the other. He headed around the corner and back into the pub, charging up the steps, the weight of the world on his shoulders. All he had to do was wait until everyone left, walk Lilah downstairs, and then ask her to wait while he ran back for something he’d forgotten. Then he’d take her out to lunch, and let The Lost Teachings work its magic on Lilah, on Rune, on Dr. St. Augustine, on Emry, on Marco, on the whole situation.
“There you are,” Illyria said from the top of the staircase.
Behind her, Nike and Lilah stood at the office door. The three women watched him as if they expected him to sprout a second head. Lilah looked as if she might burst into either laughter or tears. No. Definitely not tears.
Nike locked the door one deadbolt at a time with her own safehouse key and turned around with an almost-smile. “We’re leaving now,” she said. “Charlie, why don’t the two of you go and explore the city? The artifact is safe here.”
Charlie swallowed hard. He was sure that the two blondes would have left by now. “Uh, sure. Maybe you two ladies could recommend some tourist traps.”
“I’d like to see the cathedral.” Lilah’s eyes were misty. Whatever they had done to her to heal whatever physical or metaphysical wounds she carried had left her a little disconnected from the real world. She looked like she might fall asleep on the spot or float away.
“St. Patrick’s Cathedral it is!” He could hardly believe his ears. He’d been thinking of how to make his way there without arousing suspicion, and Lilah had made it easy. Still, he needed to give Rune time. “Maybe after a quick lunch. I’m famished, and I know just the place.”
Lilah nodded her head once but stared off into nothingness beyond him. She looked incredibly sad. Her bottom jaw torqued tighter than he had ever seen in all the time he had known her, but her chin quivered.
“Let us depart.” Illyria extended one palm toward the staircase. “Nike and I will walk you two downstairs on our way out.”
Oh, Christ. Now what?
He pivoted on the stairs and took two steps down. The women crowded around him but didn’t follow. They merely waited for him to move. Panic rose in his throat as he took another step down. He glanced over his shoulder at the office door, “I, um, you three go on downstairs. I’ll be down in a few minutes. I think I forgot something in the room.”
Illyria raised one eyebrow. “Oh? Do you still have the key we gave you?”
“Yes. Go on. I won’t trouble you. Lilah can wait downstairs while I—”
“No bother. I’ll let you in.” Nike rushed toward the office door, turned on one black pump, and waited.
Charlie stood there, the entire world spinning around him. He couldn’t very well go inside and pull out the artifact and start reading on the floor in front of her. There was no easy way for him to get to the book, not with the three of them so close by. Like Emry’s Wheel of Fortune tarot card, he felt the wheel spinning and the window of opportunity closing. The chance to change his future was slipping away quickly, and there was nothing he could do about it. He would have to wait until Rune brought the book to him and hope she’d give him his five minutes of alone time with some monk magic.
He caught Lilah’s gaze with his. He read the goodbye in her eyes and felt the panic rise in his chest. It was too late. Not a chance in hell he’d get a look at the artifact again before it left the safehouse.
Charlie glanced back one last time at the safehouse door where Nike stood with a key in her hand almost identical to the one he held in his fist. He wasn’t an empath like Lilah, but he knew from the heaviness in the air that something was wrong, and that all three were watching him.
“Never mind. I’m mistaken.” He sighed his defeat and then stumbled down the steps, one at a time.
“Are you sure?” Lilah asked. She hadn’t moved from her place on the landing.
He turned to smile at her as his options faded and the crossroads opened into a single path. “I’m sure.”
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