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Chapter Text

Dramatis Personae

Prologue

Urgent Demand

The telephone rang.

The timing was a bit unfortunate, because I was in the lab, trying to drill the basics of potion-making into my new apprentice. At the moment that training mainly consisted of getting her to stop cutting corners long enough so that she wouldn’t blow up my lab or create a concoction that would eat through the beaker, the burner, the table, the floor, and from there presumably all the way to the centre of the Earth.

There had been a few near misses so far.

‘The phone’s ringing,’ Molly pointed out helpfully.

‘Forget the phone,’ I said, trying to direct her attention back to the bubbling brew in the beaker. I didn’t need Bob’s trained eye to see that this one, like many before it, was seconds away from failure. Or disaster. Or both. ‘You need to focus, Molly.’

‘I am focusing!’

She was not, and it showed. She screwed up her face to demonstrate effort and focus, but the potion only frothed and bubbled, and finally belched out smoke and foul air before giving up the ghost entirely.

I turned the burner off.

You win some, you lose most.

I tried to remember if I had been such a trial as an apprentice, and, upon due self-reflection, reached the conclusion that the answer to that question was probably yes. My appreciation for Ebenezer McCoy’s patience with my obnoxious and rebellious teenage self had grown considerably – if reluctantly – since I had acquired an apprentice of my own.

Turns out that mentoring isn’t for the faint of heart. Or the short of temper.

Then again, it was early days. Molly had time to improve, although the honing of her talent wasn’t the thing that really worried me. The lack of good judgement did that. The tendency to solve her problems with magic – and not necessarily the White Council approved sort – could still get her executed. And me with her.

Molly coughed to get the smoke out of her lungs. ‘At least you can answer the phone now,’ she offered, semi-apologetically.

Whoever was calling, they were persistent. The ringing stopped for maybe five seconds, but then started all over again. I tried to remember if I had missed an appointment, or pissed someone off. I came up empty.

‘You can clean up the mess,’ I said, because as a mentor I could absolutely delegate the tasks I didn’t like to my complaining underling, claiming that it built character. Of course, my life would be much easier if it was character that Molly lacked. Getting her to think before she reached for her magic and teaching her to exercise sufficient self-restraint were the real challenges.

Molly grumbled a bit, but mostly for show. We had established early on that I called the shots and she followed the instructions.

The phone was still ringing, which made me uneasy. I don’t get a lot of phone calls at home. If Murphy really wants me on a case, she tends to show up at my door if I don’t answer the phone. This was not her style. And I hadn’t given out my personal number to any clients.

Only one way to find out. I picked up. ‘Harry Dresden.’

‘Finally!’ a female voice exclaimed on the other end. ‘I have been calling you for at least ten minutes now.’

It took me a moment to place her voice. ‘Bradamant?’

Bradamant was my brother Thomas’s boss, so on the rare occasion that she called, it was him she was after. Which suits me well enough, because my experiences with my world’s current Librarian-in-Residence have never been amiable. Or even polite. Kai’s description of her as a rude, back-stabbing nuisance has not been disproven so far.

‘Thomas isn’t here,’ I said helpfully.

‘I know that,’ she snapped in the kind of voice that some eighteenth century aristocrat would have envied; it was custom-made for barking orders at troublesome peasants. ‘It’s you I wanted to speak to. I have a case for you.’

Since Bradamant’s main priority as a Librarian was book theft – or book purchase, but that was more the exception than the rule – I had a pretty good idea what she wanted me for. ‘I don’t provide magical aiding and abetting to theft,’ I said.

I didn’t have any moral objections to her mission. Depositing books from this world into the Library stabilised it, stopped it from sliding all the way to the depths of chaos. After Venice, I’d have shoved books in there by the truckload if they’d let me.

My reluctance to work with Bradamant had more to do with the fact that she had a well-established, well-earned reputation for getting others to do her dirty work for her. She’d reap the rewards, but if there was blame to go around, she’d make sure her partner or apprentice was standing in front of the fan when the shit hit. Thomas, himself no stranger to double-dealings and backstabbing, was more than a match for her, but I had no ambition to volunteer myself as her next convenient scapegoat.

Besides, Bradamant didn’t need me. She had the Librarian cheat code in the form of the Language. She could simply state her desire and reality would bend to accommodate her.

She huffed. ‘You are a private investigator, are you not?’

I confirmed that this was indeed the case, but if she wanted my services, she could telephone my office and make an appointment. Like any other client.

Clearly Bradamant didn’t consider herself as just any other client, because she growled impatiently. ‘This is urgent,’ she snapped. ‘I need you to investigate a person.’

Realising that there was no getting rid of her until I’d heard her out, I asked: ‘Who?’

‘I won’t discuss it over the phone,’ she replied. ‘Come to my office. At your earliest convenience.’

I embarked on a very good speech about how I wasn’t a dog that she could tell to sit and give paw, and that it really wouldn’t hurt her to say please every once in a while, but I was wasting my breath; she had already hung up.

‘Who was that?’ Molly asked.

I bravely resisted the urge to describe Bradamant with a few choice words that would make Molly’s father wince. After all, teachers are meant to give good examples.

Please stop laughing.

‘Bradamant,’ I replied instead. Our foray into all things magical and supernatural had not yet extended to the Library, so I gave her the quick rundown. ‘Bradamant is the Librarian-in-Residence for our world,’ I concluded.

‘But what does she want with you?’

Despite my annoyance, I did want to know the answer to that question myself. I didn’t like Bradamant, but this behaviour was out of character for her. By which I meant that she didn’t like me and usually took trouble to avoid me as much as humanly possible. And as much as I didn’t like her either, I had heard the sense of urgency under all the impatience. Something wasn’t right.

‘I’ll drop you home and check it out,’ I said.

‘Or I could come with you and help?’ Molly suggested hopefully.

‘I promised to teach you magic, not investigation.’ I doubted she had the talent for it. She was bright, but impulsive, and she had little inclination for curbing her own impatience.

‘What if I want to learn both?’ she countered.

I didn’t think she wanted to, not really. Private investigation might sound mysterious and intriguing, but what novels and films usually fail to mention is the boredom, the danger, the rude clients, and the frustration of a case that’s going nowhere. Not to mention the bad pay.

There’s a good reason I live in a basement apartment and not in a mansion.

Then again, a quick introduction to boredom and a rude client – both of which I could practically guarantee – might turn her off investigating really quickly.

So off to the library we went.

It was moderately busy when we entered. I knew Bradamant had an office some stories up, but I had never been there myself, so we presented ourselves to the receptionist and announced that we had come to see Bradamant Adams – Librarians, as I understand it, don’t usually go in for surnames, so Bradamant had picked one at random to use while she was stationed here – and got ourselves an invitation and a detailed route of how to get there.

‘Do we take the lift?’ Molly asked once she heard it was on the ninth floor.

‘You’re a wizard now, grasshopper,’ I reminded her. ‘Two of us might break the electronics down even faster.’

She muttered when confronted with the downsides of wizardry, but obediently trudged up the stairs behind me.

Everything was very scholarly and academic in the corridor where Bradamant’s office was. It was as if everyone had collectively decided to dress as stereotypically mousy librarian as they could, accessorising with books, clipboards, and pens tucked behind the ears. I wondered if there was a dress code Molly and I were now violating.

Bradamant had her name on the door. Thomas’s was nowhere in sight.

I knocked.

No answer.

Since Bradamant’s “at your earliest convenience” definitely meant “right this instant” that didn’t sit right with me. I knocked again and Listened.

Nothing.

‘Maybe she’s out?’ Molly offered.

She wouldn’t demand that I come over immediately and then step out for a cup of coffee. My finely honed detective instincts told me that the situation might be a bit more pressing than I thought.

I knocked one last time, but when that yielded no response, I tried the door. It was unlocked, which saved me the need to do something illegal.

‘Wait here,’ I told Molly.

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at me defiantly. ‘I am not afraid.’

She was – or very nervous at least – but that was not the reason I left her. ‘This could be dangerous. Or it could be a crime scene. The fewer people that trample all over it, the better the police will like it.’

I stepped inside and closed the door in her face before she could argue.

The place looked as if a tornado had gone through it. Two bookcases had gone over, their contents scattered to every corner of the room. One of the books had gone into the computer screen. Thomas lay in the middle of the mess, flat on his face, arms outstretched, not moving. I didn’t see any blood.

I knelt down beside him and felt for a pulse. It was still there, strong and steady, so I shook his shoulder. ‘Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.’

The response took some time. ‘If you try to kiss me, I will punch you,’ Thomas groaned.

I helped him to sit up. He was a bit cross-eyed, so I leaned him against the desk. ‘What happened?’

‘Hit over the head.’ He rubbed the back of his head, grimacing.

‘What with? A baseball bat? An anvil?’ It takes a lot to take down a vampire.

 He gestured beside him. ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. All four pounds of it.’

‘You were knocked out with a book?’ I found that hard to believe.

Thomas gave me a disgruntled look. ‘I didn’t expect it. She came at me from behind. And she hit me at least a dozen times.’ He rubbed his forehead too. ‘All right, and I hit my head on the desk on the way down.’

That would have done it.

‘She?’

Thomas gestured around vaguely. ‘Emily. New apprentice.’

I didn’t see anyone. More to the point, I didn’t see Bradamant anywhere either. ‘And Bradamant?’

Thomas blinked and looked around. ‘What happened here?’

‘I had hoped you could tell me.’

But he couldn’t.

‘Though I think the book’s gone,’ he offered, glancing around the carnage.

‘What book?’

‘The book we retrieved on our last mission,’ he clarified. ‘Unless Bradamant still has it?’ He looked around for his boss and nearly toppled over. The apprentice really had done a number on him.

‘Sit down, damsel,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look around.’ I got up before he roused himself enough to give me the promised punch.

Given the lack of alarm in the corridor outside, the book-wielding Valkyrie had not continued her rampage out there, so I inspected the door to the Library at the other end of the room instead.

The door was ajar.

A foot in a no-nonsense boot stuck out on my end. The ankle it belonged to – as well as the rest of the body, I assumed – lay on the other side. I peeked in and found Bradamant lying in almost the exact same position as I had found Thomas in, only she had blood in her hair and a gentle shake of the leg failed to wake her up. Her right leg was definitely broken, and I didn’t like the look of her left arm either. I suspected she had tried to fend off a blow and had her arm broken for her trouble.

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the apprentice was apparently a force to be reckoned with.

I left her there for a moment – still with her foot in the door, because if it fell shut I’d never get it open again – and went back for reinforcements. It wasn’t going to be Thomas; he was still trying to remember how to get back on his feet. The initial attempts were not promising.

I stuck my head outside the door. ‘Come on, grasshopper, I need a hand.’

‘Really?’

That almost made me think better of it, but I needed the help. ‘How’s your first aid?’

‘… Not great?’

‘Just do as I say, then.’

I let her inside and closed the door before we attracted a crowd.

‘Molly, Thomas,’ I introduced. ‘Thomas, Molly.’

Thomas nodded. Molly stared. Most people of the female persuasion – as well as some of the male – do when they first meet him. Even the growing bump on his head didn’t lessen his appeal. Go figure. Even when he’s injured Thomas looks like some sort of handsome hero.

‘Over here.’

I pushed the door open further and got my first good look at the Library. I don’t know what I had expected, but it looked like a library. It had bookcases from floor to ceiling, crammed full of books of all shapes and sizes. I might have been tempted to pull one off the shelf, but the titles were some kind of foreign – something eastern European, maybe? – and I couldn’t have read them anyway.

Life is full of disappointments.

‘Hold the door open,’ I instructed. ‘I’ll carry her out. Do not let that fall shut.’

Without the Language at my disposal, I’d never be able to get back in and notify Bradamant’s superiors.

Molly, maybe taken aback by the unconscious woman at our feet, didn’t argue. She nodded, face a few shades paler, and parked herself against the door.

I crouched down next to Bradamant and felt for a pulse. I found one, and she seemed to be breathing fine, but she didn’t wake up when I lifted her and carried her out the Library. As someone who’s had more than his fair share of head injuries, I could testify that they were no walk in the park. And Bradamant didn’t have my handy wizard can-heal-from-almost-anything-eventually thing.

‘Is she breathing?’ Thomas asked. He pulled himself to his feet at last, though he needed to lean on a desk to stay upright. He didn’t look great, but he recovered a lot quicker than I would have done. Being a vampire endowed him with some perks. ‘Does she have the book?’

‘Breathing, but no book,’ I reported, wondering where to put her down. A couch would have come in handy right about now. Failing that, a clear patch of floor would have to do.

I expected all kinds of bitching about that when she woke up.

‘Should we call an ambulance?’ Molly asked, still standing at the door.

‘Thomas can do that,’ I said.

Thomas took the hint and reached for the telephone.

While he was busy explaining where he was and what had happened and what had been done to the patient to get her to her current state, I had a moment to wonder what to do. Given recent events, new apprentice Emily was beginning to look a lot like the person Bradamant wanted me to investigate.

So far I had next to nothing to go on. I didn’t even know what this girl looked like, or what she wanted. Or why she wanted it. Not that I didn’t understand the urge of knocking Bradamant on the head – I’ve had that urge myself, usually about two seconds after she opens her mouth – but knocking Thomas out as well and running off with a book the Library wanted suggested another motive than merely being fed up with her mentor’s many antics. And I had no idea where to begin looking for one.

Never a good start to any investigation.

‘I’ll report to the Library,’ Thomas said when he put the phone down. He took one step and swayed on his feet. Apparently all four pounds of Shakespeare’s complete works could really take it out of a vampire.

Something to keep in mind.

‘You’d better stay with Bradamant,’ I said.

Thomas glowered at me, but being concussed ruined the effect. ‘I’m fine.’

He wasn’t, but pointing that out would get me nowhere. ‘Do you know where Emily’s gone?’

He didn’t.

‘So what if she comes back to finish the job and no one’s there to do something about it?’ At this stage in the proceedings, that was a legitimate concern. Of course, if he went with Bradamant to the hospital he could sit down and rest.

Thomas knew that. He muttered something about younger brothers being a pain in the arse, but he sat back down. ‘There’s a computer near the Traverse. First right, second left, then the first left again.’ He wrote down something on a piece of paper. ‘Bradamant’s log-in. Send an email to Kostchei.’

I’d heard Irene mutter that name before as if it was a curse. Of course, maybe the protégée took after the mentor. Like dogs and their owners.

‘Hold the door,’ I told Molly, who had been about to come back into the room. ‘Stick a few books in it if you have to, but do not let that door close.’

She nodded tersely. Maybe it dawned on her at last that she was in over her head in something she didn’t fully understand and wasn’t equipped to deal with.

I went back into the Library again. It was a strange place. Quiet, of course, but it went further than that. The air, the make-up of the place, was different from my own world. Venice had been different too, but there everything felt wrong. That wasn’t the case in the Library.

I took the first right and ended up in a long hallway with ceiling-high bookcases on both sides. And a window to my right, looking out and down onto a quiet medieval looking street at night-time.

Which did not make sense.

I backtracked, but in the corridor I had come from the bookcases stood at least five rows back, well within the space that the window told me was the outside.

This place was giving me a headache. And I thought Faerie was messed up. Turns out that the Library could give them a run for their money.

I ignored the dimensions that didn’t make sense and went in search of the promised computer. I found it already occupied. The user looked more like a 1920s gangster assassin than a mousy librarian, but since only Librarians could get in here – or at least only Librarians could open the Ways into this place – this man had to be one.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I would like to report a crime.’

Chapter Text

Irene’s hair was merely damp by the time she and Kai entered Coppelia’s office. She didn’t feel exactly warm, but the change of clothes did help. She attributed the cold mainly to the horror that a Librarian had been attacked inside the Library itself.

The implications did not bear thinking about.

She kept her face as neutral as she could as they presented themselves to Coppelia. ‘We came as quickly as we could.’

As quickly as Kai had allowed; the insistence on a change of clothes after her dive in an icy cold lake had been his. Irene would have gone straight to Coppelia, tracking water all the way and probably catching pneumonia in the process.

Coppelia glanced at Irene’s wet hair, but didn’t comment. ‘I see.’

‘How is Bradamant?’ Irene asked. She didn’t like her colleague, but that didn’t mean she wished ill on her either.

‘She has been taken to a hospital in G-692,’ Coppelia replied, which told Irene nothing useful. ‘She was unconscious due to a wound to the back of her head, last I heard.’

That spelled nothing good.

‘Do we know anything more yet about the attack?’ Irene asked, biting down hard on her apprehension in favour of focusing on the job in hand. ‘Who did it?’

Coppelia’s face turned into a disapproving mask. ‘It seems her new apprentice proved treacherous. She incapacitated both Bradamant and her assistant.’

That was no mean feat. Knocking out a vampire was not a bit of light exercise. And Irene had seen Thomas fight. He was no lightweight. What took down normal people was nothing but a mild annoyance to him. Irene had watched him shrug off blows that should have knocked him straight to hospital. Or to the nearest undertaker.

But since she wasn’t entirely sure Bradamant had ever bothered to mention Thomas’s vampirism, she framed her next question very carefully: ‘How did she manage to do that?’

And, now that she thought of it, she had never heard that Bradamant had taken on a new apprentice. When had that happened, and how had she missed that?

‘With The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, apparently,’ Coppelia replied wryly.

Irene winced in sympathy, but then frowned. That shouldn’t have taken Thomas out of the game. And it didn’t explain why she and Kai were here either. ‘But if we know who did it, why do you need us?’

‘Because the girl has fled.’

Yes, that could be a problem. Coppelia didn’t say so, but Bradamant had been attacked inside the Library. The apprentice could have fled into G-692 again, or she could have gone deeper into the Library. She might even have found a way to secure passage into yet another alternate. After all, someone resourceful enough to take down two people, one of whom was a nearly indestructible vampire to boot, could definitely find a way to escape the consequences of her actions.

Especially if she had planned for it.

‘I see,’ Irene said.

Coppelia wasn’t done. ‘It seems Bradamant thought it wise to hire a private investigator. I believe you already know Harry Dresden?’

Kai tried not to smile. Without success, but at least he tried. Irene didn’t mind hearing that they’d be working with him again herself. Of course, it served to remember that each time their cases had collided so far, everyone involved walked away with a new collection of injuries. And they left devastation in their wake.

Coppelia stared at her, as if she had picked that thought right out of Irene’s head. ‘Please take care to leave all the buildings involved standing this time. The Library’s resources are not, whatever you may think, infinite.’

Irene studied the floor intensely and did her best not to think about the fortune in damages she had done to the Field Museum and Bock Ordered Books. But at least the Council of Ten wouldn’t send an invoice for the destruction of their tower and the pileup of anachronistic boats in the bay.

Note to self: only wreak havoc in worlds that don’t know where to send the bill.

‘Noted,’ she said.

‘See that you remember it,’ Coppelia warned. ‘I should not need to remind you that you have an apprentice for whom you have to set a good example.’

Irene, who was well aware that Kai’s short-lived stint as a petty criminal meant she had nothing to teach him about legally dubious behaviour, thought this was a little unfair, but said nothing about it in favour of asking what it was they were actually meant to be doing.

‘Your task is to find Bradamant’s apprentice and retrieve the book she stole.’

Irene blinked.

‘What book?’ Kai demanded. Like Irene, he probably sensed that there was something more to this assignment than was immediately apparent.

The last time Irene’d had that particular feeling, she ended up fighting Alberich and a bunch of necromancers. And she’d nearly drowned. There was no indication that this next venture might turn out any better.

‘A unique copy of Jane Austen’s Emma,’ Coppelia said, and clearly this upset her more than the attack on Bradamant and the fact that the apprentice had disappeared.

Irene frowned. ‘Emma isn’t so rare,’ she pointed out.

‘It is in B-457.’ Coppelia fixed them both with a disapproving stare. ‘The government has banned it. All but a few copies have been burned. It is up to you to either retrieve the stolen copy or find a replacement.’

Ah, that was the kind of horrible assignment Irene had come to expect since she had been placed on probation. Now things made sense.

‘And the apprentice?’ she asked, although she could guess the answer to that one.

She had guessed correctly: ‘Bring her back.’

That made sense, of course. It seemed highly unlikely that a mere apprentice could have decided to knock out her two colleagues and make off with a priceless book all because her mentor was one of the most annoying people in the known worlds. This reeked of some premeditated plan. Even worse, Irene could practically feel the complications breathing down her neck.

Having Harry around didn’t seem like excessive luxury. More like a dire necessity.

Keeping her thoughts about this minefield of a mission to herself, she nodded briskly. ‘Has Harry been told to expect us?’

‘I believe he specifically requested the two of you.’

Irene knew Harry. Politely requesting help was really not his style.

‘We’ll do our best,’ Irene said.

‘You will bring back the book and the thief,’ Coppelia corrected. ‘We need the book.’

The tone dissuaded Irene from asking any more questions, and her kick against Kai’s leg stopped him from blurting out things he shouldn’t.

He kept his peace until they were a good distance away. ‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’

Irene was well used to her superiors not telling her things she really needed to know, but something about that audience today made her uneasy too. Coppelia had seemed at the same time preoccupied and laser focused. Irene had sensed an urgency in her tone, as if the stakes were higher than she had let on.

‘We have time for a little research,’ she said. ‘Maybe B-457 is sliding heavily into chaos and that’s why we need the book.’

‘Or,’ Kai speculated pensively, ‘there’s something in the book that makes it valuable, some information they don’t want falling into the wrong hands, like the Grimm book.’

The thought had crossed Irene’s mind. Part of her shied away from it, but she didn’t want to go in blind again, so research it was. But she made sure to find a room a long way away from Coppelia’s office before she allowed them to sit down and try and work out what was happening.

‘I’ll take the world,’ she said. ‘You look up the book.’

The world, as it turned out, was not on the fast track to chaos. In fact, it wasn’t on track – fast or otherwise – to anywhere. From all Irene could find it was a relatively stable world in between the extremes. It had slightly more order than chaos and so long as Fae and Dragons both continued to steer clear of it, it was likely it would remain that way for a while.

The world itself was low tech, high magic. They didn’t even have steam level technology yet, although recent reports suggested some countries were beginning to experiment with it. People got around by sailing ships or anything horse-pulled. The Traverse came out in the British Library in London, as it did in the alternate where Kai and Irene were stationed. War with France had been ongoing for the past two decades, but Irene’s information suggested that it was mostly fought at sea and on French soil, so they were unlikely to get in the middle of that.

So far, so normal.

The society in England on the other hand was not. It was a vaguely early nineteenth century kind of society, but with magic and with fast-changing trends. Magic, manners, and clothes were the areas of special interest, especially to the higher classes, and they apparently liked to change things up as often as the weather. The urgent note at the top of the report advised the visiting Librarian to report first to Librarian-in-Residence Agatha for a crash course in the latest developments before they tried to interact with anyone, lest they get arrested.

Irene really hoped the apprentice had escaped to Harry’s world and not to the book’s world of origin.

‘Anything?’ she asked Kai.

Kai shrugged. ‘It’s the basic plot of Emma, but with magic. The notes say it contains the kind of commentary on culture that the Society for the Promotion of Good Taste took offence to. They lobbied to have the book banned. And succeeded. According to the Library’s records, there’s only three copies left. And the stolen book is one of them.’

Because this wasn’t difficult enough already. ‘Any information on the whereabouts of the other two?’

‘One copy is in the possession of a Professor Leopold Henley,’ Kai said. ‘He’s turned his estate into a fortress. That kind of book collector.’

Irene had robbed that kind of book collector. It was never the kind of outing she had fond memories of. ‘And the other?’ she asked without hope.

‘Last seen at an underground auction two years ago,’ Kai said, apologetically. ‘Bought by a hooded and masked figure who paid a small fortune. In diamonds.’ So not even a currency to trace. ‘What about the world? Any chaotic influence?’

‘I think we can safely disregard that one.’ At least on the basis of the currently available information. ‘No Fae or Dragons, and the world is relatively stable. It’s slightly tilted towards order, but there haven’t been any major shifts in centuries.’

All very good information, but Irene couldn’t see how it was useful to the situation. As a rare book, of course it was important to the Library, but that still didn’t warrant Coppelia’s attitude towards this mission. Failure never looked good, but every Librarian had a failure once in a while. She’d never yet been given a mission where she was so explicitly told she was not allowed to fail.

What have I missed?

Only one thing was certain: they wouldn’t discover anything by sitting here and twiddling their thumbs until enlightenment happened to pass by.

‘We’ll focus on the apprentice first,’ Irene decided. As the mentor in this team, making the decisions was her prerogative. ‘With any luck we’ll find the book when we find her.’

Kai nodded. ‘We can always rob the Professor later,’ he agreed. ‘His copy isn’t going anywhere.’

Not until Kai and Irene got round to helping themselves to it. And Irene rather hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

By the time they reached the Traverse to G-692 Irene’s hair had finally dried and she was on the whole feeling slightly more optimistic about this mission than she had a few hours ago in Coppelia’s office. Harry had the connections in this alternate that could help them track down the apprentice. That gave them a place to start, and possibly some leads to follow. Irene had undertaken missions that started off worse.

The Traverse itself wasn’t closed. Someone had propped a book in the opening to keep it from falling shut. They found the culprit in Bradamant’s office, as well as Thomas, Murphy, and a girl Irene didn’t know. Bradamant was of course nowhere in evidence.

Irene thought the reunion might be slightly awkward, given that they hadn’t visited despite their best intentions, but Harry grinned when he saw them.

‘You’re not wearing your hat,’ Kai pointed out, which broke the remainder of the ice.

‘What hat?’ Murphy asked.

Harry made a face.

‘His wizard hat,’ Thomas clarified. ‘The pointy one with the embroidered stars.’

‘It’s currently all the rage in B-414,’ Irene said. Buying Harry a hat hadn’t been on her itinerary, but she and Kai had been in that alternate for a book – a relatively simple purchase, even though it cost a fortune – and the shop next door had several hats of that sort in the window. On sale. Kai and Irene both agreed that the opportunity was too good to miss.

There had been general mirth when they pictured Harry’s face when receiving the gift.

‘Every wizard who wants to be taken serious wears one,’ Kai added. He looked at Murphy and the girl. ‘I don’t believe we have met?’

Harry performed the introductions. ‘Kai, meet Karrin Murphy of the Chicago PD, and Molly Carpenter, my apprentice.’

Harry hadn’t had an apprentice the last time they were here. One day, Irene promised herself, they’d find some time to do the normal friend thing where they actually kept up with each other’s lives without these pesky crises getting in the way.

Kai could charm the birds out of the tree if he wanted, so he smiled and shook hands and won them over in a matter of seconds.

Irene did the smiling and the handshaking. But without the charm.

‘Anything new on this end?’ Irene asked when that was all out of the way. ‘Any sign of the apprentice?’

‘Disappeared,’ Thomas reported. He rubbed the back of his head, but if any damage remained, Irene couldn’t see it. Vampires healed fast. ‘But she packs a punch.’

‘Well, there’s no sign of her inside the Library,’ Irene said. ‘But it’s a big place.’

‘There’s no sign of her on the security cameras,’ Murphy offered. Irene wondered if Harry had called her in, or if she had shown up because this could technically be construed as a matter of some interest to the local police. ‘If she left the building, she must have climbed out of a window.’

Not impossible, Irene supposed. Resourcefulness was something that was actively encouraged in new Librarians.

‘We should check the security cameras,’ Thomas said.

‘I’ve done that,’ Murphy repeated patiently, frowning in concern. Maybe she too, like Irene, wondered just how hard he had been hit on the head.

To both their surprise, Thomas grinned wickedly. ‘The building’s official cameras, yes. We have installed some discreet ones of our own.’

Of course they had. Paranoia was another one of those traits Librarians were encouraged to cultivate. It seemed Bradamant had really taken that particular lesson to heart. Irene didn’t know why that still surprised her.

Thomas pointed to the smoke alarm above the door and the light fixture on the wall opposite. ‘Emily never knew they were there.’

‘So Bradamant didn’t trust her?’ Harry asked.

Thomas shrugged. ‘She was the new girl. You know how Bradamant is with information sharing.’

‘Only at gunpoint,’ Kai muttered darkly.

Thomas smirked. ‘Oh, not only at gunpoint.’

Irene decided that, after due consideration, there were things she didn’t need to know after all. ‘Where do the cameras send the recording?’ she asked instead. She really hoped the computer wasn’t it. She did not consider herself an expert, but the book buried in the screen and the shelf embedded in the case had presumably rendered it unusable.

Whatever this Emily had done, she possessed a talent for destruction that put her in the same league as Harry and Irene herself. The office had been completely thrashed.

Irene experienced an unpleasant sense of déjà vu.

Thomas produced an intact laptop from a concealed compartment of Bradamant’s fallen over desk. ‘Be prepared. Isn’t that the Librarians’ motto?’

‘I thought that was the Scouts,’ Murphy said.

The laptop had survived the forceful overturning of its hiding place, though Thomas refused to turn it on until both Harry and Molly had retreated to the other side of the room, citing destructive wizard powers on fragile electronics.

For just this once Irene’s mission got off to a pretty decent start. She’d had more missions than she cared to count – especially recently – where she lost days chasing her tail trying to pick up any information that could point her in the right direction. Now she got a whole dollop of clues presented on a silver platter. Or a small laptop screen, to be more precise.

The scene the recording opened on was fairly normal: Bradamant at her desk, Thomas in front of the filing cabinet, peering inside, looking for a specific file, perhaps. The apprentice, Emily, came as a bit of a surprise, though. Based on the destruction in the office and the damage done to its occupants, Irene expected someone built like a brick shithouse, not the delicate flower who’d look more at home at some sort of high society event. Apprentice-turned-criminal Emily maybe cleared five feet if she stood on her tippy toes, and could probably hide behind a lamppost if she turned sideways. She looked about as harmless as a fluffy puppy.

It beggared belief that someone like her had managed to knock out a near indestructible vampire with a book.

Something doesn’t add up here.

Irene spotted The Complete Works of William Shakespeare on the corner of Thomas’s desk. Emily, once she was done putting a slim volume in the bookcase, made a beeline for it and grabbed it. Then, calmly as you like, she walked up to Thomas and thumped her unsuspecting victim repeatedly on the back of the head. Thomas staggered, grabbed for the filing cabinet to keep his balance, but was knocked off kilter by the next succession of blows. He tried to change direction, heading for the desks to escape the onslaught. Emily followed him, delivering blows with her unconventional weapon with a business-like briskness that was far more chilling than any hysterical rampage would have been.

Both Thomas and she had their backs to the camera at this point, but it caught Bradamant’s expression front and centre. The first, predictably, was one of annoyance that something she didn’t like messed up her day. That quickly turned to alarm, then to horror, as her supposedly undamageable assistant didn’t shrug off the attack as he should have done.

Tellingly, her first instinct wasn’t to hurry to Thomas’s aid. She tried to save her own skin instead. She snatched another book with her off her own desk and then fled to the Library door as fast as her legs could carry her. She didn’t even spare a glance for Thomas.

As if I needed a reminder that she has all the social instincts of a starving wolf, Irene thought wryly.

Thomas, meanwhile, crashed into the bookcase, which toppled over and took both its neighbour and the filing cabinet with it, which at least accounted for some of the carnage; one bookcase fell apart on impact and all of them spilled books and papers everywhere. Emily moved through it all as if it couldn’t touch her, and strangely, it didn’t. Everything just seemed to miss her by a hair’s breadth.

Magic, maybe? That might explain why nothing hit her and why, despite her slight build, she was able to deliver blows of such force that they brought down even Thomas. But if so, it wasn’t like Harry’s kind, or it would have taken out the cameras.

On the screen Thomas struggled the last way to the desks, where one final thump finally sent him crashing to the ground by way of the edge of the desk. Irene winced in sympathy. That had to have hurt.

Emily stepped over him and set off after Bradamant. Bradamant had the door open and rushed through it, but nowhere near fast enough. Emily stuck her foot in the door, lifted her book and brought it down twice with an ease that suggested she did that sort of thing every day of the week.

Goodness, but she is ruthless!

The door obscured most of what went on for the next few seconds, though it seemed fair to assume that Bradamant didn’t have a good time. Then Emily reappeared, dragging at Bradamant’s motionless leg until it just about propped open the door. Having secured her door stop, she marched back into the office, wrenched a fallen shelf out from underneath a mountain of books, and proceeded to lay into every electronic device in the room.

The camera caught her face at last. Despite the fact that she had knocked out two people, she showed no signs of panic or distress. If anything, the lack of any visible emotion was what made the hairs at the back of Irene’s neck stand on end. Something was badly wrong with this girl.

She worked her way methodically around the room, destroying the computers and phones, which explained how the shelf ended up in the computer case at least.

‘Good thing we have back-ups of everything,’ Thomas said. He rubbed the back of his head again, but he looked much improved already. Irene was not a little envious.

‘Why would she destroy the computers?’ Murphy asked.

Thomas shrugged. ‘Beats me. Most of our work is on paper.’

And Emily didn’t touch the books and files.

‘Bradamant suspected something was wrong with Emily,’ Harry piped up from the other side of the room. ‘Why?’

‘She was secretive,’ Thomas said. ‘Disappeared a few times during our last mission.’

And Bradamant didn’t approve of secrecy unless she was the one indulging in it. Although, given what had happened today, maybe her instincts had been on point for once.

On the screen Emily had just about finished smashing up everything in sight. She gave the place another thorough look over and then calmly stepped through the door into the Library, leaving a perfect tableau of destruction behind her.

‘She could have gone everywhere,’ Kai exclaimed in dismay.

‘She’s gone back to B-457,’ Thomas predicted.

Everyone turned and stared at him.

‘Because that’s where the book comes from?’ Kai asked.

Thomas shook his head. ‘Because that’s where she comes from,’ he said. ‘It’s Emily’s home world. It’s why we were sent to retrieve the book; because we had a local expert.’

From what Irene had read B-457 was not a world to be attempted by the uninitiated, so that made some sort of sense. So far every clue pointed straight at the place, although all of it was circumstantial evidence.

‘If she tries to get there through the Library,’ Irene said, ‘she’ll need help to open a Traverse. She can’t do that; she doesn’t have the Language yet.’

Unless she really panicked and fled into the Library without thinking about it, she would have known that once in, she couldn’t get out on her own. And since the attack seemed premeditated, they’d have to assume the same was true for her escape. Which meant that, as a nice worst case scenario, she had help from inside the Library itself.

A traitor.

Oh, Irene had no illusions about the Library and the people who ran it. The game of politics was played there as well as everywhere else. But the last traitor, the last and only traitor, to come out of the Library was Alberich, a cautionary tale to scare the new recruits.

And with good reason.

Could it be that there was another?

Before her thoughts could run away with her and lead her down a rabbit hole of unlikely paths – contrary to what she liked to think, Alberich was not the source of all of life’s ills – Thomas cut in. ‘The Library keeps records on who goes through the Traverses, doesn’t it?’

Not exactly. ‘On who opens them,’ Irene corrected. ‘But it might pay to have a look at the records for the B-457 Traverse anyway.’

At the very least it gave them a place to start.

‘I’ll interview Bradamant,’ Harry offered.

He didn’t say that Bradamant was marginally more likely to speak to Harry than she was to Irene. Besides, Bradamant had hired him to a job for her.

Irene nodded. ‘Maybe some of your sources have heard something too?’ she asked carefully, because she didn’t know if Murphy knew anything about Harry’s devoted Faerie following.

Harry thought about it, then shook his head. ‘Not if it happened here, or in the Library.’

Which made sense, now that she thought about it; chaos couldn’t enter the Library, so the Pizza Guard would steer well clear. And if interesting events happened in B-457, they’d not be there either, or the levels of chaos would be higher.

Shame really; Irene rather liked the little pizza enthusiasts.

‘I’ll go with you,’ Kai announced to Harry. Presumably to keep Bradamant in line, though he was wise enough not to mention it. ‘And then Thomas can go with Irene.’

Irene wasn’t a big fan of splitting up, but she could see his reasoning. And, if push came to shove, Kai could get himself out of this world and back to B-395. And he was certainly no match for a book-throwing – of all the things to do with a book! – traitor, whereas Thomas was still looking somewhat cross-eyed.

Irene always thought that vampires were supposed to recover faster than this. Or they were, and Emily had done something else to Thomas that stopped him from bouncing back as fast as he usually did. Not exactly a nice and comforting idea.

Irene felt as if she had stuck her foot into a hornet’s nest and the consequences were as unpleasant as could be expected.

As cases went since she had been placed on probation, so far so normal.

Chapter Text

Murphy refused to go.

I tried to explain that the Library was its own entity, with its own jurisdiction over its own affairs, and that it seemed likely that most of the problems originated in another world entirely, which made it not Chicago PD’s problem.

Murphy disagreed. ‘The crime was committed in Chicago,’ she pointed out, daring me to contradict her.

The bump on the back of Thomas’s head did make it hard to argue with that. He had refused to sit this one out too.

‘We might have to go to another world to solve this,’ I said.

‘Can’t be more dangerous than Arctis Tor,’ Murphy insisted. ‘Or do you need a special bracelet to get in as well?’ She narrowed her eyes at me in a way that suggested she had successfully called my bullshit.

That’s the problem with lying to your friends; at some point the truth is going to catch up to you and you’ll be forced to explain what you did and take the consequences.

‘You don’t need a special bracelet,’ I said, without much hope that she wouldn’t push the matter.

‘Why not?’

Kai hurried to my rescue. ‘Because B-457 is not so steeped in chaos that lack of protection would corrupt your very nature, Miss Murphy,’ he explained. ‘If Harry had gone to Venice without protection, you would not now recognise him as Harry Dresden.’

That shut her up, although not for long. ‘You get involved in the strangest cases, Harry.’

She’d get no argument from me on that one.

‘Don’t leave without me,’ she ordered.

I hesitated, but getting in Murphy’s way usually didn’t end that well for me. Or any malevolent Faerie for that matter. It took a lot of guts to shoot someone like the Erlking too, and she hadn’t hesitated then either.

So I told her I wouldn’t and then distracted her by asking how she had known that something worthy of police attention had happened. Murphy had just shown up without explanation. Not unusual for a Knight of the Cross, but Murphy wasn’t a Knight.

‘Bradamant called,’ Murphy said.

Before she was knocked over the head, I presumed.

‘Why?’ Kai asked suspiciously. ‘She had already called Harry, hadn’t she?’

Murphy shrugged. ‘She didn’t say.’ Which sounded like Bradamant. ‘She only said that she was sure she was about to be attacked and to send assistance at our earliest convenience.’

Thomas hadn’t mentioned it. Of course it remained to be seen if Bradamant had told him the chance even existed that he was about to be clobbered over the head in the near future; it’d be easier to get a straight answer out of one of the Sidhe than to get any information out of Bradamant.

Interviewing her might be an experience not unlike pulling teeth.

One of the many joys of a wizard’s life.

‘How’d SI get stuck with that?’

Murphy grimaced. ‘The Library’s classed as the kind of thing no one wants to deal with, so we got it. Someone has to think of plausible explanations for all the property destruction.’ She gave me a bit of a look, although I couldn’t see how any of the Library’s antics were my fault. I just happened to associate with them.

My current associate assumed an air of wounded innocence that failed to convince Murphy. I didn’t even try.

‘I’ll see if I can track down Emily Ashwood on this end,’ Murphy said.

I expected she had fled into the Library, but it couldn’t hurt to eliminate the possibility, so I handed over the picture of the suspect that I’d got from Thomas. The book-throwing Valkyrie didn’t look like much of one. According to Thomas, she was of a height with Murphy, might even be an inch or so smaller. She had the kind of petite build that wasn’t much conducive to the martial arts. In the picture she smiled angelically, holding a book as if she was posing to have her portrait painted.

I thought she looked like trouble.

But maybe the fact that I knew she could take down a vampire and a tough-as-old-nails Librarian had something to do with that.

Something didn’t add up.

So Kai and I set off for the hospital to find out what that was. Molly tagged along, but I didn’t think she and Bradamant were ready to spend time together, so I left her grumbling in reception.

‘She could come with us,’ Kai said, gesturing back at Molly.

I shook my head. ‘She means well.’ She had meant well when she had messed with the heads of her friends too. ‘But she doesn’t have the judgement to go with her good intentions.’ And she reached for the magic solutions too easily for my liking, which was tricky enough when she did it in my lab, but disastrous if she did it in a hospital, where her powers could take out someone’s life support by accident.

It was hard enough for me to keep a lid on things long enough to not do exactly that.

Fortunately Bradamant was nowhere near the ICU. She’d been badly beaten up, but not badly enough to need life support. Three of her four limbs had fractures, three ribs had broken, another four were badly bruised, and she had too many contusions to count. The nurse on duty declared that she also had a concussion and, because of that, might be a little grumpy. I resisted the urge to tell her that the grumpiness was a personality trait rather than the result of any injury.

Kai too refrained from commenting.

We congratulated ourselves on our self-control when the nurse moved out of earshot.

We found Bradamant sitting up and complaining to another nurse. You could hear her from three corridors away, demanding that she be allowed to leave immediately and scoffing at the idea that she had a concussion on the sound logic that she had never had one before.

We almost turned back there and then.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said when we walked in.

The nurse turned to us with obvious relief. ‘Visitors!’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ she asked Bradamant.

The patient clearly didn’t share the sentiment. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

The nurse, clearly sensing we weren’t welcome any more than she was, beat a quick retreat. I couldn’t blame her.

‘You called,’ I pointed out.

She huffed. ‘Yes, and if you had shown up straightaway, this,’ she made an expansive gesture with her unbroken right arm, ‘wouldn’t have happened at all.’ Another one who thought everything was my fault.

I didn’t point out that the reason I was late – my apprentice – at least didn’t knock me over the head with my own books.

I sat down in the chair provided, because that’s what you did when you visited the sick. Kai chose to remain standing, so that he could loom menacingly at the foot of the bed. I kind of wished I had thought about that first. But Kai could play bad cop as well as I, so I dug up my friendlier side to be good cop.

‘What happened?’ I asked, trying to sound sympathetic and understanding.

Bradamant looked at me as if I had been knocked on the head with a four pound book. ‘I was attacked by my own apprentice,’ she snapped.

‘Why?’ I asked, because while I could definitely understand the impulse, something must have triggered it.

Bradamant seemed… uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know.’

Well, that was a lie. But on the premise of don’t offend the paying customer, I gave it another try. ‘When you called me, you didn’t expect to be attacked. You asked me to investigate someone.’

The apprentice, obviously.

Bradamant glared at me on general principle. ‘Well, yes. My apprentice, Emily Ashwood.’

My finely honed detective skills had led me to the same conclusion. ‘Yes,’ I said in the same tones as you would to a particularly slow child. Or the recently concussed. ‘But why?’

She didn’t appreciate my tone. ‘Other than the fact that she hit both myself and my assistant, you mean?’

‘You didn’t know she was going to do that when you called me.’ We were getting nowhere fast. ‘What made you suspicious?’

‘Her behaviour during our last mission.’

‘To alternate B-457,’ I said, to show that I had already done some homework.

Bradamant continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all: ‘It’s her home world. The societal rules are complicated. They have an extensive etiquette. If your manners aren’t up to scratch, you could get arrested.’

Which made it a minor miracle Bradamant was still at liberty. The silence both Kai and I observed probably spoke volumes.

She pretended not to notice. ‘Emily was brought along as our local expert.’

‘Thomas said you managed to get your hands on the book,’ I said, trying to hurry her along. ‘So she must have done something right. What tipped you off that she was up to something?’

‘It took some time to obtain the book,’ Bradamant replied. ‘So we stayed as the guests of the Librarian-in-Residence. We didn’t think anything was wrong at first, until the butler approached me one morning because he had seen Emily climb out of a window three nights in a row and did I know about that?’

‘Where did she go?’ Kai asked.

Bradamant glared. ‘I don’t know. I tried following her the night after and lost her. Thomas went the night after that, and he nearly got arrested. I think she was onto us by then, and alerted the authorities.’

The more I heard about this girl, the more she sounded like trouble.

‘And you still took her back with you?’ Kai asked incredulously. ‘Did you at least report it to a senior Librarian?’

Since that would have been the sensible thing to do, naturally Bradamant hadn’t bothered. ‘We had nothing tangible. She could have been out meeting a lover. Or she could have met an informant of her own, trying to get to the book without help.’

Because that was definitely what Bradamant herself would have done, getting the prize herself so she could make her colleagues look bad.

‘Judging by recent events she wasn’t meeting a lover,’ Kai remarked dryly.

‘Clearly.’ She turned back to me. ‘There’s something else.’

There usually was. The only question was if she was going to tell me without prompting or if I had to drag the information out of her inch by inch. ‘Yes…?’

‘I’m not sure she’s doing this of her own volition.’

I hadn’t seen the camera recordings up close, but even from all the way across the room, I could have told you that no one held a knife to the apprentice’s throat. She’d gone about her business in a matter-of-fact way, as if she did this every day, nothing special whatsoever.

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’ I suggested.

‘I did,’ Bradamant snapped.

I don’t think she was used to having to ask for help – although technically, she hadn’t actually asked anything yet – and she didn’t like it. She needed my help, but she’d be much happier not needing it. Tough luck; she wasn’t going anywhere covered from top to toe in plaster casts and bandages. I’d had clients like that before, but Bradamant effortlessly managed to place herself at the top of the list.

I had another go at patience. Fortunately, having an apprentice had given me plenty of practice at that. ‘Today,’ I said. ‘What happened today, Bradamant? Walk me through it.’

For a moment it looked as if she might snap at me again, but then she thought better of it. ‘Nothing special, at first.’ She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. Her usual self-confidence had taken a hit along with her head. ‘We came back from our mission in B-457 yesterday evening.’

‘Emily’s home world,’ I nodded, trying to hurry her along a bit. Normally I’d be happy to let the witness do all the talking, but Bradamant had a concussion, and I wanted to get everything I needed from her before an angry doctor chased me out or my wizard thing broke some piece of sensitive equipment.

‘She seemed preoccupied, but I didn’t think she knew I suspected her.’ She noticed my face, and added: ‘Obviously she knew we had tried to follow her, but during the last few days her behaviour was exemplary, and she didn’t have any more nightly escapades, so for all she knew we were convinced she had mended her ways.’

Or maybe Emily knew what kind of paranoid piece of work her mentor was and had simply bided her time. I kept that thought safely inside my head and asked instead: ‘Could she have overheard you when you called me?’ It seemed the most obvious answer.

She scoffed. ‘I’m not a novice! I know what I’m doing. I waited until she was out to make a purchase with Thomas.’ Until she was alone in the office.

So the attack could be part of some premeditated plan or Bradamant hadn’t been as discreet in her suspicions as she had thought. Also not impossible. Bradamant and discretion were not on first name terms.

She was already irritable enough, so I decided not to mention that. I didn’t want to find out how much of a punch she could pack with a plaster cast. ‘And then?’

‘I called you.’

‘I was there for that bit.’

‘You took an age to answer.’

I declined to comment.

‘I could already tell you were going to be late,’ Bradamant continued snootily. ‘So I called the police too.’

‘You told the police you thought you were going to be attacked,’ I pointed out. ‘But you didn’t think you were about to be, not then.’

Bradamant huffed. ‘Well, I had to get them to take me serious somehow. And I was attacked.’

I could understand why. ‘And then?’

‘Five minutes later Thomas and Emily came back. Thomas had some files to update and I asked Emily to reorganise the bookshelves. And then she attacked us.’

It took considerable self-restraint not to point out that I had seen that she hadn’t lifted a finger to help Thomas. Kai had more trouble; a faint pattern on scales danced over his hands and face, a clear indicator of a Dragon with a fraying temper.

‘No warning?’ I asked. ‘Did she say or do anything that you think was odd?’

Bradamant contemplated that. ‘No. I don’t think so. Well, maybe… She might have whispered something, just before, but I didn’t catch it. And it didn’t seem important later.’

‘Could it be magic?’ Kai asked. The scales had disappeared again. ‘Her world of origin has it.’

‘Not that I know,’ Bradamant said, shaking her head. ‘She has never performed any magic where Thomas or I could see. Even in her alternate not everyone has magic. It doesn’t run in her family. I assumed she was one of those without. But I think we can agree that there are several things we didn’t know about that little traitor.’

I was pretty sure I would have to find out before I’d sit at home with Mister in my lap again. The next few days looked challenging.

Cases involving the Library were never easy. Or injury-free.

‘Why did you think she didn’t do it of her own free will?’ Kai demanded. ‘It doesn’t look like that to me.’

‘Because of something she said,’ Bradamant replied.

I couldn’t help myself. ‘Before or after she hit you on the head with Shakespeare?’

‘After.’ She tried to look dignified, but that’s a hard look to pull off in a hospital gown. ‘She bent over me when she took my book.’

Kai and I waited, but Bradamant had reverted back to factory settings and made us ask. ‘And then?’

‘She said that she was sorry, and that she didn’t want to do this.’

I hadn’t met many people who went around apologising for knocking someone out. ‘And after that?’

‘She hit me with the book again and I passed out,’ Bradamant said. ‘I assume that sometime after that you finally showed up and called an ambulance.’

So she was sorry, but not sorry enough not to do it again. Great. If I’d had any lingering illusions about this case being simple, they vanished into thin air.

Kai frowned. ‘Why was the book in your office?’ he asked.

Bradamant startled.

I didn’t get it, but Kai explained, probably for my benefit, since Bradamant would be familiar with Library protocol: ‘Any books retrieved on a mission are supposed to be sent directly to the senior Librarian who authorised that mission. You came back here through the Library, so you had the opportunity to deliver the book, but you didn’t. You took it with you into this alternate. Why?’

Judging by the look on Bradamant’s face she had very much hoped that we wouldn’t have worked that out. Not that Bradamant ever had trouble bending or breaking the rules, but maybe this was the kind of rule a Librarian could get into very serious trouble over.

She didn’t look at either of us when she answered: ‘Emily asked if she could read it first.’

Kai’s eyebrows jumped up. ‘And you let her? After you already suspected her?’

‘Of having a lover,’ Bradamant snapped. ‘Not this!’

Fair enough.

‘Well, it looks like she planned it,’ Kai said, looking down at her. ‘She’d never get her hands on the book if it disappeared into the Library, so she made you hold on to it for easy access.’

‘I know that!’

Although hindsight couldn’t fix the problem. Still, something didn’t make sense. ‘If you only thought she had a lover in B-457, why did you call me?’

‘Just in case it was something else,’ said Bradamant, the world’s leading authority on professional paranoia. ‘Which it clearly is. I need you to find her.’

‘The Library has sent its own agents,’ I said, gesturing at Kai. And although no one had actually said as much, I got the impression that the Library had taken over the case.

That needed a few moments to sink in and then she swore in a language I didn’t speak. ‘That’s why he’s here. I take it Irene is around here somewhere too?’

‘You really should have alerted one of your superiors,’ Kai said unsympathetically.

I wondered how much hot water Bradamant was in, but it was probably safe to assume that it was more than she could handle. There was nothing more Bradamant could tell us that I hadn’t already heard from Thomas, so we left her to stew. The unfortunate nurse due to check up on her got a chewing out we could hear all the way in reception.

‘And?’ Molly asked when we joined her.

‘And I am dropping you off with your parents,’ I said. ‘I’m going to have to go to another world. You’re not ready for that.’

And from what I’d heard about B-457, that world wasn’t anywhere near ready for particoloured hair and a ton of attitude.

‘I’m never going to be ready if you don’t let me learn,’ she complained.

How to explain this? ‘Molly, you’re still very new at this. I barely know what I’m walking into here. I won’t have time to mentor you. And one wrong step could get us arrested there. Can you honestly tell me you would do as I told you, without argument?’

Molly opened her mouth and then closed it again. She had her faults, but dishonesty wasn’t one of them.

‘I’m giving you the key to my apartment,’ I said, to soften the blow and because I did need someone to feed my cat while I was away. ‘You can feed Mister and continue your studies. Your book studies,’ I added hastily. ‘Nothing practical.’

Her face fell, but she nodded.

It would be a good test to see if she was ready to handle a little more responsibility. I didn’t like leaving her unsupervised, but she’d have to learn sometime. And it was better than the alternative, taking her along into the kind of situation she definitely was not ready for.

‘So I’m going home?’

‘I’m taking you home,’ I agreed. I wanted a word with Michael anyway. Not that he needed me to tell him to look after his daughter, but I’d feel better if I did. Turns out that mentoring comes with a greatly increased sense of responsibility.

Kai managed not to comment on the state of the Blue Beetle, but his face spoke volumes.

‘Snob.’

‘You could just get a bigger car,’ he grinned. ‘Maybe one that talks to you and tells you when you haven’t closed your door…’

I told him where he could stick his bigger car.

He informed me that was not anatomically possible.

Molly rolled her eyes, but slid into the back seat without comment.

I used the drive to get some thinking done. Not unusually, I had no idea what I was really getting into, except that it felt like somewhere below the surface lurked a lot more than I was currently seeing. Not my favourite sort of case.

‘How long will you be gone?’ Molly asked when she got out of the car in front of her parents’ house.

‘I don’t know.’ And not my favourite answer to give either. How did I keep getting involved in cases like this?

Michael opened the door before I could knock. ‘Harry. Molly? Has something happened?’

‘No one’s hurt.’ Except Bradamant, and I wasn’t sure I cared that much. ‘I have a case.’ I gestured behind me at Kai. ‘Library business. In another world.’

He didn’t ask me why I didn’t take Molly along. ‘What do you need?’

If I asked him to come along, he would. So I didn’t. I didn’t think Knights with big swords were on trend right now. ‘Just look out for Molly while I’m away. She has permission to use my apartment to continue her studies and feed my cat.’

‘And your dog?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll take Mouse with me.’ He liked Kai and Irene – the gigantic box full of treats had made him even fonder – and he was a better judge of character than most people. I’d like him sniffing out the good and the bad in a world where I didn’t know the rules. And I’d like him to have a good long look at apprentice-turned-traitor-turned-possible-damsel-in-distress as well.

Michael gave me a meaningful look. ‘What about Lasciel? Is she coming too?’

Kai and Molly were both out of earshot; I’d checked.

‘She’s still there. She’s… quiet, lately.’ It might have worried me a bit more if I hadn’t known that she wouldn’t get anywhere with my subconscious either. ‘Another world is the best place to take her anyway. She doesn’t like it. She knows I can’t get to her coin from there even if I wanted to. And she doesn’t like other worlds either.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Unknown territory,’ I explained. ‘She doesn’t do too well with not knowing.’

Michael didn’t take this as the reassurance I’d meant it as. ‘Harry, you’re underestimating her. She’s old. She understands people. Making her angry only motivates her to destroy you. And she will.’

‘No, she won’t.’

I had pushed her to her limits after Venice, and she had almost beaten me down then. But I had come out on top, because I had an ace in the hole.

‘Harry…’

I didn’t let him finish: ‘I told her that if I started to suspect I was losing control, I’d come straight to you.’ And she had been meek as a lamb since then. Plotting revenge, probably. Whatever progress we’d made in our working relationship had been spectacularly flushed down the drain. But so long as she didn’t bother me and didn’t show me things that weren’t there, I wasn’t that bothered about it.

Michael promptly shut up. We both knew what that meant.

‘Be careful,’ he said at last.

‘When am I not?’

Michael said nothing in a way that spoke volumes.

Chapter Text

The Library was dimly lit. Irene had noticed before that some of the lights had been shut off or didn’t seem to be giving off quite as much light as they should, but she had dismissed it as a figment of her imagination. Besides, she’d had bigger problems. But it seemed even darker now than it had been on the way to G-692, and she couldn’t so easily dismiss it anymore.

Something wasn’t quite right.

‘Is it normal for it to be this dark?’ Thomas asked, bursting Irene’s happy bubble that this was all in her head.

‘No,’ Irene said. She had been in and out of the Library for practically all her life, and this had never happened before. The lights were always on. They didn’t get turned off, because you never knew where a hurried Librarian would come in and you couldn’t leave them trying to find their way back in the dark, could you?

But now shadows lurked in corners and the absence of light plunged entire corridors in ominous gloom. Irene tried to convince herself that this was not some omen of ill-fortune, completely unconnected to the matter of a treacherous apprentice, but she couldn’t find enough arguments to support that hypothesis. But she didn’t really believe in coincidence either. Two major problems occurring simultaneously seemed a bit of a stretch.

Thomas looked at her face, correctly surmised that Irene didn’t have any answers either, and wisely didn’t ask any more questions.

It saved Irene the need to answer that she didn’t have the faintest idea either. Only a sudden sense of impending doom that everything she knew and trusted in was falling apart at the seams. The Library never had traitors – save one – but now it had. No Librarian was ever attacked inside the Library, but now one had been. And the Library’s lighting never failed. Until today. It was too much change – and not for the better either – in too little time.

‘We’ll need to see Coppelia,’ Irene said. Junior Librarians didn’t usually get access to the kinds of records they were after, but, given the severity of the situation, an exception might be made.

‘Not Kostchei?’ Thomas asked, but he grinned.

It took some effort not to ask him what he made of Bradamant’s mentor. Safe to assume he wasn’t a big fan. On the other hand, he’d been working with Bradamant for the better part of a year and he hadn’t run screaming for the hills yet. Maybe he liked that sort of character.

‘Coppelia authorised the mission,’ she said instead. ‘Requests related to that mission go through her first. Good to know for your Library career.’

Whatever that may turn out to be. Thomas’s role wasn’t against any rules that Irene knew of, but she’d never heard of any Librarian having a permanent paid assistant in an alternate before. Technically, Thomas had no official standing. He wasn’t a Librarian, he wasn’t an apprentice. And he was a vampire to boot. They hadn’t had one of those in the Library before. Ever.

If Thomas sensed the thousand-odd questions Irene had, he didn’t let on. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

The closer they came to the offices of the senior Librarians, the more people they encountered. Irene knew some of their faces, but most were young recruits, apprentices or newly initiated. No one walked around alone. Many had their heads bent together, whispering.

It was one more oddity. Ordinarily people had no problems talking at normal volume. Unlike many libraries in the alternates, no one would shout “shush!” in your ear if you chatted with your fellow Librarians.

So what has changed?

And is it related to our new mission?

Irene knew better than to expect that Coppelia would trip over herself in her haste to provide Irene with useful answers, but they might at least learn something.

Thomas leaned in close to Irene’s ear and did some whispering too: ‘Some of them say that Traverses are malfunctioning.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Traverses. Malfunctioning.’

So she had heard that right. Irene shivered. It must be one of those myths young Librarians told to scare each other. Irene had heard and told a few of her own in her apprentice days, some far more far-fetched than this. Everyone knew that Traverses didn’t malfunction.

Just like the lights never failed.

She shivered again.

Before her mind could run away with her – was it Alberich, was the Library falling apart, were they getting invaded, what is happening, should we run? – she took a firm grip of it and said: ‘That’s not our mission. We have a job to do. Let’s do it.’

Thomas looked at her. Was it the lack of light or were his eyes more silvery than the grey she was used to? Up close it was a bit hard not to notice how very, very attractive he was. Maybe that’s why his eyes stood out so much.

Thomas grimaced, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. When he opened them again, they were simple grey again.

Right, vampire. Funny how she kept forgetting that he wasn’t actually human. Probably had something to do with the fact that he looked very human. Very handsome, but otherwise normal. Which was what made him so dangerous. Or potentially dangerous. If Irene’s information was correct, his kind could kill with a kiss.

But Harry thought that Thomas was all right, and Irene trusted him. More to the point, Mouse liked him, and Irene definitely trusted him to tell the good guys from the bad guys. As far as she was concerned, Mouse had earned himself a lifetime’s worth of ear scratches, belly rubs, and treats, as well as her unwavering faith in his character assessment abilities.

Besides, Thomas hadn’t killed Bradamant yet, and everyone knew she likely had given him plenty of motivation for wanting to throttle her. Therefore his self-control must be phenomenal and Irene had no need to fear for her safety.

That settled, she returned to the matter in hand. ‘It’s likely nothing,’ she said, but didn’t really believe her own words.

‘And if they’re right?’ he demanded. ‘What if we want to go back to G-692 and we can’t?’

Irene meant to say that there was nothing to these whispers, but found that she couldn’t. On any other day, she’d have laughed about the very idea. But not today. When everything was already so out of sorts.

‘Then we find a Traverse that still functions and wait for Kai to find us.’ He’d told her before he could find her wherever she went. ‘He doesn’t need the Library to cross worlds.’

Thomas considered that answer, reached the conclusion that he wouldn’t get anything better than this, and nodded.

Coppelia’s door was closed, but when Irene knocked, her mentor called that she could enter. Irene opened the door and beckoned Thomas to follow her in.

‘Irene.’ You’d have to know Coppelia well to detect the surprise in her voice. Irene knew her very well. ‘And Bradamant’s assistant. To what do I owe the pleasure?’ You’d better tell me what you are doing back here after I’ve sent you out only hours ago is what Irene correctly translated from that sentence.

She hurried to oblige. ‘The apprentice Emily fled back into the Library after the attack,’ she reported briskly. ‘We have reason to believe she will try to return to her home world, B-457, and that she might have an associate there. We would like to see the records for the Traverse to that alternate.’

Coppelia studied first Irene, then Thomas. ‘Eight out of ten for concise reporting. You have however failed to mention how you reached the conclusion that she returned to B-457.’

‘She has nowhere else to go,’ Thomas said, matching Irene’s briskness every inch of the way. ‘And her behaviour on our last mission to B-457 suggests that she has an associate in that alternate. She took some extreme measures to avoid Bradamant and myself following her.’

‘Such as?’ Coppelia asked sharply.

‘Setting the authorities on us to have us arrested when we attempted to follow her on one of her nightly exploits.’

Judging by Coppelia’s face, this was the first she heard about that development, and she likely had some thoughts about Bradamant’s lack of action concerning her apprentice’s behaviour. Irene had a few of her own, but they wouldn’t get them anywhere now. ‘We could plunge into B-457 blind, but I’d rather have confirmation that she is not still lurking somewhere in the Library with some other scheme.’ Especially now that she had plenty of shadowy corners available to hide in.

‘Sound reasoning,’ Coppelia nodded. ‘And something that occurred to us senior Librarians as well. I have already requested and received the crossings into and out of B-457 for the past four weeks.’ She smiled meaningfully at Irene. ‘You are not the only one who can conduct an investigation.’ She retrieved two pieces of paper from her desk and slid them over to Irene and Thomas’s side. ‘Tell me what you make of that.’

Irene studied the records. Nothing much stood out at first. The alternate’s Librarian-in-Residence made a few trips in and out – not unusual. Two weeks ago Bradamant had opened the Traverse, going in. Yesterday she had opened the Traverse, going out.

‘Unknown?’ Thomas asked, finger tapping on the entry of this morning. Someone had gone into B-457, but the Library hadn’t known who?

Irene frowned. Maybe there was something in those whisperings that the Traverses didn’t work properly after all if this one had failed to record who had used it.

Coppelia’s face gave nothing away, but her voice did: ‘Unknown,’ she confirmed, equal parts disapproval and something Irene suspected was very close to worry.

‘What does that mean?’ Irene asked.

Coppelia’s face became very disapproving. ‘I should think that I shouldn’t have to explain the meaning of such a common word to you.’

Deflection instead of answering. That couldn’t be a good sign. ‘Why did the Traverse register “unknown”?’ Irene asked instead, although she was sure Coppelia knew very well she meant that the first time. Delay was never good either.

She had a very bad feeling about this whole thing.

‘Much better,’ Coppelia said. ‘The answer is that we do not know. Generally, all Librarians are recognised by their brand. It could be that the problem is with the Traverse.’ Irene’s mind drifted back to the rumours now flying around the Library. ‘Or, although this possibility is extremely unlikely, someone who is not a Librarian somehow found a way to open the Traverse.’

Emily, maybe, breaking out. The direction and timing of this particular use of the Traverse certainly lined up. The question remained how she had done it. The Traverses had been made so that only Librarians could use them. Magic from the alternates had no effect on them whatsoever.

Or so Irene had always been told.

She and Thomas exchanged a glance. Thomas didn’t seem particularly worried, but he didn’t seem about to a happy dance either.

Irene could practically smell the complications and all the trouble that came with them.

She hesitated briefly, because the chances of getting a useful answer were almost nihil, but going in without all the available information would be even worse, so she asked anyway: ‘Could the trouble at the Traverse have something to with the other malfunctioning Traverses?’

As predicted, that got shut down immediately: ‘That is none of your business, Irene,’ Coppelia said sharply.

Ordinarily Irene would have been content with that answer, but not today: ‘It seems it has some bearing on my current mission. I don’t much like the idea of getting stranded in an alternate with no way back.’

‘You won’t be,’ Coppelia said dismissively, but Irene wasn’t sure she bought it. ‘Your task is to focus on retrieving the book and the apprentice. Do whatever else you think necessary, but get it done as quickly as possible.’

Irene weighed the chances of getting better answers if she pressed on now, but decided against it. ‘Can I call in assistance where I think it’s needed?’

Coppelia studied her carefully. ‘Only if they already know about the Library. You are not authorised to initiate anyone else.’

Well, that shouldn’t be a problem. Karrin Murphy already knew all about the Library, and the other person she wanted to draft in also knew more than enough. ‘Understood.’

‘Speed is of the essence, Irene,’ Coppelia warned. ‘The Library needs this book, so if the choice is between the book or the apprentice…’

‘Understood,’ Irene said again, trying and failing to suppress the cold shiver down her spine. Coppelia could deny that this mission and the faulty Traverses had anything to do with each other until she was blue in the face, but Irene didn’t believe her. Something was going on, something important, and she was kept in the dark very deliberately.

‘Then I suggest you stop dawdling and get to work.’

Irene nodded, gestured at Thomas to follow her, and went to work.

‘I have been to B-457,’ Thomas said.

‘I know. You’re our local knowledge.’ So was the local Librarian-in-Residence, but given recent developments Irene thought it best to approach everyone not vetted by Mouse with extreme caution. ‘But there are far too many mysteries for my taste. We need a detective.’

Thomas’s eyebrows jumped up. ‘Harry?’

‘Harry and someone else.’ Harry did have an uncanny knack for getting to the right information, and so did Irene herself, but she could also admit that neither of them were in the running for Most Subtle Person of the Year. A mission in this particular alternate required a light touch, and possibly some undercover work. And she’d never met anyone who could disguise himself and blend in anywhere so well as Vale. ‘We’ll need to make a quick detour to get him.’

Thomas nodded.

Besides – and this she didn’t mention – she worried about Vale. She hadn’t seen much of him, but his behaviour had been… strange. There was no information – and Irene had spent her scant free time ploughing through the Library’s database – about what exactly excessive amounts of chaos did, what symptoms could be expected, over what time period these things happened… The only thing she did know was that Vale could, potentially, become Fae himself. Because he had some Fae in his ancestry. And because he fit the archetype of Great Detective so well. Becoming Fae for him would be easy.

And Irene hated it.

So dragging him to a more orderly world might not revert him back to normal, but it might at least slow the chaos down, or contain the chaos infestation in some way.

Not that she’d tell him.

He might deduce it for himself.

Of course, there was the minor issue of transporting someone chaos-contaminated through the Library. The Library wouldn’t let him in. But Irene imagined that she could simply send Kai to pick up Vale, transport him between worlds the Dragon way, and find her again once she stepped foot in B-457. Kai claimed he could track her down in some sort of mysterious Dragon way.

Time to put that to the test.

They had a bit of a walk ahead of them, so Irene distracted herself from the whirlwind of her own thoughts by asking some pertinent questions: ‘What’s the world like? B-457?’

‘Complex,’ Thomas grinned. ‘Easy to get arrested.’

Because of course nothing about this mess of a mission would be easy. ‘How’s that?’

‘Manners are subject to fashion,’ Thomas explained. ‘And what manners are fashionable changes as often as the weather. And if your manners aren’t up to date, well, you obviously don’t belong and if you don’t belong, you must be a French spy.’

Oh, bollocks. ‘And who determines what’s fashionable? The King? Parliament?’

Thomas shook his head. ‘Nope. The Society for the Promotion of Good Taste. They publish a helpful pamphlet several times a week with the latest updates about what is in and what’s out: Fashionable Manners, An Instruction for the Guidance of Polite Society.’

You could fill an entire pamphlet with that title alone. Irene felt a headache coming on. She hated worlds like that. In most alternates she could blend in with very little effort. Maybe people might think she was a bit odd, or her accent made her stand out, but her usual defence – a visitor from abroad – might get her arrested instead of giving her a free pass to be just a little different.

Getting arrested as a French spy didn’t feature on this week’s itinerary.

‘It’s more than just manners, right?’ she asked. ‘The Library’s database suggested what’s fashionable covers a wide range of topics.’

‘Mostly manners, clothes, and magic.’

Yeah, that might be a problem. Harry had Opinions about magic and the proper use thereof. Somehow Irene didn’t think he was going to take the concept of fashionable magic at all well.

Thomas laughed at her grimace. ‘Harry’s going to hate it,’ he predicted. ‘When we were there, it was all the rage to do summonings. Right now, who knows?’

‘Is it a problem if you can’t do magic?’

‘Not everyone can, so no.’ He grinned. ‘I got by on my good looks.’

‘Well, it clearly wasn’t your humility.’

‘Humility wasn’t considered a virtue last week.’

‘Lucky you.’

They both laughed. Irene decided she liked him.

‘So how did you get into all this?’ she asked, making an expansive arm gesture to indicate the Library. ‘Did Bradamant threaten you? Blackmail you?’

‘She offered me a job. I took it.’

Irene tasted a world of history and trouble behind those words, but also a flat refusal to elaborate. In that way he’d make an excellent Librarian; he’d never blab information he’d been told to keep to himself.

Irene couldn’t think of anything else to say, so they made the trip to the B-395 Traverse mostly in silence. She instead rehearsed her arguments for persuading Vale to come with her. Not that she thought she needed many; dangle a good mystery in front of him and he’d be off like a bloodhound. But what with him being so perceptive, there was every chance he’d figure out her ulterior motives for getting him off-world too, and he’d refuse to budge out of sheer contrariness. He didn’t like manipulation at all.

It's for his own good, Irene reminded herself. After all, he’d sustained the damage throwing himself headlong into danger for Kai’s sake. Irene owed him. They might not have made it out of Venice if it weren’t for him. And he hadn’t known what the risks were when he took them. Did it really matter if he knew nothing about her repairing the damage without his knowledge?

Irene checked both of them over before they crossed into B-395. Neither of them were dressed for it, but Thomas already wore a long coat; the standard Librarian uniform for when the local fashion had yet to be acquired. Irene could probably get by on the long skirt and blouse she already wore. They wouldn’t be here long enough to need to purchase anything.

The London of alternate B-395 may be filled with smog so bad that scarves worn in front of faces had become the permanent fashion, but it had begun to feel like home, like a place of her own to return to. Irene felt a pang of… something at realising it might be a while before she sat down with Kai in their lodgings again.

Those quiet moments had been too few and far in between lately, and she was, she realised, so tired. Dodging all over the known alternates might ensure she saw quite a lot of places and met a lot of people, but this alternate felt like home, to some extent. This was where one of her friends lived. This was where she had a place of her own to share with Kai.

She missed it.

They took a cab to Vale’s place. Thomas managed to take everything in without gawping like a tourist on his first trip abroad. Reluctantly Irene had to acknowledge that maybe Bradamant had actually known what she was doing for once when she picked him for the job. He certainly demonstrated the traits so encouraged in new recruits.

Maybe he’d make full Librarian one day.

Vale was at home; the lights were on. If he’d been out on a case, she’d have no idea when he’d be back. Irene might have been unable to wait for him, and she really wanted him on this case.

He opened the door himself. ‘Winters.’ He looked at Thomas. ‘A new associate?’

‘Bradamant’s assistant,’ she corrected. ‘Vale, this is Thomas Raith. Thomas, Peregrine Vale, the best detective I know.’

Vale arched an eyebrow. ‘Flattery is no use, Winters. You wouldn’t be here unless you required my help.’ He stepped aside to let them in. ‘Where have you left Strongrock? He has not been spirited away to strange places again?’

‘No,’ Irene said. ‘Not this time.’ Although she did keep her eyes open for any suspicious types with dubious designs on him. Or anything that might reactivate that wretched death curse. Neither she nor Harry had been able to determine if that thing was done now, or if it would periodically raise its ugly head again. Like malaria. ‘I have a difficult case. And I need your help. There’s a missing book and an apprentice turned traitor, currently on the run.’

‘Is that all, Winters? For a moment I thought you brought me something interesting.’

Irene didn’t reel back in shock, but that took effort. Vale had always been brusque, but he had never been this rude. He had changed, and not for the better. But how could she undo it?

‘It’s not simple, actually,’ she said, focusing on the task in hand. ‘The apprentice attacked another Librarian inside the Library. And she managed to open a door into an alternate on her own, which someone who isn’t a full Librarian isn’t able to do. Or shouldn’t be able to do.’

Fortunately, that did the trick. Vale’s eyes sparked with sudden interest. ‘You should have led with that.’

Irene proceeded to dangle tantalising bits, just to make sure she had reeled him in good and proper. ‘Or so we think. The Traverse was opened by someone “unknown” and that has never happened before, but the time and destination track with the traitor’s suspected movements.’

She left out the little snippet of Emily taking down a pretty injury-proof vampire with nothing but Shakespeare – weight of the book notwithstanding – because quite frankly, that was not her story to tell. Thomas himself didn’t really mention his vampirism unless he really had to, so Irene assumed he was a bit uneasy with the topic. If he wanted to inform Vale, that had to be his choice.

Unless, of course, Vale puzzled it out for himself.

‘No need to overegg the pudding, Winters.’ Vale smiled knowingly, but it was a friendlier smile, and the words were not so cold.

He’s still there. We’re not too late. So the sooner she could drag him into a higher order world, the better.

‘Come in. It is late, and you are ready to keel over.’

Irene opened her mouth to protest that, but realised she couldn’t. She tried to remember when she last slept, but it must have been sometime during her last mission – before her involuntary dip in a cold lake – and try as she might, she couldn’t quite determine how much time had elapsed since.

Library jetlag.

Not uncommon, especially among journeyman Librarians. They traipsed all over different alternates, sometimes in rapid succession, each with its own seasons and time zones. You could be in the midst of a winter night one moment, then in a summer afternoon an hour later, only to end in a Library where time did not exist at all. Small wonder that people got confused and disorientated if they did that long enough. The course of action recommended to cure Library jetlag was fortunately quite simple: one simply had to spend several days in one time and re-establish a good day-night rhythm. Alternatively one could remain inside the Library, provided they kept up a strict routine, though most found that hard to maintain, given that time inside the Library never moved at all.

Irene didn’t see either happening in her immediate future. Staying the night, getting a bite to eat, and sleeping for a couple hours was all they had time for.

‘All right,’ she relented. ‘Just a few hours.’

Chapter Text

By the time morning came around I had got pretty tired of my own head. Or, more specifically, its occupant. Lasciel’s initial sulk at the prospect of an off-world case had escalated overnight into what felt like full-scale panic.

‘I don’t know what you’re so upset about,’ I commented – inside my own head – as I rummaged around my tiny kitchen for something to eat. My faerie cleaning service kept my shelves well stocked, but mostly stocked according to their own preferences. And I drew the line at pizza for breakfast. ‘If you don’t want to see it, you can stay at the back of my head and talk to my subconscious.’

She flickered into being at the edge of my vision. After our trip to Venice she had settled on a Roman-style tunic as her standard outfit, although if she hoped to tempt me into anything with that skimpy dress, she’d be in for a rough awakening. I like to think I am not that shallow. ‘You throw yourself into danger deliberately, my host.’

‘No one’s tried to kill me yet,’ I pointed out. ‘And you don’t know someone will try to kill me. It’s a very mannered world, apparently. Killing someone might be considered bad manners.’

Not that this prospect didn’t cause me some concerns. After all, after I had stopped laughing at the idea of Bradamant getting arrested for a lack of polite behaviour, Kai had reminded me my own record in that area wasn’t spotless either.

I had begrudgingly admitted that he had a point.

Never mind, I’d dazzle them with my magical prowess and have all my bad manners completely overlooked.

Lash scoffed.

‘You know well enough that any case that involves the Librarians turns out highly dangerous,’ she reminded me. ‘You nearly died last time.’

I really didn’t need her to refresh my memory. Venice and the Train ride that followed had been making repeat performances in my nightmares these past few months. ‘I only very nearly died,’ I said. ‘So long as I don’t actually die, it doesn’t count. Besides, I promised to help.’

More because Thomas was involved, and I had to admit that the subsequent drafting in of Kai and Irene had only made it more enticing.

‘You have no obligation to them,’ Lasciel observed. ‘They owe something to you.’

‘They’re my friends,’ I retorted. ‘Friends don’t keep score.’

And I didn’t agree with her reasoning anyway. Kai incurred a death curse fighting one of my enemies, which made everything that happened after at least partly my fault, which made it my responsibility to fix it. We were even now.

Not that it mattered.

I sensed an emotion from her, but she suppressed it too quickly for me to get a read on it. I always thought it a little unfair she had an access all areas pass to my head, but she didn’t extend the same courtesy to me.

She only huffed in response.

I had hit a chord somewhere, though, and I thought I knew which one. ‘Right, I forgot, Denarians don’t go in for friendship.’

‘Friendships only weaken you, my host,’ she said. ‘Case in point, your last mission that featured Librarians. Oh, and the one before that.’

I had a quick vision of the highlights of my brief acquaintance with Alberich and shuddered in spite of myself. I retaliated with the highlights of my brief acquaintance with the Order of the Blackened Denarius, which would have been considered too extreme for even the most diehard horror fans.

She gave me a reproachful look.

‘You have done nothing to disprove my point.’

‘If it weren’t for Kai, your buddy Cassius would have bashed my brains out of my skull.’ And I was pretty sure I owed my continued existence to Kai – and to Irene too – a few more times since then as well. ‘And I didn’t see you lift a finger to save me.’

That shut her up.

‘Harry? You all right?’

I returned to the here and now with a bit of a jolt. I’d got so caught up in my in-house conversation, I’d kind of forgotten I wasn’t actually alone in the house. When it turned out that Thomas and Irene wouldn’t be back before midnight, I’d offered Kai the dubious comforts of my sofa. Neither of us could get into the Library without help, so we’d decided to give them until about twelve o’clock to come back on their own. After that, we’d kidnap Bradamant from her hospital bed and have her open the door to the Library.

We had four and a bit hours left until that happy event.

I considered lying, but if I started lying to my friends, I didn’t know where it would end. ‘Talking to the voice in my head,’ I said, which stunned both Kai and the voice in my head. I got the unflattering looks of disbelief in stereo.

Lasciel was at a loss for words.

‘Beg pardon?’ said Kai.

‘The voice in my head,’ I repeated helpfully. ‘The one that belongs to Lasciel, one of the Fallen. Her real self is locked in my basement in a cursed coin, but I touched the coin and now her shadow self hangs around my head trying to tempt me into digging up the coin.’

Kai’s expression changed to one of deep concern. ‘An evil entity lives in your head?’ The evil entity in my head took grave offence. ‘How long?’

I shrugged. ‘Few years.’

‘You had it when we first met?’

Lasciel didn’t like getting called “it” either.

‘Yep.’

Given how long it had taken me to confess my unwanted tenant to Michael, confessing to Kai was surprisingly easy. Of course, Kai didn’t have a big fancy sword that all the Denarians knew to fear. Instead he could turn into a winged beast that could kill me with one swipe of his claws. But I was pretty sure he never would. At least not until every other option had been exhausted. Michael had a duty to deal with me if I toppled off the rails. Kai didn’t. Maybe that made it easier.

‘Could we destroy the coin?’ he asked, pragmatically.

That thought had honestly never occurred to me. I blinked. Lasciel said nothing in a way that spoke volumes.

‘Like the One Ring,’ Kai continued, warming to his own theme. ‘Or a Horcrux. Or…’

Lasciel’s horror at the idea morphed into barely contained panic. ‘I think she gets the idea,’ I said, grinning. As solutions went, I think I preferred that one to the alternative.

The grin disappeared. ‘So where have you left the coin?’

In anyone else I would have suspected that the person asking had at least a little interest in potentially using the coin for himself, but this was Kai. He had more power than I could use in ten lifetimes. He didn’t need anything more. I didn’t think there was anything Lasciel could even teach him.

So I answered without hesitating. ‘Summoning circle in the lab. Under two feet of concrete.’ Which likely posed no challenge to a Dragon at all.

Kai straightened up. ‘Can it hear me?’

‘She hears what I hear, sees what I see.’ I’d grown used to that. Or rather, I didn’t think about it too much, which was better for my continued sanity.

Kai nodded solemnly and looked at me directly. ‘Then hear me well, evil creature. If you harm Harry Dresden or lead him down your wicked paths, I swear that I shall find your coin and destroy you utterly, every last bit of you.’

Lasciel didn’t cower. Not exactly. But I got a distinct whiff of discomfort that she did her best to hide.

‘Message received and understood,’ I reported.

‘It had better remember it,’ Kai promised darkly. ‘I am not at all sure we shouldn’t explore some options when we’re done with the angry apprentice, regardless of its continued good behaviour.’

‘We’ll hold it as a surety against her good behaviour,’ I said. ‘She’s supplied some useful information before.’

‘Your choice,’ Kai agreed.

‘I’ll keep you posted.’

We had breakfast in peace. Lasciel melted back to the very back of my brain, either plotting or hoping I forgot all about Kai’s suggestion. Mouse parked himself next to Kai and was rewarded by choice pieces of bacon and all the ear scratches he could wish for.

‘It’s not springing Bradamant from hospital that’s going to be the problem,’ Kai said as he fed a very grateful Mouse another bite. ‘It’s stopping her from going with us to B-457.’

Part of me thought it might be handy to have another person along who’d been there before, but not if the person in question happened to be swathed in plaster casts, and not if that person was Bradamant. How Thomas could work with her without running screaming for the hills remained a bit of a mystery to me. Besides, I could get us all arrested for breach of etiquette without help anyway.

‘Could Irene overrule her?’ I asked. ‘Because it’s her mission?’

Kai grimaced. ‘Maybe, but Irene’s still on probation. She doesn’t have a lot of authority right now.’

‘She’s still on probation?’ I counted back. It had been over half a year since our trip to Venice. I found that probation unfair to begin with, since we had actually prevented a war, got rid – temporarily at least – of some major troublemakers, and returned home with Kai in one piece. And, if I’d understood Lord Guantes right, Alberich stirred the whole thing up to begin with, and he was the Library’s own problem. Irene should have got a commendation for thwarting his plans, not punishment.

‘Library politics,’ Kai explained. ‘She should have waited for orders. Never mind that the senior Librarians would have ordered her to go after me anyway.’ His expression became suitably grim. ‘And they blame her for losing me in the first place.’

The more I heard about the Library and its internal politics, the more sinister it sounded. They might be the good guys. They certainly did good work. But their hierarchy and rigid adherence to orders gave me the creeps.

‘Anything I can do to help?’ After all, I had done the most damage. Not that I thought the Ten were going to send an invoice.

‘You’re already doing that,’ Kai pointed out. ‘If we get the traitor and the book, they might be suitably pacified enough to restore her to favour.’ He grinned at me, eyes sparking with mischief. ‘How do you feel about book theft?’

‘Never done it before.’

I may have broken a lot of rules – and yes, before you say anything, a lot of buildings too – and I had taken the Field Museum’s dinosaur for an unauthorised ride, but since I never planned to keep it, that didn’t count. Actually stealing something was a new one for me.

‘Welcome to my world,’ Kai said.

‘We find the apprentice, we find the book,’ I predicted optimistically.

Kai shrugged. ‘Unless she’s sold it. Or burnt it. But we’ve heard that an eccentric old book collecting professor has another copy. In his very own Fort Knox.’

If it came to that, the only question probably was if it’d be me or Irene that brought the house down. Maybe I should add “Cause less property damage” to my New Year’s resolutions list, where it could go the way of most people’s New Year’s resolutions.

Kai gave me a knowing look.

I did my very best to look innocent. Unfortunately, after you bring down an entire tower by yourself, people really don’t believe you when you claim not to destroy every building you enter.

A knock on the door saved me from actually having to make that claim. Mouse got up, wagging his tail. Good people.

Thomas and Irene brought news, and not the kind that brightened my morning. Because not only could the pretty Miss Ashwood knock out vampires, she could also most likely now open doors that should only be opened by full Librarians, because an unknown entity – i.e. not a Librarian – had somehow managed to open the Way into B-457. Another mystery.

Because we didn’t have enough of those already.

‘Then I thought we could use an extra detective on the case, so Thomas and I went to see Vale,’ Irene concluded. She shot me a mostly apologetic glance. ‘One who’s slightly better at… ehm…’

‘Subtlety?’ I suggested cheerfully.

‘Blending in?’ Kai offered.

‘Having a filter between his brain and his mouth?’ Thomas smiled angelically.

Irene blushed. ‘All three, actually,’ she admitted. ‘And everything’s just got more complicated.’

We sat down and Irene filled us in on what we’d missed, which apparently included the mysterious and unprecedented failures of the doors between the Library and the alternates.

My finely honed detective senses told me I was in over my head. Again.

Kai and I ran briefly through our frustrating interview with Bradamant. Thomas’s eyebrows tried to climb off his forehead when I told him that maybe Emily had been acting under duress, and Irene didn’t seem to buy it either. Fair enough, since I wasn’t sure I bought it either.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ Kai asked. ‘Other than going after Emily Ashwood? How are we going to find her in B-457?’

‘We’ll have to see what the situation is when we get there and decide based on our findings,’ Irene said, Librarian-speak for: no idea what we’re going to find, but we’ll make it up as we go along. ‘The local Librarian-in-Residence has a big house where we can stay for as long as we need to, so we’ll get the latest news from there.’

Normally I wouldn’t mind charging straight in, but in a society as complex as the one we were going to, it might pay to get the lay of the land first. Not my usual style, but there’s a first time for everything.

‘Do they have anything against dogs?’ I asked.

Irene seemed relieved. ‘Not that I know of.’ Mouse sat down beside her and pushed his nose into her hand in a shameless show of affection. ‘Have you run out of treats yet?’

I had treats until the end of my natural lifetime, and I told her so. ‘Where’d you get them from?’

‘A-782,’ she replied. ‘Most of Europe and Asia have a thing about pets, and apparently they have the best pet stuff in all the known alternates. It has a fascinating influence on their literature too, you know.’

‘Shall we go?’ Thomas suggested, interrupting what was sure to become a lengthy diatribe on A-782’s literature.

Irene opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again without saying anything.

So we went. I made sure to call Murphy to tell her to meet us at Bradamant’s office. If it were up to me, I’d have left her here, but wild horses couldn’t stop her from doing something she’d set her mind on, and she was a big girl. If she wanted to come, that was her choice.

And I kind of liked the idea of her watching my back.

So long as I got to watch hers.

I had packed most of my wizard paraphernalia last night. My ring was charged, my upgraded shield bracelet in great condition, staff and blasting rod polished. I had packed a few potions and a few ingredients, mostly to shut up Bob – who wasn’t coming, because talking familiars were currently out of style in B-457 – and shoved it all in my trusty bag. Irene’s gift of a wizard hat I had “accidentally” left on its shelf.

Thomas noticed. ‘Hats are all the rage right now,’ he informed me gleefully. ‘Especially if they are pointy and have pretty little embroidered stars. You really do need to be fashionable.’

I considered hitting him over the head, but refrained. My self-control was improving in leaps and bounds since I had acquired an apprentice.

Kai set off alone, to find a place where he could change into a Dragon and take off without alarming everyone within a five mile radius. He’d collect Vale from B-395, and fly him into B-457, where he’d find us again.

‘How?’ I had asked.

‘Easily,’ Kai replied. ‘I’ll just follow the trail of destruction.’ He disappeared before I had thought up a witty retort.

We made it to the library without incident. Not that I expected trouble, not unless Bradamant had discharged herself from hospital and decided to join us. But we remained happily Bradamant-free.

‘Harry?’ Irene insisted on accompanying me up the stairs instead of taking the lift with Thomas and Mouse.

I suspected ulterior motives. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing, actually.’ She stared hard at her feet. ‘Coppelia asked me to… limit the damage in B-457, if we can. The material damage, that is. Apparently you and I have gained a bit of a reputation.’

‘Did the Council of Ten find somewhere to send the invoice?’

Irene shrugged. ‘She didn’t exactly say. But the Library’s resources aren’t limitless and we are instructed to be mindful of that fact.’

I didn’t say that I usually didn’t begin a mission with the intention to leave a bread crumb trail of ruined structures behind me, but I couldn’t deny that some of my more recent cases hadn’t progressed incident-free.

‘You agree with her?’

‘The professional Librarian is encouraged to conduct himself or herself with calm, competence, and cunning,’ Irene said, trying and failing to come across as stern. ‘They keyword is discretion, you know.’

‘That’s what you think?’

‘I think,’ Irene said, deadly serious, ‘that if this apprentice lashes out, or if Alberich shows up, or if anything tries to kill us, that I don’t mind if you bring down entire neighbourhoods. Leave Coppelia to me.’

I latched onto the familiar name. ‘Alberich?’ Speaking of complications we could do without. ‘Is he involved?’

‘He wasn’t supposed to be involved in the Darkhallow,’ Irene said. ‘And if Guantes hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have expected that he had anything to do with Kai’s kidnapping either.’ And he was involved in both. ‘He hasn’t been banished from B-457. He could be there.’

‘You think he has anything to do with the doors failing?’

‘I think he hates the Library. He’s not exactly shown restraint before.’

I remembered that without any helpful comments, so Irene didn’t give me any.

‘Understood,’ I said.

We made the rest of the climb in silence.

Murphy and the others waited at the door to the office.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

Murphy answered by way of an eyeroll. ‘This isn’t my first rodeo, Harry.’

And she survived the attack on Arctis Tor just fine. What was another alternate compared to that?

‘It’s a bit of a walk,’ Thomas warned us. ‘About two hours.’

‘Not that far,’ commented Irene casually.

I knew the Library had to be big. Any place that contained the literature of hundreds of worlds had to be. It’s something else hearing that a walk of two hours to get from one Way – or Traverse, to use the Library’s own terminology – to another was just “not that far.”

‘Don’t you lot have lifts or something?’ Murphy asked.

‘We have rapid transfer cabinets,’ Thomas replied. I noted the we in that sentence. ‘But they are for emergencies only.’

‘And only for those who don’t get motion sickness,’ Irene muttered under her breath.

Someone had cleaned up a bit in Bradamant’s office. The furniture had been placed back in its original position, the files and books piled up haphazardly on the desks. The debris of demolished furniture had been placed out of the way, against the far wall. The shelf still stuck out of the computer case, though.

Irene, as the only Librarian in our little group, had the honour of opening the door. Murphy clearly anticipated some fanfare – perhaps her first encounter with the professional book thieves had given her some unrealistic expectations – but Irene only stood in front of the door and said: ‘Open to the Library.’

I felt nothing. Usually I can sense it when someone nearby is working magic, and it doesn’t matter if that someone is human, Fae, or Dragon. But with the Language I got nothing. The only thing that gave away that these weren’t just ordinary words was the weight of them. They felt heavier, pregnant with meaning and intent. But the working itself eluded me. I could only see the results.

She opened the door and beckoned us through. All of us had been in the Library before, but for Murphy it was all new. She stood still for a moment, pivoting on the spot to take it all in. ‘It looks like a library,’ she observed eventually.

‘Just a lot of library,’ I agreed. With dimensions and windows that didn’t make any sense. In its own way it made less sense than even the jumbled mess of the Nevernever. We passed windows that looked out on scenes we couldn’t reach. We passed through corridors that winded and turned seemingly back onto themselves. My sense of direction is usually functional enough, but I lost it in here. Even Irene needed to consult maps now and then.

And everywhere, there were books; crammed into bookcases of all shapes and sizes, or stacked on whatever surface happened to be available nearby, which included the floor. My own collection looked meagre by comparison.

And I would like it noted: I didn’t drool.

Irene must have noticed, though. ‘I’m sure part of your pay for this job could be done in books,’ she suggested slyly.

I made some plans to buy a few extra bookcases. I’d figure out where to put them later.

Thomas rolled his eyes.

The Library looked a lot like the dreamscape where Lasciel had first appeared to me. I was pretty sure this was a coincidence, because she had never been in here.

As if thinking about her had summoned her, she projected a vision of herself next to me, falling into step. She broke out the librarian get-up for the occasion. ‘This place is dangerous, my host.’

‘You think everywhere you don’t understand is dangerous,’ I retorted.

Having said that, something about the Library seemed different than yesterday. It took me a while to figure out what exactly, until I realised that some of the titles seemed a bit difficult to read in the dim light. It had definitely been brighter yesterday.

Lasciel nodded in agreement. ‘But that is not the source of the danger. Something sinister is woven into the very fabric of this place.’

‘Like what?’

But she didn’t answer and she faded from view.

It should worry me that she had shown up twice in one day without being called, but the dimly lit endless corridors took up most of my attention. I wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong if I hadn’t been in here yesterday and if the two people who knew the Library didn’t seem so uneasy. Irene and Thomas weren’t exactly nervous, but they were very vigilant and exchanged meaningful looks every once in a while.

Just in case I wondered if this half-dark was normal.

It seemed unlikely; you definitely couldn’t read a book by this light. I wondered if it had anything to do with the malfunctioning Traverses.

The Traverse to our destination world came as a bit of a surprise. It was just a wooden door. I had seen the inside of the Traverse to my world and that must have been the same kind of door. Originally. I couldn’t tell for sure, because it was hardly visible beneath all the posters warning the wandering Librarian to KEEP OUT! because my world happened to have a CHAOS INFESTATION! And, just in case the wandering Librarian thought that rule did not apply to him, there was a nice reminder that yes, That means you too! A more recent addition – recognisable as such because it was taped right over all the other warnings – noted that exceptions only applied with written permission from the Librarian-in-Residence. Since Bradamant was the Librarian in question, that probably never happened.

B-457 must be a safer world; no warnings applied.

Irene gave us all a quick onceover. ‘At least we’re all wearing long coats,’ she said. Not the ringing endorsement I’d hoped for. ‘Ready?’

As a now experienced world hopper, I nodded. The others did the same.

‘Open,’ Irene commanded.

The door opened onto a dimly lit storeroom. We shuffled through the door single file.

And then froze in unison as from behind a row of cupboards half a dozen guns were pointed right at us.

Chapter Text

‘Halt!’

Irene obeyed on instinct. The Language could do much, but she couldn’t outtalk a flying bullet.

Apparently her compliance didn’t mean anything to the trigger-happy gentlemen on the other side of the room; they fired anyway.

Harry saved the day. He was right behind Irene. Unlike her, he hadn’t bothered to stop moving, so he had his left arm angled over her shoulder. He muttered something under his breath and the shield flashed into existence mere inches from Irene’s face. Just in time too; the first bullet slammed into it half a second later.

The shield expanded in a riot of colour. Lines of blue and green and purple intermingled into a tight weave of magic that stopped all the coming bullets in their tracks. It was hard to say who was most surprised by this: Irene or the mysterious attackers. It took all her self-control not to stagger back, away from the danger, and stay in her place so she didn’t disrupt Harry’s working.

‘Hold fire!’

The shooting stopped. Harry kept the shield in place all the same.

‘Identify yourselves!’

‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ Harry said conversationally. ‘Usually I annoy people before they try to kill me.’

It was hard to see anything. The room was lit by a single candle, so she hadn’t got a good look before all the action started. Now the light from the shield blocked her view. On the positive side, the assailants didn’t get a clear view of her party either.

‘You are under arrest,’ the officer announced.

‘For what?’

‘Espionage, sir,’ the officer answered. ‘But I fear we must add gross indecency to the charge.’

Stunned silence followed.

‘Beg pardon?’ Irene said.

‘You are guilty of performing magic contrary to the Good Taste Act, subclause B: Acceptable Sorcery and Assorted Arts. Drop your shield and surrender, or it will go the worse for you.’

Irene had read a bit about the laws. Not that much – the Library’s information was not that detailed – but enough to know that capital punishment was still alive and kicking. Especially for such crimes as murder, treason, and espionage.

And guess which charge we just had levelled at us.

Irene had her suspicions about this turn of events, but now was not the time to dissect the causes. Deal with the crisis first, everything else later.

‘Keep the shield up,’ she muttered as softly as she could. ‘Don’t let them see our faces.’

She felt more than saw him nodding his agreement. ‘Any plans?’

The others hadn’t actually come through the door yet, so it came down to her and Harry. Irene squinted. ‘Six men,’ she observed. ‘Maybe one or two more? Could you do something with that?’

The thought had occurred to compel them to see things her way, but she had done that once, in Venice, and she had promised herself she wouldn’t do that again. Ever. Besides, who knew how many men still lay in wait beyond this room?

‘If you can do something with their guns?’

‘Done. On the count of three?’

‘Silence!’ thundered the officer. ‘Drop the shield and surrender!’

‘One,’ muttered Irene.

‘Or what?’ Harry shouted. ‘You’ll shoot us?’

‘Two.’

‘I will have it noted and put on your records that you resisted arrest,’ the officer declared. ‘Contrary to the Behaviour of Prisoners Act.’

Of course a society like this would have codes of conduct even for prisoners. Irene had a sinking feeling they regulated the life out of everything. Hard to keep up with even for the natives. For someone from outside this society it was impossible. Which she supposed was the whole point of it.

‘Three. Guns, jam!’

Harry dropped the shield. ‘Forzare!’ he shouted. The energy rushed past Irene and battered the arresting officers at full force. The cupboards went over with a crash they’d probably hear in Paris. Several human-shaped forms got trapped underneath. The remaining unlucky ones were blown off their feet and slammed into the far wall.

More sounds of breakage ensued.

Irene winced.

On the upside, their opposition no longer demanded that they surrendered, on account of all of them being unconscious after that little show.

‘Time to go, I think,’ she said.

Harry pushed past her with a grin, indicating the state of the room. ‘That must be some kind of record. We’ve not even been here five minutes.’

‘Didn’t you say something about discretion?’ Thomas chimed in, successfully laying claim to the moral high ground.

Irene wisely said nothing, mainly because she didn’t exactly have a counter argument.

It must be nighttime in the London of this alternate, because the rest of the building was as dark as the room through which they entered. No more law enforcement officers showed up, but they crept very carefully to the exit all the same.

The Traverse came out in the British Museum, like it did in B-395, but the layout of the building was ever so slightly different from the one Irene knew. Fortunately, little signs pointing out the way to the exit could be found at almost every corner, just in case the visitor ever lost his way.

The other information boards were far more fascinating and far more worrying at the same time. Signs and information boards scattered around the building informed the visitor of such things as not touching the exhibits – reasonable enough – moving around the room in an anti-clockwise manner – strange – and avoiding eye contact with people wearing gloves – baffling. Most of them seemed like they were fairly new – except the ones about not touching anything. Maybe they put up new boards whenever the current trend in manners changed.

Irene tried and failed to fight the sinking feeling that she was vastly underprepared for a mission like this.

‘How did you manage when you were here before?’ she asked Thomas.

‘Mrs Smith’s butler,’ he replied promptly. ‘He knows what’s what.’

Since the butler was nowhere in evidence right now, that was no use whatsoever. ‘And how did you get there?’

‘Stealthily.’

The route out of the building remained mercifully incident-free. They didn’t talk and they sneaked around like thieves, but the precautions proved unnecessary. But better safe than sorry, Irene thought. And that at least was a Library-approved motto, she thought with not a little relief.

The doors to the outside had been locked, though that did not detain the determined Librarian. ‘Door, unlock and open.’

The door unlocked and opened without fanfare.

The streets outside were deserted and, more importantly, dimly lit. Even better, a thick fog had moved in and reduced visibility even further. Of course, Irene’s merry band wouldn’t see any stray law enforcement officers before they bumped into them either, but perhaps Mouse would smell them and give a timely warning.

Thomas took the lead. He must have a remarkable memory to be able to find his way in the darkness and the fog, but then, it had only been a few days since he was here before. Irene for one was happy to follow.

This London turned out to look very different from the one Irene knew, and not only because a lot of streets had different name than the ones she was used to. Many of them appeared to be named after people she’d never heard of, heroes from history maybe. The signs too appeared to be subject to regular changes, perhaps as the people the streets were named after went in and out of fashion. She wouldn’t like to be a mapmaker or mailman in this city. How would anyone keep up?

It wasn’t just the street names, though. The layout of the place was different too. Streets forked in unexpected places, or were wider or smaller than Irene knew them. Some streets that she knew as residential looked like shopping districts or parks, and vice versa.

Thomas led them into one such park that didn’t exist in Irene’s London. It had gates, but that hardly stopped a determined Librarian, and Thomas claimed that it would have a nice spot well away from any prying eyes where they could wait for Kai, and where he could land safely.

‘Better here than in Agatha’s back garden,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he’d fit in there anyway.’

They waited under an oak tree that must have been there for ages at the edge of the indicated clearing. The night felt colder now that they had stopped moving. Irene had to stamp her feet and blow on her hands to keep warm. When she was not busy keeping her circulation going, she peered into the fog, hoping for any sign that Kai was on his way. She had no idea how he was going to find them, but he’d have a hard time seeing them in this fog.

After what felt like a small eternity, Thomas with his sharper hearing perked up, and pointed upwards. It took Irene a little longer to notice what he did, but now that she listened more closely, she fancied she could hear the beating of wings. Even so, she didn’t see Kai until he was almost right on top of them. He came gliding out of the night as if he had been born to do so, and landed gracefully in the middle of the clearing.

Murphy made a small noise of surprise, but didn’t betray any more surprise. Still, knowing you’re dealing with a Dragon and seeing one land right in front of you were two very different things. And a Dragon in flight was an awe-inspiring sight any day. Irene hadn’t grown tired of seeing it herself.

Vale slid down Kai’s back. When his passenger was safely back on the ground, Kai changed back to human form, and joined them. He must have raided his wardrobe on the way, because he was immaculately dressed, although maybe not quite to local standards.

‘Good evening,’ he said, because he was brought up to be polite. ‘What a fine evening, don’t you agree?’ He rubbed behind Mouse’s ears, and then turned to Vale to perform the necessary introductions. ‘Vale, you’ll remember Harry Dresden.’

The smallest twitch of his lips betrayed that Vale indeed remembered the wizard who had taken down one of Venice’s major landmarks. He declared it a pleasure to meet Harry properly. ‘One can only hope the need for mass demolition is not due for repetition.’

Harry and Irene neatly avoided looking at each other.

Kai wisely moved on. ‘And this fine lady is Miss Karrin Murphy of the Chicago police, a true credit to her profession. Miss Murphy, I am pleased to introduce to you Mr Peregrine Vale, the greatest detective in London.’

Pleasantries were exchanged, and then, to Irene’s relief, they set off again. She had almost lost feeling in her feet.

She fell back into step beside Murphy.

‘Has it occurred to you that our arrival was expected?’ she asked.

‘Was it the men with the guns who gave it away?’ One didn’t need to be a detective to puzzle that one out.

The more she learned about this Emily, the more uneasy she became. From the available evidence, Emily was a cold-blooded, ruthless, and exceedingly resourceful individual. She expected to be followed, and she had planned against it. Given the ruckus they had caused getting into this world, chances were Emily would know Librarians were after her.

But she doesn’t know which ones, Irene reminded herself. And she doesn’t know about Harry or Kai either. Of her own little party, Emily knew only Thomas, and she would have some reason to assume he’d be out of general circulation for a while.

‘This is where we part ways for now,’ Vale said, when they arrived back at the entrance to the park.

Irene blinked. ‘What? So soon?’

‘If I am to be any use to you undercover, I should not be seen with you, Winters,’ he replied briskly. ‘It seems that Miss Ashwood has contacts and eyes in many places. Leave it to me to ferret out those secrets. That is why you asked me to come along, isn’t it?’

Irene quickly agreed that yes, that was why she had asked him along, but he had a knowing gleam in his eyes that betrayed he knew very well she had an ulterior motive. ‘But how will you find us again?’ she asked quickly, hoping to forestall any questions she didn’t want to answer.

‘I will find you, Winters.’ He smiled confidently. ‘This is not my London, but its layout is similar enough.’

And he had his ways. He had managed well enough in Venice as well. She’d never even had a hint that he was there until he dragged their arses out of the fire at the Train. ‘Just be careful.’

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

Irene watched him go, but not for long; the mists swallowed him up almost immediately. Splitting up under these circumstances seemed counterintuitive. There was so much they didn’t know yet, and clearly Emily had lain traps to trip them up. Who knew what else she had cooked up?

Thomas led their little band confidently through the empty streets. Somewhere in the distance a solitary church bell tolled the hour: midnight. That’d explain why there wasn’t anyone on the streets except the people up to no good. Which now included Irene and company; getting nearly arrested in the first minute after stepping foot in an alternate constituted a record even for her. She determined not to mention this little fact to Coppelia. Or to Bradamant.

She caught up to Bradamant’s assistant. ‘How many patrols are usually out and about at this time of night?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Depends.’

‘On?’

‘On how many French spies they suspect are hanging around the city.’

Irene considered the welcome they’d had and drew her own conclusions. Although why anyone would want to be out on a night like this was beyond her. Judging by the state of the trees they passed, it must be mid to late autumn and the temperature had dropped accordingly. Surely even French spies would take one look at the weather and decide that they just couldn’t be bothered right now.

Thomas perceived their danger before anyone else did. He veered off course without warning, into a nearby alley. They all followed him.

‘Police,’ he explained in a whisper.

Mouse growled low in his throat.

‘Police?’ In Irene’s vast experience, tracking down spies was usually the prerogative of some kind of intelligence agency.

‘Intelligence, but they operate as a division of the police,’ Thomas explained.

They huddled together, waiting. The fog muffled sound, but Irene heard them eventually. They marched rather than walked, a group of a dozen men at least. They seemed more military than police and, when they came into view, they certainly had enough weaponry to pass for army; every man carried a musket and sported a sword at the hip as well. This was either a part of their uniform or they expected some serious trouble.

The uniforms themselves stood out more than the men who wore them; deep dark green coats worn over cream trousers and shirts, all of it embellished to within an inch of their lives; gold braid, gold embroidery, gleaming gold buttons… The police department must be swimming in money to outfit their personnel like this.

‘It’s a criminal offence to dirty a police officer’s uniform,’ Thomas whispered. ‘Or to tear it.’

‘How do you know?’ Irene whispered right back.

‘Nearly got arrested for flinging mud at their pretty pants.’

‘Did you get away?’

Thomas smiled smugly. ‘Eventually.’

Irene remembered that he was a vampire – yes, all right, not the blood drinking type, but the level of innuendo left precious little room for doubt about what kind he was – and there were things she absolutely didn’t need to know. Though she supposed that instant seduction was a handy thing to have in one’s toolbox, if not the most subtle.

The troop of officers – that’s what they looked like anyway – marched passed. None of them looked left or right. Maybe, Irene thought hopefully, they weren’t looking for her and her friends at all.

Unlikely, given the mess they’d left in the British Library, but you never knew. She might get lucky.

‘How about a change of uniform, Murph?’ Harry asked cheerfully, followed by the telltale ‘oomph’ caused by an elbow applied sharply to the ribs. Or, given Murphy’s height, the hips. If she was feeling charitable.

Kai was sensible enough to disguise his bark of laughter as a series of unconvincing coughs.

Thomas turned back and shushed them.

He had them wait for a full five minutes before he declared it safe enough to move again. Irene couldn’t hear anything other than the sounds of their own breathing, but she didn’t have Thomas’s keener senses, so she contained her impatience and resisted the urge to stamp her feet to restore circulation; the cold bit worse the longer they stood still.

When they finally moved again, Thomas picked up the pace. Irene wouldn’t say that he was nervous, but there was an urgency to his movements now, as if he expected to run into trouble again if they didn’t get off the streets as soon as possible. He had them stick to the shadows, and more than once he made them turn back or directed them into some dingy alley without warning.

Irene never saw or heard anyone, but she felt hunted. In this wretched fog, she couldn’t see anything, and she had to rely completely on both Thomas’s sharper instincts and his sense of direction. For all she knew the mists were crawling with police officers looking for French spies. Sometimes she thought she heard something, but she was never sure. Thomas’s sotto voce muttering of curses did nothing to put her mind at ease either.

It could have been ten minutes or an hour – no other church bells to tell the hour unfortunately – it was hard to keep track of time in this place. Eventually their luck ran out.

Thomas muttered something that didn’t bear repetition and ushered their motley band into yet another alley. ‘Quiet,’ he instructed.

Not that any of them were chattering; over the course of their cross-city hike all of them had become aware that this might not be as simple and straightforward as they might have hoped, and the clever commentary had died off. Now all of them wore suitably grim expressions.

‘What?’ Kai mouthed.

Thomas, situated at the entrance of the alley, through a series of hand gestures, indicated that a group of a dozen men approached from the right and another of about twenty from the left. This might not have been a problem if the alley had an exit on the other side, but even Irene could see that it was a dead end.

‘Mist, increase,’ she said.

Mist swirled heavily at the entrance, but probably not much further than that. What little visibility there was reduced to two feet at best.

Then they waited.

Until a pair of extremely well-dressed police officers stepped into the alley. Irene and company had half-expected them, and the officers probably had good reason to suspect the alley was occupied. Still, both sides needed half a second to process the other’s presence. For an endless moment they stared at each other.

Then everything went downhill very fast.

‘In here!’ shouted the one on the left, a young man with a shock of curly brown hair and an overabundance of freckles.

Thomas punched him in the jaw before the last syllable had left his mouth, and he went down hard. His friend danced out of reach before Thomas could follow that up with a matching blow.

Kai growled something unintelligible.

Every Librarian learned early that if it wasn’t possible to be discreet and stay under everyone’s radar, it was best to launch the offence before the other party could; that way at least you had the element of surprise.

Irene raised her voice. ‘Wind, blow the mist away from us!’

There wasn’t a lot of wind to start with, but there was quite a lot when she was finished. The mist swirled away, revealing quite a lot of men in pretty uninforms aiming their muskets.

‘Muskets, break!’ Irene shouted. She tried to remember if there were any working parts of a musket that she could particularly target, remembered that some of the weapon was made of wood and amended her next command to be a bit more specific: ‘Musket wood, burn!’

That had more effect. A few officers managed to get a shot off, but most of those went wide because the men suddenly realised that their weapons were on fire. They dropped them like hot potatoes, but these men were professionals; a little setback didn’t deter them for very long. As one they reached for their swords.

The next few minutes were very chaotic. Irene had received some training in formal fighting, but quite frankly, she preferred the Language. Thomas and Kai suffered from no such trouble. Thomas liberated the sword of the young man he knocked out – presumably on the sound premise that he wasn’t going to use it for the foreseeable future – and set to with a will. He had definitely received some training and Irene couldn’t help but notice that he looked very good doing it too. Kai matched him every inch of the way. He didn’t have a sword to start with, but he made do with fisticuffs until he acquired one.

The big surprise in this entire affair turned out to be Murphy. Irene knew the tiny police woman had nerves of steel and that she was an incredibly good shot as well – as evidenced by her encounter with the Erlking – but she must have had some martial arts training, because she took on her opponents with the kind of moves one didn’t make up on the fly.

The police officers weren’t prepared for that. Hard to tell if that had more to do with the fact that she was a woman or that she struck with the kind of quick, businesslike efficiency, but she got results. Three officers would have very sore… everything come morning.

Harry wisely limited his contributions to the magical side. He was pulling his punches, though. Irene had seen him at work in Venice and she had seen him fight Alberich. Harry Dresden could be a very scary, very deadly man. She suspected he was also, beneath it all, a decent one, because he only threw his opponents around a bit, but never hard enough to kill. Not even really hard enough to cause any lasting damage.

As for herself, she got creative with the Language. She dropped her opponents’ trousers, turned their fancy jackets into their prisons, made them trip over conveniently loosened cobbles, and, when she really felt inspired, had one imprisoned in decorative fence like an animal in a zoo.

All things considered, they weren’t doing so badly.

Of course the moment she thought that was the moment the tables turned. Without any warning whatsoever something invisible wrapped around her legs and yanked her off her feet. Irene yelped more in shock than fear, although fear followed hard on the heels of the shock, because she had no idea how to deal with something like this. If she knew what was wrapped around her legs, she could use the Language to manipulate it, but good luck trying to identify something invisible.

Thomas went down next, although he fell with considerably more grace than Irene. And he was close enough to the fence of Irene’s makeshift zoo enclosure to grab the bars and hold on for dear life. Irene however had nothing useful to hand and she got dragged away from her friends further down the street.

And whoever instigated the dragging, they didn’t bother to be gentle about it.

Harry hurried to her rescue. He sent a blast of energy in the general direction of the origin of Irene’s current woes, which stopped the dragging, but didn’t release her legs. So Harry pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and drew a circle around them.

The invisible bonds fell away.

Irene scrambled to her feet and stared into the darkness.

‘Two of them,’ Harry said, pointing. ‘Wizards.’

Irene had pieced that much together by herself, and now that she squinted she saw them too. Not as distinct people with recognisable faces – they were too far off for that – but good enough to target, although from this distance the Language was a bit tricky; the wizards had chosen their base of operations well. ‘Anything you can do from here? Reliably, that is?’

Stupid question. She was after all talking to the man who had brought down the Campanile, sunk half a fleet of pursuing boats, and contained the irate Winter Lady in a circle of barbed wire, all in the course of a single evening.

Harry nodded. ‘Stay behind me.’

Irene did not need telling twice. She wouldn’t be in his line of fire for all the world.

The majority of the fight was taking place behind them. Irene took stock of the situation while Harry did what he had to do. Thomas, hanging on to his fence with one hand, fought off four of the Greencoats at once. The wizards must still be pulling at him, because he never let go, but he was good enough at this that it didn’t seem to hinder him much.

Kai and Murphy had ended up fighting back to back. Their opponents circled them, which meant that Irene could only see glimpses of them, but they appeared to be holding their own. Possibly that’s why the wizards didn’t target them; they couldn’t get a clear line of sight any more than Irene could. She did see that they were well-protected, though; every once in a while she caught sight of a bit of fur, usually right before one of the men went down.

Irene resolved to buy Mouse a few more treats, just in case the current supply ran out.

Reassured that her allies were in no immediate danger – or at least not in more danger now that she couldn’t help them directly – she focused on what happened in the circle.

When Harry demolished the Campanile, she hadn’t sensed anything of what he was doing. The circle served as a barrier between her and whatever he was cooking up. She didn’t sense anything now, either, nothing tangible at least. But the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and the air within the confines of the circle crackled with energy, building with every moment that Harry chanted.

The wizards must be worried about it, because they sent twin blasts of lightning their way. Irene flinched, but Harry gave no visible reaction. The blasts came up against the edges of the circle with some considerable force and bounced off.

Right, magic-repellent circle. Irene usually preferred her defences to be made up of a little more than just chalk.

Having said that, the chalk was very effective. One of the energy beams hit it at an angle that diverted it to the ground, where it gouged a small crater into the road. The other bounced off horizontally and incinerated a mailbox.

Well up to our usual standard, Irene thought wryly, although they couldn’t rightly be blamed for this one.

‘Kai, circle!’ Harry shouted.

Irene was not aware that Kai even owned a piece of chalk, but it didn’t exactly surprise her either. Kai had his own way of working magic, so maybe he and Harry had been exchanging the tricks of the trade.

With the wizards temporarily distracted by their failure, Thomas fought free of his invisible ropes, and made a mad dash for Kai’s little band, knocking down several opponents on the way. He too had noticed that the wizards couldn’t get to him if they couldn’t see him, because he shoved several Greencoats between him and them.

A few of those fell victim to friendly fire, but Thomas had always already moved on by the time they could launch their next assault.

It was over in seconds. Harry smudged the line of the circle with his foot and five seconds later all the Greencoats were on the ground.

‘What…?’

‘Just sleeping,’ he explained.

Irene stared at him. ‘You put them to sleep?’

Harry grinned the grin of the cat who caught the canary. ‘They were up past their bedtime.’

The object of her incredulity was not, as he thought, that he had sent them off to dreamland, but that he had done it to more than thirty full-grown men. At the same time. ‘So are we,’ she said instead.

The others escaped naptime by seeking shelter in their own circle, but they came out when the crisis was over. All of them were a bit dishevelled, but Irene didn’t see any blood and they moved under their own power, so they had got off light. She suspected the Greencoats had tried to arrest them rather than kill them.

Murphy glanced at the houses that flanked the street. ‘No way that the inhabitants all slept through that racket,’ she observed. ‘So where are they?’

Good question. Whether they lived in a high-tech world or a high-magic one, people were people. And people, as a general rule, were incurably curious. In most places, the locals would pull up chairs and get themselves their beverage of choice to watch the spectacle. At the very least you’d expect twitching curtains as people stole stealthy glances at the action.

Not in this London, though.

The places where people didn’t at least look at what happened in their own streets were not the good places to live. You’d expect that in bad neighbourhoods with lots of crime, where seeing and knowing too much could get you seriously and permanently inconvenienced, but this was an upmarket area, with big houses, wide lanes and, presumably, lots of wealthy inhabitants.

So what are they so afraid of?

Irene considered the Greencoats and made an educated guess.

‘Staring at spectacles in the streets is a criminal offence,’ Thomas clarified. ‘Part of the Proper Civil Behaviour at Home Act, subclause 7D. Very useful for the authorities, because then you won’t actually witness them lifting your neighbour from his bed on some trumped up charge.’

‘Hell’s bells,’ said Harry. ‘And I thought Venice was paranoid. Seems the Council of Ten could have learned a thing or two from this lot.’

‘Let’s not stand here until the next patrol shows up,’ Irene said. The fog she had blown away was reclaiming lost territory. Who knew what else lurked in there? She’d had her fill of nasty surprises for one night. ‘Thomas, how far away are we?’

‘Close. Five minutes.’

‘Then lead on.’

Thomas nodded, and set off. They plunged back into the mists.

Chapter Text

We didn’t see anyone else, which was just as well; any more social interaction with the locals might end up with me doing substantial damage to a building.

Thomas must have a photographic memory, because he directed us through the streets and alleys to another alley behind a row of houses. The little gate he brought us to was locked, so Irene used the Language to get us in.

‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Kai whispered, taking in the house. ‘It’s very…’

‘Posh?’ Irene suggested.

‘Better appointed than our lodgings,’ Kai remarked tactfully.

‘Snob,’ I said.

‘Nothing wrong with having standards.’

I had a quick look for myself, and came to the conclusion that I was in the wrong job.

The house was as quiet and dark as all the others. That gave me the creeps. No city was ever this deserted at night. There’s always someone getting to or coming from a very late or very early shift, a couple of homeless junkies, the obligatory drunk bawling songs at the top of his lungs and annoying all the neighbours. I added it to everything else that was wrong with this city. Not the same sort of unnatural wrong that Venice was, but still wrong.

Thomas crossed the garden and rapped on the backdoor in a distinct pattern: four knocks, brief pause, five knocks, brief pause again, followed by a quick succession of seven more raps. The numbers of the Library world designation. Clever.

Nothing happened. We stood in the garden, looking at the little puffs of fog our own breaths made in the cold and hoping we didn’t freeze to death.

‘I’ll open it,’ Irene offered.

Thomas stopped her before she got near the door. ‘No, you don’t. Not if you don’t want us to collect bits of you in a three block radius.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Mrs Smith has a very creative butler,’ Thomas explained.

And a very paranoid one.

Thomas had to repeat his knocking two more times before a light appeared in the window. A series of intriguing sounds happened before the door opened.

The man in the doorway was middle-aged, dressed in a long nightshirt accessorised with a tasselled cap that made him look more than a little ridiculous. It was however clearly understood that anyone laughing at the ensemble would find oneself at the business end of his overgrown kitchen knife.

I wisely stifled my laughter.

The knife-wielder gave us all a thorough onceover. I made sure to stand still and let him get on with it, because from the way he held that knife I could tell he both knew what to do with it and had no moral qualms whatsoever about using it on pesky intruders.

At last his eyes settled on Thomas and he relaxed. Marginally. ‘Mr Raith, what an unexpected pleasure.’ He had a very posh English accent, underlined with an edge of steel. Mr Raith, you had better tell me what you are doing here again, unannounced, or you’ll regret it.

Thomas, no stranger to threats of violence himself, smiled calmly. ‘Parker, good evening. A situation has arisen that requires more discretion than I can offer you in this lovely garden. Might we come in?’

I blinked. Thomas had answered in an exactly matching posh English accent. I didn’t know he could do that. And it wasn’t a pale imitation either. Most people can fake an accent if they work at it, but it’s never perfect, and you can usually tell it’s an affectation rather than the real deal. Thomas on the other hand spoke it as if he’d done nothing else since birth.

Parker and Thomas engaged in a staring contest from which Thomas emerged the victor; Parker did a step back and allowed us into his domain.

We walked into a warm and spacious kitchen. Parker had lit a few candles, enough to see by. The place looked like it could fit right into one of those museum exhibits, the kind where they built a fake nineteenth century kitchen for the edification of the modern person, all the better to appreciate the modern conveniences.

Well, those of us who could actually use modern conveniences without breaking them.

This was the real deal, though. This kitchen got a lot of use. It had a lived-in feel to it, with dishes left on counters, a cloth-covered bowl, eggs in a rack against a wall, and a dusty apron draped over a chair.

‘Mr Raith,’ Parker said, locking and bolting the door behind us, ‘perhaps you could perform the introductions? And then you may tell me what business has brought you and your associates to London.’

It was not a suggestion.

Thomas nodded, still smiling. ‘Naturally,’ he agreed. ‘May I introduce Miss Irene Winters, a highly esteemed colleague of Mrs Smith, and her apprentice, Mr Kai Strongrock.’ Parker remained unimpressed. ‘May I also present Seargent Karrin Murphy, a true credit to the Chicago Police Department, and my good friend, Mr Harry Dresden, and his dog Mouse.’

Mouse sat up straighter and bestowed his best doggy grin on our reluctant host.

‘My esteemed friends, may I present to you Mr David Parker, butler in the household of Mrs Agatha Smith?’ He didn’t just nail the accent, but also the correct vocabulary. Maybe it was part of Library training.

We all muttered that it was a pleasure to meet him, but I kept an eye on that knife. If the butler thought it was a pleasure to meet us, he hid it well. More likely, he rightly suspected that our unexpected arrival at his backdoor in the middle of the night was the prelude to a world of trouble.

‘I take it,’ he said, disapproval dripping from every syllable, ‘that your sudden appearance and the loud disturbance this past hour are not unrelated.’

‘We had an unfortunate run-in with several dedicated officers of the law,’ Thomas replied easily. ‘They mistook us for French spies and, in their zeal, forgot to ascertain our identities by asking questions before they attempted to detain us. An unfortunate struggle ensued.’

‘So I heard,’ Parker remarked wryly. ‘As did indeed all souls from here to York.’

I elected not to mention the fate of the unlucky mailbox.

‘Did they see your faces?’ the butler asked.

I thought that through. It had been dark, save for a few street lamps, but I’d been able to make out little more than shapes, and we’d all been in too much motion for anyone to register anything beyond general height, build and maybe hair colour. Dogs of Mouse’s size weren’t very common, though. We might have to keep him out of sight for a bit.

Thomas must have reached the same conclusion. ‘No. And we shook them off a few streets away. They didn’t see where we went.’

The butler nodded tersely. ‘And what, sir, possessed you to chance the streets at night? Are you not aware that the city is under curfew?’

‘I was not,’ Thomas said, frowning. I did some frowning myself. This hunt for French spies had sounded a lot more entertaining in Chicago. The only thing I had going for me was that no one would think I was French the minute I opened my mouth. ‘May I enquire what caused this development?’

‘I would never dare to speculate on such matters,’ the butler said virtuously. ‘All I know is that an anonymous tip was delivered to the authorities early this morning.’ He paused meaningfully. ‘It is strange that this coincided with the unlooked for return of Miss Ashwood to her father’s house.’

That answered one question at least. I exchanged a meaningful look with Kai and Irene. We’d worry about how we’d get the runaway damsel out of there later.

‘These things too may not be unrelated,’ Thomas confessed. ‘We few have been dispatched to find Miss Ashwood.’

‘And what may be your intentions with the young lady?’

Thomas’s face became grim. ‘The young lady attacked both myself and Miss Adams yesterday morning. Naturally we would like to take her back with us to answer some questions from the relevant authorities and, if possible, re-acquire the book she took with her into London.’

‘Naturally,’ said the butler.

‘I would like to speak with Mrs Smith as soon as it can be arranged,’ Thomas pressed.

The butler didn’t like that very much. ‘To presume upon Mrs Smith’s hospitality again so soon might be considered bad manners.’

‘It is part of your mistress’s duty to receive her colleagues when they come to her house on the Library’s business,’ Thomas pointed out sharply.

‘I see but one of her colleagues here,’ the butler said bluntly. ‘By your own admission, you are no true Librarian, and nor is Mr Strongrock. Your brother and the Seargent have no affiliation with the Library at all.’

‘All of us are in the employment of the Library,’ Thomas countered, ‘and charged with the execution of this mission. Perhaps you would be so kind as to wake Mrs Smith, so we may conduct our business directly with her.’

Another staring contest followed. The rest of us were wise enough not to poke our own noses in; death by vengeful butler would not look good on my death certificate.

‘I shall not wake Mrs Smith at this ungodly hour,’ the butler declared at last. ‘You may speak with her in the morning. I shall find you beds in the meanwhile. Perhaps,’ he added passive aggressively, ‘you shall recall that they are to be used at night.’

Thomas simply thanked him for his service, with an extra double helping of passive aggressiveness, just for good measure.

Mr Parker the Butler invited us to follow him and to be quiet, or we’d wake Mrs Smith and the staff. We did as we were told. I was too busy gawping in any case. The outside of the house of the house only whispered wealth. The interior screamed it. Elegant wooden furniture, expensive looking vases, luxurious carpets, pretty panelling, delicate wallpapers, large paintings… It went on and on. Someone must have known what they were doing, though, because despite all the expensive stuff, it managed to avoid looking decadent and vulgar.

‘The Library must pay well,’ Murphy observed under her breath.

I had been thinking along the same lines. ‘Well, they are professional thieves.’

The butler shot us a dirty look.

He led us up the stairs and distributed us among the available bedrooms with the bare minimum of words and an extensive collection of reproachful glances. We had clearly upset the order of his world, and he didn’t like it. Murphy, Irene, and Kai each had their own rooms. Thomas and I, on the other hand, were made to share, and instructed to keep an eye on the dog.

Mouse gave him a reproachful look of his own.

The butler remained unmoved.

The bedroom continued the theme of wealth. Two large canopy beds occupied opposite corners, weighed down with every duvet and blanket in the western hemisphere. The wooden floor was hardly visible, covered with soft rugs. Mouse found the fluffiest one, lay down, and went right to sleep.

I fell on the bed and regretted that almost immediately; it was so comfortable I didn’t want to get up again.

I tried to figure out what time it was, Chicago time. We’d gone through the Traverse maybe at eleven? Then we’d walked for two hours. In all the excitement that followed I had lost track of time, but the best I could figure out was that it would be somewhere late afternoon. Which explained why I didn’t feel tired yet.

‘When did you become an English gentleman?’ I asked Thomas.

He shrugged. ‘Since an English gentleman generally gets taken more seriously than an obvious American.’ I did notice he dropped the fancy vocabulary and tone. ‘It’s encouraged.’

I remembered Bradamant’s cut glass tones – as if she’d had generations of belittling the peasants behind her – and Irene’s careful accent free English.

‘You’re just the assistant,’ I said. ‘It’s required for you too?’

The silence spoke volumes.

I sat up in shock. ‘You’re going to become a Librarian?’

Another heavy silence.

Hell’s bells.

I hadn’t seen that one coming. Thomas was… Thomas. He was a vampire. Librarians were, as far as I was aware, all human. Besides, what would they do about his nature? He needed to feed, and I doubted the Library would supply their own people as his sustenance.

And even if they found a way around that, I’d never seen Thomas exhibit any particular love for books and reading.

But even as I thought it, it occurred to me that the lifestyle would suit him. The danger, the disregard for laws. He had the ingenuity to plan and pull of book heists, and a unique skill set that no Librarian had: the ability to seduce opponents at will, a nearly indestructible body, and fast healing if he did get hurt. Give him the Language on top of that, and he’d be unstoppable.

No wonder the Library wanted him.

It just surprised me that the attraction was mutual.

‘You’re really going to become a Librarian?’ I asked stupidly.

He sat down on the remaining bed. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘But you’re thinking about it? Have they asked you?’

‘Kostchei suggested it,’ Thomas said. ‘Bradamant wouldn’t mind training me up. I said I’d think about it.’

But he hadn’t said no. He hadn’t told me either. I tried not to feel hurt.

He must have read my mind. ‘I would have told you if I did.’

I didn’t say what I thought, because even in my own head it sounded pathetic. I hadn’t had a brother for long. Or rather, I’d had a brother since I was born, but I’d only known about him for a few years and I wasn’t ready to lose him again so soon. Once he went into the Library, who knew when he’d come out again? Or if he came out again in my world at all. Irene and Kai wanted to visit, and they never got permission.

Instead I asked: ‘What about Justine?’

Justine was my brother’s girlfriend. Thomas slept with every woman who would have him – read: every single one that clapped eyes on him – but he loved Justine. And she loved him. And because they loved each other so much, they couldn’t be together. Her touch literally burned him, the downside of being what he was. Thomas needed lust to survive, but real, genuine love was poison, and that included his own.

Their love story was a regular Romeo and Juliet. Minus the dying. So far at least.

Despite all that I also knew Thomas would never desert Justine. Not while she was under Lara’s “protection.” And not under any other circumstance either.

Thomas hesitated. ‘… That’s not a problem.’

I saw many.

‘Really,’ he insisted. ‘I wouldn’t work inside the Library. I’d stay in Chicago.’

That brought me up short. ‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t age outside the Library, like regular Librarians. I already know the world and they like the idea of a Librarian-in-Residence they don’t have to replace every few decades.’

Put like that, it made sense. ‘So nothing would change much.’

‘Except that I’d be sworn to the Library,’ he said. ‘And that I wouldn’t be part of House Raith anymore.’

Just an added bonus as far as I was concerned. ‘They’ve already thrown you out.’

‘Officially, yes,’ Thomas agreed. ‘Unofficially, I’m pretty sure Lara still thinks I’m at her beck and call. If she wanted to.’

And she had the leverage to force compliance.

‘We could stage a rescue mission,’ I offered, very pointedly not thinking how the last one in the Raith Deeps had turned out.

Thomas scoffed. ‘You read too many books.’

‘Says the aspiring Librarian,’ I threw right back.

He threw a pillow at my head. I retaliated in kind and in the ensuing pillow fight we dropped the topic.

Eventually, when we both ran out of ammunition and we couldn’t be bothered to retrieve the pillows, we subsided.

‘How’s the head?’ I asked.

‘You don’t throw that hard.’

‘I meant all four pounds of Shakespeare.’

‘Head’s fine. Mostly.’ But he rubbed the back of his skull with a grimace. ‘I’d like to know how she did it.’

That made two of us. I’d been racking my brain, but for all I knew the magic in this world had nothing in common with the magic in my world. I’d seen the two wizards in the street do things I hadn’t seen before either, although I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that invisible rope trick.

I was still considering the possibilities when I fell asleep.

And I didn’t wake up until the grumpy butler charged into the room, trailing two young men in behind him. ‘Rise, gentlemen.’

I blinked against the light. One of the young men drew open the curtains.

‘Quickly, please, gentlemen,’ the butler chivvied. ‘Mrs Smith has requested you join her for breakfast.’

My stomach made embarrassing noises in response.

I stepped out of bed, still blinking the sleep out of my eyes. The butler didn’t have time for that, because he grasped me smartly by the elbow and dragged me to one of the mirrors on the other side of the room. Thomas was quicker than I and saved himself the embarrassment of getting manhandled like a naughty child.

That was all the embarrassment he saved himself, because apparently we couldn’t be trusted to dress ourselves. My claims that I had dressed myself for at least three decades now fell on deaf ears, and I wasn’t allowed to undress myself either. Apparently that was what the young men – Parker introduced them as Leo and Tommy – were for.

Thomas, who was used to people stripping his clothes off, grinned mischievously at me.

Parker declared my duster not fashionable enough for wear outside the house – or anywhere – and my T-shirt and jeans didn’t meet with his approval either. Instead I got dressed up like a doll, with more layers than I usually wore.

In the end I looked like something out of a period piece.

Parker tutted about the length of my limbs – unfashionable – the state of my hair – too long and thus unfashionable – and the state of my stubble – you guessed it, also unfashionable. He ignored my protests and merely told me to hold still before he snipped off an ear. And even I knew better than to speak when he put the razor to my throat.

He didn’t slash my throat, but he made it very clear that he wanted to.

The real problem turned out to be my left hand. Butters was right, and it was improving, but it still looked like a melted wax candle, and I kept the glove on to protect it, and keep it out of sight. But gloves inside the house were a big social no-no, and the Fashionable Manners allowed no exceptions to the rule. I decided that Parker could stick the Fashionable Manners where the sun didn’t shine, put my foot down, and kept the glove.

His glare effortlessly communicated that we would not be friends.

I almost didn’t recognise my own reflection. I hadn’t been this well-groomed in… I searched my memory, but I suspected it had been when Susan dragged me to the party where we tried to steal the Shroud of Turin.

I instinctively shied away from that memory.

For multiple reasons.

To distract myself I moved my arms and legs. The clothing was tighter than I liked, and the restriction of the neck cloth at my throat annoyed me already. The range of movement was better than I had expected, but I still felt like a dressed up mannequin. I felt awkward and not a little like an imposter.

Thomas on the other hand wore the clothes like he had been born to it. On him the effect was effortless. People meeting him in the street would assume he belonged here.

I didn’t think they’d say the same about me.

Thomas grinned mischievously. ‘You look…’

‘Like a gentleman,’ said Leo.

‘Like a clown,’ said I.

That earned me another stern stare from the butler. ‘The dictates of fashion are no laughing matter, sir.’

I remembered that I had nearly gotten arrested for unfashionable behaviour last night, and agreed that, in this world, that was true.

I missed Chicago already, where I could be as unfashionable as I wanted.

‘He’s a wizard,’ Thomas told the butler. ‘He should have the appropriate outerwear.’

‘What outerwear?’ I asked suspiciously.

The butler and Thomas both ignored me. ‘I shall ensure the proper accoutrements are prepared.’

‘What accoutrements?’

I might as well have saved my breath. They very deliberately ignored me.

Even Mouse hadn’t escaped the attentions of the footmen and the bossy butler. One of them – Tommy, I thought – had taken on the Herculean task of brushing out Mouse’s messy fur. Unlike me, he enjoyed the attentions, and paid Tommy with head butts and a full face wash. The piece of red ribbon that was tied around his throat didn’t meet with his approval. He looked at me for help, but the other footman was doing things near my throat, so I didn’t dare to move.

And here I was thinking I had come here to track down a wayward apprentice.

Nothing about this was simple.

The butler lined us up for his professional appraisal. Thomas passed muster with a terse nod of the head and the comment that Mr Raith was the very picture of fashionable virtue, whatever that meant. I on the other hand fell victim to disapproving stares and a lot of tugging and straightening before he eventually declared that this was the best he could make of it.

Not exactly the ringing endorsement to give you confidence.

I tried not to squirm.

‘Mrs Smith expects you to join her for breakfast,’ Parker the Butler said. ‘I suggest you do not keep her waiting.’

And with that threat he herded us out of the room to meet our host. From that tone and his manners it’d be anyone’s guess if we’d be served breakfast or be served up as breakfast.

Such is the life of the wizard: you never know what you’re going to get next.

Chapter Text

Irene slept well. Waking up turned out to be a less pleasant experience. Her backside reminded her that it had had a painful encounter with the streets, and communicated that in a number of bruises of spectacular size. Irene winced when she inspected the damage with the help of the full-length mirror.

She really hoped horse-riding wasn’t the way to get around here.

A knock on the door made her restore her underwear to less revealing levels.

‘Enter.’

A maid entered the room, bearing a pretty pastel green dress and half a florist’s shop worth of flowers. ‘Good morning, Miss Winters. Mrs Smith has asked me to help you dress.’

Irene contemplated pointing out that she knew perfectly well how to dress herself, but refrained. Besides, in an alternate that placed such heavy emphasis on clothes being just right, she’d definitely get it wrong. Fashion had never been her forte.

Fortunately, the fashion happened to be vaguely Regency, with empire waists currently all the rage. That had the upside of uncomplicated dresses that were easy to move in, but the big downside of lack of pockets.

‘That’s what your reticule is for,’ the maid, Martha, said. She produced a dainty reticule that definitely wouldn’t fit a weapon of any meaningful size.

‘That’s very small,’ Irene observed.

‘You cannot go out with anything bigger, Miss,’ Martha said. ‘That’s what they do in France, you see.’

Irene did see. Sort of. The French sounded like a far more practical people than the English in this alternate. ‘Maybe people in France actually like to be able to leave the house with more than just their house keys.’

Martha shook her head ruefully. ‘That’s what Mrs Young thought too.’

‘And what exactly happened to Mrs Young?’

‘Arrested,’ Martha replied briskly. ‘Lifted from her bed in the middle of the night. Less than a week later her head was on a spike over London Bridge. Such a shame that was. You’d never have thought she was a French spy. Happily married, considered for the Society. And her with three young ones too.’

Irene’s eyebrows did their best to climb way past her hairline. ‘And was Mrs Young a French spy?’

‘Judge certainly thought so,’ Martha said. She tugged Irene’s hair up into what she assured her was the latest style. ‘You don’t question these things, Miss. Questioning treason cases is…’

‘Treason?’

‘Just so, Miss.’

Irene took a deep breath. ‘On reflection, I think I’ll stick with the fashionable reticule.’

‘Very wise, Miss.’

The more Irene saw of this world, the less it seemed a place of silly customs and eccentric fashions, and more and more like the kind of paranoid place where not having the right dress marked you out as a spy. With all the ensuing lethal consequences.

Just ask Mrs Young.

Irene reflected that the alternate itself put her and her group at a distinct disadvantage. Emily Ashwood had chosen her hidey-hole well. She was a native. She could hide in plain sight. She knew the rules. More importantly, people knew her. If it ever came to a confrontation, people would believe her word over that of the unknown suspicious strangers.

Because this mission wasn’t complicated enough already.

When Irene’s hair had been arranged to Martha’s satisfaction, the maid moved on to the artificial flowers. Not real flowers, Irene noted with some relief, just ones made out of cloth and embroidery. Flowers were in, Martha declared, and the more the better. She enhanced Irene’s hair, tied a few on pieces of ribbons to serve as necklaces and bracelets – real jewellery of silver, gold, and gems was considered decadently French – and pinned them all over Irene’s dress, until she looked as if she had been dragged through a field of wildflowers by her ankles.

‘Pretty as a painting,’ Martha said.

Pretty was not the word Irene would have used.

‘Mrs Smith is waiting for you in the dining room,’ Martha continued, blissfully oblivious as to Irene’s true feelings about her appearance. ‘Follow me, please.’

Since Irene wanted to speak with her colleague, she followed without protest.

The dining room had been fully laid, but Irene was the first guest to come downstairs. Only the host sat at the head of the table, like a queen in her own home.

Agatha Smith, Librarian-in-Residence, came as a bit of a surprise. Small, plump, and with a face like a wrinkled peach, she looked like everyone’s favourite grandmother. She was a good deal more advanced in age than was usual for a Librarian on a permanent posting. Most of them would have retired to the Library by now.

Not Agatha. And she sat so comfortably in this house that Irene very much doubted she had any plans for such a move.

‘Ah, Irene, dear, good morning,’ Agatha said warmly, greeting Irene as if she had known her all her life. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.’

Irene didn’t say that she had never heard of Agatha until yesterday. ‘Thank you. It’s very kind of you to receive us at such short notice.’

Agatha gestured for Irene to sit and help herself to the food available. ‘Parker tells me something of a situation has reared its ugly head. Something to do with the sudden return of young Emily?’

Irene frowned. ‘You know her?’

‘Oh, very well, I should say,’ Agatha nodded. ‘I supervised the first part of her training. She is – or was, rather – expected to become my successor when I retire. Though I don’t suppose that will happen now.’

Irene didn’t know what to say to that, so covered for it by taking a large and welcome bite of breakfast.

Agatha smiled knowingly. ‘No, I never noticed anything suspicious about her. She always seemed like a nice girl, who loved books. She’s from a respectable family too, never a whisper of scandal attached to their name. She seemed ideal. It’s not easy, you see, training a Librarian to function in this alternate. So many rules and regulations to remember, and they change twice a week too. More often, if the Society’s feeling inspired. Occupational hazard, of course, in such an order-slanted world, but it’s very tricky to manage if you’re not used to it. So I had a chat with some of the senior Librarians and convinced them it’d be far easier to train up a native.’

Irene could follow that logic. The only thing she disagreed with was the choice of native. ‘Why did you send her on to Bradamant, then?’

‘Well, the girl may have to step into my shoes one day, but that’s no reason not to give her a well-rounded education. What use is a Librarian who can’t occasionally go to a higher tech alternate?’

Irene considered the possibility that Agatha had been in on the whole thing, but cautiously decided against it. Most Librarians were not traitors. Maybe Emily wasn’t one either. Maybe she had only acted under duress. This early in the investigation she had too little to go on. Though if Emily really had the authorities put the Traverse under surveillance, that did not bode well.

‘There’s been some suggestion she may not have acted of her own volition,’ Irene said carefully. ‘Did you ever see any signs that she was maybe getting blackmailed?’

‘No, nothing of the kind. Poor girl if it’s true.’

‘If?’

‘Well, she’s a delightful girl, I’ll stand by that, but she is a troublemaker.’

‘You just told me she’s respectable!’

Agatha tutted her disapproval in almost the exact same way as her butler. ‘I said her family is respectable, not that she is. Her parents have done their very best to keep a tight rein on her. When I told them I wanted to take the girl on as my companion, their sigh of relief nearly bowled me over. I think they quite despaired of her ever amounting to anything.’

Judging by the available evidence, Irene rather thought Emily’s parents were on to something.

Circumstances conspired to stop her from saying something of that nature. The butler marched into the room, trailing Irene’s companions behind him.

All of them had undergone a complete transformation. Even Mouse hadn’t escaped it entirely. A pretty red ribbon had been tied around his neck, but it didn’t suit him at all. You couldn’t try and pass off a dog like Mouse like a lady’s little lapdog and hope to succeed. Mouse glanced at Irene for help, since it did not come from anyone else. She beckoned him over.

Of the rest of them only Thomas and Kai really pulled off the required look. Of course, Thomas could probably wear sackcloth and still look good, and so could Kai. But for Thomas these clothes were something he didn’t normally wear and yet he still made it appear he’d worn nothing else all his life, whereas Kai actually looked more at home in these kinds of fashions than he did in more casual modern ones.

Harry and Murphy on the other hand were the image of acute misery. Relatable, in Murphy’s case. She had been forced into a wig to compensate for her unfashionably short hair, but it was just the wrong shade to suit her. She wore the same kind of dress Irene did, but in lilac, and with feathers instead of the flowers. The end result looked more severely abused peacock than respectable lady.

Irene glanced briefly at Murphy’s face and decided she’d have a longer life expectancy if she kept her thoughts on this matter to herself. Death by feather sounded wholly unappealing. And very messy.

Harry actually brushed up nice. Until now Irene had only seen him looking varying degrees of scruffy – not dirty, just not someone who cared a great deal about what he looked like – accessorised with the odd bruise or cut. But now someone had cut his hair, shaved off the stubble, and forced him into a full gentleman’s regalia, probably at gunpoint. The clothes fit him like a glove, but he still gave the impression of a kid dressing up in his older brother’s clothes.

Quite an achievement, given Harry’s height.

Irene performed the introductions this time. She “accidentally” neglected to mention that Kai was a Dragon. If Agatha didn’t already know, then she didn’t need to know.

Agatha invited them all to sit down to breakfast, and sent off the butler to fetch something suitable for Mouse too. Mouse sat down next to Irene and stared at her with such a mournful gaze that Irene decided to improve his quality of life by removing the ribbon.

‘I wouldn’t do that, dear,’ Agatha warned.

‘He doesn’t like it,’ Irene said firmly. ‘And he isn’t a lapdog.’

‘It’s the fashion,’ Agatha pointed out. ‘I suppose he doesn’t have to wear it in the house, so long as we don’t have any visitors, but he does have to wear it outside. You won’t like the consequences if you fly in the face of fashion.’

As Mrs Young had found out the hard way.

Irene had no intention whatsoever of having her head adorn a spike next to that unfortunate lady.

‘Well, we have no visitors now,’ she said, rolling up the ribbon and stuffing it in the reticule, which reduced its storage space by about fifty percent. Mouse laid his head on her knees in gratitude. Irene scratched behind his ears. ‘Good boy, Mouse.’

Mouse wagged his tail in agreement.

‘No one fashionable owns a dog this size,’ Agatha observed, because in this mess of an alternate even unchangeable things like size were subject to the whims of fashion. ‘It might be best to keep him out of sight as much as possible. He is unfashionably large.’

‘Just like his owner,’ Harry said in a tone that betrayed he’d had just about enough of this nonsense.

Agatha stared at him reproachfully. ‘There’s no need to fly off the handle, Mr Dresden. I appreciate that you are a stranger to this alternate, but it is you who are the visitor and therefore obliged to follow your host’s rules. While you are a guest in my home, I expect you to do nothing to bring the Greencoats to my door. It has taken the Library much time and effort to establish a presence here, and I shall not stand for you flushing all that hard work down the sewer in a matter of days.’

A genteel granny-like type, but with a spine of steel. Irene made note not to cross her.

‘You will allow us to stay here as your guests, then?’ Thomas asked. ‘That’s very kind.’ He sent a winning smile at her.

Agatha didn’t melt into a puddle at his feet, but she smiled back indulgently. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘I take it young Emily has walked off with Emma. You’ll need both the book and the girl, I reckon.’ For lunch, probably. ‘Anything else?’

‘If she is acting under duress, we’ll need to find the person who’s forcing her,’ Murphy said. She brushed a drooping feather out of her face with some force. ‘And arrest the person responsible. Of course.’

Agatha frowned. ‘The Library is not interested in arresting felons.’

‘No,’ Murphy agreed, ‘but the Chicago Police Department is. Miss Ashwood committed assault within my jurisdiction. I have no reason to assume that any blackmailing – if that is the case – took place elsewhere at this point in the investigation. Both Miss Ashwood and her blackmailer will stand trial in my alternate for crimes committed there. I see no reason why the Library should oppose that.’

‘Miss Emily belongs to the Library,’ Agatha countered.

‘Not yet,’ Murphy insisted doggedly. ‘She hasn’t sworn her vows yet.’

Agatha had nothing to say to that. ‘You are a very single-minded young woman,’ she remarked sourly.

Murphy remained unfazed. ‘That makes me good at my job.’

Agatha wisely decided that she couldn’t win that argument, and moved on to the practicalities instead. ‘According to the latest news, young Emily has returned to her father’s house after a long stay in Canada, and is now ready to rejoin polite society. If nothing’s changed, we know where she is. Ordinarily it’d be impossible to see her at this stage. As she hasn’t made her official return to society yet, we cannot make calls on her. Fortunately, we have a way in.’

‘We do?’ Irene asked. One of these days she’d have to stop throwing herself into missions with only very minimal preparation. It’d be nice to feel really on top of a mission from the get-go.

‘Oh yes,’ said Agatha. ‘I have a little token of my appreciation to deliver to Lady Ashwood. She gave a most wonderful dinner the other night. It’s only right for me to pay a call and thank her with a little present. And if I just happen to take along my nieces, whom I haven’t seen for far too long, that is entirely acceptable.’

Irene catalogued that under the best she could get under the available circumstances. She’d rather pay a less official call so she could snoop around as she pleased, instead of making conversation with a high society lady.

‘Emily knows you’re a Librarian,’ Thomas pointed out. ‘She’s not an idiot. She’ll know something’s up when you barge in so soon after what happened.’

‘It can’t be helped.’ Agatha sipped her tea. ‘Besides, if she’s watching us, I imagine that leaves you fine gentlemen free to sneak in and conduct a more covert operation.’ Her eyes sparked in amusement as she smiled at Thomas. ‘I assume a man of your… talents could find his own way in.’

That sounded more like Irene’s style.

Thomas grinned right back.

‘I do have to ask,’ Agatha said, looking around the table like a stern school teacher, ‘are there any of you, apart from Thomas and Irene, with special talent?’

‘Harry’s a wizard,’ Thomas announced. ‘Parker knows of it already, and will furnish him with the appropriate accessories. And is there any hope of the latest Fashionable Manners with the latest magical trends?’

Harry nearly choked on his coffee. Irene, who knew Harry fairly well by now, was pretty sure that it was the idea of magical trends that had gone down the wrong way, and not the coffee.

‘I’ll have one of the footmen deliver it to your room. Anyone else?’

‘I have some modest talents myself,’ Kai replied. Modest among Dragons, maybe. ‘But I would prefer not to advertise these.’

Agatha didn’t like that. ‘Hiding magical talent could land you in a lot of hot water with the authorities, Mr Strongrock, if that is indeed your name. As a Librarian, I am familiar with the Three Musketeers, though of course I would not have any work of a French author in the house.’ Kai refused to be ashamed, so Agatha gave up and moved on. ‘Hiding such a highly prized talent will gain you no small amount of suspicion. Only people with things to hide would do that.’

‘Such as French spies?’

‘Such as French spies. If you are caught using your talents without having advertised them by your apparel, you are likely to get arrested on treason charges. This mission is risky enough; infiltrating the highest layer of society to take one of their own will prove difficult enough without further… complications.’

‘I will be very careful and very discreet, Mrs Smith,’ Kai promised solemnly. He exuded innocence and trustworthiness. If he really wanted, he could charm the birds out of the trees with as much ease as Thomas. If they ever decided to team up, no one would be safe. ‘I don’t plan on using anything that could cause you any inconvenience.’

‘You do know what they say about best laid plans?’

‘I never said they were best laid plans.’

She gave him up for a lost cause.  ‘And you, Miss Murphy?’

‘Just a good shot,’ she replied. Irene knew exactly just how good a shot.

Agatha studied her intently, weighed the chances of Murphy leaving the house without her trusty weapon, and came to the inevitable conclusion. ‘Keep your gun out of sight, if you please.’

‘They will never see it,’ Murphy promised sweetly. ‘Not until it’s too late.’

Agatha classed Murphy under lost causes as well. ‘Very well.’ The tone suggested she didn’t think anything of the kind. ‘That’s as good a plan as we’re likely to get at this stage of the game. I’ll have the Fashionable Manners delivered to your rooms, gentlemen. I suggest you familiarise yourselves with the contents as soon as possible. Mr Raith, please impress upon your compatriots the dire need for compliance with the rules. I myself will see to the ladies.’

She delivered that last announcement like the wolf telling the little lamb it was the wolf’s lunch.

What have we walked into?

Irene was no stranger to highly regulated alternates, but usually she didn’t try to insinuate herself into the highest circles of their societies. Her usual modus operandi was to stay below the radar as far as possible or, if she absolutely had to infiltrate someplace in order to get close to the book she wanted, infiltrate the lower classes, where scrutiny was usually less tight.

Not this time, though. This time she’d go in bold as brass, dressed to catch the eye, walking in through the front door. A very disconcerting experience for any Librarian.

Agatha rose to her feet, signalling that breakfast was over. ‘Ladies, we shall depart in half an hour precisely. Do not be late.’

She swept from the room like a queen.

Irene and Murphy decided not to be late.

The men disappeared upstairs for their lessons in manners, herded there by Thomas, who enjoyed this whole thing far too much. Irene and Murphy returned to their rooms too, to have their clothes and hair fixed where needed and be helped into outdoor shoes, coat, and gloves. Hats and bonnets had recently been declared a French fashion, and so could absolutely not be worn, though that might change in the next week or so, as the weather grew chillier and people tired of having their heads exposed to the cold all the time. Or so Martha said.

‘How does anyone keep up?’ Irene asked in exasperation.

In between having her hair tugged and her feet forced into new shoes, she perused the latest edition of the Fashionable Manners. Some new rules and regulations had come into effect only the day before. It was now considered good conduct to not make eye contact with people who wore gloves indoors – and indeed one should shun their companionship as if they carried a deadly disease. Introductions now followed the new pattern: when making a new acquaintance a woman should bow first and then shake hands, and the other way around for men. As an afterthought it was noted that nature motifs had after due consideration been deemed appropriate for decoration.

And that was just the section on everyday rules and regulations. A whole separate section dealt with the dos and don’ts of magic. Evocations were old-fashioned, but not a staple of French fashion, and therefore acceptable, though the user should be prepared for comments on his choice of magic, or so the pamphlet warned. Potions were definitely a no-go, though. Familiars would increase one’s standing in society, provided it wasn’t a black cat. Too stereotypical, apparently. Cats of other colours could be used without consequence, but would invite comment of the negative kind. The pamphlet did warn that talking familiars were still the fashion in France, and should therefore be avoided at all costs in England.

Probably for the best that Harry had left Bob at home, and not just because he wouldn’t recognise good manners if they danced naked in front of him.

It all seemed so very silly and pointless. Why would anyone ever bother with this sort of regulated nonsense? Ordinarily, from the safety of another alternate, Irene might have laughed about the ridiculousness of it all.

You know, if there hadn’t been the death sentence for unfashionable manners to consider.

‘That’s what the Fashionable Manners is for,’ Martha replied matter-of-factly. ‘So we know what’s acceptable and what’s not.’

‘Don’t you ever get tired of it?’

Martha shrugged. ‘That’s just life, Miss. And we wouldn’t want to be thought French anyway. Would you?’

In this alternate’s London? ‘No, I wouldn’t. Naturally.’ Wouldn’t want to end up like the poor Mrs Young.

Irene skimmed a lengthy diatribe on the question if thaumaturgy was in or out – undecided, so it could stay around for the time being – and then moved on to the next page. Which just so happened to be a glowing recommendation of necromancy.

Irene had seen quite enough zombies to last her a lifetime. Occasionally she still had nightmares about that Halloween night in Chicago: the terror, the relentless rain, the hopelessness, and the endless stream of zombies attacking them from all sides. Invariably, she woke up from those dreams cold and shaking.

And here it was the fashion.

‘Have they gone mad?’ she blurted out.

Martha peered over Irene’s shoulder. ‘Oh, the necromancy? Well, that’s just plain good sense, isn’t it?’

‘It is?’

‘No sense in sending living soldiers against the Frenchies, is there? Better send the ones who’re already dead. They won’t die again.’

Sensible, maybe. Practical, definitely. But even Irene, whose grasp of ethics even she knew was shaky, knew that there were some things you really shouldn’t touch. She didn’t sense magic, as a rule, and she hadn’t sensed it as such when Harry called up Sue, but she had felt something. And what she’d felt had given her the chills.

She imagined Harry’s response to this particular section in some detail and really hoped Thomas could contain the inevitable eruption.

She wisely said nothing herself.

The coat and gloves Martha wrestled her into continued the floral theme, so if Irene wanted to, she could stand in a flower bed and be completely invisible. Useful in a garden, less so in a lady’s fancy parlour.

But compared to Murphy, Irene got off lightly. True, the feathers on her coat and gloves were of the embroidered kind, but the maid had compensated by sticking a few more in her hair and on her dress.

‘Nothing succeeds like excess?’ Irene asked when she met her at the top of the stairs.

‘I think they want to stick me in the hen house,’ Murphy muttered darkly.

‘Is the maid still alive?’

Murphy had enough of a sense of humour to laugh about it. Since it was either that or scream in frustration, Irene laughed too.

They descended the stairs and joined Agatha, who stood waiting like a stern schoolteacher waiting for the naughty children. Mouse sat next to her.

‘Irene, you cannot take the dog,’ she said.

Irene hadn’t asked for him, so either Harry sent him or Mouse had come of his own volition. ‘I think the dog is taking us.’ She retrieved the red ribbon from her reticule. Mouse pleaded with her with soulful eyes, but all that accomplished was that it made Irene feel extremely guilty about what she had to do next. ‘Sorry, Mouse. No choice.’

He whined softly, but held out his head for her ministrations. Irene made sure to tie the ribbon as loosely as she could get away with. Agatha then produced another longer ribbon – same colour – to act as a lead. Irene didn’t ask what good that would do if Mouse decided to part company with them, but only because she had by now resigned herself to nothing in this alternate making any sense whatsoever.

Mouse gave them a knowing look. Murphy scratched him behind the ears and in gratitude Mouse removed a mouthful of feathers from her hair.

Agatha closed her eyes as if she could wish it away by not seeing. She rushed them out the door before Mouse had the chance to finish the job.

The carriage that would convey them to the Ashwoods’ town house couldn’t have screamed luxury any louder. Dark green with leaf and floral motifs in bright colours painted on, comfortable cushions and curtains in a matching shade of green, and, to top it all off, foldable tables built into the interior. For playing cards on long journeys, Agatha explained, of which she undertook many in the course of her duties. She remained suspiciously vague though on the topic of who she played cards with.

Irene sank into the cushions and decided she might not ever get up again. This was a far cry from the teeth-rattling cabs of her London. Mouse hopped onto most of the bench next to Irene, sighed contentedly, and lay his head on Irene’s lap for a much-needed nap. Murphy and Agatha took the bench opposite. Agatha made a relieved noise, and sank back into the cushions. The only one not comfortable was Murphy, who complained that the feathers pricked her in some very uncomfortable places.

‘Listen well,’ Agatha said once they were on their way. ‘Your part is fairly simple. You wait with speaking until you’re introduced, then you bow and shake our hostess’s hand. I’ll tell Lady Ashwood you’ve lived in America for the last decade, so you’re bound to be a bit odd. I have enough credit that she’ll take my word for it.’

Irene, whose ability to speak in a convincing American accent was dubious at best, really hoped the Ashwoods had never been to America themselves. Never mind, she could always try to imitate Murphy.

‘What else?’ Murphy asked.

A veritable list of instructions followed: ‘Take your gloves off as soon as you step over the threshold, or no one’ll speak to you. Always accept offers of refreshment, whether you want it or not, or you’ll insult your host. Smile, but keep your mouth closed when you do, or it’ll be seen as a threat. Never compliment your host’s furniture, but complimenting plants is fine. Don’t pick a seating spot yourself. Your host will do it for you. Above all, don’t gawp at anything.’

Irene’s ears were ringing by the end of it.

Either way it hardly mattered, because ‘You will leave most of the talking to me anyway. And don’t wander off. Stay where you are directed to sit and don’t even excuse yourself to go to the loo.’

‘Let me guess, that’s rude?’ Murphy asked with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

‘Rude during morning calls, acceptable during balls. You can’t have people peeing on the floor or in flower pots after all. Some practicality remains necessary, even if it’s also done by the French.’

‘Would the government ban eating if the French did it?’ Murphy asked.

‘Government? Oh, my dear Miss Murphy, the King and Parliament are there mostly for show. They do everything the Society for the Promotion of Good Taste tells them. They don’t want to be considered unfashionable any more than the rest of us.’

‘Imagine that,’ Irene muttered.

‘Irene, the alternate you work in might have easier rules,’ Agatha said reproachfully. ‘This is not your alternate. The Library has important work in this one too. Without us, this alternate would be sliding into high order faster than a banker after his annual bonus. It’s not easy work, and often ridiculous, but it must be done, and it won’t get done by moaning about the circumstances.’

‘You’re right,’ Irene said. ‘I’m sorry.’

So she’d grit her teeth and do the job. Right now, her job consisted of getting the lay of the land, and distracting the lady of the house while the other members of the outfit sneaked around.

The Ashwood townhouse was bigger, fancier, and definitely more expensive than that of Agatha. The butler must have been peeping through the spyhole, because he opened the door before they had the chance to knock.

‘Good morning, Evans,’ Agatha said amiably. ‘I’ve come to pay a call on Lady Ashwood. Could you announce us, please?’

‘Certainly, Mrs Smith.’ The butler stepped aside to let them through. ‘May I have the names of your charming companions?’

‘These are my nieces, Miss Irene Murphy and Miss Karrin Murphy,’ Agatha replied, gesturing to each in turn. ‘Returned to our fair shores at last after years in America.’

‘Welcome back, ladies.’

Murphy and Irene smiled gracefully.

The butler left them in the hall for a moment while he went to announce them and Irene understood why Agatha had instructed them not to gawp at anything. The place invited gawping with open arms. Opulent would be an understatement. Expensive wouldn’t come close. Decadent might be as close to the mark as she could get. By comparison, Agatha’s house was merely shabby chic. Someone had thrown money at this place by the truckload.

All of it was in the latest styles too, if the nature themes were anything to go by. Redecorating this on a regular basis likely didn’t come cheap either. And this was only the entry hall. Goodness knew what the rest of the place was like.

The butler came back and accompanied them into a just as richly appointed parlour, where a lady sat waiting. She rose graciously as they came in.

‘My dear Mrs Smith! What a delight to see you!’ Her voice exuded warmth and sincerity.

‘Lady Ashwood, a delight indeed.’ Agatha’s smile matched hers in sincerity every inch of the way. Irene had no doubt that they really were friends. Which of course might make this that much more complicated. ‘I thought I’d come and pay my compliments about your lovely dinner the other night in person.’

‘You could have sent a messenger.’

‘And missed the pleasure of your company? Nonsense, my dear.’ The two clasped hands, and smiled some more.

Emily Ashwood owed her colouring and delicate build to her mother, but where Irene’s first impression of the daughter had been all action and sharp edges, the only word that sprang to mind to describe Lady Ashwood was “soft,” from her features to her dress to the way she arranged her hair. You wouldn’t catch this lady whacking people around the head with Shakespeare.

Irene noted wryly that no one had stuck any feathers in her.

‘Who have you brought with you today?’ Lady Ashwood asked, though the butler had doubtlessly informed her already.

‘Ah, Sophia, I’m glad you asked,’ Agatha said, beckoning Murphy and Irene forwards for their formal introduction. ‘These lovely ladies are my nieces, Miss Irene Murphy and Miss Karrin Murphy, lately returned from America.’

Irene bowed and shook hands as instructed. She must have done it right, because Lady Ashwood declared that it was truly lovely to meet her. ‘Such a comfort you must be to your aunt.’

Irene smiled modestly and broke out her rarely used American accent: ‘One can only hope.’

Murphy winced.

Fortunately, Lady Ashwood didn’t notice. ‘I for one am glad that she has you fine young ladies. No woman should live alone at her age. No offence, dear, but I’ve often worried about you all by yourself.’

‘I know it’s kindly meant,’ Agatha said. ‘And I can’t deny that it makes me feel quite youthful to have younger people around the house.’

‘I can imagine so. Oh, but we shouldn’t remain standing. Please, sit. Miss Irene, right here beside me. Miss Karrin, over there, I should think, with your aunt beside you. Yes, that arrangement will suit nicely.’

Irene sat down and that was when Lady Ashwood first clapped eyes on Mouse. He’d been hiding behind them and, because he could be very silent when he wanted to be, no one had noticed him before. Quite an achievement for a dog his size.

‘Gracious,’ she said mildly, lifting a hand to her chest to indicate shock. ‘And who is this?’

‘This is Mouse,’ Murphy replied. ‘Our loyal companion.’

Mouse and Lady Ashwood regarded each other with mutual curiosity.

‘He is quite big,’ Lady Ashwood observed.

‘It’s the fashion in America,’ Irene invented, keeping a perfectly straight face. ‘And naturally we couldn’t part with him when we came here. We’ve grown so very fond of him, you see, and he’s a great deterrent to any miscreant who’d seek to bother two women travelling alone,’ she added virtuously.

‘Naturally,’ Lady Ashwood agreed, but she kept a wary eye on Mouse.

So Mouse deployed his own form of conflict resolution, trotted over to Lady Ashwood and laid his big head in her lap for cuddles and adoration. Lady Ashwood proved no match for this gentle giant. Ten seconds later she scratched his ears and declared him a good boy. Mouse wagged his tail in agreement.

‘Refreshments, I think,’ Lady Ashwood said. She pulled the cord beside her to summon the butler, and instructed him to bring them tea. After the days Irene’d had lately, jumping worlds and time zones on too little sleep, coffee would have been her drink of choice. She’d had a cup at breakfast, but it didn’t do nearly as much good as she’d hoped.

Agatha made meaningless small talk with their host, and handed over a fabled recipe from her own cook as a token of her appreciation for a splendid dinner. And possibly a not so subtle hint for the next one.

The tea came. The lady poured and dispensed. Irene was just thinking that everything was going wonderfully well when the door opened and Emily Ashwood sashayed into the room.

Chapter Text

By the time I finished Fashionable Manners I had come to the conclusion that I never wanted to be fashionable again. And I possibly never wanted to see or hear that word again either. It must be the most overused word in the world.

‘Necromancy!’ I said, disgusted.

They actually promoted necromancy. It was hard enough to swallow that they made something like magic, something that was used by every wizard in his or her own unique way, subject to trend, but when that trend was necromancy, that really galled me. A power as dark and corruptive as necromancy promoted as a fashion trend. If that didn’t sum up this world in a nutshell, I didn’t know what did.

And I thought Venice was crazy.

Kai wrinkled his nose in distaste, and even Thomas muttered about new depths getting plumbed with this one. But our opinions didn’t matter. This was not our world, and if we didn’t want to get arrested, maimed, or decapitated we had to stay below the radar. And to stay below the radar, we had to adept.

But I’d die before I touched necromancy again. Integration only went so far.

I stared without enthusiasm at the outerwear delivered by Parker: a velvet blue coat, with matching gloves and hat. All decorated with embroidered stars and would-be magical mysterious symbols. The only way I could have advertised my wizard status any clearer was to walk around with a flashing neon sign over my head.

Kai observed he was very glad he had decided to keep his magical abilities publicly under wraps.

I wished I’d done the same.

‘One consolation,’ Kai added. ‘The hat’s not pointed.’

If it had been, I would have refused to wear it on principle, but apparently pointy hats had just gone out of fashion this week, because too many French wizards wore them. Irene’s pointed offering now lived on one of the shelves in my subbasement, where Bob could laugh at it, and pester me about wearing it.

‘Small consolation,’ I corrected. I already looked like a dressed up doll, and the additions would not improve it. The only thing I considered a consolation was that I could keep my staff and blasting rod with me – and in plain sight – and no one would think anything of it. The coat even had a special storage space in the lining inside for the rod and any at least five pockets for other magical necessities.

But it wasn’t my spell-protected duster. I felt naked even with all the layers and the flashy coat.

If we wanted to be in place by the time the ladies showed up to the Ashwoods’ place, we couldn’t dawdle, so we left before they did. They got the fancy coach. We walked.

‘Keep an eye on them, Mouse,’ I instructed my dog. I’d have liked to take him along, but we were conspicuous enough already, and I liked the idea of Mouse as extra back-up for the women.

And before you point out to me that Murphy and Irene were more than a match for anyone: yes, I know that. But I’d have liked to watch out for them myself and I couldn’t, so Mouse could do it for me. I doubted any book-throwing harpy could get the drop on him. Like she’d got on Thomas.

Mouse sat down next to the front door to wait for the others, and we let ourselves out. The disapproving butler fortunately had given up on us and was nowhere in sight.

Thomas had scoped out the Ashwood house the last time he was here, so he knew how to get there.

The streets were quiet. It wasn’t that early, but according to Thomas, no one who was anyone showed their face early. Only working people had a reason to leave their beds early, and they’d had their morning rush several hours ago.

Just as well. I still felt like an overdressed clown. And I bet it showed.

Not with Thomas and Kai, though. They strolled along as if they owned the city. Well, a Dragon and a vampire of the White Court would be used to being top of the social food chain. Everyone else was far enough beneath them not to matter much. Thomas had got used to slumming it on my couch, and Kai had never turned his nose up at the dirty work, but they were born to privilege. And it showed.

From the Fashionable Manners I knew that it was currently not fashionable to greet other people in the street if you didn’t already know them. Since we knew no one, that worked out well for us.

It was a quiet journey. No crisis happened.

Which made me deeply suspicious. Usually when things go my way, that’s the only warning I get that the shit is about to hit the fan.

Spectacularly.

We found the house. The only word I could think of to describe it was ostentatious, and even that barely scratched the surface. It oozed money.

Thomas led us around the back, which still oozed money, but a little more discreetly. Everyone who actually had work to do came around the back. Which meant that we’d stick out like a sore thumb. So we loitered in the back alley, studying the house from a safe distance while I pretended to study the cobbles. If asked, I was instructed to say I was inspecting a possible tear in reality. That’d put people off.

How they expected me to deliver that with a straight face was never communicated.

‘So, how do we get in?’ I asked, bending over theatrically, squinting at the dirty stones.

‘Through the window,’ Thomas announced, pointing up.

‘I can’t fly,’ I retorted. ‘And Kai flying us up there might possibly be missed on the other side of the city, but not here.’

‘I wouldn’t fit between the house and the tree anyway,’ Kai said practically.

Thomas grinned. ‘We’ll climb the tree. From that big branch we can easily climb in the window.’

‘And what’s on the other side of that window?’ I asked.

‘Emily’s bedroom.’

I realised that I didn’t want to know how he knew that, but that I needed to know. ‘Did she and you…?’

He shook his head. ‘I try not to with colleagues. Ruins your working relationship.’

‘Did she try?’

‘Once.’ The tone was definite enough to discourage further questions.

Which I posed anyway. ‘So you broke her heart.’

‘Not sure she has one, but no. Lust, not love, Harry. Believe me, I know the difference.’

Yeah, he would. I shut up.

‘So how do you know where her bedroom is?’ Kai asked.

‘She pointed it out to us when we were here last time.’

‘Last time?’ I asked. I felt like I had missed something. ‘I thought you were in London to steal a book. What were you doing here?’

‘Didn’t I mention? Emma happened to be part of Sir Henry Ashwood’s collection.’

Kai and I stared at him. ‘And you didn’t think it’d be a good idea to mention this any earlier?’ we demanded, in stereo.

Thomas shrugged. ‘I thought Bradamant had.’

‘Bradamant never shares unless you drag it out of her with tongs,’ Kai pointed out. His voice dripped with disapproval. But since now was not the right time to determine blame, he got back on track: ‘Was that how you got in last time?’

‘Considered it, didn’t need to use it,’ Thomas reported. ‘We managed to get ourselves a dinner invitation instead.’

‘You stole the book between the first and second course?’

‘No, between the main course and dessert.’

My brother the book thief. The very professional, very official book thief if he decided to go that way. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Not the book theft, obviously, but the commitment to the Library. From what I’d seen of it, as an institution it had its flaws, as well as an uncomfortable tendency towards secrecy.

Of course, Thomas was hardly a stranger to secrecy. He’d been raised on it. And he saw laws and rules as optional anyway. And from the way he discussed his previous heist, this job was tailor-made for him. He liked it, and he was good at it.

He hadn’t said it, but I had a feeling the decision had already been made.

‘And they let you?’ Kai asked, fascinated.

‘Just had to seduce the housekeeper to keep her mind off what I was doing in the library uninvited,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly. ‘Other than that, no problems at all. One of the easier heists. Very civilised.’

‘Except for the part where they nearly arrested you.’

‘That’s a separate issue.’

Only I didn’t think it was. Something had happened with Emily on that last mission. Questioning the witnesses proved a trial – both kept secrets as easy as breathing – but from what I could piece together Emily had made it a habit to run off at night, and probably had set the police on Thomas and Bradamant when they tried to follow her. Now I found out that Emily’s family were the original owners of the book they’d stolen. Either her family were putting the pressure on her to return their lost item, or she was working for someone else. My guess would be someone native to this world, since this was the place where her behaviour changed so drastically.

Or she had been a mole all along and something had forced her to reveal herself. But what? And why?

As usual, I had more questions than answers.

‘How long do we have to stand here?’ I asked. ‘My back is starting to ache.’

‘Until the coast is clear,’ Thomas said, unhelpfully. ‘Or until I can get one of the servants on their own and distract them.’

I glanced at the back door. ‘There’s one alone now.’ I didn’t like what he did, but I knew he’d do it whether I approved or not. And a few kisses to distract from our mission couldn’t hurt anyone much. I hoped.

Thomas shook his head. ‘And I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. Look at that silly grin on her face. Head over heels in love. With that footman, by the looks of them.’

We peered at the maid and the footman who had just appeared at the door. Silly grins and blushes abounded.

Kai, a vampire novice, frowned. ‘You can’t touch them?’

‘True love. Antithesis to lust. Doesn’t mix with what I am. Like order and chaos.’

I tried not to remember what I’d seen of order and chaos brushing up against each other and definitely not mixing. It wasn’t my first choice, but it had shown up in my nightmares a couple of times since then. I wondered if Kai still had the burns from that gondola trip.

I blinked and dispelled the images.

‘It burns me,’ Thomas clarified when Kai didn’t respond. ‘Same reason I wouldn’t try anything with you and Irene.’

‘Me and Irene?’ Kai frowned some more. ‘What do you mean?’

For someone so bright he could be remarkably dim about some things. I for one remembered some handholding, and that was just the obvious lovey-dovey stuff. Kai had thrashed half a museum when Grevane attacked Irene. Irene had broken every rule in the book and pushed herself beyond her limits to bring Kai home out of nightmare Venice. No one did those kinds of things for someone they didn’t care deeply about.

Whether or not all that caring had actually been acknowledged, or even recognised, remained another matter.

And I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one.

Thomas raised his eyebrows, but changed tack. ‘Same reason I wouldn’t touch Agatha, then.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t try with colleagues,’ I said.

‘But if I did, I wouldn’t. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Noticed what?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Agatha and Parker. The butler.’

So that made him so protective of her. Last night I’d just thought he hated getting dragged out of bed, but maybe the idea of us causing trouble for Agatha was what had put his nose out of joint.

Fascinating as this was, this wasn’t a high school yard where we could happily speculate who was dating whom. The lovebirds had gone back inside, replaced by a grumpy-faced maid giving a carpet the whacking of its lifetime. I didn’t see anyone else and unless we wanted to be here till sunset, we’d better get a move on.

‘Thomas, you’re up.’

He straightened his coat – not that he needed it – and strutted over to the mad maid. Within moments he had her from taking out her frustrations on a piece of carpet to wrapping her limbs around him like an octopus and trying to suck his face off. I turned away.

Kai and I tackled the tree. It was an old one, with a rough bark that offered plenty of footholds. Climbing with a staff proved a little more difficult. It’s a good thing no one filmed that, because it wasn’t one of my more graceful efforts, but I got high enough eventually. Kai scrambled up behind me. He of course made it look easy.

Thomas finished off the maid – not fatally, before you ask – and came up behind us. His victim sagged against the tree trunk, blissfully starry-eyed, and definitely not sure which planet she was on. I think she might even hesitate if someone asked her name.

‘Aren’t you afraid she’ll tell someone?’ Kai asked.

‘She isn’t married.’ Thomas vaguely indicated the maid. ‘And having that kind of encounter out of wedlock, at your place of work, and with a total stranger is a very serious breach of social rules. She won’t tell.’ He winked. ‘Getting up to all kinds of sexual shenanigans is a French thing, didn’t you know. This way.’

Thomas went first over the branch to the window, did something wiggly with lock-picking equipment that I didn’t know he owned, and got the window open. He beckoned Kai and me to follow.

I wasn’t invited into this house, so I had to leave most of my magical bag of tricks at the door. Or window, in this case. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like being vulnerable, and especially not in this place. We had discussed this problem, but since it was only supposed to be a fact-finding mission, and Kai did get to take his powers with him – threshold rules didn’t apply to Dragons, apparently – we decided to risk it.

I might have left my ability to magically defend myself, and most of my handy wizard senses, but I had enough left to sense that the Ashwood house was not a happy home. Part of that impression could just be what I already knew about one of the occupants, but I thought it was more than that, although I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.

Emily’s bedroom was an extravaganza of pale woods and gentle pinks, all in the kind of warm shades that made the place look welcoming. It featured a canopy bed, luxurious carpets, a sizeable wardrobe, and a dainty little vanity with a wide array of a woman’s many beauty products. A desk had been placed under the window. I left a muddy footprint on it when I entered. A series of bookcases took up an entire wall, stocked from top to bottom.

From what I’d seen of her, the bedroom didn’t match her personality. The bedroom suggested that a Disney princess lived here. This Disney princess mustn’t have read the rulebook.

It was at this point that we realised none of us had the right qualifications to search a young woman’s bedroom. Thomas admitted that he had certainly seen enough of them, but that paying attention such useful things as preferred hiding places was not usually first and foremost on his mind during such occasions. Kai said he hadn’t grown up with any sisters and what I knew about the inner workings of young women’s minds would fit in a shot glass.

‘In stories, girls like to hide things under floorboards,’ Kai suggested hesitantly.

‘She’s a book thief in training,’ I said, since all the floorboards looked as if they’d been welded to the floor. ‘Why don’t we start with the bookcase and the desk?’ I really hoped I could skip the vanity.

In the back of my head a female voice laughed at me.

I ignored her.

Thomas removed his hat, turned it upside down on the desk and tossed his gloves into it. ‘These hats are delightfully multifunctional,’ he said in an exaggerated posh English accent with the air of a skilled salesman. ‘When not worn, you can turn them into a receptable for your little knickknacks.’

I resisted the urge to point out that the coat pockets provided the same function with the added benefit of not making me look ridiculous. I did take off my hat. Unlike Thomas’s and Kai’s, mine had acquired a little collection of dying leaves and twigs.

They noticed: ‘What happened to your hat?’ Kai asked.

I climbed through a tree to get here. ‘Nature motifs are in right now,’ I said with dignity. You try to climb a tree with a staff in your hand and see how well you look afterwards.

‘Motifs. Not actual nature.’

I brushed the twigs off.

Thomas claimed the bookcase for himself, which left Kai and me to toss a coin for the more embarrassing tasks of sniffing around under the bed and rifling through a young lady’s underwear. Kai lost; he got the wardrobe.

I delayed the inevitable by investigating the desk first. That turned out to be a waste of time, because Emily kept almost nothing in it. Empty paper, a spare inkwell, and a half-finished note to a friend thanking her for the recommendation of a good glover. I could tell she had pretty handwriting, but it didn’t tell me something useful. Like where she’d hidden her stolen literature. Or who was potentially blackmailing her into attacking her colleagues. Or how she’d got the power to attack said colleagues successfully.

The space under the bed proved equally fruitless. I rooted around under there like a pig after truffles, but the floorboards were all tight, and knocking proved the absence of hollow spaces under it.

I was still up to the waist under the bed when an unknown cultured voice remarked: ‘I say, what has my sister got involved in now?’

I bumped my head on the bed.

Seeing stars – and not the embroidered sort – I crawled back out, just in time to hear Thomas explain unconvincingly that this wasn’t what it looked like.

‘Well, Mr Raith, as of yet I am undecided as to what it appears like,’ the newcomer said mildly. ‘Though, if I were to hazard a guess, I should say that it seems that you are engaged in the act of searching my sister’s chamber. Dare I ask what she has done this time?’

I stood up and looked at the owner of the voice: a tall young man with red hair whose many freckles preceded him into the room. Like everyone of the higher classes, he went around impeccably dressed. His pale green suit featured a subtle leaf motif around the hems. I noticed no one had tried to smother him in embroidered stars.

I studied the scene. Thomas came out looking the best. He only rifled through the books. I didn’t emerge nearly so well, what with my proximity to the bed. Kai, however, took the cake. In the process of searching the wardrobe he’d had to remove several of the clothes in it, and now stood, like a deer caught in the headlights, with a lady’s nightdress over his arm.

I wondered how I got involved in this again, realised it was Bradamant’s fault, and happily heaped all the blame on her deserving head.

Thomas tried to stall. ‘What makes you think she’s done anything?’

‘Apart from the fact that I find you and your… compatriots turning over her room, you mean?’ the stranger asked, warm brown eyes twinkling in badly contained amusement. Not the usual response when I got caught somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. ‘Emily is always in some sort of trouble. Only the depth varies.’ He sighed. ‘So, I shall ask again: what has she done this time?’

He stepped into the room properly, closed the door behind him and leaned against it in a would-be casual way. The three of us could fight him to the side and force passage easily. We could possibly climb out the still open window without much trouble if we needed to. Running away is usually my go-to method when I’m caught out somewhere forbidden. But Emily’s brother’s reaction to our presence here was strange enough to keep us all in place.

‘Theft,’ Thomas said. ‘And assault. Of myself and Miss Adams.’

‘Good grief! How did she do that?’

‘With the invaluable help of Mr Shakespeare,’ Thomas replied wryly. ‘And his collected works.’

The brother winced in sympathy. ‘I take it this incident is the reason that she returned home so unexpectedly?’

‘You don’t sound surprised,’ I observed. Not at finding us in his sister’s room, not at discovering Emily was up to her ears in hot water, and not even at learning she had committed several crimes. Growing up with her must have been interesting.

He shrugged. ‘When you have known Emily for as long as I have, nothing much will surprise you.’ He turned back to Thomas. ‘Perhaps, Mr Raith, you could perform the introductions, albeit somewhat late in the conversation.’ He shrugged. ‘A breach of etiquette, perhaps, but I think we can all agree that there are extenuating circumstances.’

Thomas did as asked: ‘Mr Ashwood, may I introduce my good friends? Mr Kai Strongrock…’ Kai quickly stuffed the nightdress back where it came from and performed an impeccable bow. ‘And Mr Harry Dresden, a wizard of no modest skill.’

I imitated the bow, but without Kai’s natural elegance.

‘My friends, may I introduce you to Mr William Ashwood, son and heir to Sir Henry Ashwood…’

‘… And brother to the most devious debutante to ever grace the streets of London,’ William Ashwood finished, bowing too. ‘A pleasure to meet such fine upstanding gentlemen.’

I know when I’m getting mocked.

William studied us all in turn. His gaze lingered on the glove on my left hand, and he raised his eyebrows in a silent question, which I chose not to answer. William considered this, then shrugged and moved on. You could almost see the cogs in motion behind his eyes. I had a feeling that he had no intention of ratting us out to the servants or the Greencoats. And if he sided with complete strangers against his own sister, then goodness knew what their relationship must be like.

‘So,’ he said, drawing the word out, ‘perhaps you’d do me the kindness of explaining the situation so that I may determine what I can do to assist you.’

‘You’d turn against your own family?’ Kai asked incredulously.

William sighed wearily. ‘Mr Strongrock, I have lost count of the times I’ve had to step in to stop my sister from fulfilling her life’s ambition of plunging the family into scandal and utter ruin. I had hoped to be rid of that responsibility when Mrs Smith engaged her as a companion.’ He sent Thomas a pointed look.

‘Considering the circumstances, it seems unlikely Mrs Smith will welcome her again,’ Thomas said. He kept up the accent without any effort, and he had the lingo down too. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have taken him for a born and bred English gentleman myself.

‘And given her forceful application of the esteemed Mr Shakespeare to both yourself and the incomparable Miss Adams, I take it you yourselves are not terribly keen to take her back in either,’ William concluded, resigned but not surprised. ‘A pity. I had hoped some time away from a familiar environment might finally calm her down. Life is full of disappointments.’

‘You seem very calm about this all,’ I said.

‘You would be too, Mr Dresden, if you had known my sister as long as I have,’ William said. ‘Well, then, gentlemen, you mentioned something about a theft. I take it, in the light of your presence in this room, that you expect to find your stolen item here. Have you recovered it?’

We shook our heads in unison.

‘What is it, if I may be so bold to ask?’

‘A copy of Jane Austen’s Emma,’ Thomas replied frankly. He didn’t even blush.

‘The very same copy that so mysteriously vanished from my father’s library several days ago, during your previous visit to this house?’ William asked, amused. ‘Gracious, man, you have some nerve. Though, I take it, its acquisition had something to do with the institution that you work for, Mr Raith?’

For a supposedly secret institution, the Library appeared to be an open secret wherever I went. Perhaps Irene wasn’t the only Librarian who thought she’d get a bit further with candour than with secrecy. And I had never seen the point of it anyway; it wasn’t as if outsiders could get in without help.

‘It has,’ Thomas agreed. If he felt embarrassed at all about being revealed as a book thief, he didn’t show it. ‘I would apologise if your father had ever read any of the books on his shelf, but as things stand…’

William laughed openly. ‘A fair point. Though I harboured hopes of perusing its pages myself someday.’

‘I suppose we could come to some arrangement where, if we are successful in retrieving the book, a copy could find its way into your hands,’ Thomas suggested shrewdly. I had trouble remembering why I found his chosen career path so far-fetched at first; he acted like he had been born a Librarian. ‘If that is something you’d be interested in, of course.’

‘A very reasonable arrangement indeed,’ William said. Behind that affable façade lay a clever negotiator. Though I supposed he’d have to be. ‘Would the matter of the assault be as easily remedied, Mr Raith?’

‘The Library has questions,’ Thomas said bluntly. ‘When we find Emily, I am under obligation to take her back. Several of her earlier indiscretions have been graciously overlooked because of her tender age, but this attack was too severe to be swept away under the rug as if nothing had happened.’

‘Could you perhaps persuade them to release her into her family’s loving care?’ William suggested. ‘We agree that her sojourn with your organisation is at its end. Where else should she go?’

Thomas remained unmoved. ‘That is not for me to say. As I said, she has to answer for her actions, as well as explain where she learned a certain skillset.’ An edge of steel crept in his voice. ‘Are you aware Emily is capable of performing magic?’

I’d come to the same conclusion. Bradamant’s testimony and the fact that Emily had been able to knock Thomas out at all left little room for another interpretation. And then there was that strange situation where she had maybe opened a Library Traverse by herself.

Ordinarily, I’d have thought talent manifested sooner. According to Thomas, Emily was twenty-two. On average powers began rearing their heads during the teenage years. So maybe Emily had kept hers hidden. Maybe she trained herself. Or maybe, in this world, magic manifested at a later age.

What did I know?

But I recognise magic when I see it. And the kind of magic that is used to try and bash someone’s brains in is probably not the White Council approved sort.

William had nothing to say to that. He stared at Thomas. ‘You must be mistaken.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Yet you must be.’ William became agitated for the first time since this strange exchange began. ‘There has not been a wizard in this family. Not ever. I claim no great knowledge in this, but even I know that magic is passed down through blood.’

Unless Lady Ashwood had an adventure her husband never knew about.

‘You understand the problem, then,’ Thomas said.

‘This house is not equipped to contain those with magical talent,’ William acknowledged. ‘And if Emily indeed has gained powers, she must have used strange and dark means to acquire them.’

Like all the other allegations against his sister, he accepted this one surprisingly easy. I didn’t know Emily – except from certain tape recordings – but judging by her brother’s tired resignation, there were no depths she would not sink to. He must have a full-time job in damage control with a sister like that. Dragging this one into the Library against her will sounded almost as entertaining and uncomplicated as hauling Maeve back to Mab in a wire circle.

Especially since none of us had a clear idea of what exactly she could do.

William pondered in silence for a few moments. Thomas said nothing either. Kai and I just stood still and let them sort it out between them.

‘Very well.’ He came to a decision. ‘Mr Raith, do you vouch for your companions’ good behaviour?’

Thomas nodded. ‘I do.’

‘Then, gentlemen, you may count on my cooperation and assistance.’ The goofy grin made way for grim determination. ‘It seems to me that a quick resolution is of paramount importance, before my sister does any more harm to the family name. Or innocent bystanders,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

Good to know where his priorities lay.

‘In exchange for a copy of Emma,’ Thomas agreed.

‘Indeed,’ said William. ‘Gentlemen, we have a deal. Now, here’s the plan…’

Chapter Text

‘Good morning, mother dearest,’ chirped the resident troublemaker when she entered. ‘And good morning too, Mrs Smith! What an unparalleled delight.’

You had to hand it to her, Irene thought, she had a poker face a professional gambler would envy. If she hadn’t known any better, Irene would have thought that Emily was genuinely delighted to find a representative of the Library in the parlour.

Lady Ashwood didn’t match her daughter’s professed delight. ‘Dearest, we’ve discussed this. You have not yet officially returned to society. This is not appropriate.’

No one who went around whacking colleagues round the head with heavy tomes cared much about propriety. ‘Oh mother, don’t fret. Mrs Smith will not be offended.’

Agatha’s face had been carefully wiped blank, though her mouth smiled. ‘I am not offended, Sophia,’ she said. ‘But this is your house.’

Lady Ashwood seemed torn between maintaining her warm hostess persona and the urge to drag her recalcitrant daughter from the room by her hair for a few very stern words. The former won out.

Barely.

‘Take a seat, then,’ she invited, carefully directing her uninvited guest to the third, unoccupied, sofa. ‘And please remember your manners. We have guests.’

‘Ah, guests,’ exclaimed Emily as if she only just noticed Murphy and Irene. She was good; her cheerful mask never faltered. ‘Mother, will you introduce us?’

Lady Ashwood performed the introductions. A great deal of bowing and handshakes followed.

‘Gracious, you never said you had nieces, my dear Mrs Smith.’ Emily smiled sweetly, but with a bit of a sharp edge.

‘Oh, they’ve lived in America,’ Agatha said without missing a beat.

‘Yes,’ Irene added innocently, ‘in Chicago. Have you ever been, Miss Ashwood?’

The smile became rather fixed. ‘Can’t say that I have.’

So, full denial mode. Irene had, briefly, considered playing the innocent, but Emily would know how things stood the minute she saw Agatha. Anyone who accompanied her would be suspicious by association.

The book-stealing Miss was even less impressive in the flesh than she had been on camera. Hard to believe that such a slight girl had wielded a book to such concussing effect. In here, in this very genteel parlour, she looked more at home than in a Librarian’s office. She certainly embraced the fashion of soft colours and the endless nature motifs. Most eye-catching was some sort of choker-like necklace of embroidered leaves and berries, a theme which continued downwards all the way to the floor.

Only the keen intelligence in her eyes betrayed that she was not sugar and spice and all things nice.

Well, that, and the video evidence.

Mouse hadn’t seen the video evidence, but he had good doggy instincts. He took one look at Emily Ashwood, lifted his great head, and growled softly, just once. Emily, who meant to continue her charade by petting Mouse’s head and exclaiming over the softness of his fur, quickly retracted the hand. A very ugly look crossed her face.

But only briefly. She recovered her composure, and smiled brightly as she sat down. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you have many interesting things to discuss. Do continue.’ She assumed an expression of rapt attention.

Lady Ashwood did continue her conversation with Agatha, and if she didn’t exclude her daughter explicitly, she did so by never looking at her. Irene suspected that relations between mother and daughter had a long and fraught history. Given Emily’s conduct, it was hardly a great effort deducing whose fault that was.

Emily, unperturbed, turned back to Irene. ‘Do tell, Miss Irene, how you find London so far? Has it welcomed you appropriately?’

 ‘Oh, yes,’ said Irene, matching the fake sweetness every inch of the way. If by appropriate one meant having a gun shoved in one’s face in the first five seconds. ‘It has.’

The more she saw of this girl, the less she bought the damsel in distress theory. Maybe Bradamant had been hit over the head one too many times and only imagined that Emily apologised for her actions, because Emily sat there, beaming like the cat who caught the canary, and not at all remorseful.

And, more to the point, not nervous either. For all she knew, three full Librarians had walked into her house to take her in by force, but she just sat there, cool as a cucumber. Not an attitude Irene approved of in renegade apprentices.

If anything, it made her nervous.

Murphy went on the attack: ‘I did notice a lot of law enforcement on the street. Should we worry?’

‘Only if you’re a French spy,’ Emily said. ‘Your accent should preclude you from being mistaken for one, I shouldn’t wonder. It seems unlikely the French employ Americans.’ As if she hadn’t set the Greencoats on them.

‘Really,’ Irene said, turning up her American accent to the max and ignoring Murphy’s failed attempts to suppress her wincing, ‘they must be a great problem to justify such surveillance.’

‘Oh, they are a great thorn in our kingdom’s side,’ Emily agreed. ‘Only last night they blew up an entire street.’

The only thing that got blown up was a mailbox. All right, and Irene may have done some damage to a few fences. That hardly counted as blowing up an entire street. Of course it sounded far more alarming than a small skirmish that ended when a wizard put the whole regiment to sleep. Some of the officers might have been a bit embarrassed to be caught sleeping on the job.

‘Did they catch them?’ Murphy asked.

‘Escaped, unfortunately,’ Emily said, sounding genuinely disappointed. She would be. ‘That’s why we’re still under curfew, you see. They won’t lift it until all hostile agents have been captured.’

In other words: never. No government could resist the temptation to hold on to that kind of power. After all, if nobody knew exactly how many hostile agents walked around London, you could always claim you hadn’t caught them all yet and so keep the curfew in place. Clever. But very authoritarian.

‘Goodness,’ Irene said, raising a hand to her chest to indicate shock, ‘are we safe to go outside then?’

Lady Ashwood interrupted: ‘Emily, dear, you will kindly not scare our guests. Please forgive my daughter, Miss Irene, she likes to tease. You are perfectly safe outside. You are under Mrs Smith’s protection, and she is a respectable woman of good character. You have nothing to fear.’

‘So long as you are inside at midnight,’ said the girl who, if Thomas could be believed, had a nasty habit of climbing out of her window after midnight.

Lady Ashwood’s glare should have incinerated her on the spot. ‘Please pay her no heed. Curfew does start at midnight, but exceptions can be made for emergencies or those with the right invitations. Such as the invitations for your own homecoming ball, dearest.’ She sent another pointed glare at her daughter.

‘Oh, you managed it then?’ Emily made it sound like an insult.

‘Permission came from the Office early this morning. I’ll send the invitations out this afternoon.’ She smiled warmly at Agatha. ‘You are of course most welcome to attend, you and your nieces. I’ll make sure you receive your invitations before you leave.’

‘Gracious, mother, are you inviting every stray who comes to your door?’

‘I have invited the nieces of a dear friend,’ Lady Ashwood said firmly. ‘Who are newly arrived in town and know no one. A ball is the perfect way to introduce them into society. You cannot begrudge them that.’

‘If you must. I suppose they’ll at least meet some men.’ Emily tossed her head contemptuously. ‘Maybe some without discernment might be desperate enough to take them off the market.’

Just in case Irene was in any doubt what Emily really thought of them.

Lady Ashwood coloured bright crimson in embarrassment. ‘I won’t ask you to forgive her.’ She gave Irene and Murphy each a pleading look. ‘But I would like you to know that I do not share her sentiments.’

‘We know that,’ Irene said. She didn’t say that she didn’t take offence, because that would have been a lie.

She suspected that, now that Emily had determined that acting sweetly passive aggressive hadn’t worked, she turned to open hostility. And it had happened as soon as the ball was mentioned. So what is she planning at that ball that she doesn’t want us poking our noses in?

Nothing good, she’d wager.

Perhaps, Irene speculated, the person she had been sneaking out to meet during her last visit was going to attend. She had gone to great lengths to deter Thomas and Bradamant from identifying him. It stood to reason she’d do the same with Irene and Murphy.

Whatever she is up to, it’s not Library approved.

She made a mental note to watch her back for assassins.

‘And your invitation is very kind,’ Irene continued. ‘We’ll be happy to attend.’

Emily took a deep breath to register her displeasure, but never got round to it; the door swung open to admit the second wave of the invasion.

The first through the door was a tall young man with red hair and a wealth of freckles, followed by Irene’s three musketeers.

Her stomach dropped.

‘Good morning, mother!’ the redhead said. ‘And good morning, guests!’

Lady Ashwood managed to give the impression she was seconds away from tearing out her own hair in despair. This was a very formal, heavily socially regulated society, but you wouldn’t know it from the way the Ashwood offshoots behaved.

‘William, dearest…’

‘Of course, where are my manners?’ the newcomer said in the kind of voice that suggested he knew exactly where he left his manners, but couldn’t usually be bothered to pull them out of storage. ‘Mother, let me introduce my friends. You remember Mr Thomas Raith, of course. He has just returned to town wrap up some unfinished business. These two fine gentlemen are Mr Kai Strongrock and Mr Harry Dresden, a wizard of great skill. I hadn’t seen them since university. Naturally I met up with them today to renew the acquaintance when I heard they were in London. They were staying in some dismal lodging place, so I asked them to come and stay here with us. If, of course, that meets with your approval,’ he added hastily, throwing in a winning smile to seal the deal.

Irene blinked. And it wasn’t just at the eye-wateringly bright ensemble Harry wore. That coat had been embroidered to within an inch of its life. Irene, who remembered Harry’s flat refusal to dress wizardly for their trip to Venice, wondered if someone had held a knife to his throat to force him into it.

More to the point, how had they run into Emily’s brother? And how had they convinced him to pass them off as his friends? Last Irene knew, the men were off to search Emily’s room while the ladies provided a suitable distraction. Their part had gone off without a hitch. So what had gone wrong on the other end?

Or gone right, she amended, studying the male part of the group, all of whom appeared perfectly at ease. So this bit was intentional.

Probably.

Lady Ashwood blinked too. Nothing Emily did or said had knocked her off-balance, but this did. ‘That is… a surprise.’

‘I know it’s a bit short notice,’ William acknowledged, still smiling. ‘But we do have the room…’

‘Yes, of course.’ Lady Ashwood recovered herself, and pretty quickly too. ‘Of course you fine gentlemen must stay with us while you are in London. And please, you must come to the ball tomorrow too.’ She rose to her feet to exchange the bowing and handshake ritual with all three of them. She did look at Harry’s still-gloved left hand, but inexplicably ignored it. ‘I do apologise for my conduct. We so seldom meet any friends of William’s.’

‘Indeed, we weren’t aware he had any at all,’ Emily said nastily. She ignored the rules entirely by retaining her position on the sofa. ‘Did you bribe them to follow you home, William?’

No love lost between those two either. Irene noticed a pattern emerging.

William pretended he hadn’t heard her. He spent his time more productively by introducing his new friends to his mother. He ignored Emily entirely. Then he asked his mother to introduce the unknown guests and in the ensuing bowing and shaking circus Emily was again completely ignored.

Talk about family issues.

The men introduced themselves as if they had never met any of the women at all. They pulled it off well. Harry grinned at Murphy and kissed her hand. She coloured beet-red and glared at him.

Irene drew her own conclusions.

Lady Ashwood rang for more tea and arranged her unexpected guests over the rest of the furniture. She knew her children, because she made sure to place them as far away from each other as physically possible while still remaining in the same room.

‘I never knew William had made such good friends at university,’ Lady Ashwood said, addressing Kai, who ended up beside her. ‘How did you meet?’

‘In the library,’ Kai answered with a completely straight face.

‘Ah, naturally. And what was your field of study, if I may be so bold to ask?’

‘Physics,’ he replied. ‘And you can probably guess Dresden’s.’

‘Sorcery, I take it?’

As if it could be anything else.

‘And you all met in the library. How very lovely indeed.’

She did sound like she thought it was lovely. Maybe William’s unconventional manners resulted in a lack of friends. He certainly seemed amiable enough to attract people. In most alternates, at least.

‘We all love books,’ Harry observed, smiling like a shark.

Emily froze.

So the prospect of three Librarians didn’t faze her, but even she realised how much trouble she’d be in with six. Of course, she knew Thomas was only an assistant, but for all she knew, the other five had all qualified. Irene had no intention at all of enlightening her with the knowledge that of their party only two had access to the Language.

Harry happily prattled on about the many advantages of books and libraries, seemingly oblivious to Emily’s mounting panic. At first she didn’t realise why he did it – other than Harry being Harry – but then she began to suspect that he was trying to tip her off balance, making her wonder just how much he knew, especially when he went off on a tangent about the many uses of Shakespeare’s works, including its application to the heads of intruders.

‘Gracious, that is very violent,’ she said, standing up abruptly. Most of the colour had left her face.

‘I believe in incapacitating thieves myself before I call for help,’ Harry said, grinning helpfully. And meaningfully.

‘Fascinating,’ Emily said. And then practically fled from the room.

An admission of guilt if Irene had ever seen one.

Now what to do with it?

Agatha rose and announced that they too should be going. Lady Ashwood called the butler to get the coats and the invitations.

‘It is wonderful to have met you,’ she said to Murphy, clasping her hands as though she was an old friend. ‘So many new acquaintances in one day. It is truly marvellous.’

Unless she was an award-winning actress, Lady Ashwood was just one of those people who was genuinely nice. Makes you wonder how she could produce such a harpy of a daughter.

That’d have to remain one of life’s little mysteries, and one Irene wasn’t here to solve. She needed to find out what Emily was up to, where she left the book, and who this mysterious person was that she tried to keep everyone away from.

Tempted as she had been to use the Language to incapacitate the family and drag Emily off to the Library right from this parlour, that’d be too conspicuous. Tomorrow night at the ball though… Most balls offered dim lighting, secluded little rooms, most rooms of the house conveniently unlocked… Plenty of opportunity to pull Emily into one of those dimly lit rooms, close the door, and ask a few sharp questions about her recent activities. Emily would be at the ball; it was in her honour. And until then she could stew in uncertainty about what they all knew and what they planned.

Or it’d give her time to plan something nasty.

The invitations and coats were delivered and back they went into the carriage.

‘That went better than expected,’ Agatha said as they pulled away. ‘But goodness, can’t you do something about that wizard? I swear, he flaps his jaws like no one else.’

‘Yes,’ Irene said, who remembered a few people Harry had flapped his jaws at, ‘that’s one of his best attributes.’

Agatha stared at her disapprovingly. ‘In other alternates, that might be the case, but not here. Reckless behaviour like this could get you all arrested. You promised to behave as long as you were under my roof, I’ll remind you.’

‘Harry doesn’t stay under your roof anymore,’ Murphy pointed out. ‘He can say what he likes.’

Agatha sighed. ‘Don’t I know it. What were they thinking?’

Irene shrugged. ‘Probably that close proximity to Emily might help them to uncover some useful clue. They get to observe her at close quarters, maybe follow her if she decides to move around town. That’s far greater use than we are going to be for the next day or so.’

‘Oh, I have plans for that day,’ said Agatha, and proceeded to drag Murphy and Irene all over town, to see and be seen. All the shopping and promenading and bowing took up most of the day, and by the end of it, Irene was heartily sick of it. None of it advanced the mission in any way. It didn’t get her closer to Emily or the book, and in the back of her head Coppelia’s voice kept reminding her that time was of the essence.

And what, another voice whispered, did this mission have to do with the darkening Library and the malfunctioning Traverses?

So many questions. So few answers.

Back in her room after dinner, one of the most luxurious ones she’d stayed in over the course of her career – whatever Agatha did as a sideline, it must be highly lucrative – she sat down and jotted down a list of mysteries to solve and actions to undertake.

It read as followed:

Mysteries:

1. Location of Emma
2. Emily’s blackmailer/partner-in-crime
3. Emily’s night-time outings
4. Timing of attack
5. Source of new/magic powers
6. Malfunctioning Traverses/darkening Library

Actions:

1. Question Emily
2. Search the Ashwood house
3. Research other Emma copies

Irene read it over. Writing things down helped, and not just because she was a Librarian who favoured the written word over almost anything. Putting it on paper got the whirling thoughts out of her head, pinned down on paper.

And besides, lists were dead useful. You’d just go from one item to the next, ticking boxes as you went until you inevitably reached the end and you’d find you’d done everything. In theory. Reality had a nasty habit of being somewhat less organised.

Still, maybe one of these days it’d work.

Writing things down was all good and well, but what she really missed was a sounding board, a second pair of eyes to pick up on the things she missed. Normally Kai filled that role, but Kai was in the Ashwood house making nice with the occupants – and possibly doing his level best to glare Emily to death. Irene half hoped he succeeded; something about that girl made her very uneasy.

Then she remembered that she may not have Kai, but she did have a police officer staying in the next room.

Five minutes later she knocked on the door.

Murphy hadn’t gone to bed yet; half a minute later the door opened, revealing Murphy, sans wig, in a feather-embroidered dressing gown.

‘I wondered if you had a moment to chat?’ Irene asked, holding up her list.

‘I’m not much for girl-talk,’ Murphy warned.

‘Neither am I.’ Too busy, usually. And no friends who were girls. ‘It’s business, if you don’t mind.’

If anything, Murphy seemed relieved. She stepped aside and let Irene in. ‘No fashion talk,’ she said as she closed the door. ‘If I never see a feather again, it’ll be too soon.’

Irene understood the sentiment. ‘I’ve suddenly gone off flowers. Maybe we can switch themes tomorrow?’

Murphy arched an eyebrow. ‘If you want to get feathers stuck in your head…’

‘Consider it compensation for what I did to your garden.’ It had looked bad enough in the dark. Daylight would not have improved the view. After the event, Irene had barely spared a thought for Murphy, then an unknown woman, and the damage she had done to her property. She felt a little guilty about that now.

‘And what Harry did,’ Murphy shrugged. ‘I don’t think you burned the hole in the fence.’

‘No, I took down the fence.’ A byproduct of trying to get Alberich away from Harry and Kai. ‘And I did most of the excavation work.’

Murphy considered her. ‘Impressive.’

‘Sorry about the damage?’ Irene offered, albeit almost a year late.

‘I’m not much of a gardener anyway.’ Murphy grinned. ‘And I had most of the damage covered by insurance anyway.’

Irene wondered if insurance companies covered supernatural damage.

‘No,’ said Murphy. ‘I filed it under storm damage. Severe wind and flooding, you know.’

Irene, who had spent most of that night anywhere from ankle to knee deep in ice-cold water, did know about flooding. She still got cold thinking about it.

Murphy invited her to sit in one of the comfortable chairs before the fire. Mouse, now moved in with Murphy, trotted over to collect his due of attention and then lay down on Irene’s feet. Just as well; the floor was chilly and Irene’s feet felt more like ice cubes than living flesh.

One of these days she’d have to get a mission to a nice tropical island or something. She was done with getting the colder climates all the time.

‘Let me see the list,’ Murphy said.

Irene passed it over. Murphy read it, nodded a couple of times. ‘Harry will search the house,’ she said confidently when she was done. ‘He can’t help himself.’

Irene agreed. ‘That was the plan. I hope.’ She wasn’t always sure what went on in Harry’s mind. Quite a feat for someone who usually blurted out the first thing that popped into his head, especially if it would annoy the big bad of the moment. ‘And we might get into some forbidden territory during the ball tomorrow.’

Murphy nodded. ‘And we’ll try to get the suspect on her own too.’

Irene’s line of thinking exactly. ‘And that might give us the answers to the first three or four mysteries.’ She had no moral qualms on practising her Language perception trick on book destroying people. All Irene needed was a few minutes alone with her – which was why Emily would likely do her level best to avoid getting cornered – and maybe several repetitions of the Language; in this higher order alternate her commands would be less effective and would wear off quicker.

She explained this to Murphy, and mentally shrunk from the reprimand Coppelia would give her because she revealed Library secrets to yet another uninitiated person. Although, she reasoned, constructing a defence well in advance, she’d had no reason to assume Harry hadn’t already told Murphy. And Murphy had been inside the Library anyway. She wasn’t exactly uninitiated.

It occurred to her she hadn’t asked any permission to take Murphy inside in the first place. Nor Harry, although since he was officially on the case that might be considered a bit of a grey area. If her superiors were feeling generous.

Her chances of getting off probation shrunk all the time.

Murphy distracted her: ‘What does “Malfunctioning Traverses/darkening Library” mean?’

Irene hesitated, but only very briefly. Murphy had given her no reason to distrust her. More importantly, Harry and Mouse trusted her. And Irene hated doing her job with one hand tied around her back. It didn’t facilitate a great deal of efficiency.

Not that she had much to tell: ‘I don’t know. I’ve heard rumours that some of the doors to alternates have broken down. The Library itself seems darker, as if the energy required to keep it fully functioning isn’t available. And I also know my superiors are very jumpy.’

‘And very stingy with useful information?’ Murphy guessed.

Irene resisted the temptation to complain about her superiors, however much she wanted to. ‘They said that it’s not my mission,’ Irene admitted. ‘And they’re right. It’s best we focus on catching the apprentice and retrieving the book.’ She hesitated, but then added: ‘Maybe that helps to stop problems too.’

Murphy frowned sceptically. ‘How?’

‘The more unique books we gather from a specific alternate, the stronger our link to that world becomes,’ Irene explained. ‘This version of Emma is unique. It contains the kind of social commentary exclusive to this specific society. Theoretically, once we have it, the ties with this alternate should strengthen and the chances of the Traverse failing should decrease.’

‘That’s a lot of ifs,’ Murphy observed. ‘Is that what went wrong with the other Traverses? Links not strong enough?’

‘I don’t know,’ Irene said helplessly. ‘I don’t know which worlds we’ve lost contact with.’ Nobody would tell her anything. She might not have known about the Traverses at all if it hadn’t been for Thomas’s sharper hearing, although she would have noticed the constant twilight and worried anyway. ‘And I don’t know what’s caused it. There are alternates the Library has weaker links with, but I’ve never heard of that link snapping.’

‘Could this world’s link snap?’

Irene had no idea. ‘Maybe? Until we know what causes it to happen, I don’t know.’

Murphy’s face clouded over with concern. ‘We could be trapped here?’

Of course. That would be a concern to her. ‘No,’ Irene replied decisively. ‘If the Traverse breaks, Kai can get us out. He can travel between worlds without needing the Library as a go-between. Like he brought in Vale.’

‘And he can find my world?’

‘He could probably deliver you to your own front door.’ The key, as far as Irene understood it, was that he could home in on people he knew well and places he had visited before. And his visit to Murphy’s home was very memorable. For all the wrong reasons. ‘We won’t get stuck here.’

That was the very least of Irene’s concerns. She was more worried about her ability to get back into the Library. If there even was a Library at the end of all this. The horrible thing about not knowing enough was that it left her mind far too much creative licence for imagining some spectacular worst case scenarios.

She dragged her mind back to the current issues, in short, the things she could do something about. ‘All we can do tomorrow is pick Agatha’s brain about ball etiquette.’ It had been a while since Irene attended one. She had been to several of Silver’s parties, but one couldn’t really class that as the epicentre of good manners by any definition, especially not this alternate’s. ‘And make sure we’re as prepared as possible for the ball itself.’

Irene foresaw many feathers and related items in her near future.

She scratched a grateful Mouse behind his ears. ‘I don’t suppose dogs would be welcome at balls,’ she said regretfully. A pity, she would have liked Mouse around to subdue any potential ruffians. ‘And I don’t think we can smuggle him inside in our reticules.’

‘Not with the size of these reticules,’ Murphy scoffed. ‘You know Harry’s left him with us to protect us poor defenceless womenfolk, right?’

‘We’re hardly defenceless,’ Irene pointed out. And Harry knew that.

‘He’s got this thing about protecting women,’ Murphy said. ‘It’s a bit insulting actually.’

Irene hadn’t really noticed. Then again, she hardly fulfilled the damsel archetype. Or perhaps she had grown so used to Kai leaping to her defence that she hardly noticed it when someone else did the same. ‘Well, he didn’t have any trouble fighting them that I could see.’ Quite the contrary. Harry had not made a secret of his deep loathing of both Maeve and Lady Guantes.

‘Just be careful if Emily breaks out the sweet puppy routine,’ Murphy warned. ‘Especially if she cries prettily and tells him she didn’t mean it and she was forced. He’ll be tripping over himself to help her.’

‘She didn’t look like she was being forced,’ Irene said. She had pondered for hours what exactly had struck her as wrong. ‘She was too smug. Too confident.’

‘Until she thought we were all Librarians.’

‘Yes, but the idea of three Librarians didn’t faze her.’ Emily hadn’t started panicking until the men came in. Odds of three to one never bothered her at all. ‘So what kind of power has she acquired that she thought taking on three people in possession of the Language would be a piece of cake?’

That made Irene very nervous.

‘Suppose we’ll find out tomorrow,’ Murphy said, but she looked worried too.

Chapter Text

Getting in the house was a lot easier than searching the house. The place crawled with servants; a butler, a housekeeper, and a flock of maids and footmen that I couldn’t tell apart. I didn’t know if it was deliberate, but every room I entered had at least one of them, dusting or rearranging furniture.

‘Preparations for the ball,’ Kai deduced. ‘We’ll have a better chance tomorrow during the ball. The servants will be downstairs and most of the rooms will be open.’

I remembered that he had a lot more experience than I in all things ball.

I knew one place we could search without arousing suspicion, so we went to the library.

I expected something like a study with lots of bookcases. I didn’t expect an actual library. The Ashwoods must really like reading. They had the kind of collection that made me drool. And possibly colour green with envy.

If I ever had enough money to afford one – hah! – I’d want a library just like it.

It must have been two rooms on the ground floor to begin with, but they’d knocked out the wall in between and made it one big room. And then, while they were at it, they knocked out the ceiling as well and expanded upwards. Stairs on each side of the room led up to the gallery wrapping around the second level. It was hard to tell, because all the wall space was taken up with bookcases, but the wall behind it was warm wood panelling. The only places not taken up with bookcases were the windows – two on each level – and the ornate hearth which had a landscape painting hanging over it. Red carpeting covered the floor. The room had desks as well as comfortable armchairs and couches for optimum reader comfort.

I could spend hours in a room like this.

So naturally, when I encountered it I was on a case and I had the whole library to search for a missing book.

And there were a lot of books.

Just as well that William’s invented cover story had included the idea that we were all incurable bibliophiles. At least we could hang around all day without arousing anyone’s suspicion except Emily’s. Searching this place could take days.

If I were Emily, I’d either put the book back where it came from to please my family – although Emily’s great hobby was to antagonise them, from what I had seen – or hide it somewhere in plain sight to keep it until she could pass it on to her accomplice.

Whoever that was.

And whatever he wanted.

That was the thing that really bugged me about this: the motive. Why? Emily certainly looked like a troublemaker, but even troublemakers need reasons. If she was even half as bright as I thought she was, she would have known that the Library would come down on her like a ton of bricks. They might have overlooked the assault, but definitely not the theft of one of their coveted books. What had pushed her to risk it, even knowing the possible consequences?

Either someone had something big over her – and she was way too confident for someone getting blackmailed – or we missed some vital piece of information.

‘You go left, I go right?’ Kai suggested without great enthusiasm.

Lacking any better alternatives, I agreed.

So I went left and he went right. I’ll have you know that I started with the very best intention to only look at the titles on the spines and move on if it wasn’t the right book. The problem was that not all the books had the titles on the spines, or on the covers, which necessitated pulling the book off the shelf and checking the title page instead. From there it was only a short distance to having just a quick glance at the first chapter.

Thomas and William found us an hour later with our noses in a book.

Much mocking and recrimination ensued.

The work went quicker with the four of us, but by dinner time we’d only managed to cover three quarters of the downstairs bit. The Ashwoods had a wide array of genres on offer, both non-fiction and fiction, ranging from history and geography to adventure novels and romances. The only thing nowhere in evidence was Jane Austen’s Emma. If it was here, we could have overlooked it. Or it could be in one of the sections we hadn’t searched yet.

‘And I wouldn’t put it past Emily to sneak in and move it after we leave,’ William remarked. ‘Gentlemen, I suggest we set a watch. A late-night reading session, we shall call it. I’ll have the servants send in refreshments and we shall spend the night here. We can take sleeping in turns.’

‘And maybe we can put a watch on Emily’s room while we’re at it,’ Kai added. He turned to Thomas. ‘Didn’t you say that she often snuck out at night the last time you were here?’

‘Very well,’ said William. ‘Two of us to guard and search the library, two of us to keep watch on my sister’s room, though it would be prudent to wait to set our watch only after the servants have gone to bed. Best to avoid questions. Even so, it’s best kept outside, I should think. She cannot leave through the house without passing the library.’

‘She prefers climbing out the windows anyway,’ Thomas remarked wryly.

‘You are a wizard, Mr Dresden,’ William said. ‘Is there anything you can do to aid us?’

I contemplated the notice-me-not potion I had last used in Venice. Probably useful for loitering outside without anyone stopping to ask why, equally useful for following rambling apprentices through dark streets, and unsurpassed for avoiding run-ins with guards and assorted nasties. Ingredients were easy enough to get. All I needed was the equipment to assemble. ‘Any place I can brew a potion?’

William shook his head ruefully. ‘We are no magical household. And Mr Dawson suffers no interlopers in his kitchen. Besides, potions are not currently in fashion. Brewing would invite the kind of comment we would be wise to avoid.’

So that was the potion off the list. Thwarted by fashion. Again. ‘A few things, probably.’

I guessed I knew where I would spend the night.

Dinner was a tense affair, and not just because my outfit was so fancy that I hardly dared to move. I have decent table manners, but not for something like this, where I had the choice between five knives and forks, as well as a vast array of spoons. I quickly figured that I’d watch what William did and copy that.

Sir Henry Ashwood presided at the head of the table like a Roman pater familias, all straight posture and stern face. All stern everything actually. He sat up straight, regarding his family and his guests like a vulture, waiting for them to make a mistake that would allow him to sweep in with the full force of his disapproval. Fortunately Emily kept him busy so that he didn’t have the time to scrutinise all my failings. Although he did glare at my single glove in a way that ordered me to take it off.

I pretended I hadn’t seen him.

Just as Emily was a copy of her mother, William was his father’s double. Except where William was all friendly manners and laughter, Sir Henry was rigid and frigid. I don’t think he knew what laughter was. He had no laughter lines. Even the lines on his face were so rigid and stern you could probably cut yourself on them.

Apparently he was a founding member and therefore high-ranking official in the Society for the Promotion of Good Taste, and the epitome of good manners. The only reason he hadn’t made president of the society had to do with his lack of magic. I suspected that rankled. He certainly looked sour enough.

At least it explained Emily’s rebellious attitude. Sir Henry had the kind of commanding bearing that triggered all my worst instincts; the kind of high-handed, patronising authority that circumvented the already faulty filter between my brain and my mouth and went straight to open warfare.

So I made sure to keep my mouth shut. Or I’d say something that got all of us kicked to the curb. Thomas didn’t trust me, so he gave me the occasional kick under the table to refresh my memory.

By the end of the meal – which passed in endless monologues about good manners for Sir Henry and in silence for the rest of us – my shin had turned blue and my jaw ached from clenching it so hard.

I’d hoped to ditch the man after dinner when we returned to the library, but he stuck to us like a tick. William grimaced, but made sure to keep a straight face when his father glanced in his direction. That man could detect bad behaviour at half a mile’s distance.

Sir Henry sat down in the most prominently placed chair in the room like a king on his throne, and singled me out for his undivided attention: ‘I assume, Mr Dresden, that you have an explanation prepared to account for your abominable rudeness in wearing a glove in my house.’ Only after his endless monologuing did he pretend to take an interest in his guests. Pretentious bastard. Or maybe offences against fashion weren’t considered suitable to be discussed in the presence of the ladies.

I didn’t want to take off my glove at the say-so of a man so puffed up on his own importance, and had already opened my mouth to say something sarcastic and antagonistic, when William’s warning glance made me think better of it. ‘My hand was burnt a few years ago,’ I said, curtly.

‘In a horrific fire,’ Thomas added smoothly. ‘Saving children from the conflagration. The sight of it would distress the ladies. Mr Dresden keeps it covered to protect their delicate sensibilities.’

I kept it mostly covered to protect it from the elements, and because I didn’t always want to look at the reminder. Ladies and their delicate sensibilities had nothing to do with it, but I nodded along with Thomas and agreed that this was indeed the case.

Sir Henry wouldn’t recognise sensibilities if they danced naked in front of him – he’d just berate their lack of fashion sense – so he fixed me with a stern stare, and commanded: ‘Take it off. I shall judge this matter for myself.’

I took it off. I held up my hand and showed him both sides. It wasn’t as bad as a few years ago, and the mobility improved a lot, but it still wasn’t a pretty sight. Thomas had seen it before, but none of the others had. Kai’s eyes widened, then narrowed. I suspected that if I named Mavra as the culprit, he’d make it his life’s work to track her down and explain to her how much of a mistake – on her part, obviously – that whole episode had been.

William seemed genuinely shocked and sympathetic for half a second, and then he had his face back under control. Sir Henry didn’t do sympathy either, only icy disapproval. I got the impression he would have preferred dead children over this affront to good taste, which did nothing to quell the urge to plant my fist in his nose.

‘Keep that glove on at all times, Mr Dresden,’ Sir Henry ordered. ‘Under no circumstance are you to show that hand to anyone outside this room.’

I resisted the urge to keep it off out of sheer contrariness.

‘I shall inform the Society that an exception must be made for you in the face of your condition,’ he continued. Clearly he considered this matter closed, because he went on a mission to find more fault with me: ‘And what, Mr Dresden, do you do with your talents?’

I considered lying. For about half a second. ‘I’m a private investigator.’ Always stick as close to the truth as you can. I already had more than enough lies to remember.

Sir Henry frowned. In his case that meant he frowned deeper than usual. A mild frown was his default setting. ‘I assumed by your dress that you were a man of leisure.’

‘When I am not investigating.’

‘How… unusual.’ From his lips that wasn’t a compliment. ‘To have such a highly priced talent and use it for something so… common.’ If he’d had magic, he’d have fit right in with all the other stuck-up pricks in the White Council who held much the same views.

Kai rightly concluded that I was about to reach critical mass and saved me from myself: ‘I always believed it a very noble endeavour,’ he said. He, unlike me, effortlessly modulated his tone and vocabulary to make it sound like he was born to this. Which he was. I wondered if the way he ordinarily talked was the affectation and this his factory settings. ‘For which reason I entered into a partnership with him.’

Which placed both of us under the cloud of Sir Henry’s displeasure. ‘Really? I had no high expectations from an American to begin with, but from you, a…’ He hesitated. Kai spoke English very well, but almost in the same way Irene did, with an accent you could never quite place.

‘Canadian,’ Kai said, straight-faced. The corner of his lip twitched, though I didn’t see what was funny about it.

‘Marginally better,’ Sir Henry allowed. ‘Still, I suppose one must make allowances for foreigners.’ The hierarchy of acceptable nations could have been in the Fashionable Manners, but I stopped reading after their promotion of necromancy.

‘So long as they aren’t French,’ I said virtuously, dialling up my own very American accent as far it would go.

In the hierarchy of nations, I still came out ahead of the French. Barely. ‘Indeed,’ Sir Henry agreed. ‘Though how you came to fall in with my son remains a mystery to me.’ The next Stare of Disapproval was for his own disappointing offspring.

William seemed uncomfortable. I didn’t think he had many friends. Between his father scaring away all candidates and his sister turning scandal-prevention into a full-time job, I didn’t think he had the opportunity much for socialising. And if people here were anything like people in my own world, they’d be gossiping happily about all the outrageous things Emily got up to, which in this place would be enough to keep people at a safe distance. No wonder his mom was so happy to see him bringing home friends for a change.

Kai, Thomas, and I exchanged a glance and came to the same conclusion. ‘He’s good company,’ Kai said in the kind of tone that strongly discouraged disagreement. ‘And we share many interests.’

‘In books.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir, but it seemed to me he has followed your stellar example in this,’ Kai flattered. He did that a lot better than I did. I wouldn’t have bothered with flattery in the first place. ‘Is this library not evidence of your own love of books?’ He made a wide expansive gesture to the library around us. ‘It seems to me that you have truly led by example in his education.’

Sir Henry allowed himself to be slightly mollified; the library was clearly his pride and joy. It probably disappointed him less than his own children. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said. ‘It would be better if he were to apply himself with more diligence to the family business.’

‘I never involve myself with anything else,’ William muttered, beet-red in embarrassment. His usual affable confidence had disappeared completely.

‘Your time would be better spent seeking a wife and managing the estate,’ Sir Henry snapped.

I decided I really didn’t like the man. ‘Or you could switch it up,’ I suggested cheerfully. ‘You let William do all the fancy society stuff, and you could do your turn in scandal prevention.’

Sir Henry decided he did not like me either. He threw back his whisky and stalked from the room without another word.

‘I’m afraid, Mr Dresden, my father does not approve of you,’ William said mildly.

‘I don’t approve of him either.’ I plopped down into Sir Henry’s chair.

‘You do not understand,’ William stressed. ‘My father ranks high in the Society. He will not stand for any ill manners.’

His lack of friends suddenly made a lot more sense. I wondered what had happened to the last ones.

‘They get a midnight visit from the Greencoats?’ Thomas guessed.

William said nothing in a way that said a lot.

We spent the time searching more of the Ashwood library, but Emma didn’t turn up. I had a sneaking suspicion Emily had already dropped it off with her accomplice. She was arrogant, but she wasn’t stupid. Leaving it in her own family’s library was too much of a stupid risk.

The butler presented us with the promised refreshments – enough to keep a small army going for a week – around eleven o’clock.

‘Thank you, Evans,’ said William.

‘Will there be anything else?’

‘Not tonight,’ William said. ‘Have the ladies retired?’

‘Yes,’ Evans nodded. ‘And Sir Henry too.’

Time to take up our posts. By general agreement the two men who could act posh the best stayed behind in the library with the snacks. Those less fortunate – Thomas and I – had been assigned watch duty outside. The only consolation was that it didn’t rain.

Outside was pitch black. Nobody bothered with streetlights in the places where only servants came. Thomas, with his sharper senses, guided us to a spot where we could lurk out of sight and keep an eye on Emily’s bedroom window at the same time. She had left a candle on, so I was reasonably sure she hadn’t gone to bed yet. Just biding her time until everyone else was asleep.

‘Any idea where she was going the last time you tried to follow her?’ I asked.

I felt more than saw him shrug. ‘No idea. She knew we were following.’

And Emily hadn’t struck me as someone who’d lead her stalkers straight to her top-secret rendezvous.

This wasn’t my first stakeout, so I leaned back against the wall and prepared to wait. Thomas did the same, and for about an hour we waited in silence. Emily didn’t extinguish her candle, but we didn’t see her near the window either. It would be just our luck if we stood here freezing all night while she sneaked out the front door.

But she didn’t.

It had just gone midnight when the light flickered. Thomas touched my arm and beckoned me deeper into the shadows. A moment later Emily climbed out. She moved over the branch to the trunk and slid down that with an air that betrayed she had many years of experience in sneaking out of the house without her parents being any the wiser.

She made the usual mistake of the overconfident: she didn’t look around for inconvenient lurkers. She set off at a brisk pace. Thomas and I waited until she reached almost the end of the alley before we went after her.

Emily knew where she was going, and she was in a hurry too.

The upside of the curfew was that no one was on the streets and we didn’t lose sight of our violent apprentice in the crowds. The downside of the curfew was that no one was on the streets and she could spot us a mile away. If she ever looked back.

Which she didn’t.

I began to have a bad feeling about this. Emily knew we were after her. She knew Thomas had already tried to follow her during one of her nightly ramblings. All of us staying in her house must have clued her in that we were there to keep an eye on her. If she didn’t think we’d try to shadow her she was dumber than I thought she was.

And the last person who underestimated her got a Shakespeare to the head.

‘Am I the only one thinking this is too easy?’ I asked in an undertone.

Thomas shook his head. ‘Keep an eye out for Greencoats.’

That notice-me-not potion would have come in really handy right about now. I felt a bit like a walking target. During open season. Following the bait dangled in front of me.

At the same time there wasn’t much I could do about it.

For about twenty minutes nothing happened. By now, Emily definitely knew we were there, because she led us round. Most of the streets looked really similar, but not a lot of them featured a blown up mailbox and re-imagined fences. We’d passed those twice now.

‘Time to go,’ I said. I know when I’m being led around by the nose. Any moment now someone nasty would try to shoot us.

They did. I’d barely finished the sentence before Thomas threw himself against me out of the way of a musket ball. We crashed into a piece of fence. I banged my head. Thomas didn’t.

The Greencoats didn’t burst onto the scene like screaming madmen; that wouldn’t be mannered and fashionable at all. Instead they stepped out from behind a low wall surrounding one of the fancier houses and calmly pointed their guns at us.

Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of sudden death, so I ignored my throbbing head and summoned up my shield. If they had any doubt they were following the same people as last night, they didn’t have them anymore. My new, updated shield was a riot of brilliant colours.

But at least they couldn’t see our faces.

‘Any ideas?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure I could keep up the shield while running away. A Librarian would have come in handy right about now.

He was fresh out of ideas too, but we backed up against a wall and waited until they stopped shooting. That took a couple of minutes.

I used the time to think. Last night they’d brought in a couple of wizards with nifty tricks. If they hadn’t brought them to start with, they’d have sent for one when they realised they were dealing with another wizard. In my own alternate this wasn’t a problem. I usually knew what the competition was capable of and planned for it. But you can’t really plan for something you don’t know.

And a Greencoats wizard wouldn’t have got that commission by twiddling his thumbs and smiling at the recruitment officer. Although I’m sure he’d have impeccable manners, or the only way he’d see anything of the world was from the top of a sharp spike over London Bridge.

When bullets failed they tried diplomacy. ‘Kindly drop the shield and refrain from further magic!’ they instructed us.

‘Please stop shooting and walk away!’ I countered.

Thomas rolled his eyes.

I shrugged and asked if he had any better ideas.

He still didn’t.

The prolonged silence from the Greencoats suggested they didn’t get this response every day of the week. Or any day of the week.

I still kept my shield up, though that cost me. This new version stopped a lot more, but it took a lot more energy too. I grit my teeth and kept it up, because I’d rather be tired than dead.

‘You are under arrest!’ came the response eventually.

‘For what? Taking a stroll in the moonlight?’

‘I regret to inform you that you have broken curfew.’

I played stupid. ‘What curfew?’

They didn’t buy. ‘The same curfew you broke last night. You are also under arrest for resisting arrest, destruction of public property, destruction of private property, improper manners, improper language…’ Brief pause to take another breath, ‘… assault of officers of the law, physical harm to twelve officers of the law, disruption of order in the public space, and excessive noise after midnight. And espionage,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

My record from Venice paled in comparison. And I hadn’t even really destroyed any buildings yet.

Preliminaries over, their pet wizard sent a blast of concentrated force at my shield.

I tried to angle my shield to bounce the blast upwards, but the effort pushed me hard against the wall; this wizard was no bumbling novice. He concentrated his magic into a thin laser of focus, probing against my shield, trying to find a spot small enough to blast through and shatter the shield entirely. It was a neat trick, and one I’d like to take notes on, but not under these circumstances.

I did a bit of quick thinking. Thomas was good in a fight, but there wasn’t much fight you could put up against bullets, and his vampire come-hither thing wouldn’t work at this distance either. And probably not on a full regiment of Greencoats all at once. It would be really handy if he had the Language now.

But he didn’t. Yet.

So it was all up to me again. I couldn’t keep this up for long, but the moment I dropped the shield we’d be targets.

Thomas followed my line of thinking, and pointed to a stair leading to a basement entrance three houses along. I nodded and we ran for it, in my case mostly in reverse whilst still keeping up the shield. The unknown wizard got off another three lasers and the last one nearly made me stumble and fall. This guy knew what he was doing.

We stumbled down the stairs and I released the shield. Not because we were anywhere near safe, but because I wasn’t entirely sure I could keep it up any longer. That last attack had almost ripped my shield apart.

‘You have a plan?’ Thomas asked.

I didn’t. ‘Blunt force.’

‘Resistance is futile!’ the spokesman announced. ‘Surrender yourselves.’

‘And then you’ll only cut our heads off once?’

‘Please refrain from sarcasm! This is your last warning!’

Of course they had outlawed sarcasm. As if I wasn’t in enough trouble already. So I dug my grave a little deeper: ‘Or you’ll add it to the charges? I’m quaking in my boots!’

I was, but more because that shield had really taken it out of me, and I wasn’t done yet. I drew in as much power as I could and retrieved my blasting rod from its handy pocket in my star-spangled coat.

‘This is in bad taste! Kindly refrain and surrender yourselves or it’ll go the worse for you.’

He didn’t explain how it would be worse than killing us, and I didn’t particularly care to find out. But if I wanted this to work, I needed them to come closer. For maximum impact.

Thomas gave me the patented big brother what-is-my-baby-brother-doing look. I grinned. He fortunately decided to trust me. He said something rude. In French. I didn’t speak the language, but the tone spoke volumes.

A bullet ricocheted against the wall.

‘What did you say?’

He smiled smugly. ‘I questioned if their fathers were married to their mothers.’

In this society probably the height of rudeness.

He followed that up with a few – probably – lewd suggestions, also in French. Another few bullets bounced off the wall. The shooters came closer with every shot fired, but cautiously. And I still didn’t know where their wizard was.

Thomas needed no more encouragement to insult the Greencoats. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it really pissed them off. I took the time to draw in as much power as I could, ready for the big push.

At the last moment I remembered to pull my hat over my face. Thomas did the same. Getting recognised by local law enforcement would just get us arrested later. I preferred not getting arrested at all; I liked my head where it was.

Thomas kept up a running commentary in French. Judging by the response, he did a lot worse than question their parentage. The Greencoats kept firing off angry shots that, other than pin us in place, didn’t do any damage, but some of them had begun to shout back angrily, casting aspersions. Apparently Thomas’s parents hadn’t been married either. Thomas grinned. No need to tell them it was true. Although I think he did.

We crouched just under street level so we didn’t get our heads shot off, although I kept forgetting I had one of these ridiculous hats, which ended up getting some ventilation holes.

I waited just until the first faces came into view, and then cast ‘Forzare!’ right in their surprised faces.

The results weren’t pretty. The first lines got the worst of it, but not one of them escaped it; they were way too close. Like little dominoes they all toppled over. Some of them got blasted all the way across the street. One unlucky Greencoat ended in a tree. Several branches broke off.

Not to worry. I already had an outstanding warrant for damage to public property.

‘Did you get their wizard?’ Thomas asked.

It had gone suspiciously quiet, but the wizard had hidden at the back last night. Why get your hands dirty if you didn’t need to?

The exhaustion was settling in nicely, but I could sleep after we got back safely to the Ashwood house. I peeked over the edge. Other than fallen Greencoats – I anticipated another charge for damage to their flashy uniforms – and their scattered paraphernalia I couldn’t see anyone moving. I still didn’t see anyone moving when the magical equivalent of a right hook hit me in the jaw.

That hurt. I may have squeaked.

He’d got the angle slightly wrong, though, so I didn’t get knocked back against the house. I did see him now, crouching behind the tree on the other side of the street; the brim of his excessive hat was showing.

So I levelled the playing field by setting fire to his hideout. My opponent yelped – and sounded girlier than I did, for the record – and danced out of reach of the flames, which gave me the chance to send a blast of concentrated energy at his knees. More yelping followed, but this guy was a professional and he sent me another long distance right hook as he went down. This one hit my left shoulder. It hurt like hell.

Better chances than this wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, though, so I sent him a little tornado to play with while I prepared another blast of force. I’d have to make this one count, because, as usual when I went up against the heavyweight brigade, my energy was draining fast. I had a few more good ones in me – probably, maybe – but then Thomas would have to carry me back to Ashwood House and he’d never let me hear the end of it.

I only barely got there in time. The Greencoats wizard dismissed my boomeranging tornado with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, as if he did that as a matter of routine. I was too busy lining up my next attack before he could do the same thing to me, or my knees might have been knocking together.

One of these days I would have to pick a case where not everyone was stronger and meaner than I was.

Before he could really turn his undivided attention to me, I hit the bull’s eye with my next blast. This time I got him right in the sternum. He got thrown back against the house behind him – three cheers for more property damage – where he bounced and fell down.

‘He’s down,’ I announced, rubbing my shoulder. I didn’t think I’d broken anything, but I’d have a spectacular bruise there. ‘Time to go.’

Before any more of them came crawling out of the woodwork.

We ascended to street level and assessed the damage. It looked like a minor war had been fought. The burning tree had ignited both its neighbour and a decorative hedge. Odds and ends lay everywhere. Bodies lay strewn as if carelessly flung around. Several windows had fallen victim to bullets and blasts of magic.

In Chicago the sounds of sirens and outraged humanity would have made it hard to hear yourself think. Sirens hadn’t been invented yet in this London, but the lack of angry people complaining about their windows and the noise really gave me the creeps. We looked around, but not so much as a curtain twitched.

And of course in all the action, Emily had quietly disappeared.

Chapter Text

Apart from all the feathers stuck in her dress and in her hair, her ballgown was not so very bad, Irene reflected. It was loose enough to allow a decent range of movement – she could easily lift her arms above her head without getting stuck or tearing seams – and it hung far enough off the ground to make tripping over the hem only a very small risk.

Of course, getting stabbed by the many real feathers attached willy-nilly to the dress remained a disturbing possibility. She should have stuck with the flowers, but tonight Murphy was the one who could play hide and seek in a flower garden. Irene on the other hand looked like she had fought a battle with every bird known to man. And lost.

Agatha was more sedately turned out, as befitted her mature years. She too had embraced her flower theme, but in moderation.

‘Why aren’t you smothered in flowers?’ Murphy demanded as they got in the carriage.

‘I’m a widow, dear,’ Agatha said. If her patience had taken a severe beating from trying to teach her charges how to dance in the space of a morning, she never showed it. ‘It’s for the unmarried Misses to make a splash at balls. To attract eligible suitors.’

‘The only thing I’m attracting is a swarm of bees,’ Murphy muttered.

Hard to argue with that.

Agatha utilised the brief journey to run over the rules again. ‘You cannot leave the main ballroom until you’ve danced at least once,’ she said. ‘If you absolutely must pair off for the search with one of the men, make sure you won’t be caught. Your reputations would never survive being found alone with a man.’

Irene shook her head. ‘That doesn’t really matter. With any luck we’ll be out of here soon.’

The sooner the better. She missed her own London. The one without all the silly rules and without the paranoia. Even Venice hadn’t been this bad. It had been worse in other ways.

She tried not to think about it too much.

Agatha levelled a stern stare at her. ‘Your misbehaviour will reflect badly on me,’ she pointed out. ‘I cannot have it said about me that I sheltered…’

‘French spies?’ Murphy suggested sarcastically.

Irene felt annoyed, but only because she had been about to ask the same thing and Murphy beat her to it.

‘Moral degenerates,’ Agatha said primly. ‘Which in turn would severely hamper my ability to work in this alternate and collect useful books. I’ll thank you not to jeopardise my position.’

‘We’ll try not to,’ Irene promised, and she meant it. If their places had been reversed, another Librarian recklessly endangering Irene’s position in her alternate would make her spitting mad. The job was difficult enough without being sabotaged by one’s own colleagues.

Agatha looked at her. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I take it there is a lot you haven’t told me.’ The tone was displeased, but unsurprised. They both knew what their superiors were like.

‘Quite a bit,’ Irene agreed, thinking about mysteriously malfunctioning Traverses.

‘How bad is it?’ Agatha asked. ‘Apart from the obvious?’

‘Unprecedented,’ Irene said. Existential, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. If all the ways into the Library got severed, could the Library still exist? The dimming light suggested maybe not. And then what? No more neutral power to balance order and chaos, no one standing up for actual human beings, free rein to Fae and Dragons and their endless, worlds-destroying feuds… It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I see,’ Agatha said again.

And she didn’t speak again until they arrived at their destination.

Irene didn’t feel very talkative herself. What she wanted most right now was to get on with the mission as soon as possible. All the etiquette and dancing lessons, the fittings and the strutting around town served a useful purpose, but it didn’t get her any closer to Emily or the book. She could only hope that the men had better luck, although judging by the way the mission was going so far, she didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

Their carriage joined the queue of carriages crawling their way to the Ashwood House front door, where they disgorged their dressed up passengers. The house blazed with warm, welcoming light. Even half a street away they could catch the sounds of laughter and strains of music. It sounded like a very merry gathering.

Provided you followed the rules.

Agatha disembarked first, followed by Murphy and then Irene. Their hosts waited to greet them just inside the door. This was where Irene got her first look at Emily’s father. He didn’t have trouble written all over his forehead, but he might as well have; that terrifying frown should have sent at least half his guests running for the hills. His manners were impeccable. Clearly he expected no less from his guests, going by the way he scrutinised their every move and found them wanting compared to his own.

Lady Ashwood’s friendliness shone by contrast. She embraced Agatha with genuine pleasure – earning a stern look from her husband that she didn’t seem to notice – and clasped both Irene and Murphy’s hands with a sincere smile and the wish that they would enjoy themselves tonight.

Irene doubted it, but appreciated the sentiment.

William Ashwood was next in line, grinning at them. They went through the whole bowing and hand-shaking ritual – was it any wonder that the line progressed so slowly when every greeting took up at least half a minute? – before he got round to the useful stuff. ‘My friends are already in the ballroom,’ he said, winking. ‘Perhaps you ladies may take pity on them and allow them to ask you to dance. Their circle of acquaintances here is regrettably still very small.’

‘So is our own,’ Irene remarked. ‘What a coincidence.’

William laughed. ‘So it is, Miss Irene. Fortunately, balls exist to remedy such deficiencies. Remind me to introduce you to some interesting people later.’

Before Irene could ask what he meant, she was ushered on to the last in the line. Emily Ashwood was splendidly dressed, apparently with the aim of making her look soft, innocent, and approachable. It might have worked if Irene hadn’t seen her lay about with Shakespeare and if she hadn’t got a close up look of the girl’s face; you could cut yourself on that smile. And if that didn’t do the job, her Gorgon stare could probably turn you to stone.

She was not pleased to see the Library delegation. At all.

Still, both parties went through the motions. Irene forced herself to play nice and, casting about for something nice to say, eventually settled on the eye-catching embroidered choker necklace. ‘Such a marvellous piece of work,’ she said, and it was. It covered most of Emily’s neck in a pattern of delicately rendered flowers, a continuation of her dress. ‘You must tell me where you got it.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you all my secrets, surely,’ said Emily. The tone was perfectly pleasant.

Irene was pretty sure she could get all of Emily’s secrets, but not in civil conversation and not in this crowded hall either. She’d find her later.

The ballroom was crowded already and there were still people coming in. Fortunately Harry was easily the tallest man in the room and if his height didn’t draw the eye, the eye-catching outfit would. From her research earlier today Irene knew that bright colours were set apart for wizards, so they could easily be distinguished from the rest of the populace. Harry had been forced – manhandled, blackmailed, forced at gunpoint – into an ensemble of an eyewatering shade of red embroidered with gold stars and vague mystical symbols. Kai and Thomas looked dull and underwhelming beside him, even if they were the more tastefully turned out.

‘Nice suit, Dresden,’ Murphy grinned when they joined them.

‘Nice dress, Murph,’ he returned. ‘What happened to the feathers?’

She wisely didn’t respond.

Irene took charge. ‘Anything to report?’ she asked. Their little corner was relatively unoccupied at the moment. The chances of being overheard were as small as they were going to be. Best make use of it.

‘Emily had another one of her nightly outings,’ Thomas informed her briskly. ‘Harry and I tried to follow, but she led us right to another Greencoats patrol.’

They looked remarkably undamaged, and Irene said so.

‘Tell that to my left shoulder,’ Harry muttered darkly.

‘The street took most of the damage,’ Thomas added cheerfully.

Agatha frowned in disapproval. ‘How much damage, Mr Raith?’

‘At least two trees, one hedge, a lantern post, a dozen windows, and some superficial damage to doors and walls. Uncounted.’

Agatha closed her eyes in dismay.

It spoke volumes about Irene’s standards these days that she considered that mild damage. Agatha might suffer an apoplexy if she knew what Harry had done to Faerie Venice’s major landmark. Or the kind of mark Irene had left on the Field Museum in Harry’s Chicago.

‘They didn’t get a good look at our faces,’ Thomas carried on. ‘And Harry knocked their wizard out. But by that time Emily had disappeared.’

‘And the book?’ Irene asked, without much hope.

‘If it’s here, then it’s not in the library,’ Kai said, apologetically. ‘And it’s not in her room either. We’ve searched most of the house…’

‘The bits we could get without servants breathing down our necks,’ Thomas interjected.

‘… And we didn’t have any success there either,’ Kai concluded. ‘I don’t think it’s here. We’ll try to have a look at the rest of the rooms tonight. Otherwise we’ll have to grab Emily and get the information from her.’

Irene wished she could be surprised. This mission was just one setback after another, only interspersed with lessons in genteel manners.

‘How’d you get away with the glove?’ she asked before Agatha recovered her equilibrium and could start in on a lecture about the importance of Keeping One’s Head Down.

Harry held up his left hand in the matching red glove. ‘I showed it to Sir Henry. He insisted on the glove.’

Irene hadn’t actually seen Harry’s left hand. She knew he’d been horribly injured and that he’d lost most of the function in it, but she’d never had to see it. For someone who usually flapped out the first thing that popped into his head, he was remarkably tight-lipped about some things. Of course, the fact that they were usually up to their necks in some crisis or other when they met wasn’t conducive to in-depth chats.

What else was new?

‘Just like that?’

‘I just have to tell people I became disfigured rescuing children from a fire.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘Which is true.’

‘Just not the entire story,’ Murphy said. ‘I would have liked to have heard you explain the vampire with the flamethrower.’

Irene reflected once again that Harry’s life was at least as strange as her own.

‘Time to mingle,’ Agatha spoke forcefully. ‘Make sure you establish your presence as respectable people. Emily will be greeting people for at least half an hour more.’ She grabbed Irene’s arm and hooked it through hers. Murphy tried to dance out of reach, but Agatha was fast for a woman her age. ‘The dancing won’t start until the hosts are in the ballroom. Now, come.’

It did make sense, but by now Irene thoroughly resented the endless manners and all the hoops they had to jump through. The resentment didn’t extend to her colleague yet. She understood Agatha to some extent. But all this flitting about making empty small talk felt like so much fluff.

But a ballroom was not the place to start an argument, so she allowed Agatha to drag her around the room and introduce her to the local worthies. Most names and faces went in one ear and straight out the other, but a few stood out.

Agatha introduced them to a small, thin man whom she introduced as Mr Lawson. ‘The editor in chief of the Fashionable Manners,’ she clarified. ‘These are my nieces, Karrin and Irene Murphy, freshly arrived from America.’

Much bowing and hand-shaking followed.

‘A great pleasure to welcome such fair ladies to our civilised shores,’ he said. ‘How are you finding London so far?’

‘An education,’ Murphy said, straight-faced but with an edge of steel that went about a mile over Lawson’s head.

‘I hope you found our humble pamphlet helpful,’ he said, fishing for compliments. Irene suspected he didn’t have much of a life apart from the pamphlet, which would explain a lot about some of its contents.

Agatha got there ahead of her charges. ‘To be sure,’ she said. ‘I especially noted your editorial on page three on the dos and don’ts of gloves. Inspired, I would say.’

‘It’s such an important part of life,’ Lawson simpered. ‘Good society requires clear rules. It is our solemn duty to make sure the standards are communicated plainly. And above all, it is important to explain to the people why things are the way they are.’

If Irene remembered correctly, the only justification for doing something was because we don’t want to be like the French. It took effort to keep her mouth shut.

Lawson prattled on oblivious: ‘And still, despite how readily we make our pamphlet available to the populace, people ignore the conventions of society,’ he complained. ‘Take that wizard for example.’ He gestured in Harry’s direction. ‘Gloves! Indoors!’

‘One glove,’ Murphy corrected.

Lawson blinked. Irene didn’t think he was at all familiar with people correcting him. That was his job. But he recovered quickly. ‘One glove,’ he agreed with bad grace. ‘Still very unbecoming.’

‘You’d find him even more unbecoming if he took it off.’ Murphy glared at him, all pretence at pleasant manners forgotten. ‘His hand is badly disfigured. Burned, you see, when he rescued a group of children from a fire.’

Lawson blinked some more. ‘I… I did not know that.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Murphy agreed emphatically. ‘Because you like to judge people without knowing them.’

Agatha stomped on Murphy’s foot.

Murphy took no notice. ‘Rules are fine, but they have to make sense. “Because the French do it” isn’t a reason.’

Lawson glared back with double intensity. ‘I shall take your comments under advisement, Miss Murphy,’ he replied acidly. ‘No, I shall not forget this. Mrs Smith, I had expected you to have greater discernment in what manner of person you allowed under your roof.’

A threat if ever Irene heard one.

‘Forgive my niece, good sir,’ Agatha soothed. ‘She has spent most of her formative years living in America. I understand they do things very differently there. She has only recently arrived and is not yet accustomed to our English ways.’

‘Then, madam, you should have waited to bring her out into society until you had educated her better,’ he retorted. ‘What possessed you?’

‘A spirit of charity,’ Agatha said mildly, but she had gone very pale. ‘And a firm belief, if not in their fashions, at least in their good hearts.’

Lawson scrutinised them one by one. Murphy made some effort to look contrite – which didn’t suit her – but didn’t manage a verbal apology. Irene gave innocence her best go. A bit hard when she agreed with Murphy whole-heartedly, but she could pretend. All good Librarians could.

‘At least they aren’t French,’ Lawson said at last. ‘I suppose we could be… lenient with ignorant Americans. For a time.’

‘Very gracious of you,’ Agatha agreed, relief written all over her face. ‘It shan’t happen again.’

‘See that it doesn’t.’ Lawson stalked off.

Agatha pulled the pair of them to a corner and then turned on Murphy. ‘What were you thinking?’ she demanded. ‘Have I not impressed upon you the need to obey the rules, even – especially – when you do not agree with them? How many times do I have to repeat that this is not your world and you can’t act like you do at home? What you did can get you arrested, dearie, and me with you. When this is over, you can go back to wherever it is that you call home, but I will have to live and work here. What you did here might have ruined my reputation. It might take years to mend. It might be the end of my career here!’

Irene did understand. Murphy was beginning to. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Little good that does us now,’ Agatha grumbled. ‘For goodness sakes, girl, think before you speak. Better yet, don’t speak at all if you can help it.’

They resumed their turn around the room, but Irene was uncomfortably aware that a lot of people were staring at them, not least of which was Lawson, who’d sidled up to another wizard, this one dressed in a sapphire blue piece with embroidered silver magical whatnots. And if anyone somehow missed the clues, he also carried a staff easily as tall as he was, inlaid with precious stones and carving along its length. Despite all these status symbols, he looked like he enjoyed life about as much as Sir Henry Ashwood. In short: he looked like trouble.

‘Who’s he?’ Irene asked in an undertone.

Agatha paled. ‘Lord Edward Spencer, president of the Society for the Promotion of Good Taste. The most powerful man in the country.’

The last man they should make an enemy of, and they’d already antagonised his best friend. What a way to start. Irene was beginning to feel a little annoyed with Murphy herself. Yeah, maybe she didn’t know any better, but she wanted to come. No one made her come. Sometimes in this line of work, you just had to close your eyes to the things you didn’t like and get on with the job in hand.

‘We can’t leave,’ Agatha said, ‘not before the dancing. But it would be best if we retired early. To stay long will be seen as arrogant after that encounter. And then, Miss Murphy, you must stay out of sight as much as possible. You are in deep disgrace. It would not be appropriate to be out and about.’

Murphy looked rebellious, but kept her mouth shut. Maybe she’d sensed the change in atmosphere too. People still laughed merrily, but with an undertone. Something had put them on edge. Given that the encounter with the editor was the only thing of interest and that everybody now stared at them, it wasn’t much of a guess what that could have been.

And they hadn’t even got anywhere near Emily yet.

What a shambles.

Finally, after endless turns around the ballroom – people now avoided making contact – the Ashwoods finally entered, the very picture of a happy, harmonious family, which went a long way in showing that appearances were deceptive. Sir Henry welcomed his guests graciously and hoped that they would enjoy themselves at this ball to welcome Miss Ashwood back to London after her absence. With all that, he invited them all to dance.

As speeches went, it was a decent, unadventurous one, but at least it was short.

‘Dance with one of your friends,’ Agatha ordered. ‘And conclude your business afterwards quickly. We cannot be seen to linger.’

Wisely, neither of them argued.

Harry bore down on them, asked Murphy to dance, and led her off to the dancefloor. He’d barely gone when Kai showed up, the very picture of a distinguished gentleman. He’d never needed any help looking good, but this current ensemble didn’t hurt.

‘Miss Irene,’ he said, eyes twinkling mischievously, ‘might I have the honour of this dance?’

‘You may,’ Irene said, and let herself be led off to the dancefloor.

She didn’t say that it was a relief to get out from under the constant cloud of Agatha’s disapproval, but she certainly thought it. Her first impression of Agatha had been of a kindly old lady, but the more she saw of her, the less that held up. Yes, Murphy had made a big mistake, but the reaction was excessive, more geared towards the preservation of her own position than helping out her colleagues. Maybe she didn’t understand the stakes, and maybe – Irene felt a little guilty for even thinking it – she rated her own position higher than the need of her colleagues.

It made her a fickle ally at best.

Would she sell them out to the Greencoats, though? Yesterday Irene’s immediate response would have been a resounding no. Today, she wasn’t so sure.

‘Everything all right?’ Kai asked as he led her through the opening steps.

‘No,’ Irene said. ‘We’ll have to be quick.’

‘The incident with the man in lavender?’

‘Murphy snapped at him when he complained about Harry’s glove.’

Kai nodded in understanding.

‘Anything useful on your end?’ Irene asked.

‘Nothing,’ Kai said. ‘Just endless small talk.’

Not that unexpected at a ball, but frustrating all the same.

Emily had been claimed by a young gentleman in green, although she didn’t seem to like that. But this ball was in her honour. With any luck, she’d be so high in demand that Irene’s little band had searched the house, found Emma, and absconded back to the Library with it before she managed to extract herself from her many admirers.

Kai expertly twirled her across the floor. Irene had some skill in dancing herself; this wasn’t the first case that involved some kind of formal occasion. And Agatha’s dancing lessons had helped too. They didn’t bump into any of the other dancers – always an encouraging sign – and they even got some nods of approval as they came past.

It would have been even nicer if they’d had a proper dance at a proper ball when they didn’t have to sneak out to steal a book, but such was the life of the Librarian. Not that Irene really believed Emily kept the book in the house, but without searching they wouldn’t be sure. And she always meant to snatch Emily away for a private conversation later.

Kai danced them to the edge of the room so that when the music stopped it was simplicity itself to step through the door and out into the hallway.

‘Expertly managed,’ Irene complimented him as they snuck away on their tiptoes. They shouldn’t have bothered; the band struck up the next piece and the hum of conversation drowned out the sounds that the music couldn’t cover.

‘Will it go on my record?’ Kai grinned.

‘Well, that depends on the rest of this evening’s performance.’ Teachers shouldn’t be too free with their praises; it made for lazy students. ‘Let’s find the book first.’

Once they got upstairs, well away from the throng of London’s upper crust, they stopped whispering. Everyone was downstairs. Most of the rooms there had been opened for guests to explore, but it was considered bad taste for any guest to intrude on the family’s private quarters. Since Irene already suffered social displeasure, she opened the first bedroom door she could find and got stuck in.

Her first impression of the Ashwood House was tastefully decadent. Every room, even the private spaces, had been decorated with expensive furniture in the current fashionable colour palette. It must cost them a fortune to redo the entire house a couple of times each year. That people put up with this kind of expense was baffling, but maybe they economised by storing the unfashionable furniture in an attic until it came back into fashion.

The first bedroom definitely belonged to Sir Henry. Even allowing for the pastel palette it breathed austerity and authority, all sharp lines and the darkest possible shades. If Lady Ashwood shared the room, there was no sign of her soft personality anywhere. More importantly, there was no sign of the book either.

They went through each of the bedrooms save Emily’s – which had already been searched the previous day – and William’s – which the men had searched that morning on the off chance Emily tried to secrete the book in the most unlikely place imaginable.

The end result remained the same: no book. Either Emily – with her inside knowledge of the house and all its hiding places – had used a place a novice like Irene would never find or she had already handed the book over to her mysterious accomplice.

Whoever that was.

Someone to worry about, Irene suspected, given that this unknown could apparently open a Library Traverse and remain… well, unknown.

‘Nothing,’ Kai concluded without surprise when they finished the last bedroom, a guest bedroom done in a hundred shades of soft yellows. They reconvened on the landing at the top of the stairs. ‘I don’t think it’s here, Irene.’

Irene had, reluctantly, come to the same realisation. ‘We need to talk to Emily.’ And the sooner the better.

As if he had heard her request, Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Any luck?’

Irene shook her head. ‘No. You?’

‘No sign of Emma,’ Thomas reported. He had been allocated the downstairs area on the sound premise that if he got caught, he could always seduce the intruder and leave them stunned in the best possible way before continuing on with the search. And none of his victims would ever say a thing about it, because they’d destroy their reputations in the process. Sometimes it really paid to have a vampire on the team.

Since Thomas looked charmingly dishevelled enough, it certainly seemed like he had run into trouble and had taken a moment to snack on the local delicacies.

‘And Emily?’ she asked, wondering if he had snacked on her too. She wasn’t a colleague anymore after all.

‘Harry and Murphy have her in the library for a chat.’

The first good news of the case, as far as Irene was concerned. ‘How did they manage that?’

Thomas smiled in a would-be modest manner that fooled no one. ‘I… persuaded her to join me for a private encounter.’

Part of Irene nastily hoped that he had done that in as much of a public spectacle as possible, so that Emily could sample the questionable delights of having her reputation dragged through the mud, with all the repercussions that entailed. Then she reminded herself that having Emily’s head removed might make it somewhat difficult to question her on her recent illegal activities.

Life was full of disappointments.

‘Is she in any state of mind to answer a few questions?’ Irene asked. She had no idea how long the effects of a snogging session with Thomas would last.

‘Probably pleasantly relaxed.’

Good enough. Probably.

And if not, Irene hoped the Language would sufficiently focus her mind to keep her on task. They needed some answers, and the sooner the better.

‘When we’re done, can you keep her…?’ She wondered how to best phrase this request.

‘… Occupied?’ Thomas suggested.

‘Something like that,’ Irene said. ‘At least long enough to let us get her out of the house without her kicking up a fuss.’

Once outside, they could simply gag her, but no way that they’d get anywhere with the daughter of the house trussed up like a pig for slaughter in front of the Ashwoods’ many guests. But if she appeared to come willingly…

‘Easy,’ said Thomas.

Except it wasn’t. Easy, that was.

Keeping with the established pattern of everything going to hell in a handcart, the front door was thrown open with quite unnecessary force. It bounced against the wall. Only a timely intervention by the butler prevented it from rebounding in the intruders’ faces.

Thomas grabbed Kai and Irene and dragged them behind a wall out of sight before they got a good look at the newcomers.

Not that they needed to wonder for long; they announced themselves: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? In the name of His Majesty the King, we have come here to arrest some suspected French spies. Please do not panic. Remain where you are and all shall be well momentarily.’

Except for the potential French spies, for whom nothing would ever be well again.

The cries of alarm cut off. No one was laughing now. If Irene had any doubts about what kind of a place this was, they disappeared fast.

‘That’s us,’ Thomas whispered, face grim. ‘We’re the French spies.’

Irene’s brain hadn’t gotten that far yet. But he could be right. Maybe they’d been recognised during the altercation on the night of their arrival. Maybe Emily had decided to drop them in it before they could get to her.

Maybe that was why she’d been so confident. Irene wished she’d considered that possibility a bit earlier.

This however was not the time for quiet reflection or self-recrimination. ‘Could we climb out the window of Emily’s bedroom?’

Thomas already led the way.

Irene spared a brief thought for Harry and Murphy, but they could look after themselves. Any second now she’d hear the sounds of Harry vigorously disagreeing with the imposition on his freedom of movement. Besides, Irene could never cross the Greencoats-infested hallway to the library without being seen and arrested.

Kai and she hurried after Thomas to the pinkest room in the house. Thomas gestured for them to wait while he sneaked to the window. From where he retreated pretty quickly with a muffled curse.

‘Surrounded?’ Kai asked.

‘At least twenty Greencoats.’

They’d come packing for bear. Irene supposed she could be flattered that they didn’t underestimate their suspects, but competence was not a quality she appreciated in people who put heads on stakes for a hobby.

She briefly contemplated using the Language on that many people all at once, and instantly filed that under To Be Attempted Only As A Very Last Resort. ‘Any other way out?’

‘The servants’ hall downstairs. Or the backdoor.’ All of which involved crossing the path of hysterical guests and more Greencoats. Also not to be attempted while there were still other options on the table.

Of course, that suggested that other options were still available.

‘Maybe they won’t come upstairs,’ Kai offered.

All the guests were supposed to remain on the ground floor, but of course French spies, the arbiters of bad taste, would never let that stop them. Which meant that the Greencoats wouldn’t let that stop them either.

‘Maybe,’ she said doubtfully. Maybe the Greencoats had come for someone else and this was all just a huge coincidence. Unlikely, but possible.

So far no stylish boots had pounded up the stairs, so they snuck back to the top of the stairs and peered over the railing to take stock of the situation.

Just in time to see Harry and Murphy taken out the front door in chains.

Chapter Text

A ball. Fancy dress, fancy people, fancy nibbles.

You could say a lot about the Ashwoods, but they knew how to keep their guests from starving. Since I didn’t feel like any more bowing and handshaking, I let Kai do most of the mingling and talking. I just stood there looking mysterious. And trying not to wince when I moved my shoulder; the right-hook-wizard knew how to pack a punch.

I looked like a circus director. In hindsight, the blue ensemble hadn’t been so bad. Why it wasn’t ball-appropriate had not been adequately explained, so I went through the evening blinding spectators and frightening the horses.

I should count myself lucky that there weren’t any angry bulls in the immediate vicinity.

Thomas and Kai excelled at the mingling, so I let them get on with it, hoping to stay mostly out of sight. Chance would be a fine thing, but it was the glove rather than the suit that drew the attention.

‘Quite the shock to see someone wear gloves indoors,’ said a delicate lady, slowly getting crushed under the weight of all the flowers weighing down her dress.

‘Dear lady,’ said Thomas, dialling up the Raith charm to the max. She staggered under the onslaught and fanned herself furiously. ‘Mr Dresden would never say so, but the glove is for the protection of your innocence.’

‘My innocence?’ the lady asked in breathless tones that suggested she was eager to lose it. ‘Pray explain, good sir.’

‘He is far too modest to say so himself,’ Thomas said smoothly, ‘but Mr Dresden here is quite the hero. He lost the use of the hand in a terrible fire, saving the lives of many children.’

Not exactly the truth, but close enough. Thomas wisely didn’t mention the vampires. Or the flamethrowers. Or Murphy in her underwear.

‘In fact, it has become horribly disfigured and would distress a lady of your delicate disposition,’ Thomas continued, still ramping up the kind of allure that could charm the birds out of the trees. ‘He would rather risk public censure than offer such a distressing sight.’

She never stood a chance. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and then turned to me with a look of benevolent pity. ‘I must ask your forgiveness, Mr Dresden,’ she said. ‘I had no idea. Thank you for your sacrifice.’

Still, she drifted away to mingle with less disfigured people.

Over the next hour Thomas had to do the glove explanation a few times more. By the end I’d been hailed something of a hero. An unfashionable one, but a hero. One had to make allowances for Americans.

They didn’t make allowances for Murphy, who apparently pissed off some posh piece in a lavender suit while I got pitied. She got the stink eye wherever she went, and her Librarian escort seemed to berate her as much as she could get away with in a crowded ballroom. Even from the other side of the room I could tell Murph was seconds away from biting her head off.

The Ashwoods arrived just in time to rescue Agatha from Murphy. They presented themselves as a nice and loving family. Lady Ashwood had her hand on Sir Henry’s arm, smiling adoringly at her husband. Their suspiciously well-behaved offspring smiled angelically.

If I hadn’t been at their dinner table, I might have believed the act.

Sir Henry made a short opening speech welcoming his lovely daughter – no, he didn’t actually choke on the words – home. After that, the band struck up.

Time to break out my next trick.

And then ideally I’d get out to get some actual work done.

I sauntered over to Murphy, bowed low, and requested the pleasure of this dance.

She rolled her eyes at me, but followed me onto the cleared space for dancing. ‘Don’t tread on my toes.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ I’d had lessons. More specifically, I’d had lessons in this particular dance, since I didn’t plan on doing this again. I had a house to search and an apprentice to arrest. If we could get her on her own, but Thomas had a plan for that.

‘You’re not doing your reputation any good,’ she warned me. ‘I’m in deep disgrace.’

‘That makes a change,’ I said. ‘Normally that’s my job.’

‘Keep this up and it still might be,’ she retorted, but she smiled.

Murphy must have had lessons too, because she didn’t stand on my toes. We didn’t bump into any other dancers, which classed this as an unparalleled success.

If we could ignore all the angry stares, it was a very nice, relaxing interlude in what turned out to be a very difficult case.

‘Any sign of Emily?’ Murphy asked.

I peered over the heads of all the other dancers and found her dancing with a friendly-looking young man who made valiant attempts to engage his partner in conversation. Emily was having none of it and stared everywhere but at him. She caught my eye, and I gave her a friendly smile. She glared.

‘Dancing,’ I reported to my tiny partner. ‘Nowhere near an exit.’

‘Which is where we should be heading,’ Murphy said. ‘She’s up to something.’

My shoulder was inclined to agree with that. Emily might have magical powers, but she didn’t need them. Not when she could just as easily set the authorities on us. I didn’t think she’d call the police on her own house, during the ball in her honour, but why hang around to find out?

I performed some steps that had not been part of William’s dance lessons to manoeuvre us to the door without bowling over everyone else. Unfortunately, everyone else noticed.

‘Could you be any more obvious?’ Murphy muttered, before adding: ‘Actually, don’t answer that.’

‘I can do subtle,’ I said, although I couldn’t follow that up with an example of when. It had probably been too subtle to register in my memory.

Murphy didn’t ask for an example, but only because I smoothly twirled us out of the ballroom and into the hallway beyond. And when I say smoothly I mean that I only bumped my own elbow on the doorpost.

Thomas joined us a moment later. ‘We know it’s not downstairs,’ he said without preamble. ‘And Kai and Irene have gone upstairs.’

Although neither of us believed that it was there. Still, an investigator often wastes time just trying to eliminate possibilities. However unlikely it was that Emily had hidden Emma down the back of a sofa, we’d never know for sure until we checked.

‘We’ll poke around the parlour,’ Murphy said.

Thomas grinned. ‘I thought I’d retrieve our runaway apprentice and get the information from the horse’s mouth.’

We both frowned. ‘And how will you do that?’ I asked.

‘With all the smooth efficiency for which I am known,’ he replied not very modestly. ‘Wait in the library. I’ll get her.’

He swanned back into the ballroom.

Murphy and I did not go into the library, because 1) I don’t ever do as I’m told, especially not by my older brother and 2) we wanted to see how he’d get Emily to come quietly without her either screaming bloody murder or trying to rip his clothes off in the middle of the dancefloor.

I had forgotten that White Court vampires are the masters of subtle. Thomas caught her between partners and very politely asked her if she would honour him with the next dance. With so many people within sight and earshot she couldn’t get away with refusing – according to Fashionable Manners the only valid reasons for a lady to refuse a gentleman a dance were if his breath stank or if he wore unfashionable clothing – so with bad grace she put her hand in his.

The lack of gloves really tripped her up here, because Thomas didn’t need more than skin-on-skin contact. Once Emily gave him her hand, she was his.

Unlike me, Thomas could do subtle. He led her in a dance, keeping her compliant and completely focused on him by gentle touches, nothing more than warranted by the steps of the dance, just casual brushes of his fingers over the back of her hand. By the end of the dance Emily looked as if she was not only seconds away from dragging him into a dark corner for a more intimate encounter, but also as if she might have forgotten her own name.

Thomas skilfully manoeuvred her past the refreshment table and out of the ballroom in the chaotic bustle between dances. No one seemed to notice. Murphy and I decided we had seen the master at work long enough and slipped into the library just ahead of them.

It was the most interesting room in the house, so naturally we were the only ones there. Murphy shoved another chair behind the central desk and placed the most uncomfortable one before it, the closest she could get to a traditional interrogation set-up.

Barely five minutes later Thomas and Emily burst into the library. Thomas had abandoned subtle – or Emily had; he’d teased her enough – and had Emily pressed up against him. Her hands struggled with his clothing, which went nowhere, because Thomas kept kissing her to distract her. He fed on her too, taking a nice big bite of her lifeforce to fill up his own tank. Possibly because it was his nature, or possibly to pay her back for her enthusiastic application of Shakespeare to his unprotected head.

Murphy and I both looked away.

We didn’t look back until Thomas dropped her into the interrogation chair and broke away. Emily breathed heavily with the kind of look on her face that suggested she wasn’t exactly sure what planet she was on. Murphy used the opportunity to handcuff her to the chair.

‘I’ll fetch Irene,’ Thomas announced.

‘You might want to fix your clothes before you walk out of here,’ I said. ‘And your hair.’

‘Yes, mother,’ he snarked before he slipped out.

We settled in to wait. Emily needed a moment before she realised where she was. When she did the silly smile slid right off her face.

‘Good evening,’ I said, because manners never hurt.

‘He fed off me!’ Emily exclaimed, out-raged.

‘You knocked him on the head,’ I retorted lightly. ‘I think you’re even.’

Emily did not appreciate good sense; she glared some more. ‘This is my house. I can scream.’

‘And I can gag you,’ Murphy said calmly. ‘Alternatively, I can shoot, too.’ She produced a tiny gun from somewhere that I didn’t know she had. And I didn’t know where she’d stashed it. She couldn’t have fit it in that post stamp-sized bag dangling from her wrist.

Emily considered the gun and shut up pretty quickly.

We waited some more.

‘What do you want with me anyway?’ she asked, tremor in her voice.

‘Some answers,’ Murphy said.

‘But I don’t know anything!’ Emily claimed, unconvincingly.

‘You don’t know how you knocked out two of your own colleagues and stole their book?’ Murphy scoffed.

Emily pouted. It was a very pretty pout. ‘It’s all a big misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to do it, but they left me no choice.’

‘How’s that?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said Emily, unleashing the kicked puppy look in all its glory, ‘they took a book from my father’s library. It’s not right. Future Librarians’ families should be exempt from book thefts. My mother was heartbroken to find one of her favourite novels missing. I had to give it back to her.’

Heartbroken was not the word I’d use to describe Lady Ashwood. Long-suffering, maybe, or exasperated. And if she did turn out to be heartbroken, I’d wager Emily was the cause, rather than the bearer of the cure.

‘So you argued and then you attacked them when they didn’t give you the book?’ Murphy asked, as if she bought in to that fairytale, which she didn’t.

Emily managed a pretty single tear. ‘I know I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t dare! He’s a vampire! I didn’t want to be fed from!’

‘So you knocked him out, unprovoked, from behind?’

Her expression froze.

‘And then, of course,’ Murphy continued sweetly, ‘you pursued your fleeing mentor and gave her such a beating that she will have to spend considerable time in the hospital. But you say that you had no choice?’

The flow of tears stopped abruptly. ‘You don’t believe me!’ she said, outraged again. Whatever her talents, I didn’t think she’d get far in an acting career.

‘No, moppet, we don’t believe you.’ Hard to forget she’d battered Bradamant and Thomas hard enough to take them both down. ‘Why did you smash the office?’

‘I was panicking!’

We didn’t believe that either. Her story had more holes than a Swiss cheese.

‘So, where’s the book?’ Murphy asked.

Emily turned on the waterworks. She broke out in loud sobs. Tears tracked down her face. She was a pretty crier too, without any of the red and blotchy eyes or dripping nose you’d see on most people.

Murphy and I leaned back and crossed our arms over our chests to signal our complete disinterest.

She kept it up for a few minutes, then stopped abruptly. ‘You are heartless people!’ she declared. ‘Have you no pity?’

We refused to accept moral judgement from the young woman who’d knocked out two of her colleagues without qualms. And I hadn’t forgotten the trap she’d led Thomas and me into last night either. Ruthless would be the best word to describe her, right after dangerous.

I studied her a bit more. Emily had done nothing but protest since we’d had her here, but she wasn’t panicking. Not even a little bit. She’d objected, she’d  pleaded, and she’d acted her heart out – with limited success – but if I had been in her place, with a wizard and a potential Librarian with a gun and a twitchy trigger finger staring down at me, I might have started worrying.

Okay, I still would have plied my captors with witty remarks, but deep down I would have been worrying. And thinking of ways to get out of my current predicament.

The longer I looked at Emily, the more I became convinced that she had thought of something already and that it was only a matter of time before she sprung the trap. I exchanged a glance with Murphy, who had come to the same conclusion. I’d feel a lot better if Irene got here quickly.

‘Where’s the book?’ Murphy repeated.

Emily’s pretty face twisted in a sulk. ‘All right, all right, I’ll tell you. I don’t suppose you could get me out of these handcuffs first?’

Murphy snorted. ‘Nice try.’

‘Well, it couldn’t hurt.’

‘Where’s the book?’ Murphy asked again.

‘I said I’ll explain,’ she snapped. ‘In fact, you perceive that I have just told you where the book is and that I’ve promised to fetch it for you. You also perceive that you have just agreed to let me out of these handcuffs so that I can bring the book to you and that you have agreed to wait here so as to not draw attention to ourselves.’

Finally some progress. That had taken long enough. But at least we’d have the book and Irene could open a passage to the Library from this room.

I love it when my cases turn out easier than I thought.

Murphy unlocked the handcuffs. ‘Hurry up,’ she instructed Emily. ‘We don’t have all night.’

‘I know, I know,’ Emily said. She rubbed her wrists. ‘Just wait here,’ she reiterated. ‘It’ll be suspicious if we’re all seen sneaking around the house.’

‘Stop delaying,’ Murphy snapped.

Emily darted out of the library and left Murphy and me alone.

‘That was like pulling teeth,’ Murphy grumbled.

Yeah, it was. But we got there in the end. The Librarians could decide what they wanted to do with Emily, although I suspected that Murphy would put up a fight to have her tried in Chicago. I didn’t think she’d get very far.

Still, something niggled. ‘She caved too easily.’

Murphy considered that. ‘Maybe Thomas rattled her more than she showed,’ she offered. ‘And she knows there’s at least a few more Librarians in the building. Maybe she realised she couldn’t get away.’

It didn’t feel right. The one thing Emily Ashwood never lacked was arrogance. Or confidence, as she would probably call it. And now she suddenly folded, out of the blue, after that theatrics display? I was missing something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Murphy frowned. ‘Why did we let her get the book on her own?’

A good question. And I had just thought of another. ‘Where did she say she hid it again?’ Part of my brain insisted that I knew and that she had told us, but when I tried to think of an actual location, I came up empty.

Murphy hesitated. ‘I… don’t know.’

Just then the front door was thrown open and a large number of booted feet marched through it. My finely honed wizarding senses told me that we were in trouble.

Before I could do more than think it, the door to the library burst open and in came a dozen menaces in green, wielding guns. ‘Hands up!’ they barked.

Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy. ‘Didn’t your mother teach you to say please?’

They didn’t like that. Quicker than it takes to describe it, my feet left the ground and my back made the painful acquaintance of the wall above the fireplace. Then, for good measure, I landed face-first on the floor. The carpet broke my fall a little, but the impact knocked the air from my lungs.

I tried to catch my breath, but quickly, because people who throw you into a wall without warning are usually not the types who wait until their victim is ready for a rematch. I began to gather my power for easy distribution once I’d figured out where to send it. I still had my blasting rod in its handy holder. And I’d use it as soon as I could get it out.

I never got round to it.

Say what you like about the Greencoats, but they were quick. I’d only just got to my knees when they shoved the barrels of their guns right in my faces. There were at least three of them, and keeping an eye on all of them forced me to look at them cross-eyed. I can conjure up a shield pretty quickly, but my arms still supported my weight and I definitely couldn’t get a shield between them and me before they blew my brains out. From that distance, they really couldn’t miss.

Self-preservation and I are not always on friendly terms, but even I had to acknowledge that offering resistance now would get me killed. I froze.

‘A wise decision,’ a cultured voice commented. ‘Shackle them.’

Another three fashionable cops came up behind me, held me by the shoulders, and clapped me in irons.

And my magic evaporated.

All the power I had been gathering slipped away and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop it. All too soon, I couldn’t even feel it. This wasn’t like when we went to rescue Kai and I’d only exhausted myself. I’d still been able to feel it, I just hadn’t been able to use it. This was different. If my power was still there, the shackles had locked it away so deep that I couldn’t reach it.

That was when I started panicking.

I’m not a brawny guy. If I need brute strength, or an escape from a sticky situation, I use my magic to get out of it. Usually with a tool to focus my efforts, mainly because doing it without hurts a lot. But I’d need to be able to actually use my power to do that. And now I couldn’t.

Murphy couldn’t hurry to my rescue either this time; they’d shoved two guns in her face and cuffed her while she tried to kill them by glare.

Unfortunately they failed to get the hint.

The Greencoats wizard stood in the middle of the room, looking smug. He continued the Shrek theme, but with more gold braid and a flamboyantly embroidered wizard’s hat. He had the nerve to make it look good.

‘I suspect you’ve realised that your powers have been shackled as securely as your hands,’ he remarked casually. ‘Save your strength. You will not be able to perform any feats of sorcery now.’

As if that had ever stopped me from trying. ‘I don’t take lessons in magic from villains,’ I announced with dignity. ‘Even when they do throw a nice magical punch.’ I had no doubt that the spell that had thrown me to the wall was the same one that had bruised my shoulder.

He inclined his head graciously. ‘I shall say this for you. Though you are undoubtedly a French spy, you are a worthy opponent.’ He turned to face me fully and revealed that my fire spell had singed away all of the hair on the right side of his head.

‘Nice hairdo,’ I commented, because I was in trouble already and they could only chop my head off once anyway.

‘Complimenting your own work. How very French.’

‘I appreciate a job well done.’

‘If I were in your shoes, I would mind my tongue,’ the Greencoats wizard said. ‘The list of charges against you is already long enough.’ He ran through it again in case I had forgotten last night’s encounter.

‘Why, are you going to kill me twice?’ I asked. And then I remembered that necromancy was the fashion of the day and my stomach turned.

‘Ah, I see you’ve realised the foolishness of your remark,’ the wizard said. ‘We could, in fact, kill you as many times as we’d like. And you have caused us quite enough bother to make several repetitions of your execution more than worthwhile.’

It was the calm, civil delivery of these words that really made my blood run cold. He meant it, and he had the power to make it happen. He’d be pleased to make it happen. And I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

I really hoped Irene, Kai, and Thomas managed to stay out of the hands of the rest of the green brigade, because I had a sinking suspicion that Murphy and I got cast as the damsels in distress in this story. We required a couple of knights in shining armour to haul our arses out of the fire.

They hoisted me to my feet and manhandled both of us out of the library. We emerged into a full-scale invasion of the hallway. The Greencoats had cordoned off the entrance to the ballroom. Terrified guests clustered behind them, probably very worried that they were going to get taken away too. I looked around for any familiar faces and discovered Irene at the top of the stairs before someone unseen dragged her out of sight again. Not quickly enough; the Greencoat at the bottom of the stairs had noticed her.

‘There’s more of them, sir!’ he shouted, pointing at where Irene’s head had just vanished. ‘Up there!’

My guards stopped to stare, so I did the sensible thing and threw myself with my full weight against the gaggle of Greencoats congregating at the bottom of the stairs. They went down like dominoes. I ended up mostly on top of the police pile, but one of my surprised guards went down with me and fell on my already battered shoulder.

In the general consternation I didn’t think anyone heard my manly grunt of pain.

The Greencoats wizard didn’t just excel at magical punches, he knew how to magically grab someone by the back of their coat and hurl the victim against the opposite wall too. I made contact with an oil painting of one of Sir Henry’s severe-looking ancestors and we both took a tumble to the ground. The canvas tore, separating Ashwood senior’s neck from his shoulders.

Talk about a premonition.

‘That was most unwise,’ the wizard said when he hauled me off the floor.

‘I think you should arrest yourself for damage to private property,’ I said, because sometimes I don’t know when to quit.

He hit me in the stomach. Hard.

I gasped for air. ‘I thought violence against prisoners was forbidden,’ I wheezed.

‘We make exceptions for French spies.’

Of course he did.

He forced me upright again. I blinked the excess of stars away and tried to remember how to breathe. The Greencoats on the floor were only just beginning to sort themselves out. Irene had disappeared. The pile-up before the stairs prevented anyone going up, but some of the more zealous cops had taken a few shots at the upstairs landing. Other than gouge holes in the walls, they didn’t seem to hit anything.

‘I suppose you think that was very clever,’ the wizard said. He gestured impatiently to his underling to secure his troublesome prisoner.

‘Not my best work,’ I said modestly, ‘but perfectly executed.’

‘Oh, we shall ensure a perfect execution,’ he muttered darkly. No need to ask whose. I was pretty sure I’d just earned myself another one. My stomach sank. The others might have to hurry up with their rescue attempt. ‘The house is surrounded. There is no way out. We will catch your co-conspirators.’

‘You’re very confident for a man who’s nowhere near them,’ I said. So long as he underestimated them, the easier they had it. And I wouldn’t put it past Kai to fly them out if he needed to. But I didn’t say that. I don’t villain-monologue my plans to my enemies; I leave that job to actual villains.

‘I will get them,’ he said.

‘Believe it when I see it.’

His handpicked guards took charge of me and dragged me outside. On principle, I refused to make it easy on them, so I refused to walk and they had to half carry half drag me out to the prison carriage where Murphy was already chained to the bench. They must have pulled her outside before I turned the hallway into live dominoes.

‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

‘Played dominoes with the Greencoats,’ I said, wincing. Now that the worst of the excitement was temporarily over, my newly acquired injuries clamoured for my attention. I thought I might have a cracked rib or two. And maybe picked up a slight concussion. ‘Met Sir Henry’s grandfather.’

‘Silence!’ our accompanying guard said.

We ignored him.

‘You know who’s missing?’ Murphy asked.

Oh, I knew who was missing. And I was pretty sure I worked out what she’d done. ‘We’re in trouble now.’

‘Correct,’ said the guard, and slammed the door.

Chapter Text

Thomas pulled Irene back, but too late.

‘There’s more of them, sir! Up there!’

‘Run!’ Thomas advised.

Run where? Irene meant to ask, but away seemed good enough for now. At least three bullets embedded themselves in the wall. These were serious people. And they didn’t seem to care if they brought their captives in alive or dead.

Irene’s party tore down the corridor, through a door and onto the back stairs.

‘Door, close and lock!’ Irene ordered. It might not hold up the pursuit for long, but she might think of something else by then.

Thomas led them up, since all the Greencoats were downstairs. Behind them sounds of noisy chaos drifted up. Harry maybe. Irene tended to associate anything noisy and explosive with him these days.

But Harry would have to save himself, because even the Language could not deal with that amount of enemies all at once. In situations such as these the experienced Librarian made sure to remove herself from the situation to a place of safety where she could adjust any plans. Of course, the experienced Librarian was expected not to get herself into these sorts of situations in the first place.

She could almost hear Bradamant’s voice in the back of her head asserting that she would never have made such a hash of things.

They went up as far as they could, into a dusty attic, directly under the roof, which would have been a bit more useful if it happened to possess a handy window for easy exit. Thomas didn’t seem surprised by this. Without breaking stride he made for a matching staircase at the far end of the attic. Irene would have asked where they were going, but she didn’t know the house well enough to make sense of the answer anyway.

Down they went. From behind the doors to the more inhabited parts of the house came sounds of running feet and barked orders, but any pursuit remained far enough behind for the moment. Thomas took them into what looked like a wine cellar.

‘Is there another way out?’ Kai asked. He wasn’t even panting.

‘Hiding place,’ Thomas said. ‘William showed us.’

All very well, but ‘Does Emily know it exists?’ Irene had little doubt who had invited the Greencoats to join the party. And she knew this house like the back of her hand. Waiting like rats trapped in a barrel for the Greencoats to find them did not appeal to her at all.

‘Emily doesn’t know everything.’

Even if it seemed like it.

Thomas led them to the back of the room and reached into one of the wine racks. He must have pulled a lever of some sort, because a section of wall slid back to reveal a small room behind.

Small, but comfortable. Whoever had designed this bolthole must have anticipated spending a lot of time there. It had a bed, two comfortable chairs, a supply of candles, a stack of books, food and some expensive looking bottles of wine – complete with delicate glasses to drink it from. For the more practically inclined, there was a small armoury of swords and guns mounted to the far wall.

Irene sat down in one chair, Kai in the other. Thomas pulled another lever and shut the door. They were plunged into darkness. Irene thought about lighting a candle, but she wasn’t sure the light wouldn’t show under the door. Apparently Thomas and Kai had similar reservations. They didn’t suggest it either.

Then they waited. Irene couldn’t see her hand in front of her own face. She could only listen. Not that there was a great deal to hear. She heard Kai’s breathing and, after listening a little more intently, she picked out Thomas’s as well, nearer the door, standing guard. Annoyingly, neither of them were out of breath after all that running.

Beyond that, all she could make out was distant thumping in the distance.

‘Can they find us by magic?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘Magic proof bunker,’ Thomas replied. Irene could almost hear him grin. ‘It pays to be paranoid.’

Clearly. But why the paranoia? And whose paranoia? Sir Henry’s? Lady Sophia’s? The Ashwoods were by all accounts pillars of the community, the epitome of respectability. They set the standards by which the rest of society measured itself. What could they possibly need a secret bunker for?

Something didn’t add up.

The only question was if it had anything to do with Irene’s mission.

Irene couldn’t really measure time in the darkness, but she estimated that it took the Greencoats at least twenty minutes to get to the wine cellar. Presumably they stopped to check every room and every corridor in between the ballroom and here.

The door to the bunker was too thick to make out individual words or recognise individual voices, but Irene could make out barked commands – probably to find the fugitives already and to get on with it – and several more subdued replies – probably reporting failure – and one voice raised in complaint. Sir Henry, Irene suspected, worrying about what these intruders could do to his wine collection. And his reputation. And probably not in that order.

Belatedly, Irene wondered if he knew about the bolthole. Could he rat them out? Would he?

They spent a very tense ten minutes while the Greencoats turned the place over. Evidently they found nothing, because eventually they left. They stomped back up the stairs again. For a while the thumping continued and then stopped. Which meant they left. Or so Irene hoped. She suspected that the ball was over after this interruption. Goodness knew what this had done to the Ashwoods’ reputation.

Nothing good, probably.

They lit a few candles when they were sure the cellar was empty. Thomas helped himself to the food and Kai broke into the wine, pouring it expertly into the glasses. Normally Irene wouldn’t drink on the job, but there were exceptions. This was one.

‘So, what now?’ Thomas asked, directing the query at Irene.

Technically, she was in charge. ‘First, getting out of here,’ she said decisively. Which might be easier now that everyone had left. Or not, depending on if the Greencoats kept the place under surveillance. ‘Then back to Agatha’s.’ And hope that she was still inclined to be of assistance, which Irene took liberty to doubt. They might have taken a wrecking ball to her hard-earned reputation. For all she knew, Agatha was in as much hot water as they were.

Kai had reached the same conclusion. ‘They might be watching her place.’

‘Or they might have taken her in for questioning about her charges’ behaviour,’ Thomas chipped in. ‘At the very least she’ll be under heavy suspicion.’

‘We need Mouse,’ Irene insisted. And she didn’t want to leave him in a potentially hostile house anyway. ‘And then we need to break Harry and Murphy out of jail before these people put their heads on stakes on London Bridge.’

Now that she’d had some time to think about it, it struck her as odd that Harry got dragged off in chains at all. He was a wizard. He should have been able to get himself out of those, or perform the kind of explosive spell that would have laid waste to the Ashwoods’ fashionable foyer. But that hadn’t happened.

This was a world that had magic. It stood to reason that the police arrested the kind of people who weren’t bothered by ordinary handcuffs every once in a while. It stood to reason that they had invented something to nullify a wizard’s power to be able to lock him up, and if that was what had happened to Harry, he had no way to rescue himself.

‘How?’ Thomas asked. He didn’t point out that Harry should be able to get himself out of this, so he must have come to the same conclusion.

‘By whatever means possible. I don’t care if I have to compel an entire police station, or bring it down.’ Usually Harry’s job, but Irene was prepared to stand in for him. All this Greencoat obstruction was really getting on her nerves. Well, that and Emily, whose neck Irene wouldn’t mind wringing at some point in the near future.

Thomas nodded in approval. ‘Are you going to ask me to seduce the desk sergeant?’

‘Yes,’ Irene said. ‘And anyone else who happens to be standing in the way.’

‘I suppose I could eat again,’ Thomas said casually.

Irene made a point of not enquiring after the “again” in that sentence. She had another question for him instead. One she had been puzzling over for a while, but that hadn’t been all that relevant until today. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask,’ she started, ‘because normally it’s none of my business, but what are you and Harry to each other?’

‘If you mean to ask if I’m going to betray him…’ The easy grin disappeared and Irene found herself face to face with a predator. A very handsome predator, but one who could and would kill her if he wanted to.

‘I suspect everyone,’ Irene replied briskly. And the treachery had come from within. Maybe it was only Emily. Or maybe Thomas and Emily had set it up so that Thomas could stay on the inside. What better way than by making him look like one of the victims? Out of all her companions, he was the one about whom she knew the least. And one who was a predator by nature, the kind Hercule’s extensive Guide for the Visiting Librarian had stressed Librarians should definitely steer clear of if at all possible.

He stared at her. Irene stood her ground, although she really wanted to run away. Kai positioned himself at her back without asking.

‘I won’t put a knife in his back,’ Thomas said at last.

‘Why?’ Irene pressed. She noted he’d made no such claim about her or Kai.

‘Harry’s my half-brother,’ Thomas snapped.

That wasn’t always a guarantee, but if she added that information to everything else she’d seen of him, it did make it extremely unlikely that he’d sabotage them. It didn’t completely rule out the scenario where he turned out to be a traitor to the Library, but it did make it less likely. Less likely would have to be good enough. And not just because suspecting everyone wouldn’t get her anywhere.

Having said that, it raised as many questions as it answered.

‘Good enough,’ she said. She didn’t apologise.

‘Keep that information to yourself,’ Thomas warned. It wasn’t a question. It was a you’ll keep this to yourself or else…

‘Agreed,’ Irene said.

‘And I’m not shoving the knife in your backs either,’ he added, though she hadn’t asked. He didn’t elaborate, and after the earlier revelation – and the way she’d pushed him into making it – Irene didn’t expect it.

It might have got awkward, but the door to the bunker slid open and gave them something else to think about. They turned around to face the threat, but it was only William Ashwood.

‘Peace, lady and gentlemen,’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘I’ve come bearing the good news that our intruders have taken their leave. It is time we did the same.’

‘We?’ Kai asked.

‘Who else could lead you to the place where they have taken Mr Dresden and Miss Murphy?’ he asked reasonably.

That had not been what Kai meant, Irene thought. ‘No, why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have a stake in this.’

Unless, of course, he was the one who landed them in all this trouble. After all, it paid to be paranoid. Especially in this alternate.

‘My sister betrayed guests under our roof, and attacked those who should have been her friends,’ William said, and there was nothing insincere about the barely contained anger in his voice and on his face. ‘The honour of my family is at stake.’

‘He’s all right, Irene,’ Kai said.

She trusted Kai’s judgement, if not entirely without reservation. But she couldn’t alienate every potential ally she had just because he could maybe turn out to be her enemy. And without William’s help they’d lose valuable time looking for Harry and Murphy.

William took her silence for agreement and nodded briskly. ‘The Greencoats appear to watch both the front and the back of the house. We shall have to depart another way. Follow me.’

They followed. William closed the bunker behind them and then guided them to the other side of the cellar, where he pulled another lever in a wine rack – how many of those could one man possibly need? – to reveal another piece of sliding wall. This led into a dark passage, just wide enough to walk single file.

‘Where does this go?’ Kai asked.

‘The house of a friend,’ William replied. ‘He knows he should be in bed by this hour and shall not disturb us.’

Plausible deniability, a valuable commodity in this city. Even so, secret bunkers and tunnels and friends prepared to look the other way suggested that there was quite a bit more to William than met the eye.

He took the candle from Thomas and went in first, which went some way to raising him in Irene’s esteem. If he’d gone last, she’d have suspected he was leading them into a trap.

It was a five minute walk to the other end. The tunnel ended in what looked like a pantry, the entrance concealed as wall panelling. Since everyone had apparently been told to be tucked up in bed, there was no one in sight.

William continued their silent procession through the kitchen and the servants’ hall, up the stairs to street level, and out the back door. ‘Ah,’ he said, pleased. ‘Another fog has moved in from the river. How fortuitous.’ He turned back to Irene. ‘Where to now?’

‘To Mrs Smith’s house,’ Irene replied with more confidence than she actually felt. ‘We have to collect our dog before we continue.’

William frowned. ‘A dog won’t be much good against a heavily guarded Greencoats station.’

He clearly had never seen Mouse in action. ‘I think you’ll find that he can surprise you in that regard. Can you take us to Mrs Smith’s house?’

William nodded. ‘I can take you there, but I can’t guarantee that she will grant you entrance. She may have escaped tonight’s ball with nothing but a severe reprimand, but she only did so because she disavowed you with the greatest emphasis and feeling.’ Irene could imagine that. ‘Even so, her house will be watched.’

‘Point us at the watchers,’ Irene said. ‘We’ll deal with them.’

William raised his eyebrows. ‘If you say so, Miss. Even so, she may not allow you into her home.’

‘Let us worry about that,’ Thomas said in a tone that suggested he had a bone to pick with Mrs Smith.

So did Irene for that matter. Something about her colleague’s attitude really rubbed her the wrong way. Rivalry and protecting one’s own patch were not uncommon among Librarians. Thanks to Bradamant Irene was not even unfamiliar with the concept of throwing colleagues to the wolves to advance one’s own career. But her first impression of Agatha had been of a nice old lady.

Evidently, she’d really misread that one.

‘I take it,’ William said thoughtfully, ‘that you fine fellows are in the possession of more talents than you have thus far disclosed and have means at your disposal to ensure a favourable outcome?’

‘Talents that improve the chances of a favourable outcome,’ Irene agreed. Although she hoped it wouldn’t come to Kai in his Dragon form tearing down any building standing between them and their friends. She’d save that for a last resort.

‘Very well,’ William said. ‘I understand your reticence in sharing such information. Follow me.’

And off they went. The fog proved very useful indeed. Several times they heard muffled footsteps nearby, but the fog prevented the two groups from ever clapping eyes on each other. Still, they stuck to alleys and smaller streets. Several times they had to take a detour to make sure they stayed out of the Greencoats’ path.

They were out in force, Irene realised. They mustn’t have realised that the fugitives had been hiding behind the wine racks in the Ashwood house. Of course, that might also have pissed them off. Having suspects sneak out from underneath their very noses wouldn’t make them look very competent. They had something to prove now.

Irene didn’t like that kind of motivation in an opponent. Especially not when there were so many of them.

They made it to the entrance of the back alley leading to Agatha’s garden, where they discovered their first physical obstacle in the form of four Greencoats guards blocking the way in. The only good thing about this was that none of them were wizards.

‘Anything subtle you can do?’ Kai whispered.

Irene surveyed her resources. Ideally they’d slip past without the guards being any the wiser. Just because Agatha was comfortable throwing fellow Librarians under the bus didn’t mean Irene was. Even if Agatha did deserve a taste of her own medicine.

‘I think so.’ The guards all clustered under an awning to their right. It was a bitterly cold night and they had lit a brazier to keep warm. They kept their backs to it so they didn’t ruin their night vision, which was unfortunate. Just as well there was a Librarian on the scene. ‘Mr Ashwood, can you sneak us past on the left side of the alley? I will provide the necessary cover.’

‘Consider it done.’

‘Fog, increase by four hundred percent,’ Irene ordered. ‘And move towards the Greencoats guards.’

She couldn’t raise her voice, so she had to repeat the command a few times. Increasing the fog by that much reduced visibility to about four inches, so they all took each other’s hands and shuffled single file into the alley and past the guards, William in front, Irene behind him, then Kai and Thomas at the end. They moved at a snail’s pace, listening for any cries of alarm, but nothing happened and they made it to their destination without incident.

So far, so good, but nowhere near fast enough for Irene’s taste. She had no idea how long they had until the Greencoats could arrange an execution. Not long, she suspected. They had shown they could be awfully efficient.

Agatha’s back door was locked, and possibly booby-trapped. Irene remembered that from her first visit.

‘Can you disarm the traps?’ Thomas asked.

‘Most of them probably.’ But it would require a broad – and therefore vague – command in the Language. ‘But without knowing what exactly they are, I might miss a few. How deadly are they, exactly?’

‘Pretty lethal, but Parker didn’t let me get a good look at them.’

Right. Irene had almost forgotten about the butler. And he was at least as paranoid as his employer, probably more so.

As if speaking about him had summoned him, the door flew open and revealed the irate butler, meat cleaver in hand. ‘How dare you?’ he demanded in a hiss. ‘How dare you return here after what you just did?’

‘Kindly step back so we can enter, Parker,’ Thomas said. ‘You don’t want to have this conversation on the doorstep.’

‘I should turn you over to the Greencoats and good riddance,’ the butler said with feeling. ‘You’ve dragged Mrs Smith’s good name through the mud and subjected her to the worst social scrutiny. And at her age!’

Kai practically vibrated with indignation. ‘Mrs Smith worked closely with Miss Ashwood and failed to recognise the risks,’ he snapped. ‘She bears some responsibility for our current troubles. The very least she can do is face up to that and do her part in mending the damage.’

‘That has nothing to do with this,’ Parker said.

‘Who do you think sent the Greencoats to the ball?’ Thomas demanded.

The butler did not have an answer to that. He stepped aside to let them in, but made sure to glare threateningly at all of them as they did. William even warranted a special comment: ‘I had expected better of you, Mr Ashwood. For a man of your standing and reputation to become embroiled in such a scandal is quite unacceptable.’

‘Just cleaning up after my sister as usual, my good man,’ William replied affably. ‘All in a day’s work.’

Which neatly answered the question how Emily hadn’t dragged down the family reputation before now. Of course, the chances of it surviving this night’s lively events were slim to none, no matter William’s efforts.

The butler glared some more, but reluctantly agreed to have the four of them conveyed to the servants’ hall. They had lost parlour privileges apparently. An offer of refreshments did not appear to be forthcoming either.

The air crackled with hostility.

Agatha must have expected them, because she came down the stairs before they had all sat down, still dressed despite the late hour. She wore an expression of deep disapproval to match her butler, but Irene suspected that she was scared underneath all of the bravado.

‘You have no idea what you have done!’ she said as she stormed into the kitchen. ‘And for goodness sake, please tell me you were not seen when you came here.’

‘We weren’t seen,’ Irene replied. ‘And we didn’t call the Greencoats. Emily did.’ She couldn’t think of who else they had pissed off. ‘You know that.’

‘You still think that matters?’ Agatha demanded. ‘After that awful display at the ball? That was enough to warrant an arrest in its own right. I hope you have no plans to break them out of jail, Irene. You’ll never get close. And I’ll tell you now, I won’t speak for them. My position is already precarious enough.’

Thomas and Kai seethed with barely contained rage. ‘You’re telling us to abandon them?’ Kai asked, outraged.

‘I am telling you to save yourselves while you still can.’

‘Not without Emily and the book,’ Irene said, striving for calm and finding some last reserves of it. She reminded herself that Agatha couldn’t answer questions if she couldn’t breathe. ‘And not without Harry and Murphy either.’

She hadn’t forgotten that Harry had dropped everything to come with her to Venice when Kai was kidnapped, and she hadn’t forgotten what it cost him either. And Murphy had stepped up to keep the Erlking off their backs when their own strength was gone. Irene owed them.

Besides, Irene wasn’t very good at friendship – although she liked to think she made some progress in that area – but she was pretty sure friends didn’t leave each other to die. If the situations were reversed, Harry would already be staging the prison break to end all prison breaks. And probably razing every building standing in his way.

Irene could do no less.

She ignored the voice in the back of her head that sounded remarkably like Coppelia complaining about the damage.

‘You aren’t listening,’ Agatha said, agitated. ‘There is nothing you can do. The only thing you can do is die with them. And I didn’t think the Library taught us to martyr ourselves for a hopeless cause.’

‘The Library didn’t teach us to throw our fellow Librarians to the wolves to save ourselves either,’ Irene retorted coolly. It happened, but that didn’t mean it should. ‘Besides, even if you do leave aside such considerations as moral responsibility and common decency, we need Harry and Murphy to complete our mission. Rescuing them is as much a necessity as it is an inclination.’

And any good Librarian would understand the concept of needing to complete a mission.

Except apparently Agatha. ‘Listen, Irene. That station is chockfull of armed men and wizards. They have two wizards on duty as a rule at all times. And they didn’t get that position by being bad at what they do. They are no lightweights.’

Neither was Harry once she got the shackles off. It might just be a simple matter of balancing the scales.

‘I don’t see how that matters.’ They had quite a bit of firepower on their side even with Harry out of the running. ‘But I think you have made your views abundantly clear. We will not ask for any assistance.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To retrieve Mouse and our possessions. We never came here to ask for your help.’ Not that she wouldn’t appreciate any back-up. ‘But only because you’ve made it very clear that you’d rather save your own skin than to help your colleagues.’

‘Self-preservation is not a fault,’ she snapped.

‘No, but sacrificing your colleagues to save your own skin is,’ Kai remarked sharply.

Agatha glared at him, but cut that out pretty quickly when she saw the pattern of scales dancing over his skin. ‘You have got to be joking.’

‘Kai, this isn’t helping,’ Irene said. Coppelia’s voice in the back of her head continued her complaint that Irene had encouraged the manifestation of a Dragon, although she supposed she could plead extenuating circumstances. ‘Agatha, we require twenty minutes at the most to fetch our things and our dog, and then we will be more than happy to leave your house.’

There was nothing else she could do right now. But Irene resolved to write a very scathing report about the conduct of B-457’s Librarian-in-Residence the minute she got back to the Library. Ideally, she’d like to slap some sense into her fellow Librarian, but they didn’t have the time to reason with her until she came around. They probably didn’t have time to cobble together a decent rescue plan either before they had to put it into practice, but at least that was hardly the first time Irene had to make it up as she went along.

‘Very well.’ Agatha relented with bad grace. ‘But don’t come back. I mean it, Irene. The next time I will turn you over without any hesitation. It’s been the work of years to establish a permanent Library presence here. I will not allow you and your band of reckless young idiots to jeopardise my life’s work.’

Irene stomped on Kai’s foot before he could do something stupid and reckless.

They weren’t allowed to walk around the house unsupervised, so they had Parker looking over their shoulders every second. First they liberated Mouse from Murphy’s room. He greeted them like he hadn’t seen any of them for a year, collecting his due of pets and ear scratches from all four of them before making a show of growling and baring his teeth to Parker, who wisely did a few steps back.

‘Good boy, Mouse,’ Thomas said admiringly, feeding Mouse a treat.

Irene didn’t take much from her room. She definitely left the dresses and the feathers. Fugitives from the law didn’t bother flicking themselves up for society. And if there wasn’t quite a witch hunt for her now, there definitely would be after she broke Harry out of jail.

From Murphy’s room they only took what she had brought in with her from G-692; Murphy hadn’t made a secret about her opinions of the local fashions, so she wouldn’t be interested in a souvenir. From Harry and Thomas’s room they took the same, although Irene also snatched a few magical looking paraphernalia on the basis that Harry could probably do something with them. And if he couldn’t they could serve as missiles to chuck at obstructing Greencoats.

‘If that is all, then you may leave by the same way you entered,’ Parker said primly. Agatha had already disappeared somewhere. ‘How you avoid the Greencoats is your own concern.’

‘Why, thank you, Parker, for your outstanding concern for our welfare,’ William said. He was good; you couldn’t even hear a hint of sarcasm. ‘I shall remember your compassion in the days to come.’

Parker grinded his teeth. ‘Don’t get caught anywhere near the house,’ he said and then he physically shoved them out of the door.

Thomas growled low in his throat, but didn’t actually kick the door, which spoke of considerable self-restraint.

They snuck back out the same way they snuck in. Intensifying the fog was hardly needed; it had done that all by itself while they were in Agatha’s house. The guards hadn’t moved either. Not that Irene could see them, but she could hear their muffled conversation, in true English fashion, complaining about the weather conditions.

The amount of patrols seemed to have lessened. Maybe the weather was too bad to be out and about.

‘How long do we have?’ Irene asked William when they were out of earshot of the Greencoats. ‘Until they decide to start chopping off heads?’

‘That might take anything up to a week,’ he said, ‘but we don’t have that long. They’ll only keep Mr Dresden and Miss Murphy in that station overnight. Come dawn they shall be moved from there to the Tower of London, and if it is very nearly impossible to break into that station, it would be suicidal to attempt to breach the Tower.’

Well, that made matters very simple. ‘How long until dawn?’ In all the excitement she had lost track of time. She didn’t feel tired yet; the adrenaline kept her going nicely. She might as well utilise it while it lasted. She could always crash later. Alternatively, she’d be dead and she wouldn’t need sleep anyway.

‘A couple of hours, maybe.’ Apparently their guide’s sense of time was as skewed as their own. ‘Not long. But take heart, Miss Irene, the station is not far. I trust that you have a plan?’

A very straightforward one: ‘We march in, we deal with any opposition by whatever means we have to hand, we get Harry and Murphy, and we leave again.’ Simple, flexible, lots of room for improvisation. Not exactly the standard Librarian operation. The prudent Librarian was encouraged to plan for everything. But you couldn’t exactly plan for sudden catastrophe.

Thomas and Kai both nodded approval.

William’s eyebrows tried to climb up past his hairline. ‘Miss Irene, that is highly risky.’

‘What isn’t in this place?’ Irene muttered darkly. There was something to say for sneaking around and avoiding ruffling feathers. But the time for that had clearly come and gone. And now there was something to say for Harry’s way of doing things: as flashy and as explosive as possible.

‘What I mean to say, dear Miss Irene, is that such an approach is not very subtle.’

Irene almost laughed. ‘We are going to rescue Harry Dresden. The option of subtle was never on the table.’

They got moving again. There was no time to stand there deliberating what to do. Besides, the less time they had to think about what they were going to do, the less time they had to start dreaming up realistic worst case scenarios. Irene wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t lose her nerve if she gave herself a minute to think about this.

William set a brisk pace. He only spoke to tell them that they had a fifteen minute walk ahead of them and then admonished them to be silent; one never quite knew who might be listening and could overhear their plans.

What plans? Irene thought, and considered that maybe it was a good thing they didn’t have any specified plans; that made it harder to thwart.

And so it was that a little later Irene marched into the crowded lobby of the police station, throwing the doors open with a little help from the Language to facilitate as flashy an entrance as she could possibly manage.

All conversation ceased. Every eye was on her.

So much the better. ‘Gentlemen,’ Irene said, pitching her voice to carry. ‘Put your hands up and don’t move. I am pleased to announce that this is a prison break!’

Chapter Text

Given that I had multiple death sentences hanging over my head, the sensible wizard would have stopped digging his own grave as fast as he could go, and keep his mouth shut for a change. I’ve never claimed to be a sensible wizard. And anyway, my grave has already been dug.

It was a gift.

‘It’s a bit drab in here,’ I said conversationally to the guard who accompanied Murphy and me in the carriage. ‘You could liven it up with a bit of colour. Green maybe, to match your uniforms?’

He didn’t look at me. ‘You will kindly be silent,’ he said.

‘Your boss kindly threw me into a wall. Twice. I’m not feeling very kindly.’ In fact, now that I had a chance to take inventory of the night’s collection of injuries, I wasn’t feeling very good either. The Greencoats wizard had tossed me around like a ragdoll, and I wouldn’t mind betting that I had an impression of his fist at stomach height too.

Unfortunately, well up to my usual injury standard so far. But since losing my head over them could very well end up really costing me my head, I employed Lasciel’s method for blocking the pain. That wasn’t exactly magic, more of a mental discipline, which made it one of the only things I could reliably do.

She came when I thought about her, even though I hadn’t actually called her. ‘My host, you are in graver trouble than you think.’ She materialised on the bench opposite me, next to Murphy, dressed in the local fashions, though she did tone down the amount of feathers. And she managed to look good in them.

I made sure I didn’t answer out loud. ‘I can’t use my powers, I’m chained up, and I have half a dozen executions lined up in the foreseeable future. I don’t think I’m underestimating anything.’

‘Except of course the elusive apprentice,’ she pointed out.

Hard to argue with that, although I wouldn’t make that mistake again. The others however might, which meant that getting out of incarceration had become my top priority.

Lasciel scoffed. ‘That should already be your top priority, my host, if you wish to keep your head attached to the rest of your body. This girl and the book must wait.’

‘I like to multi-task,’ I retorted, fiddling with the chains. They didn’t give. ‘Anything useful you can tell me about what these shackles have done with my powers?’

‘I am not familiar with the practices of this alternate,’ Lasciel said, scowling, ‘as you well know. Had you been in your own world, I might have been of greater service.’

‘If I had been in my own world, you would have been trying to get me to dig up and take up your coin,’ I said. ‘Possibly by withholding any useful information to put the pressure on me.’ The only reason she wasn’t doing that now was that apparently you couldn’t summon objects that weren’t in the same world.

‘Information that would preserve your life I would give freely and without hesitation,’ Lasciel claimed.

Because that went a long way to preserving her own. I had no illusions that, if given half a chance, she’d override my will and relegate me to being a passenger in my own body while she called the shots. That was her nature. I’d seen other Denarians do that, and I definitely didn’t want that to be me.

Having told Michael and Kai about my unwanted houseguest had given me at least some insurance against the worst excesses. And if what Kai suggested could be done, I might get her out of my head entirely in time.

The fact that she didn’t comment on that particular thought suggested that she was not nearly as sure as she liked to claim that it couldn’t be done.

Which was a hopeful prospect, provided I managed to hold on to my head, which returned us to my current predicament. ‘What have the cuffs done to my magic?’ I asked. If I knew that, I might figure out a way around it. After all, I had motivation in spades.

‘Locked it away,’ Lasciel replied. ‘Cleverly done,’ she added reluctantly, perhaps a little jealous that someone else had thought of something nasty before she had.

‘Clever how?’ I asked.

‘Your magic flows through your entire body, my host,’ she said. ‘In theory. In practice, however, most practitioners channel through their hands. Or the tools they hold in their hands.’

Possibly because it was easier to hold a staff or blasting rod in your hands than between your teeth. ‘How’s that relevant?’

‘These cuffs dampen magic in your entire body, and through the cuffs cut off access to your hands entirely. You could not use your shield bracelet now.’ It sat between the cuff and my hand, so apparently now only served a decorative purpose. The same for my ring. Which was a shame; I’d been considering punching some deserving bastard.

‘But I can use my magic?’ I tried to reach for it, but couldn’t detect anything.

‘It will be hard,’ Lasciel warned. ‘And you must find some other means to channel it.’ She hesitated. ‘I cannot guarantee that you will have the strength to work a spell strong enough to be of use.’ Another hesitation, before she added, even more reluctantly: ‘The wizards of this world know what they are doing.’

I don’t like competent opponents, but I do like overconfident ones, the type that leaves you a handy loophole to exploit, but are too arrogant to think that anyone will 1) find it and 2) be able to make use of it if they do. Not that I was entirely sure that I could do something with this – my power remained out of reach – but it gave me something to aim towards.

And I’d better get to it quickly; the prospect of multiple executions failed to appeal. And I had Murphy with me too. The Greencoats had taken her guns, even the one she’d strapped to her leg and the one she somehow shoved down the back of her dress. And, after she had broken the noses of two of them, they’d trussed her up like a pig for slaughter. Her current attempts to glower the guard opposite her to death unfortunately remained without the desired result, so it would be up to me to get us out.

Better get to it, Dresden.

I surveyed my resources. Anything that required the use of my hands was out of the question. My staff was still in the Ashwood library, shield bracelet and ring were useless, they’d confiscated my emergency gun, but they hadn’t bothered to take my blasting rod from its own pocket on the inside of my coat. Which might be useful if I could first find my power and then get it out of its holder. At the moment I didn’t have enough range of movement to retrieve it.

I’d have to get a feel for my power first, though. Bearing in mind that I usually get bigger results – read; the kind of results that destroy major landmarks – when I’m properly motivated and experiencing stronger emotions, I returned to annoying the guard.

He hadn’t responded to my last remark. Instead he stared sullenly at a point somewhere to the right of Murphy’s head.

‘Maybe a few windows,’ I said. ‘So your prisoners can appreciate the scenery. With lace curtains, obviously. I hear they’re all the rage in France.’

His head snapped up. Bingo. ‘We are not in France!’

If this alternate’s France was the opposite of this England, then ‘More’s the pity.’

‘You condemn yourself out of your own mouth, spy!’ he said heatedly.

‘Why, because people in France are maybe not completely batshit crazy?’

‘Language!’ he barked. ‘Any repetition of such uncouth words will result in another charge added to your already extensive list of crimes.’

‘Don’t tell me people get executed for a few impolite words.’

The guard said nothing in a way that said a lot.

‘You people really are insane.’

‘Slander against the English!’

‘It isn’t slander if it’s true.’

‘You’ll hang for this,’ he promised.

‘Is that before or after the beheading?’ I asked, wittily, trying to mask the fact that my insides were trying to tie themselves into knots. Contrary to appearances, this wasn’t nearly going so well as I wanted. The promise to have me executed – again – made me more than a little nervous.

But the fear did work. Sort of. Throughout the exchange I kept feeling for my power and I thought that maybe I’d found a bit of it. It was faint and slippery and I couldn’t get a proper grip on it. I might have imagined it.

The guard slapped me so hard that the back of my head banged against the carriage’s hard wooden planks, hard enough to make me lose my grip on Lasciel’s pain blocking technique. In the ensuing trip through most of the galaxy I lost my balance and banged my head again, against the carriage door this time.

By the time I returned to terra firma we had arrived at our destination and the Greencoats dragged me out. It just so happened that my stomach had joined the revolt and switched on the reverse. I vomited all over the arresting officers. I swear I didn’t aim it, but I got at least three of them, throwing up all over their fancy uniform jackets, spotless trousers, and polished boots. I was mostly out of it, but I was pretty sure someone told me I’d gained another charge to answer. Improper expulsion of bodily fluids. Probably.

My legs had forgotten how to work, so two Greencoats dragged me by my arms to my temporary residence, which scuffed the noses of my boots, which earned me a charge of improper attire. They really were throwing everything at me to see what they could make stick. They really wanted me dead. Repeatedly.

Apparently the cells were overcrowded – lots of French spies around lately – so Murphy and I got to share the remaining one. Murphy supported me to the narrow bed bolted to the far wall and helped me on it. Just as well; my balance had taken the day off and left me to fend for myself, and my vision contained all kinds of disco lights that I was pretty sure weren’t real.

‘What did you do that for?’ Murphy hissed once the goons had left.

‘They already want to kill us, Murph,’ I said. I like to think my words came out eloquent and clear, but I mostly slurred them. ‘It can’t get much worse.’

Murphy sat down on the rickety chair and studied me worriedly. ‘So now what?’

I had a simple answer to that: ‘I either find a way to get access to my magic or we’ll wait here for the others to break us out.’ Not easy solutions, but at least they were simple ones. Just as well, because my brain definitely wasn’t up to anything very complicated.

Murphy didn’t like the second option, so focused on the first instead. ‘Can you?’ she asked, keeping her voice down in case someone was eavesdropping just outside the door. ‘Get to your magic, that is?’

I thought about that for a moment. Actually, I put Lasciel’s pain ignoring measure in place first. The disco lights disappeared and my mind cleared a bit. Better, but I also thought I’d better not try moving a lot for now, at least until I was sure the walls would stay in place. On the plus side, my stomach had nothing left in it, so I wouldn’t throw up all over myself.

‘Maybe,’ I said honestly. ‘I can barely feel it.’ To my surprise I hadn’t actually lost the little bit of it I’d been able to find. ‘And they’ve blocked up access to my hands. I might be able to do something, but only the minor stuff.’

‘You’re useless, Dresden,’ Murphy said, but the tone remained worried. She brushed my hair from my forehead. ‘What can I do?’

I smiled innocently at her. ‘Take my boots off?’

‘What am I, your butler?’

I patted the place on my coat under which my blasting rod resided and then made vaguely magical gestures with my fingers. ‘Can’t use these. Have to use the other end.’

Murphy stared at me in unflattering disbelief. She must have got the message. ‘Only you, Harry…’

‘It’s one of my many gifts.’

‘It’s something,’ she muttered. ‘Can you get your cuffs off like that?’

I was not a contortionist, as I reminded her. ‘But I might get yours. And maybe the door,’ I said with more confidence than I felt. I had never tried to use my blasting rod with anything other than my hands – why would I? – and I still couldn’t feel much of my magic. The only good thing was that while I normally wouldn’t have dared to try to use a blasting rod on something so close to someone’s hands – I’d be more likely to take the hands off – now I’d be lucky if it did enough to open the locking mechanism.

Before we could get anywhere with our plan, we got a visitor. Fortunately I still had my shoes on, or he might have figured out what I was up to.

‘Not so confident now, are you?’ said the Greencoats wizard through the small window in the cell door.

I told him to come in and say that to my face.

He didn’t. ‘You have a lot of confidence for a doomed man unable to stand on his feet.’

Out of sheer contrariness I stood up. I had to cling to the wall for support, but I could stand. ‘Your point?’

‘You have a lot of confidence for a doomed man,’ he amended. ‘I shall have to grant you some measure of courage; most of your countrymen have become gibbering wrecks at this stage.’

‘Gibbering is not my style,’ I told him with dignity. I indicated his head with both hands. ‘Will the hair grow back or will you remain half bald?’

That made him angry. ‘You think you are full of wit.’

‘I know I am full of wit,’ I corrected him. ‘Now, what do you want?’

His eyes glittered dangerously; he didn’t like having the tables turned on him. ‘Why? Do you have somewhere to be?’

‘It’s way past my bedtime,’ I said. True enough, sleep would be nice. I was pretty sure though that I wasn’t going to get it anytime soon. ‘Don’t you people sleep?’

‘You may persist in this empty bravado,’ the wizard said, smiling like he was thinking about something very nasty and painful. ‘You’ll stop laughing soon enough once we put you to the question.’

I knew better than to dare him to get on with that already. ‘Why don’t you just ask politely?’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Where are your accomplices?’

I contemplated telling him we didn’t have any accomplices, but he wouldn’t believe me after that display in the hall of Ashwood House, so I didn’t bother. I actually told him the truth instead: ‘No idea,’ I said cheerfully, because if he didn’t have them, at least we had some back-up on the outside. ‘Don’t tell me you and all your overdressed buddies couldn’t find them.’

‘They must have had help from their dark arts.’

‘Or you’re just bad at your job.’

That annoyed him a bit more. ‘Where are they?’

I shrugged. ‘How would I know? I haven’t seen them since you dragged us here. I’m a wizard, not psychic.’

‘You must have agreed a safehouse somewhere. All spies have one,’ he insisted.

‘There’s no safe house.’

He didn’t believe me. ‘You think to mock me?’ He shook with anger.

I knew he could really hurt me if he felt properly motivated, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him, so I decided to tone it down a bit. I know I like to punch above my weight, but I couldn’t even punch right now.

Time to be sensible.

Or as sensible as I know how to be. ‘If I were mocking you, you’d know. We don’t have a safe house. We’re not as paranoid as you lot.’

‘Very well,’ the wizard said, hanging onto his composure by the skin of his teeth, ‘if you will not answer to me, you’ll answer to the questioner in the Tower. I assure you that he is not nearly as gentle as I am.’

The guy had no self-awareness.

And I had just about enough talking to him. I had a breakout to plan. ‘Anything else we can do for you today, Mr…?’

‘Captain,’ he snapped. ‘Captain Alexander Barclay.’

‘Never heard of you.’

I don’t think he was used to not being taken seriously. And he really didn’t take it well. ‘I am the man who’s going to kill you, revive you, and kill you again as many times as I can get a judge to agree to. Learn to fear my name in the little time that remains to you.’

I yawned.

He stalked off and slammed every door behind him on the way out.

Murphy gave me a look. ‘Do you have to do that?’

‘He needed to go,’ I said, pretending like I actually had a plan and hadn’t just blurted out the first thing that popped into my head, as usual. ‘We can’t break out with him hovering over our shoulders.’

I made another attempt to gather my power and succeeded. Well, it would be more accurate to say that I had to drag it in from outer Mongolia with enormous effort, but I did grab it and I managed to hold on to it. It would be more encouraging if I could do more with it than light a candle, but I could work my way up to the more strenuous business of breaking handcuffs and chains while Murphy took my shoes off and I figured out how to hold a blasting rod with my toes.

I’d save the option for wielding it with my mouth as a final resort; for all I knew I’d only manage to knock out my own teeth.

‘So, what happened there in the library?’ Murphy asked as she got to work on my boots. She didn’t have much more range of movement than I had, but at least she could reach them. ‘Why did we allow Emily to walk out of there? Why did we believe what she said?’

I’d been trying not to think about that too much. Of course, I hadn’t had a lot of time for it either.

The Librarian perception trick. I’ve seen it done. I’d almost had it done to me the first time I ran into the nightmare that is Alberich. It’s the Librarian way to warp someone’s perception of a certain issue, to make them go along with whatever the Librarian in question wants them to do or believe.

It’s temporary, it always wears off. But it reaches into someone’s head all the same.

And now I’d really had it done to me. I felt violated, tainted. What with Lasciel hanging around my brain, I’ve got more of an audience to my private thoughts than I ever needed. But although she’d certainly tried to corrupt my thoughts and bend me to her will, I remained in charge. My decisions had always been mine. I dictated what I did and did not do.

And now that I had the ultimate Librarian cheat pulled on me. And I had not even noticed. She had walked out with our help and made us wait like lambs for the Greencoats to pick us up.

I felt cold and nauseous thinking about it.

‘A Librarian trick,’ I said to Murphy, pressing the lid on the panic and associated emotions. ‘They can use their special Language to make someone see things the way they want to. It wears off after a bit, and you’ll remember what they did to you.’

I remembered very well. And I remembered also all the other things a Librarian could do with the Language. Which finally made sense of the mystery how Emily had managed to take down Thomas. She could have commanded the book to be heavier, or to increase its impact on unprotected heads by about four hundred percent. Or something of that nature. Emily was resourceful enough to think up something suitably nasty. Bradamant herself had admitted she believed Emily had muttered something prior to the attack. There was no reason that something couldn’t have been a Language command.

Murphy frowned. If it unsettled her, she didn’t show it. ‘But Emily isn’t a Librarian. She’s only an apprentice.’

Which was where it got complicated. ‘Exactly.’

From what I’d seen and the little Thomas told me, someone only got access to the Language through their Librarian brand. I’d seen Hercule’s, his name surrounded by a frame of tiny script, before I’d had to perform an instant cremation on him. I hadn’t seen Emily’s back, but I was pretty sure she didn’t have one. Apprentices didn’t get one.

So how had she got access to the Librarians’ magic?

Not officially, I’d bet good money on that. The Library’s official records marked her passage through B-457’s Traverse as “unknown” – because I was by now pretty sure that Emily was the person who had opened the Traverse – and they would have marked her name if they recognised her.

The others didn’t know, I was pretty sure. If Irene had known, she would have warned us. And I would have made pretty sure to gag Emily until Irene could get to her. I definitely wouldn’t have tried to interrogate her myself.

And if Irene didn’t know and she ran into little Miss Trouble, Emily could do the same to her. I really needed to warn her before this became an even bigger mess than it already was.

Murphy got my right boot off and made a start on my left. ‘We’re in trouble,’ she concluded.

‘In over our heads,’ I agreed.

We stopped talking after that. Murphy worked off the other boot and then my socks. I tried not to shiver, but the floor was freezing. But I’d rather be cold than dead. Murphy had to dig around the inside of my coat a bit to get to my blasting rod. Anyone watching would have drawn the wrong conclusion.

But she got to it eventually. Then came the challenge of grasping the rod with my toes. That went well enough. Aiming it was a different matter. I did it from a sitting down position on the bed, but that didn’t actually help me aim it where I wanted.

‘Just lift it up and hold it still,’ Murphy instructed me when she had enough of it. ‘Before you poke my eye out. I’ll hold the cuffs before you.’

I nodded, gritting my teeth. Getting knocked on the head repeatedly was no great aid to focus, and getting enough power gathered to do something useful with it was no walk in the park either. I was sweating and shivering. Murphy shot me more than one concerned glance, but didn’t say anything. Neither of us could do something about this anyway.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

As ready as I was going to be. ‘Ready.’

Magic comes from belief almost as much as from born talent. The cuffs had done more than just lock up my usual reserves; they had taken a big bite out of my certainty, my belief too. I couldn’t feel my magic the way I usually would, and that didn’t help either. I wasn’t sure I could do this. I knew I needed to, and that counted for something, but it was an uphill battle every step of the way, and the effort left me shaking and frustrated.

‘Harry, focus,’ Murphy said sternly.

Good advice. I took a few steadying breaths, tried to banish all doubts to the back of my head, where they could keep Lasciel and my subconscious company for a change, and did my best to keep my foot as still as I could. The rod still shook like a leaf in a storm.

Under any other circumstance, this would have been a Very Bad Idea.

I focused, realised it wouldn’t be getting better than this, and then cast the spell. The energy rushed out of me, way more than I should have lost on such a minor working, and I fell back against the wall. On a positive note, I didn’t bang my head. Just my already heavily bruised back.

For about five endless seconds nothing happened.

Then the handcuffs shuddered and broke apart.

‘Harry, you all right?’

I considered lying and then thought better of it. ‘I don’t think I can do the door, Murph.’ At least not until I had time to recharge. And maybe sleep. And take some very strong painkillers. In the aftermath of the spell, my pain block had slipped again. Getting it back up required more effort than I felt capable of.

She said nothing, but we both knew we’d end up dead unless I could get my act together. By unspoken agreement we hadn’t planned beyond getting Murphy out of the shackles and us both out of this cell, mostly because I didn’t really think we’d get that far. Now I knew we wouldn’t even get that far.

‘How’s your lock-picking?’ I asked.

She looked grim. ‘Rusty.’

I was forced to admit that things really were not looking good for us.

That was when the cavalry arrived. Somewhere in the front of the building something banged against the wall. The low murmur of sound from within the central hall – just one corridor away, if I remembered correctly – stopped abruptly.

In the silence came Irene’s voice, perfectly audible even to us: ‘Gentlemen! Put your hands up and don’t move. I am pleased to announced that this is a prison break!’

It’s good to have friends sometimes.

Chapter Text

For a moment, nothing happened. Greencoats started at Irene in unflattering disbelief.

Before they could recover their equilibrium, Thomas sauntered in, dangling a sword – pilfered from the hideout in the Ashwood House – in one hand and a modern hand gun in the other. ‘Your prisoners or your lives!’ he cried, just in case any of them had any doubt about how this was supposed to go.

Still nobody said anything, though a few Greencoats hesitantly put their hands up when they noticed the gun.

Kai came next. ‘Good evening,’ he said, because he was brought up to be polite.

Some of the men let out involuntary shrieks. Several dropped their guns.

In his Dragon form Kai didn’t fit through the double doors, but he poked his head in as far as he could. The building shuddered when his massive shoulders came up against the exterior walls. Some of the Greencoats got far more than they bargained for when Kai opened his mouth to wish them a good evening; a front row seat to the size of his teeth.

Hence the panic.

This was actually going very well so far.

Or at least she did until she considered the opposition. She counted at least three wizards, thirty guns and thirty-five men. And she had no idea how many others happened to be hanging around the building, waiting to leap into action.

That begged another question: what were so many Greencoats doing here at this time of night?

She had a sneaking suspicion she and her merry band had something to do with that. This made the number of opponents a little higher than anticipated, but they had started now, and the element of surprise would not last forever, so they had better get on with it.

First things first: ‘Greencoats’ guns, jam!’

That was only just in time; the appearance of a real Dragon in their building made many of the less panicky inclined Greencoats a little trigger-happy. She left Thomas to deal with them and concentrated on their wizards instead. One of them had evidently already met Harry once; the right side of his head looked a little roasted. Unsurprisingly this hadn’t improved his disposition any.

He lashed out at her and threw her against the wall as his opening move.

That hurt. The landing was no walk in the park either. Irene had the wind knocked out of her and tried to remember how to breathe.

Fortunately Kai had her back. He pulled his head back in order to have the room to get his paw in. The offending wizard got a taste of his own medicine and sailed across the room to the opposite wall. His wizard buddies did not like that very much, but Irene managed to get her feet back under her before they could retaliate.

‘Wizards’ hats, go down over your wearers’ eyes! Wizards’ trousers, drop! Floor, hold the wizards’ feet!’ she rattled off in the Language, meanwhile looking around for a few more viable options to turn against them. Finding them, she proceeded to have their fancy coats restrain their wearers, set a few filing cabinets on ram course with them and, to top it all off, set their staffs on fire, on the sound premise that they couldn’t use their staffs if they had been turned into piles of ash.

That should keep them busy.

Events surrounding the rest of the Greencoats had advanced in the meantime. Thomas fought four of them while Kai wiped the floor with the rest. He had turned around and now used powerful lashes of his tail to swipe everything in his path to the sides. Such Greencoats as were not engaging Thomas, now were actively looking for a way out.

Not that Irene had any intention of letting them. She turned her attention to them next, ignoring the building headache, and soon enough the Greencoats were all knocked out.

‘That went well,’ she commented to her fellow team members.

William, heavily hooded and cloaked to avoid being recognised, came in to survey the damage. ‘Quite the pretty picture,’ he commented, nodding in approval. ‘Well done, my friends. It seems I underestimated you. Reinforcements, however, will be on their way, Miss Irene, so I suggest we make haste to depart this place before their arrival, so as to prevent further…’ He let his eyes roam around the room, searching for a word to accurately describe the carnage.

By Irene’s standards the damage was nowhere near as bad as some of the other destruction she had inflicted on poor undeserving buildings in the past year. It was only one room, the building itself was still standing and really, when you considered the whole picture, it was only the furniture that had taken a real beating. Well, the furniture and the occupants, but the occupants had been intentional, so that didn’t count.

As she would be sure to explain to Coppelia when giving an account of this mission.

‘Quite right,’ Irene agreed before William could settle on something to call it. ‘Which way to the cells?’

William pointed out the door on the left at the far end of the room. ‘That one,’ he said. ‘Do you require keys?’

‘Not at all.’ It paid to be a Librarian sometimes. ‘Please keep an eye out for any more Greencoats.’

She and Kai, now back in human form, made their way to the cells, while William, Thomas, and Mouse guarded the front entrance. No Greencoats were in evidence. They must all have been in the lobby.

All the cells were occupied. Irene peered into the ones on the left, while Kai took the ones on the right. The occupants ranged from very young – a boy of maybe sixteen, cowering against the back wall of his cell – to very old – an old married couple in their eighties, clinging to each other – and none of them looked in the very least like a danger to society.

‘I don’t suppose,’ said Kai conversationally, but Irene knew him well enough to hear the suppressed anger in his voice, ‘that it would take much extra effort to open every door along this corridor?’

‘What a coincidence,’ Irene said, just as lightly, although it made her very angry too, ‘I was just thinking the exact same thing.’

Coppelia’s voice in the back of her head reminded her that the Library didn’t interfere in the affairs of the various alternates. Librarians just acquired books. Otherwise they were neutral. It was not their job to rearrange societies to their own preferences. But Irene wouldn’t exactly rearrange this one, she told herself. She’d just create extra problems and maximum confusion for the Greencoats, in order to advance her own plans.

That some – probably innocent – people benefitted as a result was just a happy coincidence.

They found Harry and Murphy in the last cell on the left and for a few moments Irene was quite lost for words. She’d come to expect the unexpected and strange from Harry Dresden, not to mention the completely bizarre. And he still took her by surprise sometimes.

‘Is this really the time to kick off your boots and relax?’ she asked, aiming for light-heartedness, because it would adequately hide her concern. ‘And why are you holding the rod with your toes?’

Harry sat on the bed, still shackled, boots and socks off, holding his blasting rod with his toes. Once she looked past that however she noted that he looked nearly as bad as he had when they came out of Venice: skin pale and sweaty, eyes ever so slightly unfocused and a carefulness to his movements that suggested injury. Knowing Harry, he wouldn’t have submitted to his arrest without a fight. And they’d likely made him pay for it.

If Irene had felt bad about knocking the Greencoats’ wizards around the head with their own filing cabinets, she didn’t feel bad about that anymore.

‘It’s the latest fashion,’ Harry declared with only the ghost of a grin.

Murphy shook her head in exasperation. ‘The cuffs lock up his magic.’

Given that the sad remnants of Murphy’s shackles lay on the ground, Irene suspected that it must have been a localised block. Unfortunately, given the state of Harry, it must have taken up most of his strength to do even that much. Which said a lot, given that Harry was usually capable of taking down buildings, freezing vast swathes of water, and taking on small armies before he ran out of steam.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Irene said. ‘Door, unlock and open. Shackles that bind magic, unlock and open!’

The Language worked on that at least.

Kai pushed past Irene into the cell and collected Harry’s boots. ‘Now it’s my turn to break you out of a prison,’ he announced. ‘Can you stand?’

Harry went to demonstrate that he could. And he did. For about five seconds. Kai caught him before he faceplanted the floor and put him back on the bed.

‘What happened?’ Irene asked of Murphy, since Murphy could at least be trusted to make an accurate assessment of the situation. Harry would just try to claim that it was nothing.

‘They threw him against the wall, then knocked him against the wall of the carriage. And then he fell against the carriage door on his own,’ she reported concisely.

So three knocks on the head in less than an hour. No wonder he was a bit out of it. And then having his magic locked away wouldn’t have helped. Especially since all the available evidence indicated that he had tried to use it anyway.

Kai hoisted Harry over his shoulders. ‘Then we’ll do it this way,’ he announced. ‘Miss Murphy, might I request that you carry his socks and boots? Irene, can you get the doors?’

Irene could get the doors. Persuading the prisoners to come out turned out to be slightly more complicated. One confused man kept shaking his head, insisting that he didn’t want to break the law, that he was a good citizen, that he would never go against the Proper Conduct for Prisoners Act, which apparently forbade escape. It took a lot of coaxing on Irene’s part, but one of his fellow prisoners played the deciding role when he hauled the muttering fellow over his shoulders and marched him out.

Irene decided that she really didn’t like this alternate and that, if the senior Librarians ever offered her a post here, she would be running screaming for the hills before the last word left their mouths.

The situation in the lobby remained unchanged, though William and Thomas affected twin looks of exasperation when they noticed all the extra entourage.

‘Well, I say, that’s a few more people than we reckoned with,’ William observed mildly, but not surprised. ‘I take it you would prefer to see them remain beyond the reach of our esteemed friends in green?’

‘Something like that,’ Irene said, refusing to feel sheepish about this. ‘We were emptying cells anyway.’

And judging by the look of these people, these weren’t hardened cutthroat criminals. Most would be here for “fashion infractions” like too few flowers on their clothes or a hat of the wrong size.

William nodded, taking in the group. The young man with the mutterer over his shoulders like a sack of flour he picked out as the leader. He walked over and whispered instructions that Irene couldn’t hear.

It occurred to her again that there was a lot more to William Ashwood than met the eye. First the bolt hole and the secret passage in the wine cellar, then the way he had helped them avoid patrols on the streets, how nothing seemed to faze him – except maybe the scale of the destruction in the foyer – and now the instructions to this group of escaped prisoners.

‘You’re an actual French spy, aren’t you?’ she asked.

He grinned winningly. ‘A spy for the French,’ he corrected. ‘Someone must try and put a stop to the madness in our society, and the French happen to be a fairly sensible bunch. Well done for working that out, Miss Irene.’ He turned back to the prisoners. ‘You know where to go?’ Their designated leader nodded. ‘And the password?’ Another nod. ‘Then go quickly. There’ll be quite the hunt for you and us once the reinforcements arrive.’

Because things weren’t complicated enough already.

They waited only long enough to see off the last of the prisoners and to check that all the Greencoats were still unconscious and, for the most part, tied up. Murphy, with a look of grim determination, put Harry’s manacles on the wrists of the wizard with the burns.

Irene caught her eyes and nodded. That seemed fair enough.

‘Where to now?’ she asked William. ‘You mentioned another hiding place?’ How many could one man truly need?

‘Follow me.’

Irene should have known that it had all gone far too smoothly. It would have been too easy to simply walk into a heavily guarded station, knock out all the guards, release the prisoners, and melt back into the night as if they had never been there. Of course more Greencoats were on the way; the racket they made while invading the police station must have been audible in Paris.

The mist was still there, but it was thinning a bit. So Irene could see quite clearly the group of heavily armed Greencoats marching into the streets.

‘Guns, jam!’ Irene screamed, because they had already been seen and now was not the time to be subtle. And she didn’t particularly fancy getting a bullet to the brain.

The sudden lack of functioning firearms led to a mewling confusion among the Greencoats. Irene wouldn’t mind betting that the Language wasn’t even close to anything the Fashionable Manners had declared acceptable magic. Of course they wouldn’t know what to do with that.

Kai handed a protesting Harry off to Thomas. ‘Since we have abandoned the subtle approach, let me,’ he declared.

Irene wasn’t aware that they had ever embraced the subtle approach, which meant they had nothing to abandon in that regard. Besides, Coppelia would have enough to complain about with the way this mission had gone so far anyway. One more manifestation of a Dragon could hardly make her sink any deeper into trouble than she already was.

At this rate she should be lucky to get off probation by the end of the decade.

‘I can stand,’ Harry claimed. And he could, provided he could hold on to Thomas. Now that Irene knew of the family connection and could see them standing side by side, she didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed it sooner.

Kai shot him a wicked grin. ‘Why stand if you can ride?’

He transformed and then crouched down so that Harry could climb on.

The last time Kai and Harry had fought like this, Irene had been too busy keeping ghosts, zombies, and necromancers off her back to watch what they got up to. But in this street – broad, but not broad enough to really allow the Greencoats to use their numbers to advantage – Kai easily blocked the entire street. He had just enough space to launch himself into the air, where he could spread his wings.

The Greencoats, to a man, staggered back.

Kai landed on the top of the sturdiest looking house and roared. The Greencoats cowered. They might be very brave against unfashionable citizens and French spies, but a Dragon was way above their paygrade. But they were too disciplined to run away. They froze to the spot instead.

That was no good either, so Harry sent a stream of hot dark fire at the cobbles just before their feet and melted them.

He must have recovered enough to at least be capable of magic again. Irene had seen him cast spells that would have scared the living daylights out of her had she been on the receiving end when he was basically walking wounded before. Quite frankly, the fact that he recovered from the kind of serious injuries he sustained at all was a source of amazement, but that he recovered so quickly sometimes beggared belief. The man had the constitution of an ox.

He worked over the street from left to right and then, for good measure, from right to left before he let up. By that time the Greencoats realised that they could always come back to get roasted another day. They turned and marched away.

Probably going for more reinforcements.

Best not to hang around.

Kai had the same idea. He landed back in the street with an impact that could be felt for miles. A triumphant Harry Dresden dismounted, stumbled, and nearly fell. Thomas and Murphy caught him between them.

‘I’m not calling you Sir Harry the Dragon Rider,’ Thomas warned.

‘Spoilsport,’ Harry grumbled without any real bite. Without any real focus either.

‘And no one needs We Are the Champions,’ Thomas added, although he looked deeply worried. If Harry wasn’t running his mouth every chance he got, that must mean he was hurt worse than he wanted to show.

In the distance thunder rumbled.

Irene looked at Kai, who shrugged. ‘It can’t hurt.’

William’s hideout had better have some dry clothes, or else they’d all end up with pneumonia. But she did admit that the Greencoats would have a lot more trouble following them if they had to swim through the streets. Provided Irene and company were somewhere dry by that time.

‘How far?’ Thomas asked William.

‘Ten minutes, if you can carry him,’ William replied, all business now.

‘Easy,’ said Thomas.

They set off again. The wind grew stronger, and the thunder rumbled closer. Irene could almost feel the storm gathering, building, just waiting to break. She couldn’t sense magic as such, but the signs for this working were unmistakable. Big drops of rain began to come down sporadically, but with the clear understanding that very soon there would be a lot more of them. The only good thing about this was that people, if they had reason to be out and about so early at all, kept their heads down and hurried to wherever they were going without paying much attention to their surroundings.

William must have realised time was of the essence, because he picked up the pace. He led them through a warren of streets, away from the main thoroughfares. Irene had no idea where she was or where he was taking them. This London was nothing like the London in B-395. The layout was different in some places, and some streets that looked familiar bore different names. She’d given up trying to draw comparisons.

When the thunder finally crashed directly overhead and the floodgates really opened, William slipped into a narrow alley and opened the door of a small house. It was in a sorry state of repair. The windows hadn’t been washed in forever, the paint on the door and shutters should have been redone years ago, and weeds grew between the cobbles every which way.

The house continued the deserted and neglected theme inside. Irene got only a quick look into what should be the living room, because William directed their merry band upstairs.

Which clearly saw more regular habitation than the downstairs. Someone had cleaned recently, wood lay stacked next to the fireplace, and the furniture, though a little shabby, looked comfortable and well-used. A safehouse, she understood. An unassuming place for spies to hide away from the eyes of most Greencoats. No doubt William had directed the escaped prisoners to another one of these places.

Kai, who brought up the rear, locked and bolted the front door behind him before he bounded up the stairs after the rest of them. ‘No one saw us,’ he reported. ‘And the storm will likely prevent further pursuit for a while.’ He didn’t bother to hide his smugness.

And not without reason. Outside the storm had broken. Rain lashed the windows. Winds howled around the house. The constant rumble of thunder made it hard to hear anything from outside.

William nodded. ‘You are indeed a man of many talents, Mr Strongrock. It’s quite fortuitous that you graced this city with your presence at this time.’ He paused. ‘Even if my sister’s antics are to blame for it. You must accept my apologies. I never dared to think she would sink so low as to call the Greencoats to the family home during a ball in her honour.’

‘It was her ball,’ Harry said. ‘Perhaps she thought she could invite whoever she liked.’ Thomas had parked him in the most comfortable chair in the house. He didn’t even try to sit up straight. Not a good sign, although Irene took the return of witty remarks as a good omen.

‘Even so, to openly bring dishonour in so spectacular a fashion on the family, for which she will likely suffer as well, that is not a course of action she would lightly take.’ William looked deeply troubled by the idea.

‘She’s not staying around for the consequences,’ Irene concluded. From what she had seen, Emily was of the opinion that consequences only happened to ordinary people, and she didn’t consider herself ordinary. Hard to argue with that, although Irene certainly didn’t mean that as a compliment.

‘I concur,’ William said gravely. ‘She has proven herself to be more slippery than even I had believed, and I am well acquainted with her ways. The question remains where she may have fled. She has friends in the city, but after last night’s debacle, they’re unlikely to openly receive her.’

‘Wonder why,’ Murphy muttered sarcastically. ‘Does she have any other hidey holes?’

‘To the best of my knowledge, not within London,’ William said. ‘Though I suppose she might have no reason to remain within the confines of the city. She never gave a reason for her unexpected return, nor indicated how long she would stay. We merely assumed that it would be for a good while.’

‘She could have gone back to the Library,’ Harry said.

Irene was on the verge of pointing out that Emily could not get in there, but then she remembered the accomplice. Someone had got Emily through the Traverse, someone unknown, which summed up this accomplice quite well; apart from knowing that there was one, they knew nothing about this person. Could it perhaps be someone they had already run into? Could it even be a Librarian who somehow managed to mask his or her identity?

And what was the whole plan behind all of this? Unfortunately, they had very little to show for all their efforts. They didn’t know where Emma was, where Emily and her accomplice were, what they wanted, and how they were going to achieve it. That was a whole lot of not knowing, and a bit of an unwelcome first for Irene; usually she had at least one lead to go on this long into a mission.

The only thing she did know for certain that if Emily wanted to get back into the Library, she could not do it on her own. She told as much to Harry.

Then he torpedoed that theory with his next words: ‘Emily can use the Language.’

Irene blinked. ‘That’s not possible. She’s only an apprentice.’ And quite possibly not even that anymore.

‘She used it,’ Harry insisted, voice and face suitably grim. ‘On Murphy and me.’

Irene began to have a bad feeling about this. ‘Used it how?’

‘The perception trick,’ Harry replied, definitely displeased. ‘To make us think we wanted to let her out and to make us wait until the Greencoats collected us.’

Oh.

That was not good.

All arguments that it might have been something else, some magic native to this world, died before they could be spoken. That did sound like the Language perception trick. If Harry and Murphy had been the masters of their own thoughts, they would never in a million years have allowed Emily to walk out of there on her own, not after what she had done. She must have overridden their wills somehow.

But the point still stood: ‘She should not have been able to do this. Only full Librarians get the use of the Language.’

Thomas frowned, rubbing the back of his head absent-mindedly. ‘I’ve never seen her back,’ he said. ‘Could the senior Librarians have made her a full Librarian without telling us?’

Irene wanted to deny that, but stopped herself. Secrecy was many a senior Librarian’s first language. It wouldn’t be the first time that Irene discovered late into the assignment that certain pertinent facts had not been communicated to the Librarian on the scene, even – or especially – when that would have been very useful to know.

‘I… I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It’s not standard practice. Becoming a Librarian is a special occasion. Most Librarians would sooner shout it from the rooftops than keep it hidden.’ Unless maybe they were ordered to keep it under wraps. ‘They could have, I suppose…’

But why hadn’t Coppelia told her? That wasn’t like her. She kept secrets, but not usually ones of this magnitude. This was too relevant for the mission. Right?

The following silence took on a suitably grim quality as they all pondered the implications. Irene began to feel that maybe she was in way over her head. The list of things she didn’t know had only grown, she was no nearer any answers, and now it turned out that Emily Ashwood was a lot more dangerous than anyone had anticipated.

With some effort she pulled herself together. This was still her mission. Losing her head over this was not an option. ‘We’ll have to find her first,’ she announced. ‘And once we do, we shall have to make sure we don’t give her the opportunity to speak.’

Thomas smiled seductively. ‘Not a problem.’

‘We may have to split up,’ she said. ‘I must go back to the Library and find out if she has gone back there through the Traverse. If she hasn’t, it should be a priority to shut it off.’ If the Traverse hadn’t malfunctioned on its own, but Irene kept that thought to herself for the moment. ‘The rest should try and find out where else she could have gone.’

William nodded. ‘I will return home to ascertain that she has indeed departed. It is imperative that I show my face there at any rate, before my absence is noticed.’ He had been away all night; Irene rather thought that ship had sailed. ‘I shall procure supplies as well, and speak to my contacts. I may persuade some of them to keep an eye out for strange goings-on. We shall cover more ground that way.’

Ordinarily Irene would have hesitated about so many unknown people involving themselves in her mission, but London was a big city. Without leads they might end up chasing their own tails for days. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

She felt slightly better with at least a rudimentary plan of action.

At least until someone knocked on the front door.

Chapter Text

Someone knocked on the front door. I was already reaching for my blasting rod when my battered brain reminded me that Greencoats didn’t knock. They threw the doors open with as much fanfare as possible.

Nevertheless, we all froze.

A second round of knocking followed.

Kai broke his statue-impression first. He put his finger to his lips – as if we needed the reminder – and snuck back down the stairs. In the time he needed for that, the mysterious knocker had communicated another demand for entrance.

Kai must have decided the visitor was good people, because we heard the door open and Kai’s voice telling our mystery guest to come in.

‘Thank you, Strongrock,’ said a familiar voice.

Irene sagged with relief. ‘Vale,’ she said.

Now I could place the voice. I’d almost forgotten Peregrine Vale in all the excitement of the past few days, and I had a feeling – from the little I had seen of him – that he liked it that way. When given the chance in Venice, he had avoided our company to investigate on his own. And we had lived to be grateful for that.

They came back up the stairs, Kai in front, grinning, and Vale following, almost unrecognisable. If I hadn’t known it was him, I wouldn’t have known him. He had acquired the local fashions, but lower class rather than the upper classes we had tried to infiltrate. He must have done something with some kind of make-up too, just subtly altering the shape of his face. A hood against the rain hid most of his face, though he pushed it back when he entered.

 ‘I assume that the current deluge is your work, Strongrock,’ he said as they entered the room. ‘You could not have announced your presence any clearer.’

‘Only if you know what you’re looking for,’ Kai shrugged.

I would have stood up to greet the new arrival as the others did, but I had embarrassed myself enough for one day. I wasn’t entirely sure I could even try to get up. It might be possible that I may have overdone it with the fire. And for all I knew the handcuffs had some aftereffects. I really hoped occasional black spots in my vision were part of that, otherwise I might have a concussion. Again.

By the time I had finished my self-diagnosis the greetings were out of the way and Vale had been made comfortable on the couch. ‘You’re hardly subtle, Winters. I could follow your trail of carnage all over the city.’

Irene and I avoided looking at each other. I did my best to look innocent and virtuous, but probably only gave the impression like I had been drugged out of my skull.

‘It’s been an explosive few days,’ Irene retorted. ‘How have you been?’

‘Productive,’ Vale reported. ‘I have found your runaway apprentice.’

Which, admittedly, was more than any of us had done.

‘Where?’ we asked, all at the same time.

Vale settled back and prepared to show off. ‘Finding out where she lived was not difficult,’ he began. ‘The talk of her return is all over town. Having discovered where she was, and having ascertained myself that the lady was inside the house, I stationed myself somewhere out of sight and waited. I followed her when she departed for her nightly trip and, unlike you fine gentlemen, avoided the notice of the police.’ His tone suggested that this had not been difficult. ‘I followed Miss Ashwood to her hideout, a house not unlike this one, and only three streets away.’

We all sat up straighter. She was that close?

‘And did she go there again after last night?’ Kai asked eagerly.

Vale nodded. ‘She’s become careless. I suspect she believes you were the only threats to her and she believes you all in police custody. That cannot last long, given the night’s events. Rumours of a large fire-breathing Dragon rush across town already.’

Kai and I wisely said nothing.

‘What about her accomplice?’ Irene asked. ‘Did you see him? Or her?’

Vale finally had to disappoint. ‘She never met anyone.’

Or at least not any one obvious. There must have been dozens of people at the ball, and any one of them could have been the elusive accomplice. I searched my brain for anyone who might have come across as suspicious, but that only made my head hurt, so I gave it up.

William decided to take charge. He announced that he would use his contacts to put the house Emily was in under surveillance. When this met with a storm of protest – though not from me; I had trouble keeping my eyes open and I could feel my heart pound in my head – he pointed out that the Greencoats would be out in force today, not to mention the fact that we had all had an exciting night, no sleep, and a variety of injuries to show for the above. Far better to keep our heads down. Down on a pillow, in fact. He would see about keeping Emily under surveillance and we could move in on her at nightfall.

None of us acknowledged out loud that she could have moved by then, but only because the rest of what he said was too sensible to ignore.

I spent the day sleeping. I fell asleep before the discussion wound down and woke up in the late afternoon in an unfamiliar bed.

I took stock of my injuries before I moved. My head hurt, but it stopped pounding. My back was less promising, but I could breathe without gasping in pain, so I counted that a win too. Then I reached for my power. I hadn’t told anyone, but last night’s inferno had made my power almost disappear again.

Those cuffs are no joke.

The effects must have worn off, though. My power came when I called it. To make sure I lit the candle on the bedside table and that didn’t make me feel like I’d run a marathon, so I decided I was recovered enough to get out of bed. The walls all stayed in place too, and I didn’t feel the need to throw up. I was practically glowing with health and fitness.

Someone must have recovered my stuff, and I had enough of London fashions, so I returned to shirt and jeans and my trusty duster. It didn’t have a handy pocket for the blasting rod, yet, but it scored major brownie points for its complete lack of embroidery. And clearly some people don’t need magic to manage the almost impossible; William must have worked a minor miracle to liberate my staff from his parents’ house, because it leaned against the wall right next to all the other things I’d left behind when the Greencoats dragged me out in chains.

Most of the others had already congregated in the living room. Thomas passed me something to eat and told me he’d seen healthier looking corpses. Don’t look for encouragement from your family members. Seriously, don’t.

William brought us up to speed on the latest developments in the world outside: ‘A true witch hunt has been called for,’ he reported. ‘A state of emergency has been declared. Apparently there’s a fire-spewing monster on the loose.’

I regretted nothing.

‘And Emily?’ Irene asked, anxiously. I didn’t look forward to renewing that acquaintance myself.

‘My friends tell me that she has not moved from that house all day,’ he said. ‘Which, I admit, is most unlike her. My friends have surrounded the place, but report no sign of life. Yet the house has no other way out than the front door, not even a window large enough to climb from.’

But if Emily had somehow acquired the use of the Language, who knew what other skills she had picked up along the way?

Our plan had more holes in it than a Swiss cheese, but, lacking any better ideas, we agreed to simply descend on the place in force and stop her from talking before she could talk us all into seeing things her way. Again.

Lasciel showed up again when I put my boots back on. ‘If I suggest that you would be better off remaining behind, would you heed me, my host?’

She must have known the answer to that one before she asked, so I didn’t bother with a reply.

‘You still underestimate her,’ she said.

‘What? After she used the Force on me and had me locked up?’ After that, I’d go in armed to the teeth.

‘Do you know what she did to your mind?’ Lasciel demanded. She sounded… angry.

I studied her, but discreetly, because I didn’t want to explain to the entire room that I had another argument with the voice in my head. Lasciel paced the distance between the couch and the hearth. Usually she’d strike some seductive pose from which she dripped tempting words in my ear.

‘She twisted my perceptions,’ I said, ignoring the tendrils of panic and disgust flaring up at the memory. ‘And I didn’t see you come to my rescue.’

She stilled.

Interesting.

‘You couldn’t.’ It was a conclusion, not a question. ‘She got you too.’

That made sense. Emily included every person in the room, and apparently also the Denarian in my head. And I don’t think she was used to getting her mind messed with.

‘Not as much fun being on the receiving end, is it?’ I said. ‘Dishing it out is more your style.’

I’d pissed her off. ‘She should not have been able to do that,’ Lasciel snapped.

‘What, so you get to screw around my brain, but you’re not supposed to get a taste of your own medicine?’ I hadn’t forgotten what she had tried to do to me in the station after we returned from Venice. And I hadn’t forgiven it either.

And as much as I hated having someone else messing around in my brain and making me dance to their tunes, I also thought that if I needed another way to subdue Lasciel, the Language might be a way to do it. I really didn’t want to announce to the world that I had one of the Fallen knocking around my brain, but telling Irene probably couldn’t hurt. She might hear it from Kai anyway. Lasciel didn’t seem to have a lot of weaknesses, but I’d definitely use the ones I could find out about.

It would be nice to have my brain to myself again.

Lasciel froze as that thought reached her. Tellingly, she didn’t try to call my bluff.

But only because we both knew I wasn’t bluffing.

‘You might as well leave on your own,’ I told her. I’d had more than enough of her trying to push me to play on Nicodemus’s team, more than enough of her always popping up when I was in the middle of something, and definitely more than enough of her manipulations. When all of this was over, I’d look into possibilities of nuking her coin and getting rid of her. And if I found that out, I’d tell Michael so he could have a decent go at doing the same to any other coins he stumbled across.

The world would be better off without Denarians tearing it up.

‘I cannot erase myself, my host,’ she stated stubbornly.

‘And you don’t want to.’

‘Indeed, I have no wish to die,’ she agreed, eyes wary. ‘All creatures possess some sense of self-preservation. Why should I be the exception?’

To begin with, I had never wanted her in my head. Parasites shouldn’t be surprised when their unwilling hosts tried to eject them. I’d done my best to ignore her. I had occasionally made use of her. Not my proudest moments, but sometimes you’ve got to use the resources available. But I wanted her out before I grew so reliant on her that I’d reach the point where I saw no other choice than to dig up her coin.

Because she wanted me to. She might dress it up in velvety words, but her end goal had always been the coin and its retrieval. It was the reason she existed in my brain in the first place. She had already got me as far as sometimes calling on her for advice and magical tricks.

And I wanted off that slippery slope as soon as I could.

During that enlightening conversation everyone had got ready. Only Kai and I remained in the room. Everyone else had trooped down the stairs.

He crouched down before me. ‘Is it speaking to you?’ he asked frankly.

I saw no reason to lie. ‘Yes.’

‘What about?’

‘Registering her displeasure that the Language works on her.’ I also registered fury that I had shared that information with the Dragon who planned to destroy her.

Kai perked up. ‘Does it? That’s good. Maybe Irene could try it on the coin.’

Something to try when we got back to Chicago.

‘Can you walk?’ Kai asked.

I wasn’t an invalid, and I told him so. It just hurt when I tried to do something more strenuous than breathing, but I had functioned on worse. And by now I really wanted a few words with the menace to society who thought she could whack people with books and mess around their minds.

I made it down the stairs without tripping over my own feet and we set off for Emily’s lair. The sun had gone down and the temperature plummeted. I wouldn’t mind betting that we’d have the fog move in before long too.

‘No Greencoats?’ I asked Thomas.

‘No one close,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been through this street all day.’

Wiliam had assured us that his people still had the place under surveillance, but I never saw them. The street outside the hideout was empty.

The house, a small neglected looking place, looked empty too. Emily hadn’t lit any candles, and she hadn’t drawn the curtains either. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought that no one had been here for decades.

‘Looks like a witch’s cottage,’ Kai observed.

‘Shouldn’t that have candy stuck to the outside?’ Thomas retorted.

‘I must admit that my sister is accustomed to better accommodation,’ William said pensively. ‘I do not doubt your observations, Mr Vale, but I find it hard to credit that my comfort-loving sister would ever choose such a dilapidated hovel for a hideout.’

Vale didn’t take offence. ‘She is there,’ he said with absolute certainty.

Mouse growled softly. I didn’t like the look of the place either.

‘Any magical booby-traps?’ Irene asked me.

I put my magical feelers out, but didn’t sense anything. Of course, for all I knew Emily had done something really nasty with the Language and I could never detect that, unless I had it done to me. ‘Nothing I can feel. Anything you can do with the Language?’

Irene grimaced. ‘If she has put something on it, and I deactivate it, she’ll know we’re here.’

For all we knew, she might know that already. ‘I’ll go in first.’ At least I could conjure up a decent shield to stop anything she could hurl at us. And I could definitely render her unconscious if I needed to. Not that I particularly liked the idea of throwing young women into walls or apply a staff to their heads to stop them, but I could do it.

Murphy must have followed that train of thought. ‘Don’t be a gentleman, Harry. Knock her out as soon as you get the chance.’

I avoided looking at her.

‘Ready?’ Irene asked.

I gathered my power, grabbed my blasting rod, and made sure my shield bracelet was ready for immediate action. ‘Ready.’

‘Wards that are on the hideout of Emily Ashwood, made with magic or with the Language, deactivate! Traps, hindrances, and malevolent measures that are on the hideout of Emily Ashwood, made with magic or with the Language, deactivate!’

You’d have to admit that as magic goes, the Language was very effective, but a simple forzare is at least quicker to cast.

And more spectacular to see.

Nothing happened. At least, nothing visible happened. The house remained dark, dreary, and desolate. Although if Emily was inside, there was no way she hadn’t heard that.

I marched to the front door. After Irene’s loud declaration I saw no point in going in discreetly, so as my opening move I blasted the door off its hinges. It flew the length of the corridor and crashed to pieces against the far wall.

Emily hadn’t been here long enough to have much of a threshold. It might be her home away from home, but she didn’t spend the majority of her time here. Even if she had, she lived here alone. A bit sad for her, but pretty good for me, because I got to take my power with me inside. Given the occupant, I expected I was going to need it.

The hall was empty, but not as neglected as the outside suggested. Emily must have put some sort of disguise on – Irene’s command had only disabled the traps and wards, not any disguises – because the inside was decently lit and cosily decorated. A bit too feminine for my tastes, but cosy and comfortable, with pretty flowered wallpaper, rugs, and a few paintings of landscapes on the wall. And that was just the hallway. Who knows what she had done with the rest of the place.

‘That looks more like Emily’s taste,’ William muttered. ‘She painted that landscape on the left. It seems, my friends, that we have come to the right place.’

Emily must be hiding somewhere, but she didn’t lie in wait behind the door. Three doors opened onto the hallway. Stairs at the far end led upstairs. I Listened, but didn’t hear any signs of life apart from our own.

We combed the downstairs first. Living room, kitchen, and study all turned out to be deserted. Recently occupied, but empty now. We progressed towards the stairs, where Mouse gave the first warning in the form of another growl.

I went first.

No one tried to throw me off the stairs – encouraging – and the upstairs hallway was empty too. A number of doors opened onto it, but I got drawn to the second one on the left. If you asked me why, I couldn’t have told you, but something seemed subtly different about it.

And I understood why the moment the door handle tried to burn my hand. Fortunately I used my left hand – not much salvageable there anyway – and I withdrew it before it could do more than eat through my glove and singe the hand itself. I did say something that would earn me an extra charge of improper language if the Greencoats had been around to hear. In their absence, William’s eyebrows jumped up to his hairline.

I only stopped long enough to put Lasciel’s pain blocking technique in place – because getting burnt is no joke – and then blew another door off its hinges. I already had several charges for damage to private property. What was one more?

I only had a glimpse of the room – some sort of private library – before the occupant launched herself at me, nails first. Since I was at it anyway, I threw her back against the bookcase, too fast for her to cushion her collision with the Language.

Word to the wise, if you’re fighting a Librarian, make sure you’re quick enough to stop them from talking. It’s when they open their mouths that you’re really in trouble.

If the collision with the bookcase hurt her, Emily showed no sign of it. She growled in frustration, then opened her mouth, so I threw her back against the bookcase again. That knocked the wind out of her again, but at best it would only buy me a few seconds, so I magically knocked over the bookcase to land half on top of her. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do, but she must have seen it coming, because she crawled away and the bookcase only trapped her left foot. Useful, but not as useful as I’d hoped.

By now I had advanced into the room a bit, so theoretically I should have been able to knock her over the head with my staff, but she got there ahead of me. ‘Books, attack the intruders.’

Clever, because now I had to conjure up a shield pretty quickly to avoid getting buried in books. I only just got there in time.

‘Books, cease your attack and be still!’ Irene commanded. The books dropped from the air. It had barely taken five seconds.

But it bought Emily the time to shake off the bookcase and retrieve her foot, and by now she was right in front of me. I dropped my shield, lifted my staff, but I already knew I’d not be able to get anything done before she set off her next attack of the furniture.

So I did something stupid.

I looked her right in the eyes.

And held her gaze.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t look away.

Her mistake, because the next moment we were both pulled into the soulgaze.

The inside of Emily’s head unsurprisingly looked like a library. The centre of it, where Emily sat surrounded by piles and piles of books, was brightly lit, but darkness and shadows lurked around the edges. I heard shouting and angry voices, though nothing intelligible.

Emily, shoulders hunched, had sought refuge in her books. She made her novels and stories her shield against the world, her little island of freedom.

Except it wasn’t.

Emily might think that her books were her gateway to escape and freedom, but all the while, seemingly unnoticed, tendrils of words crept out from the books and up her bare arms, higher and higher until they wound all around her, top to toe, until they even tied like a noose around her neck.

I tried to read the words. They moved around a lot, but I did get a glimpse at words like compliance, obedience, restraint, compulsion. As if the words looking like chains weren’t enough of a hint.

Emily looked up, face lit up in joy, raising her arms and delighting in her chains as if they were the best thing that had ever happened to her. It made her face look less sharp, less jaded. She appeared younger, more like a girl than the hard young woman who would have happily sent me to multiple executions.

It didn’t take Einstein to figure out that whatever it was she saw when she looked at them was not what I saw. Trapped and bound, but without her realising.

The soulgaze ended and I was still staring into Emily Ashwood’s eyes. Her face had gone pale and her mouth had dropped open in shock.

‘Oh,’ she said softly.

And then she fainted.

Arrest through soulgaze. That was a new one. Even for me.

Chapter Text

Thomas hoisted Emily up and propped her into a chair, and then made sure to gag her. Irene held her tongue about how roughly he handled her; if she had been repeatedly bashed with all of Shakespeare’s Language-enhanced works, she might feel she had a score to settle too.

The rest of them picked their way over the battleground of books in search of a decent place to sit or stand. The whole fight had maybe lasted a minute altogether, but the place looked like it had been going for longer, claiming many casualties along the way.

Kai pushed the fallen bookcase back up to give them more space.

‘Books, return to the shelves you came from,’ Irene ordered, decreasing tripping hazards by about hundred percent.

‘Now what?’ Harry asked, leaning against the door in a would-be casual way that didn’t fool Irene for a second. It might just be the concussion getting him down, but Irene had done a soulgaze a while ago and knew how much it could rattle a person. Even though it was almost a year ago, the memory of soulgazing the Corpsetaker was as vivid now as it had been when it had just happened.

‘Now we ask some questions,’ Thomas announced.

Unconscious Emily seemed a lot less threatening. Now that she wasn’t glaring and snapping, she looked like what she was: a very young woman, completely out of her depth. But still dangerous. Nice and innocent people didn’t do the things Emily had done.

‘It certainly seems like my sister has acquired some destructive skills since the last almost-scandal,’ William observed. If he minded the way Thomas handled her, he didn’t show it. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll be inclined to share with us how she obtained them.’

Not the usual way, that was for sure.

And it made Irene deeply uneasy. It wasn’t that she doubted Harry and Murphy’s words when they claimed that Emily used the Language on them, but it remained a hard thing to believe. Maybe, Irene had reasoned, scrambling for explanations that didn’t upset everything she had known and believed, Emily had got hold of some sort of magic that looked and sounded a lot like the Language; Irene knew of at least four B-alternates where magic more or less functioned by the caster clearly stating what he wanted to happen. Maybe Emily had found out about it somehow, and learned how to use it.

The little showdown of a few moments ago neatly put paid to that; Irene recognised the Language when she heard it.

How had Emily got hold of that? It shouldn’t be possible. Irene had never heard of something like this. Apprentices couldn’t get access to it. Only full Librarians, the ones who had completed their training and taken their vows, got the Language, and Emily had done neither.

So yes, answers were exactly what they needed. And the sooner, the better.

‘The Language has a trick for that,’ Irene said, but her eyes kept drifting back to Harry. She didn’t know if it was quite the done thing to ask about something as private as a soulgaze, but she did know that it revealed something of a person’s essence. And they really needed to know what kind of a person they were dealing with. The fact that Emily had fainted after a good long stare into Harry Dresden made Irene wonder about a few things, but this was not the time to worry about that.

Harry answered the question before Irene had to ask: ‘She’s bound in words, somehow. Emily thinks it’s freedom, but they chain her, bind her to someone else’s will.’

Intriguing, but not exactly the kind of clarity Irene had hoped for, although she suspected that Emily’s accomplice might turn out to be her master instead.

‘Begging your pardon,’ William said, ‘but may I ask what exactly took place between you and Emily? I take it you read her thoughts?’

‘I don’t read minds,’ Harry said. He explained the concept of the soulgaze. Apparently wizards in this alternate didn’t go up close and personal with someone else’s soul every time they stared in their eyes a little too long. Lucky them. Irene had found it very disconcerting when it had happened to her.

‘But what does that mean?’ Irene insisted. ‘Bound in words?’

Harry shrugged helplessly. ‘Don’t know. But I’ll bet it’s connected to why she can use the Language.’

Thomas frowned. ‘There’s only one sort of person who can use the Language.’ He stood behind Emily and without further warning ripped her dress down the back seam, exposing her back. ‘A Librarian.’

Irene didn’t want to look, but she did. Emily’s back should have been bare, but wasn’t. There, right below her shoulder blades, was a Library brand; Emily’s name surrounded by a frame of tiny script.

‘But…’ Her brain short-circuited, because none of this made any sense. If Emily was a Librarian, then why hadn’t Coppelia told her about it? Of course, if Emily was a Librarian gone rogue, they’d want to keep it under wraps. There’d be mass panic if other Librarians discovered that another one of their own had turned against them. The last one to do that was Alberich, and he was used as a horrible warning to scare new recruits.

Then common sense kicked back in. ‘Let me see,’ she said.

Thomas stood aside to let her.

The brand still had every appearance of a Library brand up close, but there were enough differences too to give Irene pause. The name was the most obvious one. It wasn’t entirely unheard of for a Librarian to retain their birth name when they became a full Librarian, but it was rare. Most chose names of famous characters or authors. That’s what Irene herself had done. Emily had kept her own. Of course, enough characters and authors had the name Emily, and she might have been inspired by any of them. Still, strange enough.

But what really drew and then kept the eye was the frame of script around the name. Irene had never made a great study of Library brands, but she didn’t think they would so heavily feature words like compliance, obedience, restraint, and compulsion. Librarians weren’t compelled. They did what they did because they wanted to, because they had chosen to become a Librarian and they had worked their socks off to obtain that coveted position.

She said as much.

‘She chose it,’ Harry said. ‘She thinks it’s the best thing that ever happened to her.’

Irene shook her head. ‘But it’s wrong.’ For all that words were her bread and butter, she couldn’t put into words just how wrong. She settled for: ‘This isn’t a Library brand.’

And that in turn raised more questions than answers.

‘But only the Library can bestow the Language,’ Kai insisted. ‘It’s a unique ability.’

‘Evidently not anymore,’ Murphy said.

‘Evidently,’ Irene echoed, because all the silent wondering wouldn’t get her closer to answers anytime soon. Time to wake up their resident troublemaker. ‘Can anyone wake her up, please?’

Harry summoned up a splash of water to the face that brought her round quite quickly. Emily gasped in shock and then found out that she was gagged. Unhappy sounds of protest filtered through the gag, but she couldn’t get out actual words, which suited Irene well enough for now.

Emily’s next discovery was the fact that her dress had more of an open back than it had when she put it on that morning. She crossed her arms over her chest to prevent the rest of it sliding down to her waist. The panicked noises changed to ones of pure rage, with the deadly glare to match.

Irene didn’t have time for the amateur dramatics. ‘As you can see, we’ve gagged you. We would like to talk to you, so I require your oath, in the Language, that you will not use the Language to attack or to compel us.’

‘Better: that you won’t use the Language at all as long as you’re with us,’ Thomas suggested.

A good suggestion, plugging any potential loopholes well in advance. Irene approved it immediately. ‘You will swear that you won’t use the Language while you’re with us,’ she amended, which earned both Thomas and herself another death stare.

‘And if you try to trick us,’ Murphy added, ‘you should know that I have been waiting for a good excuse to shoot you since last night.’ She produced the gun William had retrieved from… somewhere, and pointed it at Emily, who toned down her protests instantly.

Emily turned a pleading puppy stare on her brother, who shrugged. ‘I shall not stand in her way,’ he announced. ‘As there certainly is a case to answer. I hope it has occurred to you, Emily, that you have this time gone far beyond minor infractions that can be swept under the carpet. This time I cannot protect you. Indeed, given the ruin you brought upon our own family, I am not in the least inclined to do so.’

That, more than the gag, the humiliation of a torn dress, and the threat of violence, brought Emily up short. She stared at William as if she could barely believe what she heard. Over the years she must have grown used to him cleaning up after her so much that she automatically assumed he would do the same now.

Irene did not have the time for the family drama. ‘Will you give your oath?’

Emily considered this, and nodded.

Thomas removed the gag.

‘Now, if you please.’

‘I swear that I will not use the Language while I am with you,’ she said obediently.

This gave Irene a little peace of mind, but not a lot; she had already proven her proficiency with slightly more unconventional weapons. Fortunately Harry still blocked the door and Kai had positioned himself before the room’s sole window. She wouldn’t get out.

Emily opened the batting. ‘Am I a prisoner?’ she demanded.

‘I suppose that rather depends on your answers,’ Irene returned. Unlikely as it seemed, she might be acting under some sort of duress. ‘Where is Emma?’

Emily crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Not here.’

Thomas was perusing the shelves regardless, but so far without luck.

‘I didn’t ask where it wasn’t.’

‘Not in this alternate,’ Emily said.

Equally unhelpful. ‘So in which alternate is it?’

‘You must be stupid if you think I’ll tell you.’

‘You must be stupid if you think I won’t use the Language on you to make you tell me,’ Irene retorted. She wouldn’t like it, but she would do it.

Emily paled. ‘That would be a very bad idea.’

‘So talk.’

‘I can’t.’ Emily swallowed.

Hard to tell if this was just the next theatrical performance or a real fear of repercussions. If Harry had interpreted the soulgaze correctly, then the latter was at least a real possibility. And if she had somehow been bound in the Language, that might make it impossible to speak.

But who could have bound her?

The longer she thought about it, the more obvious the answer became. There was only one rogue Librarian who had access to the Language and who had accrued all sorts of powers he really shouldn’t have had. If anyone could bind another in words and have her do his bidding, it would be Alberich. If he was behind all of Emily’s antics, he might be behind the current crisis in the Library as well. Which meant that Irene was in over her head.

Again.

She exchanged a look with Harry and then with Kai, both of whom seemed to have come to the same conclusion at the same time.

‘What?’ Murphy demanded. She still had her gun fixed on Emily.

‘Trouble,’ Irene said. Trying to not leap to conclusions, she turned back to Emily: ‘Who are you working for?’

‘You know I can’t tell you,’ Emily said, voice rising in panic. ‘Please don’t make me!’ For some reason Irene didn’t think Emily faked her fear. Maybe because for the first time her eyes matched the rest of her face. ‘I won’t survive.’

Perhaps the brand on her back really would not let her. Harry must have thought so, because he stalked over and had a nice long look at the brand on her back. Emily shrank away from him, whimpering, but Harry didn’t touch her.

‘Anything?’ Irene asked.

‘Too much to know for sure,’ he said. ‘But it wouldn’t surprise me if she couldn’t.’

To summarise: they had the apprentice, but not the book. Alberich might be involved. Out there the Greencoats had declared open season and the Library was in some sort of danger. They had no allies apart from Emily’s brother, and he was mysterious enough to make Irene reluctant to trust him. After all, spies were good at subterfuge and secrecy.

What a mess.

‘What can we do?’ William asked. ‘If she has been prevented by magical means from conveying the information we require?’

‘If she can’t speak, she’ll have to nod or shake her head in answer,’ Irene said. Privately, she entertained some doubt that Alberich wouldn’t have put some measure in place to stop anyone from revealing anything about him, but needs must. They wouldn’t learn anything like this either.

But there might be consequences for Emily. Then again, there would be consequences from the Library too after what she’d done. The girl got herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Most of it was her own fault; she had chosen to get involved in something she should have stayed well away from.

That didn’t mean Irene didn’t feel a little bit guilty about what she was about to do. But Coppelia had made it clear: if it came to a choice between the apprentice or the book, she should choose the book.

Emily hadn’t thought it through, or she really believed that it was a viable loophole. She nodded. ‘All right.’

It limited the kind of questions Irene could ask, but better something than nothing. So she went straight for the jugular: ‘Are you working for Alberich?’

‘Oh,’ said Emily, as if she hadn’t expected that question.

‘Yes or no?’ Irene pressed.

Emily gasped. At first Irene thought it was just more of the unnecessary theatricals, but then the gasping turned to wheezing and she began clawing at her throat, as if something or someone was strangling her.

Harry acted almost immediately, reaching for the most obvious cause and ripping it away; the oversized choker around her neck. Except that wasn’t the culprit.

Irene stared in horror for a moment, and not only because she could never have conceived of someone putting the Language to this kind of use. She didn’t know it was possible. She would have been much happier if she had never learned any better either.

The words around Emily’s throat writhed and twisted, cutting off Emily’s air supply. The girl brought her hands up to pull at them, but they were branded into her skin and of course she couldn’t do it.

And if there had been any doubt that Alberich was involved, she didn’t have that anymore. It took Irene a few seconds before she could make out what it said, but when she did, she knew. Before I should betray you, or be forced to speak, or be made captive, I shall die.

‘Irene!’ Harry snapped, pulling her roughly out of her trance. ‘Do something!’

He was right of course. The Language was Irene’s area of expertise, but the application here made her hesitate. Ordinarily she would have tried to unravel the construction with the Language, but Alberich would have guarded against that. He knew she’d have to deal with Librarians. For all she knew he had put measures in place that made everything worse if she tried to use the Language on it.

But a word couldn’t harm if it didn’t exist in the first place. ‘A coin. I need a coin.’

William reached into his pocket and retrieved some.

Irene snatched them out of his hand. She didn’t have a lot of time. Emily’s wheezing grew weaker all the time. She still tried to pull the words off her skin, but with less fervour and less accuracy. The fear in her eyes chilled Irene to the bone. And even more because they were glassing over, losing focus.

So before she had the chance to overthink this, she selected one coin, praised her own foresight in wearing gloves, and got on with it: ‘Silver shilling in my hand, rise in temperature to red-hot heat.’

As if from a distance she heard the others ask what she was doing, but Irene didn’t answer. ‘Harry, hold her still.’

Emily still writhed and spasmed, but weakly now, so Irene was under no delusion that she’d get more than one shot at this. The second Harry grabbed her tightly, she pressed the red-hot coin to the word die, making sure all the letters were completely covered.

Emily tried to twist out of Harry’s grasp, but more on instinct than actual conscious decision; she was barely aware of what was going on. The stench of burning nearly turned Irene’s stomach, but she kept the shilling in place until die had been destroyed. With that crucial word missing, the sentence disintegrated, snapping like a thread that had been cut.

Emily breathed in air, coughing and gasping in turn. Irene dropped the coin and stepped back. She really didn’t like Emily, but she didn’t like having to hurt people she was trying to help either. Lacking any better scapegoats, she decided to blame Alberich instead.

William pushed past her to take a closer look at Emily’s injury. ‘Good grief, Miss Irene,’ he said with feeling. ‘Remind me never to cross you.’

That seemed a tad ungrateful, given that she had just saved Emily’s life. Well, for as long as it lasted; she suspected that Alberich had imbedded some nasty surprises in the brand on Emily’s back.

Kai placed a hand on her arm. ‘Well done.’

Vale nodded at her too. ‘Quick thinking, Winters. Although I don’t suppose we’ve got all the traps yet.’

‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ Irene agreed. But one thing at a time. At least she knew what Harry had meant when he told them that Emily had been bound in words. Hard to believe that anyone had consented to that of their own free will.

Emily caught her breath and then glared daggers at Irene. ‘You maimed me!’

Ashwoods clearly didn’t know how to do grateful, that was for sure. ‘I saved your life,’ Irene returned. ‘And after all the trouble we’ve taken for you, maybe you should reciprocate and answer our questions.’

Emily crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Well, I don’t want to. I’ve had enough near death experiences for one day.’

‘There’s nothing in her brand that instructs her to drop dead when she talks,’ Harry offered. He’d taken the time to have another long look at it.

Irene didn’t think so. Why else would Alberich have made a noose of words around her neck if a simple safe fail in the brand could do the same, and in a less visible way too? That didn’t rule out the notion that there might be subjects Emily would be physically unable to speak about, but they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

‘Well, that’s good to know,’ Thomas said. He’d studied the brand with Harry and must have reached the same conclusion. Now he came to stand next to Irene and Kai. ‘So talk. Where’s Emma?’

‘I can compel you to speak,’ Irene reminded her. Not that she particularly wanted to, but there was no need to burden Emily with that thought.

‘I told you it’s not in this alternate,’ Emily whined.

‘We are not interested in where it is not.’

‘And I’ve also told you that I don’t want to tell you,’ Emily snapped. ‘You’ve hunted me like an animal, threatened my life, and now you’ve maimed me. I don’t feel in the least inclined to share any relevant information with you.’

The level of self-absorption and hypocrisy rendered Irene temporarily speechless. Not so William, who had apparently reached the end of his tether. Now that Emily’s life was out of danger, he quickly reverted to his habitual exasperated too-tired-to-put-up-with-my-sister’s-antics attitude. ‘Miss Irene, if you would allow me to speak a few words with my sister?’

‘In private?’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary quite yet.’

Emily had the good sense to start looking worried.

Irene shrugged. ‘Be my guest.’ It wasn’t as if Emily had cooperated yet. And if William could get her to comply without use of the Language, then so much the better.

William nodded and then slapped his sister across the face.

She reeled back, then stared at him in disbelief. And she wasn’t the only one.

‘You have no idea how long I have wanted to slap the sense into you that our parents failed to instil in you,’ William announced. ‘My friends are perhaps too polite to lay hands on you, even after all the horrors you have inflicted upon them, which indeed speaks very well of them. I however am held back by no such concerns, having long been privy to your many misdeeds.’

Emily didn’t listen. She touched the place where William’s hand had made contact. ‘You hit me!’ she exclaimed in shock. ‘You’ve never struck me before!’

William remained unfazed. ‘And to the best of my extensive knowledge, you have never sold out anyone to the Greencoats before. You do realise that you could have been the cause of their untimely demise through execution? Have you no conscience? Have you any notion of the cost in lives you could have incurred?’

‘They should have stayed out of my way.’ Emily was unrepentant every inch of the way. Then again, she had trained under Bradamant, the leading authority on throwing other people under the bus and pretending she was the victim. Had Irene really expected any different from her apprentice?

‘You should have refrained from theft and assault,’ William pointed out. ‘I only marvel at the fact that they did not retaliate in like manner when they caught up to you.’

Emily pouted at him.

To absolutely no effect: ‘You have plunged our family into scandal and ruin, Emily. Some remorse for such a thing would be most appropriate. I can only surmise that you had no intention to linger and face the consequences of your crimes, but by God, will I make you face them! Do you understand me?’

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her like a ragdoll.

Emily’s eyes widened. ‘You can’t mean that. You’re my brother! You should protect me!’

‘I think we can both agree that I have discharged my familial duty to you many times over,’ William said through clenched teeth. ‘Too many times, all things told. Indeed, I have shielded you from the consequences of your misbehaviour for far longer than can be asked from any reasonable man. I wash my hands of it. From this moment onwards, I will not protect you. Quite the contrary. Now, you shall answer their questions or, be assured, I shall make you!’

Irene reflected that even amiable men apparently had a breaking point. Then again, Emily could probably drive a saint to murder in an hour. William had resisted the urge quite long, all things considered.

Perhaps Emily at last sensed something of that nature. She had gone quite pale and her lower lip wobbled. ‘I… I can’t!’

William held her eyes. ‘Oh, I believe you can.’

‘You think he’ll let me live if I tell you?’ she demanded with a ghost of her old defiance.

‘I find myself quite unable to care,’ William responded icily. ‘You have utterly disgraced yourself. Perhaps you may redeem something of what you squandered if you lend us your aid now. That shall depend on the quality of your answers. Do you understand?’

Emily nodded mutely, still shocked.

William turned back to Irene. ‘Ask your questions now, Miss Irene. She will answer.’

Irene wasted no more time on preliminaries: ‘Where is Emma?’

Emily hesitated, took one look at William’s face, and answered: ‘In the library. The parallel library.’

Irene had never heard of anything like that and said so.

‘It’s in his library,’ Emily said and then she hissed in pain. ‘He’s made his own.’

Thomas realised what it meant before Irene had even begun to digest that little bomb. ‘Is that why the real Library’s dark and the Traverses stopped working?’

Emily nodded tearfully. Irene suspected part of it was show, but it was not out of the realm of possibility that Alberich had built something into that brand that punished her for speaking of things he didn’t approve of. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘Yes. I don’t really understand it, but we must take rare books in there before the Library gets them.’

Irene began to understand. ‘He binds worlds to his own library rather than the real Library and so pushes the real Library out.’

Harry stared at her. ‘He can do that?’

If it hadn’t happened, Irene would never have suspected the possibility. But it was as good an explanation for what was happening to the Library as any. But to achieve so devastating an effect in such a short span of time he must have stolen some very rare and crucial books or he’d have employed a lot of people, which brought Irene neatly back to the we in that last sentence. ‘Who’s we?’

‘The librarians. Like me.’

Irene closed her eyes as she finally pieced it all together. ‘He has made his own librarians?’ How did he even do that? It was the Library who made a Librarian. Individual Librarians, such as Alberich had been before he went dark, could not do it. They wouldn’t know how. Irene certainly didn’t.

Emily nodded, openly weeping in pain now. ‘Yes!’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t! He doesn’t really let us meet and socialise.’

Irene could believe that much. Alberich was nothing if not a control freak. The custom-made noose around Emily’s neck testified to that. He may use people to achieve his ends, but he didn’t trust them. He bound them as tightly as he could to stop them from betraying him. Bound in words, indeed.

Emily regained a little of her attitude. ‘Not that I wanted to. I’m a Librarian-in-Residence here, you see. Well, until you came in and spoiled it all.’

‘You are not experienced enough to be a Librarian, never mind a Librarian-in-Residence,’ Irene pointed out. That sense of entitlement was usually Bradamant’s trademark, and it vexed her no less in Bradamant’s apprentice. ‘Why side with Alberich?’

‘A lady has got to advance her career somehow,’ Emily said with as much dignity as she could muster with her dress trying to slide down indecently. ‘It became clear fairly quickly that the senior Librarians would have me work for years before I could even be considered for full Librarian-ship, never mind Librarian-in-Residence.’

Irene realised she had finally got the measure of the girl’s character. An opportunistic career shark. One with ice-water in her veins. The kind who would walk over the corpses of her fallen colleagues to get to the top. Someone who wasn’t prepared to put in the work to earn her place, so cheated and connived and betrayed to get there.

It shouldn’t surprise her that Alberich singled out individuals like that. Which didn’t bode well for the kind of people he had promoted to librarians. ‘And you can all use the Language?’

It began to sound like something out of her worst nightmares. Or what would have been Irene’s worst nightmares if she had ever imagined an enemy library, which she hadn’t. A library with Alberich at its head and a legion of Language-using minions behind him. It was bad enough when it was just Alberich popping up where he shouldn’t. Now it became clear that she hadn’t known when she was well off.

Not to mention what kind of library that might be. Alberich had contaminated himself with chaos to such an extent that he couldn’t bear the touch of iron. This library was of his making. How much chaos had he pumped into it? What would happen to the various alternates if his library pushed the original out?

And how much, if anything, did the senior Librarians know or suspect of this? Coppelia had been tight-lipped about the Library’s existential problem when she briefed Irene. Did she guess the cause of their trouble?

So many questions, so few answers.

Emily nodded again. ‘How else would we get to the library?’

How else indeed?

But this was not the time to panic. Panicking wouldn’t stop Alberich. Panicking would not get her the book. So Irene asked the most important question first: ‘Can you get us in there?’

Chapter Text

We could steal Emma from an eccentric academic with his own Fort Knox or we could steal Emma from a reality-bending psychopath on a vengeance trip.

Guess which option we went for.

To begin with, Emily reverted to the hysterical damsel act that no one bought. She really was scared of Alberich, I was pretty sure, but she dialled it up all the way to extract as much sympathy from us as she could. She begged and whined and wheedled, but Irene never backed down. And neither did anyone else.

Not that I wasn’t a little sympathetic. The girl was about as likeable as Maeve in a bad mood, but she’d got in over her head and had now nearly died because of it. Talking to us made her brand acutely painful. She got caught between a rock and a hard place. She only had herself to blame for her choices, but I didn’t really believe she truly understood what she got involved in until Alberich’s party trick nearly strangled her to death.

‘He’ll kill me!’ Emily pleaded.

With a guard detail that included a destructive Librarian, a Dragon, the most devious spy in London, B-395’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, the world’s best guard dog, a police officer with a gun, and a wizard with also destructive tendencies, this seemed unlikely. Not that I was particularly looking forward to the next round of Dresden versus Alberich myself. I had made it out of our previous encounters alive. But only barely, especially the last time. And that was when I met him on my home ground. This time I’d have to face him in his own creation.

I had no illusions about how that might turn out.

‘You’re not special,’ Irene said unsympathetically. ‘He’ll try to kill all of us.’

She had regained a little of her usual brisk manner, but Emily’s revelations had taken it to the parking lot and given it a beating it wouldn’t forget in a hurry. She was hanging onto her composure by the skin of her teeth.

Murphy sidled up to me. ‘What’s this Alberich like?’

I had told her about my Halloween adventures, but I hadn’t really described Alberich much. I didn’t have the words to do him justice, and I didn’t like dragging the memory up either. I could only take so much insanity before it drove me mad too.

‘Insane,’ I replied. ‘Vindictive. Murderous. Way too powerful.’ And if he had somehow created a parallel library – how did you even do that? – it’d be playing by his rules. We, as the intruders, were at a distinct disadvantage. As I explained to Murphy.

‘You take me to the nicest places, Dresden.’

‘I like to impress,’ I said modestly, trying to slam the lid on the growing panic.

‘Do bullets work on him?’ she asked. Perhaps even she had realised Alberich was not the kind of suspect you’d put in handcuffs before you read him his rights. I didn’t think prison would even slow him down. It’d just piss him off.

I shook my head. ‘No.’ I thought about that. ‘Maybe.’

‘Anything that does work?’

‘Iron,’ I said. ‘He’s been messing around with Faerie powers so much, he’s acquired the same weaknesses. Maybe shooting him will work. Or at least weaken him.’

In the back of my head Lasciel made unhappy noises, but I ignored her. I didn’t need the voice in my head to tell me that our planned excursion was a Very Bad Idea that could get me killed. To be fair, I’ve had those odds before and I’m still here.

And this was in a good cause. I may think that the Library was a shady organisation with somewhat dubious ethics, but so long as they kept worlds like mine from sliding headlong into chaos, I could get behind them. Alberich, with all his chaotic Faerie powers, definitely wouldn’t be devoting any efforts to stabilising worlds, not when he could melt them instead.

‘How do we get to this mysterious place?’ William demanded.

‘Through a magical doorway,’ Emily said. ‘And only I can open it, so you had better be a bit politer.’ She turned back to Irene. ‘In fact, I’m not at all inclined to open the door in the first place.’

Irene closed her eyes and – presumably – prayed for patience. She must have found a few reserves, because she didn’t fetch Emily a smack around the head. ‘In that case, I’ll have to take you back to the senior Librarians and let them decide your fate,’ she said. ‘And I can tell you that they don’t care one whit for your well-being.’

‘You don’t care for my well-being either,’ Emily snapped.

‘If I didn’t care about your well-being, I would have let Alberich strangle you and have done with it,’ Irene snapped back. ‘Now get on with it.’

Emily considered her opponents and folded. ‘I am not confronting him.’

‘Nobody said you had to.’

I was pretty sure she’d try to stab us in the back or run away and strand us there if there was even half a chance she could get away with it. She didn’t really care about Alberich, but she cared about us even less.

‘Fine.’ Emily glared at us all in turn to register her displeasure. ‘But I’m not lifting a finger to save any of you. If Alberich kills you, that’s no less than you deserve.’ She gave me an extra helping of glare, although she didn’t meet my eyes. Since none of us expected Emily to be willingly helpful anyway, this announcement failed to be met with any sort of surprise or outrage. ‘Do I have your permission to make an exception to my vow to open the door with the Language?’

Irene nodded. ‘You have permission to use the Language only to open the door to the library. I will not consider it breaking your oath.’ I could tell she’d said it in the Language; the words were weightier, imbued with meaning.

Huffing, Emily turned to the door into the hallway and said: ‘Open to the library.’ She opened the door and gestured us through. ‘After you.’

‘No,’ said Thomas, smiling predatorily, ‘after you.’ He took the door from her and shoved her through.

We followed after her. The place we entered definitely wasn’t the hallway. It looked a lot like the bits of the Library that I had already seen; the rooms filled with books, the proportions and physics that didn’t make sense, the eclectic mix of furniture from all kinds of different times and cultures. But this wasn’t the Library.

At first I couldn’t put the finger on how I knew that. Something about the feel of the place was different. Like an imitation of something that didn’t get it exactly right.

Kai, who came in after me, hissed and grimaced.

‘Chaos?’ I asked, remembering the last time Kai had an encounter with high levels of the stuff.

He nodded. ‘Not too bad,’ he told me. ‘I could still transform. And it doesn’t hurt. Not badly, at least.’

The fact that he told me that twice made me think he was lying.

Irene rolled her shoulder blades and grimaced too. ‘Something’s not right.’

‘What isn’t right?’ I asked Lasciel. I hated having to call on her, but in this place I needed all the advantages I could get.

Lasciel appeared in front of me, dressed as a sexy librarian. She pushed her unneeded glasses up her nose and looked around her. ‘There is chaos here, more than in your own world, my host.’

She closed her eyes as if in deep concentration. I knew she relied on my senses and magic to figure out what happened, and if I knew how she did it I could probably do it myself. I just didn’t have the time to learn, so I took the shortcut.

She drew in a sharp breath.

‘What?’ I demanded.

‘The library is possessed.’

‘What?’

‘Possessed,’ she repeated. ‘By its creator. I recognise his… touch from our prior encounter.’

I remembered his touch too, when he tried to drown me in knee deep water. Happy memories. On the bright side, they might seem like nothing compared to what he would do to us now that we had invaded his territory.

She guided me through the process so that I could sense it too, which promptly made me wish she hadn’t bothered. Alberich’s territory felt like his soul, all madness and vengeance, with a strong dose of festering resentment that tainted everything it touched. Touching it made me feel unclean. I had planned to have a quick peek at the place with my Sight, but I shelved that idea pretty quickly. Alberich’s library felt malicious. Actually, it felt even worse than his soul.

Of course, I assumed Alberich hadn’t gotten any more stable since our last meeting.

I shared my observations – without mentioning how I got them – and ruined everyone’s day. We did our best not to stare at the walls suspiciously, but we all did it. Fortunately, other than the mark he left on his creation, there was no sign of his active presence and attention.

Acting on the assumption that he couldn’t watch all of his enormous library at once, I convinced myself that he couldn’t have noticed us yet. Which was just as well, because we had charged in without much of a plan. No plan at all actually. More of a stated goal and no methodology.

We knew that Emma was somewhere in here, but “in here” was a lot bigger than I thought. We could be searching for years and never find it.

We really hadn’t thought it through. And if that wasn’t this mission in a nutshell.

‘Where did you drop it?’ Kai asked.

‘In a delivery chute.’ Unhelpful. ‘I don’t know where it goes afterwards.’ Equally unhelpful.

‘Anything you can do with the Language to locate the book, Winters?’ Vale asked. So far he had been quiet, taking everything in, maybe. I didn’t make the mistake of assuming this meant he wasn’t keenly aware of what was going on; he was the one who had located Emily when the rest of us were running around like headless chickens.

Irene pondered this. ‘Maybe?’ Not the ringing conviction one would hope for under the circumstances.

I turned to Emily. ‘Do you have any part of the book?’

She blinked at me. ‘A part of the book?’

‘Like a bit of a page that came out or something like that?’ It might have been too long ago – by now the book must have been in here a few days at least – but this was also a more Faerie environment. And if I’d understood Irene right, high levels of chaos would always try to push events into stories. It might make a good story if the wizard could trace the stolen book with his powers. Especially if that also led to a spectacular showdown with the villain.

I tried not to think too hard about that bit.

Emily stared at her feet. She seemed… uncomfortable.

It was telling that Irene only exploded now. ‘You tore something out of a book?’

Kai slapped a hand over her mouth.

‘Don’t overreact,’ Emily said contemptuously. ‘It was just the title page.’

Irene gasped in horror.

‘It had Austen’s autograph.’

If we had been in a less perilous position, Irene’s stare of horror and outrage might have made me laugh. Librarians might be ordinary humans, but they had their priorities completely skewed sometimes.

‘Do you have it on you?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ She retreated a few steps until William grabbed her by the wrist and cut off her escape. ‘But there will be hell to pay if you don’t give it back when you’re done with it. And I promise you that your life won’t be worth living if you do any damage to it.’

As if I needed any more proof that underneath all the scheming and unapologetic self-interest lurked a real Librarian. I thought she might have slightly bigger problems than the return of one piece of paper if we made it out of this adventure. Such as arrest, interrogation, and possible execution.

‘Noted.’

She rooted around in her coat pocket and handed over the page. I didn’t see anything all that special about it. There were millions of title pages like it all over the known worlds. Granted, they didn’t all have the author’s autograph.

I was right; it had been a few days since the page had been removed from the book it came from. I fiddled around – absolutely an official wizard term, and not a way to say that the wizard was just blundering his way around until he found something that worked – with it for a few minutes, but such a connection as I could establish was weak and flickering. The best I could tell everyone was that Emma was probably up and somewhere to the left of where we were.

Whatever that meant in a place that treated reality and physics as optional extras.

‘But the connection might be stronger as we get closer,’ I said with massive optimism and negligible realism.

Irene, our official mission leader, frowned at me in a way only a fellow bullshitter could. ‘Maybe we should hold on to it in case we can’t get anything else working.’

‘Maybe we should just ask the owner of the place where he’s left it,’ Thomas suggested, which was a remarkably unsubtle idea for a White Court vampire.

We all stared at him in disbelief.

‘He’ll find out we’re here anyway. Might as well do it on our terms.’ He shrugged. ‘And he’ll likely figure out what we’re here for, so he’ll move to protect his precious book.’

I was on the verge of protesting, but then I remembered where I was. This place wasn’t anywhere near as chaotic as Venice, but there was enough of it to subtly twist everything towards a compelling narrative. And we already had all the makings of a compelling story right here with us: a daring heist, a group of people with various talents and skills, a quest to save a Library from destruction, a powerful villain… And the higher we made the stakes, the more we dictated the moves, the greater the chance that all that chaos swirling around would recognise that as something it could work with.

Risky, but not as risky as skulking around and waiting for Alberich to find us and come down on us like a ton of bricks.

‘Might make for a good story,’ I said casually, not sure if Alberich was listening, but sure that Irene would get the hint.

She had been all set to protest to the best of her ability, but she shut her mouth as if someone had knocked it shut. ‘Oh.’

Kai and Vale figured it out too. Only William, Emily, and Murphy didn’t get it.

‘Trust me, Murph,’ I muttered while Emily’s noisy protests provided enough cover. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Explain later why we antagonise someone as dangerous as this guy?’

‘Promise.’

Of course we would have to live long enough first.

Irene cut over Emily with the air of someone who’s fed up with all the nonsense. ‘Shut up,’ she advised Emily. ‘Or I will gag you. Believe me, I want to.’

‘I take it some plan has just come to fruition?’ William asked. He at least had enough sense not to demand answers where an opponent could conveniently overhear. Then again, he was a spy, which must have given him a thorough education in the art of secrecy. ‘What do you require of me?’ He addressed his query to Thomas.

Since it was his idea, we all looked at Thomas.

‘Only your assistance in the most daring theft of the century,’ he announced. ‘Irene, can you open a passage to the real Library from here?’

We all got it at the same time. ‘Oh, that’s genius,’ Kai breathed.

Genius, yes. Reckless, definitely. But if we wanted Alberich’s attention, this would get it. If Lasciel was right and he possessed the place, he’d notice when we removed contents from it. And I wouldn’t mind wagering that this would piss him off.

A lot.

Irene shrugged, turned to the nearest door and said: ‘Open to the Library.’

We knew she succeeded right away. The Library on the other side of the door was very dimly lit – worse than when we came through a few days ago – and somehow dying. It breathed desolation and hopelessness. The few lights that were on flickered ominously every few seconds, as if they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. And losing.

Time to do something about that.

I grabbed an armful of books from the nearest shelf and put them in the Library, just inside the door. Stacking and shelving them neatly wasn’t going to be my job; that was what real Librarians were for. I’d settle for quantity over quality.

The others set to it. The only hiccup was Vale, who tried to get in and couldn’t. Still chaos-contaminated, then. I caught Irene’s eye. She nodded.

Nothing we could do about it now, though. Vale only nodded, as if he had just come to a conclusion he had half-expected already, and limited himself to grabbing books off shelves and passing them to Kai, who carried them into the Library.

Emily didn’t assist. Murphy appointed herself as guard, holding Emily by the wrist and making sure to keep her gun within sight. Emily glared rebelliously, but without the Language there wasn’t much she could do about it.

You can’t get the villains these days; we had already cleared out over three quarters of the room before the hairs of my neck suddenly stood on end. And we all felt it. Emily whimpered and tried to wiggle her way out of Murphy’s grasp. The rest of us had enough experience with crises to fall into confrontation stance; a half circle, facing outward, guarding the door to the Library. Not that Alberich could get in there, but we could, if this place suddenly became too hot to hold us.

William, wisely, didn’t think Emily would contribute anything to the defence and pulled her in behind us. For once, she didn’t need to be forced; she was more pulling him than the other way around.

‘Where is he?’ Murphy muttered. She had her gun in hand, but as of yet had nowhere to point it.

‘Right here,’ said a disembodied voice. Hard to tell where it came from; the sound seemed to emerge from the walls, the ceiling and the floor all at once. You’d expect a loud booming sound, but instead he spoke in a soft, almost hissing voice that sounded far more menacing. Although his opening line left something to be desired. If ever there was a missed opportunity for a nice unsettling “Who enters my domain?” this was it.

The lights dimmed momentarily, then came back on flickering. It’s a good thing none of us suffered from epilepsy. The doors interspersed around the room all slammed shut, including the one leading back to B-457. No great loss; I didn’t want to return there anyway. Fortunately Irene had enough presence of mind to wedge the one leading to the Library. The floor creaked, the bookcases moaned and shuddered.

Possessing his library indeed. Which probably meant he could turn our surroundings against us as and when he pleased.

Something to look forward to.

He materialised at the other end of the room. Not as an actual real human being, but more like a vaguely human-shaped shadow without distinguishable features. If that was what self-improvement was supposed to look like, I think I’d pass.

‘What have you done to my library?’ he demanded.

Since no one else answered, I opened the batting. ‘Spring cleaning,’ I announced. It was autumn. ‘Decluttering. I’ve heard it’s very good for you.’

I didn’t think Alberich subscribed to that philosophy; the room darkened in a very menacing way.

And we knew it worked. Not enough to undo all the damage this Library did, but enough to maybe slow the damage and even reverse it a little. The lights in the real Library seemed a little brighter and flickered less often. We’d upgraded it from on one foot in the grave to back on life support.

I hoped to do a lot more than that.

‘You’ve brought the traitor,’ he observed. The shadow didn’t have eyes, but we all knew he homed in on Emily, who made soft panicky noises. Not without reason either; Alberich really didn’t take opposition well. ‘And you have even found a way to undo my words, Ray. You always have been an exceptional Librarian.’

‘I don’t need compliments from raving madmen, thank you,’ Irene said coolly. ‘What do you want?’

Personally, I thought the what needed no further explanation. It was the why I was interested in. Because, yes, Alberich was barking mad, but I’d had a nice long look at the depths of his soul a while ago and I knew that he had some motive, some reason to hate the Library with such a passion. No one embarked on such a complicated mission to create a parallel library with its own librarians without a very good reason. Even the clinically insane rarely do something that requires such effort without a motive.

‘The Library is rotten the core,’ Alberich declared. This guy had no self-awareness either. ‘It deserves to fall.’

‘I don’t take lessons in morality from someone who tries to kill his own employees when they do something they don’t like,’ Irene pointed out.

Alberich laughed, which upped the level of creepiness by about a hundred percent. ‘And you think the Library treats its people any kinder?’

‘I have not seen any Librarians drop dead when they disobey their orders,’ Irene retorted. True enough. The Library only put them on probation and treated them like pariahs. Not exactly a convincing claim to the moral high ground, but still miles ahead of Alberich’s workplace agreements. ‘That’s more your area of expertise.’

Alberich ignored that very good point in favour of staring hard at Emily. He had a pretty penetrating stare for a guy without eyes. ‘You thought you could stab me in the back and return without consequences?’

With us Emily had demonstrated a ton of attitude. We may have defeated her – or at least forced her into a corner – but she wasn’t really afraid of us. We were just obstacles to overcome, minor speedbumps on the road of life, to be quickly driven over and left behind. Alberich fell into a different category. Alberich was dangerous. And she knew it. For him she had no witty retorts or contemptuous put-downs. She only cowered.

I knew he’d go for her, so I readied my shield bracelet, but I still wasn’t fast enough.

‘Bookcases, crush the traitor.’

I can defend against attacks from one direction only. But the improvised missiles – still shedding books – came at us from all sides. Irene shrieked and pulled Kai and Murphy with her into the Library. Thomas followed them of his own accord. Mouse went for Vale; he cannonballed into his legs and knocked him away from the worst of the onslaught.

I was made of sterner stuff, so took up position in front of William and Emily to defend them against all comers. Several bookcases – heavy oak, if anyone is interested – bounced off my shield. And then came back. As if it wasn’t bad enough, the bookcases behind us threw themselves at us too. I tried to do what I could, but remaining unbattered wasn’t going to happen. One clipped me across the shoulder and only avoided my head because I threw myself out of the way. Another one whacked me on my already black and blue back and knocked me over entirely.

I tried to maintain the shield, but it wasn’t happening. I ate a mouthful of dusty carpet while above me the Clash of the Bookcases reached a deafening crescendo. Splinters and shards rained down on me.

‘Bookcases, hurl yourselves away from me and then be still!’ Irene screamed over the din.

Another earth-shaking collision of bookcases and wall caused another deafening roar, followed by the sound of wreckage coming down all around the room. The whole thing had maybe taken half a minute, but by the time I managed to prop myself up on my elbows to have a good look around, the place was unrecognisable.

The only word I could think of to describe the result was carnage. On the plus side, it wasn’t my fault for once. If Alberich wanted to wreck his own place, he could foot his own bill.

Speaking of the devil, I couldn’t see him anywhere. The lights had miraculously survived the destruction, but I saw no evil shadows lurking anywhere. Of course, if he possessed his library, he could be anywhere.

I tried to get back up again, which earned me a screaming protest from every bone, muscle, and nerve in my back. I had to make my staff double up as a walking stick, or I might not have made it. Thomas assisted me, not fooled by my if-I-can-stand-it’s-fine routine. To be fair, I wasn’t sure I was fooled myself.

But I had got off lightly. William was still on his feet too, but only because he had found a convenient piece of wall to lean against. He looked a bit dazed. Blood trickled down the left side of his face.

Emily had got off worst. Irene had banished and then destroyed all the bookcases, but some must have executed Alberich’s command, because everything from the waist down was the kind of sight that could turn stomachs. I was no medical expert, but even I could tell she’d never walk again, even if she survived this. I could see bits of bloodied bones, among other delights. She must be in a world of pain. And she was conscious enough to experience every agonising second of it; the sounds emerging from her throat were terrible, a mixture of moaning, screaming, and sobbing. The sound of a human being in unimaginable pain.

And for all that she was a scheming little plotter who had no moral qualms about sending other people to their multiple executions, it was impossible not to pity her. No one deserved to go like this. One near death experience was bad enough, but to follow that up with a second, that might not be a near death experience in the end... More like a very dead experience.

Normally I would have called for an ambulance, but that was in Chicago, not in Alberich’s special place. And for all that we had a mixed company of people with many talents, not one of us had any medical training beyond rudimentary first aid.

Except…

‘Irene, can you keep Alberich off my back?’ I asked.

Her face was pale, but she had that grim set to her mouth that suggested she was raring for a fight. ‘I can certainly try.’ The tone suggested she would make the experience an acutely painful one. For Alberich, just to be clear.

I sat down beside Emily and called up my non-rent paying tenant. ‘Lasciel. I need your help.’ And if you think having to speak those words didn’t hurt, you can think again.

She re-appeared as the sexy librarian, peering disapprovingly at me through her spectacles. ‘No,’ she said.

‘No, you don’t know or no, you don’t want to?’ I demanded.

‘The girl tried to have you killed,’ she pointed out, as if there was something wrong with my memory. ‘You cannot seriously think about saving her life now, my host.’

I didn’t have time for this. ‘Do you know how?’

‘No,’ she said, too quickly.

‘You’re a terrible liar.’ Not usually, but I think my request to use her powers to do good got under her skin. ‘How do I save her life?’

‘You believe that I routinely engage in the preservation of life?’

She had certainly spent some effort on preserving my life in the past few years, but that fell under self-preservation. If I died, she died with me. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have any experience with keeping a body functional enough for a soul to live in. And I told her so.

This annoyed her. ‘My host, I could destroy every part of her body even as I named it.’

I shrugged. ‘Then healing is simply a process of reversal, isn’t it?’ If she could identify the broken bits, we were halfway to fixing them. A bit simplistic, maybe, but workable enough. I don’t like to go for complicated when simple will do.

Lasciel stared at me, lost for words. It might be the first time a human had thought of a solution before she had. I don’t think she relished the experience.

‘Do you know how to heal her?’ I insisted.

The look turned mutinous. I couldn’t get a read on her emotions like she could get on mine, but it didn’t take a great detective to deduce that Lasciel was in no way inclined to be helpful. The only reason she didn’t speed Emily on her way was that I would never let her.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why do you want to heal her? She has done nothing but try to get you killed since you met.’

‘Because no one deserves to die like this.’

Her death stare told me that in her opinion a lot of people deserved to die like this and, right at this moment, I happened to be on the top of that list. ‘Your police friend is right; you do have a weak spot for the damsel in distress.’

No one could deny that Emily fit that description, not even me. I just believed that it wasn’t relevant. ‘She’s a stupid, rebellious, overconfident kid who got in over her head with something she didn’t fully understand and someone she severely underestimated.’ Something about that struck a bit of a chord, but no need to tell her that. ‘No one deserves to die for something stupid they did before their brains were fully developed.’

She regarded me thoughtfully. In my peripheral vision, a shard of furniture flew overhead. So Alberich had recovered from the shock and retaliated. I didn’t have the time to keep an eye on him as well, so I left it to the rest of the crew. But that also meant that I really didn’t have time to argue back and forth with Lasciel.

So I stopped asking nicely. ‘Tell me how to fix her.’

She crossed her arms over her chest.

‘Tell. Me. How. To. Fix. Her.’ It’s hard to get the whole angrily-clenching-your-jaw-thing in mental conversation, but I managed it no problem.

‘You make no sense,’ Lasciel declared.

Pot calling the kettle black, as far as I was concerned. ‘I make no sense because I don’t want to kill everyone who’s ever crossed me?’

It said more about her and her lack of morals. As if I needed reminding that I was dealing with someone who wasn’t actually human. Concepts like human decency, human kindness, and human compassion meant nothing to her because she was not human. She had never been human. She understood humanity, to some extent. She certainly knew what buttons to press to make people do what she wanted.

But just because she knew what made people tick, didn’t mean she really truly grasped it. The nasty sides of humanity she could relate to. The nicer bits… Not so much.

She seemed all geared up for another argument, but then she stopped. ‘Oh. I see.’

Nice and enigmatic, but not actually useful.

So I reverted to my earlier demand. ‘Tell me how to fix her.’

Third time was the charm with Faeries, but it finally proved useful with my Denarian too. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I must warn you, my host…’

‘Yes, strain, headache, dizziness, chance of sudden death,’ I cut over her. ‘Can we get a move on before she bleeds to death?’

For a moment she stared at me, but then we got to work. I couldn’t say I relished the experience of actually working with her instead of against her, but there was a life at stake. Say what you like about her, Lasciel did know what she was doing. Compared to her, I looked like a bumbling novice. She made me do things with my powers that I didn’t know were possible. I didn’t know I had that kind of talent in the first place.

Something to explore later.

Dangerous, of course. The more things she showed me, the more she made sure I saw the benefits of letting her in and relying on her knowledge. She’d try to hook me on it, get me addicted and then… Well, the end result would be me with a coin in my hand and a full-blown demon in my head. I’d be Nicodemus 2.0.

‘You could be more,’ Lasciel whispered as we worked. ‘In time, when you have had time to grow. You have more raw talent than he has. If only you would learn to harness it.’

I ignored her as best I could. She’d won a round, and she knew it. She was restrained in her triumph, but she didn’t bother hiding it. And I wasn’t sure she had no reason. When push came to shove and it was a choice between letting a girl die or asking her for help, I had made exactly the choice she expected.

I really should devote some effort to figuring out some way to destroy that coin.

She huffed, but toned down the gloating.

And Emily lived. She still boasted a complexion more common on corpses, but when we were done, she had no more broken bones. She also didn’t have any bits sticking out where they shouldn’t be sticking out. She breathed easier. Of course, she had lost a lot of blood, and there was – apparently – no magical way to replace that. Not that Lasciel had ever been interested enough to learn.

That didn’t surprise me.

She hadn’t been kidding about the energy drain, though. Or the headache. Or the dizziness. But sudden death didn’t happen, so that was a win. It seemed a better idea to remain sitting for a while though while I took in the situation around me.

And found myself looking at a larger-than-life, very angry Dragon.

Chapter Text

Irene left Harry to look after Emily as best he could. First aid was not an area in which she could boast much knowledge or experience anyway. She didn’t think Harry had the necessary requirements either, but given the amount of injuries he tended to accumulate on any given case, perhaps he had learned on the job. She had bigger things to worry about.

Harry and Irene had made short work of most of his ammunition, but that didn’t mean Alberich was now powerless. This whole library was his creation, his to command and do with as he willed. And Irene hadn’t forgotten Emily’s remark that Alberich had made more of his own librarians. And who knew how many of those were lurking somewhere nearby.

It took her a while to locate Alberich’s shadow after the worst of the destruction. She found him where he had been before the Battle of the Bookcases; on the other side of the room, hovering several feet above the floor.

The show-off.

He stared at them or, more specifically, at Emily. And while Irene really didn’t like the girl, and would have been more than happy to drag her in front of as many senior Librarians as she could find, she drew the line at murder. And by bookcase, no less. Adding insult to injury. As if she needed any more evidence that Alberich was not cut out to be a good Librarian.

She tried to ignore the memory of herself hurling books at the Corpsetaker. That had been a completely different situation.

Murphy took her place on Irene’s right hand, holding her gun as if she was seconds away from using it. What good a bullet was going to be against a shadow, Irene didn’t know, but she appreciated the sentiment.

‘Stand down, Ray,’ Alberich said.

Quite the achievement for a guy without a mouth. As Irene then told him. Hanging around with Harry Dresden must have eroded the filter between her brain and her mouth. This might worry her more if she thought that playing nice with Alberich increased her chances of survival. Which she didn’t.

The air itself felt more hostile as soon as the last word left Irene’s mouth. ‘I admire your resourcefulness, Ray, but I will remove you if you do not get out of my way.’

Since Irene had been acting on the understanding that he would do that anyway, this threat failed to have her quaking in her boots. ‘I think we both know the answer to that one,’ she said coolly. The longer she could keep him talking, the longer Harry had to sort out Emily and get back to join the defence. Because the last time Alberich had gone up against Harry, he had had a real fight on his hands.

She ran through a list of words in her head that might come in handy when dealing with a disembodied shadow – not a situation she had to deal with on a daily basis – and kept her eyes on him.

Alberich remained hovering in the same spot. ‘There is still time,’ Alberich said. ‘You can still join me, Ray. Soon the Library will be no more. Wouldn’t you like to continue your work?’

‘No, thank you. I don’t like your terms of employment,’ Irene retorted.

She didn’t ask what he meant by “soon the Library will be no more” but only because she had worked out that bit for herself. And while transferring books from this place to the Library had staved off the worst, they’d need a lot more books to reverse the effects entirely. And she didn’t think Alberich would calmly let them walk off with his hoard. Irene had no idea how big this place was, and how many books it contained. Too many, probably.

She tried not to dwell on the futility of her mission. She definitely didn’t panic. Or so she told herself.

‘Can’t you hear it, Ray?’ he pressed. He must have contaminated himself with chaos too much and now started with his villain monologue. ‘The ticking clock? Ticking down to midnight and the end of the Library.’

Given how much else Irene had on her mind she hadn’t paid it any mind. Now there was no unhearing it. It wasn’t a loud sound, but now that she knew what it signified, it drowned out everything else.

Murphy must have thought he talked too much, because she shot him. The shot rang out loud and, to Irene’s surprise, was followed by a scream of pain. The bullet itself embedded itself in the far wall, but not before tearing through the shadow and… well, wounding it. Irene didn’t know how else to describe it. The shadow seemed to shrink away from the place where the bullet had come through. It curled in on itself as if hurt and it didn’t close the hole.

Well, not immediately anyway.

Murphy shrugged, smugly. ‘Cold iron bullets,’ she explained. ‘Worked wonders on the Erlking too.’

Clearly this wasn’t her first rodeo with Fae-like creatures.

‘Light, bright and clear!’ Irene commanded, hoping to follow up on Murphy’s success by dispelling Alberich’s shadow entirely.

That didn’t work. The light became almost too bright to see, but the shadow only became clearer, as if it benefited from a greater contrast between the light and the dark.

‘Group close together,’ Kai said. ‘I have a plan. Miss Murphy, might I trouble you to shoot him a few times more until I am done?’

Murphy nodded. ‘No problem.’ She shot Alberich again, through the other shoulder this time. The first “wound” had almost closed, so she sent another one in the general direction too, just below the first area of impact.

That gave Alberich something else to think about. His screams reverberated off the walls. Proof, if proof were needed, that filling yourself up with chaotic powers was not the best way to invulnerability. Irene might not be immortal, but at least she could step over a barbed wire circle.

Although a cold iron bullet to the shoulder might not improve her quality of life either.

Kai utilised Alberich’s distraction to draw a circle on the floor with a piece of chalk, a trick he must have picked up from Harry. Irene had seen him use it, mainly to cook up spells and bring them to the boil before he released them into the wild. And the iron circle she had seen him use could be used for summoning, containment, and banishment. Irene presumed Kai didn’t mean to do any of that, but was at a loss for what could be done with this one while Harry was still on medical duties.

Alberich screamed again, but in rage this time. ‘You think you can escape from me so easily, can you?’ His shadow dove to the ground and slammed a hand down.

Irene braced herself for some sort of earthquake, but that was not what happened. Where his hand touched the floor, mould sprung up. And then it spread, creeping over the floor, over the broken furniture, closer and closer to the little group huddling behind a defence line of chalk.

Irene would have preferred a wall if she thought it would stop the mould. She hesitated about using the Language, but only very briefly. ‘Mould caused by Alberich, reverse course and go back to where you came from!’

Not the best way maybe to get that stinking rot away from them, but the only one she could think of at the time. And it did seem to work. The spread slowed, hesitantly, and then retreated. Alberich growled and offered his counterattack: ‘Mould, spread rapidly!’

That got a reaction pretty quick.

‘Don’t worry,’ Kai said. He closed the circle, but remained on the outside. ‘You’ll be safe in there.’

‘What about you, out there?’ Irene demanded.

Kai’s face became grimly determined. ‘If you want to combat the forces of chaos, who better than a Dragon?’

Who better indeed? But Alberich was no regular Fae. Could a regular Dragon really do anything against the powers of chaos and the Language both? If the circumstances had been less dire, she would have pulled him back into the circle with them, but he was out of reach.

‘Miss Murphy, please refrain from shooting from now on,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll take care of this.’

And then he changed. Irene had seen it before, but it remained an awe-inspiring thing to watch. Just as well that Alberich had designed his rooms as spacious and with high ceilings, or Kai might never have fit. He roared, slamming one claw down on the ground.

The building shook. Alberich reeled back. The mould stopped abruptly. Kai roared again and the mould retreated.

‘You think you can unleash your pet on me?’ Alberich roared. ‘You are greatly mistaken, Ray.’

Irene bristled with indignation on Kai’s behalf, but Kai didn’t need her to fight his corner. He may not have the Language, but he had order to combat Alberich’s chaos. And in this shape, he was a great deal less vulnerable than in his human one.

‘Bookcases, crush the Dragon! Floor, hold the Dragon’s feet! Mould, cover the Dragon!’ Alberich screamed.

Kai was already airborne, roaring again. The walls shook. Such pieces of bookcases as still remained tried to hurl themselves at him, but they bounced off without doing any harm. Kai made sure he didn’t touch the floor, so neither of the last two of Alberich’s commands got off the ground, so to speak.

Just like that, this was no longer a place Alberich liked to be. He had no trouble with pesky wizards and meddling Librarians, but he clearly had enough sense left to not get in claw’s reach of a wrathful Dragon. Kai came right at him. Alberich didn’t hesitate; he turned around and raced away.

An almost comical race around the room ensued. They were almost equally as fast, so Alberich managed to stay ahead and Kai never really gained.

This wouldn’t get them out of this situation, so Irene had better think of something.

Vale, it seemed, already had. ‘Winters, it occurs to me that we may soon be in a position from which you may expel this being from this room,’ he observed. He kept his voice down, although he needn’t have bothered; Alberich was too preoccupied keeping sufficient distance between himself and Kai to pay any attention to the goings-on at ground level.

Oh.

Of course.

That was why Kai chased Alberich around the room like a cat after a mouse: not to catch him, but to ward the place. Dragon wards. In a place with books and an open door to the Library right behind them.

‘I might need more books,’ Irene said, business-like, slamming the lid on the panic when she envisioned Alberich’s response to getting banished out of his own library. ‘We’ve moved too many out of this space.’

She hadn’t noticed that Harry had finished dealing with Emily until he spoke. ‘If I amplify your voice, can you call them out of the adjacent rooms?’

He didn’t look good. The fact that he still sat down should have been enough of a clue that fixing up Emily had taken a huge bite out of his reserves, but if that failed to do the job then the slightly unfocused gaze, the pale face, and the shaking hands would communicate it perfectly.

Irene thought she could be forgiven for staring at least a bit, because somehow he had pulled it off. Emily didn’t look well, not quite, but all the things that should be inside were inside. She was no longer bleeding and all her bones seemed to be in their proper positions. Not that she demonstrated a very grateful attitude; she scowled at Harry and scooted away from him.

‘Irene?’ Harry insisted.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think that could work.’

It would give her a nasty headache, but what else was new? Every case that involved Harry Dresden ended with her nursing the headache to end all headaches. Then again, he might have come to a similar conclusion about her; he never had a case involving Librarians that didn’t end in major injury.

Maybe she should send him a fruit basket to aid his recovery when all of this was over.

Provided they survived this.

And they’d never do that if she sat here dawdling. Harry had his priorities straight because he was already chanting. Right, they sat in the middle of his magic circle, so cooking up some spell should be easy. He remained on the floor, probably because he might keel over if he tried to stand. She remembered that not too long ago he had blown most of his strength on trying to work magic past the very chains invented to prevent that. Had he even entirely recovered before he attempted to drag Emily back from the brink of death?

Well up to their usual injury count so far, Irene reflected wryly.

Harry finished up and nodded at her.

Irene took a deep breath, braced herself for the backlash and spoke at ear-bleeding volume: ‘All doors that can hear my voice, open wide!’

They obeyed.

Now for the tricky bit: ‘All the books in Alberich’s library that can hear my voice, come off your shelves and assemble here in this room!’

Alberich could only have missed her command if he had been deaf, and the results not at all. Irene’s voice must have been loud enough to disturb books several rooms away and all of them came zipping into this room. He gave a shriek of rage and, ignoring Kai, dove down to Irene’s little group. Kai broke off the chase in favour of finishing his warding.

They had him. Or at least, they had him trapped in this room.

Which might not be the good news it appeared, because he was spitting mad.

He dove down with incredible speed, and came to a sudden halt about five inches away from Irene’s face thanks to the many uses of a piece of chalk. Apparently. Irene made a mental note to invest in some when she got out of here. As a defensive weapon it was severely underestimated.

Before he could think of nasty ways to get out or to kill them, Irene invoked the Library. And since Harry hadn’t bothered to cancel his voice-amplification spell, she did that at a volume probably audible several alternates over. And she made sure to do it thoroughly, including both the space in and out of the circle.

The effect was instantaneous. Alberich’s screams of rage turned to screams of pain and he vanished. In fact, more than Alberich had to clear the field, because nothing chaos-contaminated could exist within the Library. The mould melted back into the floor and didn’t come back. Vale staggered and had to brace himself against the wall.

Oh. Well, that was not bad for an unintended side effect. If Irene had known it was that simple to deal with his chaos contamination, she would have done it months ago.

That was the end of the good news, because in all the crisis they hadn’t contemplated what exactly might happen to a space that had been built with chaos when all the chaos was forcefully evicted from it. The answer to that unasked query involved a lot of destruction. Not really surprising.

Just life-endangering.

‘Time to go!’ Harry announced when all around them the building began to creak and groan and splinter.

Irene’s first instinct was to go back into the Library, but then she’d have no guarantee that she could ever get back to this place. And she hadn’t retrieved Emma or found a way to put an end to Alberich’s horrible creation. Much as she wanted to, this job wasn’t finished.

Mouse made an accurate assessment of the situation and dragged a protesting Emily into the Library by the back of her mangled dress. Irene would have loved to have Harry’s dog with them for the last bit, but they couldn’t leave Emily unguarded either; this was no girl to give free access to anywhere, certainly not something like the Library.

‘Send the books into the Library first,’ Thomas suggested.

Good plan. ‘All the books that are in this room, go into the Library and neatly stack yourselves!’

The moment the books flew at the door was the moment to go. Irene vaguely recalled Alberich getting pushed out through the wall on her left, so she chose a door to her right. The sound of running footsteps behind her told her that everyone followed. They emerged into a room much like the one that they left behind, completely devoid of books. So were the next four rooms they tore through at breakneck speed. Irene took a small moment to feel a little smug. Whether or not she managed to retrieve Emma, she had never acquired that many books in one mission before. That she had stolen them right from underneath Alberich’s shadowy nose only added to her sense of achievement.

Now if only she could get Emma and then find a way to bring Alberich’s entire creation down around his ears, that would be the cherry on the cake. Quite an ambitious scheme, of course, especially considering she was now running away from Alberich.

She finally called a halt about a dozen rooms later. They’d left the empty rooms behind some time ago and Alberich hopefully even further. Tearing through this place in blind haste wouldn’t help them get to the book any faster. They needed a plan.

Then she remembered that they left Emily behind.

‘Does anyone have the page?’ she asked.

Thomas smiled smugly and pulled it out of his pocket.

He really had all the makings of a good Librarian, Irene had to admit. He had the intelligence, the ability to think on his feet and, not unimportantly, a streak of deviousness that no good Librarian could do without. And of course his skill at pickpocketing would certainly come in handy. She’d have to recommend to Coppelia that it’d be well worth the trouble to offer him an official apprenticeship despite his… peculiarities. There might be ways to work around those. And the benefits of someone like him as a Librarian could be considerable.

Then she turned to Harry and seriously questioned whether he had enough strength to move under his own steam, never mind casting spells and fighting off Alberich.

He held out his hand and Thomas handed the page over without comment but with an eyeroll that spoke volumes. Harry flipped him off.

‘Keep the owner of this place off my back.’

Irene would prefer it if the owner didn’t show up at all, but thought the chances of that slim to non-existent. They’d robbed his library, unceremoniously expelled him from one of the rooms, wrecked said room, shot him with cold iron, and in the process thoroughly pissed him off. He’d never let them leave this place alive if he could help it.

Harry busied himself doing magical things to the page, so the rest of them gathered in a circle around him facing outwards to let him do his thing. Irene resisted the urge to ask him to be careful with it. If this could get them to the book, she really shouldn’t mind if he destroyed only the title page. This had become a whole lot bigger than just one book.

In the silence she heard the ticking of the clock again, but it seemed slower and fainter. Had they perhaps moved away from the centre? Or had they shifted the balance of power enough to weaken this place and strengthen the Library? She hadn’t counted, but she knew she’d emptied out several decently-sized rooms full of books. That must have had some effect, surely.

William, who by now must surely be thoroughly out of his depth, ended up next to Irene. ‘Miss Irene, would it be fair to assume that, to ensure our safe return from this place, it might be prudent to deal in a more permanent fashion with its owner?’ The tone remained unfailingly amiable, even though the words were not.

It paid to remember that he led a double life most of the time. She had no idea what he did in that spy-side of life, but she assumed it was a murkier and darker world than her own. As evidenced by the casual way in which he suggested killing Alberich.

Irene wasn’t sure that she could ever be so careless about taking a life. She hoped not. As much as she didn’t like the dreams where she relived the ends of the Corpsetaker and Lord Guantes, better that than remorselessly pulling the trigger on people. Or using the Language to do some lethal damage.

That wasn’t to say that William didn’t make a very good point. As long as Alberich was alive, he would keep trying. He’d never stop. And if this library didn’t show exactly how far he was willing to go, she didn’t know what would.

‘I don’t know that we can,’ she said instead. They could banish him, pump him full of holes, set fire to him… Nothing ever seemed to stick. They could destroy the skins he wore, but Alberich himself survived. Iron hurt him, but didn’t seem to do any lasting damage. How did one even kill someone who wasn’t fully human anymore? ‘The best we can hope for is to bring this place down around his ears.’

William considered this. ‘I bow to your superior expertise with the villain,’ he said. ‘But I should like to repay him in some way for what he did to Emily.’

A spy with an unshakable sense of familial duty, whether he liked his family or not. He was a better person than Irene in that respect.

‘Wrecking his plans will do that,’ she said. And that was true as well.

‘I shall turn my mind to that, then.’

Irene looked over her shoulder, but whatever Harry was doing with the page, she couldn’t get the measure of it. She wished he’d hurry up. Wherever Alberich had gone, he would not stay gone indefinitely. She checked the walls for unusual shadows, but found nothing.

‘It was stealing his books that alerted him last time,’ Kai, now back in human form, suggested. ‘Maybe if we’ll wait until we have found Emma until we touch another book, we might sneak around unnoticed.’

‘We had to clear out over half the room before he showed up,’ Murphy pointed out.

Good news, of a sort at least. Irene was hardly asking for Alberich to barge in on them. But in a sense this was bad news too. Just how vast was this place that it could take so long for Alberich to find them? How many Librarians did he have running around, doing his bidding? And for just how long had he been at this? It must have been a while, to be able to build up such a collection of books.

And the Library had suspected nothing of it until the Traverses began to malfunction.

A very chilling thought indeed.

Harry made a noise of frustration.

‘Doesn’t it work?’ Thomas asked.

Another noise of similar nature followed the first. ‘Barely,’ Harry said. ‘Emily must have torn this page out days ago. It’s lost most of its connection to the book.’

Why that should matter, Irene didn’t know. Of course, she didn’t have a lot of expertise in all things magical, but she bowed to his superior expertise. If his method failed, she could maybe use one of the books in this place to lead her to Emma. But she had a lingering suspicion that any use of the Language might alert Alberich and bring him straight to them. Best avoided until there was no other choice.

‘Most, but not all?’ Kai asked.

‘I’ve got a general direction,’ Harry said, nodding. ‘It might get stronger when we get closer.’

But he wasn’t sure.

Lacking any better options, they set off again, Harry in the lead. Irene walked right behind him, in case Alberich should appear and they needed someone to fend him off. Just behind her came Murphy, gun at the ready, with Vale and Thomas behind her. Kai and William brought up the rear. As defensive formations went, this wasn’t so bad.

Unless Alberich rose up out of the floor or dropped down from the ceiling.

Irene resisted the urge to keep looking up or down.

The place was a maze. The Library had its spatial issues, but this place beggared belief. It twisted, turned back on itself until one barely knew which way was up. Not exactly a surprise, given the way Alberich had turned his flirtation with chaos into a full-blown love affair. The inherent chaos of this place made Irene’s brand itch so fiercely now it felt like burning. Just how close to the deep end of chaos had Alberich created his library?

They moved in silence, but not one of them felt easy about it. They listened hard, trying to figure out if Alberich approached, although a shadow had no footsteps or breathing to give him away. And he didn’t bother about using doors and corridors either; last time he had entered through a wall and a row of bookcases.

‘Is the connection stronger?’ Irene asked in a whisper.

Harry made a noise that was neither disagreement nor enthusiastic assent. She got the feeling that he was struggling to keep the enchantment going more than he let on. Or maybe the power he’d already flung around like it was going out of fashion was taking its toll on him. Well, and he’d been thrown about like a leaf in a storm.

She exchanged a look with Murphy and they both caught up with him. Just in case he suddenly fell over. Just the kind of physical condition you’d want to be in when going for a confrontation with a major baddie. Irene’s major headache didn’t inspire any confidence either.

They never encountered another soul, even though they must have walked for miles. Alberich must have all of his librarians out on assignment. Or locked in dungeons. Goodness knew what the rest of his workplace agreements must be like, but the way he treated Emily wasn’t encouraging.

‘I think we’re close,’ Harry said eventually.

‘How can you tell?’ Murphy asked.

‘The pull is stronger.’ He grimaced. ‘It shouldn’t be, but it is.’

‘It’s high chaos in here,’ Irene said. ‘I’m not sure if Alberich intended that. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was in Venice,’ because Kai could walk around without writhing in agony, ‘but bad enough that things will fall into narrative shapes.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Murphy, who lacked the experience of a weekend in Faerie Venice.

‘Things will happen like they do in stories,’ Irene explained. ‘No good story will allow the heroes to be thwarted before they get anywhere near their goal.’

‘So we can look forward to a climactic confrontation in the heart of this place?’

Harry and Irene exchanged a look of mutual understanding. It would be the Train all over again. High stakes might make this more likely to go their way, but if Alberich had any understanding of his own creation – and all evidence to date suggested that he did – he might make this work in his favour, the lone owner fighting off the invaders. Not as compelling a narrative as the Great Heist one Irene and company tried to spin, but Alberich was on his home ground, which gave him the advantage. He probably knew this place like the back of his shadowy hand.

‘If he’s clever, he’ll pretend this is like Home Alone and play Kevin to our burglars,’ Harry muttered darkly.

Not a very cheering prospect, especially since that would be a compelling narrative, as well as an acutely painful one for the intruders.

‘Can you not give him ideas, Harry?’ Murphy complained.

But if Alberich was listening, he didn’t utilise the opportunity to lay some deadly booby-traps. The way ahead remained clear.

Irene knew it the moment they stepped into the centre. It looked different, for starters. The other rooms were only big, but this one was grand, as if extra expense and attention had been lavished on it. The carpet was softer, the ceiling more polished, the bookcases of higher quality. Irene suspected that the books in here must be of equal improved value.

Somewhere in the distance she spied some sort of towering glowing metal contraption. She squinted. Winding stairs leading up to a big clock at the top. It was half past eleven. At her best guess, something unpleasant would be happening once it struck twelve.

Half an hour. Not a lot of time, but maybe just enough to think of something clever.

‘I don’t suppose we could help ourselves to some select volumes?’ asked the book thief in training slyly.

‘Let’s wait until we have Emma.’ They had entered the heart of Alberich’s domain. If he hadn’t upped the security in here, he wasn’t as clever as Irene had assumed him to be. ‘He might know it if we touch something here.’

Instinctively she knew – she couldn’t exactly reason why she knew, only that she did – that these were the books that really caused the Library so much trouble. These were the ones of great value, the crucial and unique books that created the strongest links.

And with a sinking feeling she also knew that there was no way they could ever clear this place out before Alberich could get to them. They could never shift enough books to stop this library from continuing to be a threat to the Library.

Not unless they could, as William had so succinctly suggested, deal with Alberich in a permanent fashion.

Which might be an option if they actually knew how to do that.

Until they did, there was no choice but to go on and make it all up as they went along. To no one’s surprise, Harry led them through the stacks in the direction of the metal staircase tower that seemed to be the heart of this library. If Emma was as rare and valuable as Coppelia thought, possession of it should create a very strong link with the alternate of origin. And what with Harry still leading them in the direction of the centre, she wouldn’t mind betting it was right in that metal tower. Somewhere.

Under heavy security, most likely.

‘Harry, stop!’ Thomas hissed suddenly.

They all halted. And listened. At first Irene wasn’t sure what had caught his attention, but Thomas’s senses were more sensitive than hers. All she heard was the ticking of the clock in the distance. Unsettling, but not an immediate threat.

And then she froze. Footsteps. And since all of her party were currently huddling together, it couldn’t be any of them. Another one of Alberich’s librarians maybe? A problem, but not one she couldn’t deal with, Irene thought.

Alberich’s voice then quickly put paid to that notion: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are…’