There was a delicate balance between us, and I rather enjoyed his company now that I realized his stern looks weren’t full of judgment, but of care. We were working, right now, especially in bed, but also in many other ways. I’d decided to see where things were headed first; after all, I’d have to be an idiot not to notice that all these “soulmates” in town were absolutely right for one another. It was impossible not to hope that it was like that for Luther and me too.
“How goes the battle?” he asked softly. He perched against the table next to me, his warmth bathing my side. I had not realized that a chill had begun to set in, but this basement was a little cool. No sun warmed the stone walls, and shadows clung to every corner as if the place had been designed never to be brightly lit. Since that was better for old paper and old leather, I could hardly complain, though.
“Slow,” I admitted. “Some of the worst-hit books might not be salvageable at all.” I pointed at the carefully sorted piles of paper and scraps we’d collected from the wreckage. Some of the books were still at least somewhat in one piece, and some looked like they’d gone through a paper shredder, they were that bad.
His jaw tightened, but he nodded in acceptance. He had already known, because I’d bemoaned the fact last night. Then he’d set out to distract me from the back-aching work, bent over the old books, with a massage and a delightful dinner. “And the creature?” he asked, his gaze flicking from the scraps of paper to the still untouched books on the many other shelves down here.
He was asking me if I’d found anything out about it while going through the works I was restoring. Though I’d wanted to go through everything, my focus had been on preservation first—lest things deteriorate while I spent my time researching. I couldn’t help but feel like each of these books was incredibly important in its own way. I hesitated, then took a breath. “I think it came here specifically to destroy any books that referenced it. I found a scrap earlier—barely readable—but the name was there.” I met his eyes so I could see his reaction. “Galamut.”
He swore in a language I didn’t understand, something sharp and old, Germanic in origin. Then he straightened, composuresnapping back into place like armor. “I suspected as much,” he said. “I’ve been searching for additional references, and I think I have a lead.”
Hope sparked, fragile and dangerous. That was incredible news, because I was very certain the answers we were after wouldn’t be in the wreckage the creature had left behind. The damage was too precise; it had known exactly what it was doing. “Where?” I asked, wondering how many of these secret magical collections of books existed, a sense of adventure and excitement thrumming in my chest at the thought.
“Not here,” he said with a wry smile as an elegant hand gestured around the hidden library. “I need you to come with me to verify it, to make sure it’s real.” He cupped my shoulder with warm fingers, and I felt a spark of warmth at hearing the confidence in my skills in his voice.
“Okay,” I said without hesitation. If there was one thing I’d learned over the past two weeks, it was that Luther might be suspicious by nature, but once he was on your side, he wasreallyon your side. “Where is it?”
“Boston,” he drawled, his gray eyes on my face, as if he fully expected me to have a reaction to it. I hadn’t told him anything, so that had to be a figment of my guilty imagination. The word hit like a slap, like cold water splashing down my spine.
I shook my head immediately. “I can’t go back there,” I told him, and dread coiled through my belly at the thought. It had been so hard to keep it together the past few months before I got here. The desperate job-hunting, as I was forced to search further and wider to even get a response. No museum or library wouldhave me; I’d even tried auction houses as a consultant and been turned away. My savings had almost been gone by then, I had not just desperate, I’d been about to lose my home. Until Mayor Hightower—Grandma Liz—had reached out to me.
His brow furrowed as he considered my answer and the probably slightly panicked edge to my tone. I saw concern in his gray eyes, but a shiver shot down my spine as if he were trying to peer a little too deep into my soul, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let him in. “Why?” he asked when I didn’t say anything further but hovered there beside the table and him.
I glanced toward the doorway out of habit, toward where Drew had been standing, but it was empty now. My cheeks burned anyway. I really didn’t like this story; I’d been an idiot all around, falling for my nerdy, handsome boss before I realized what a jerk he was beneath the handsome, mild-mannered exterior.
“I… dated my boss,” I said quietly, as if saying it out loud were somehow worse than living it. “At the preservation lab. It was a mistake, of course. I should have known dating my boss was a terrible idea. When I ended it, he didn’t take it well, and things got… inappropriate. I got angry.” A humorless laugh escaped me. “I kicked him in the groin.” There, that was it, the big reason I’d taken a random job at a supposedly tiny, unimpressive library to attempt to salvage my career and soothe my frayed nerves.
Luther blinked once, as if he couldn’t quite believe what I’d said. His gaze traveled from my face down to my sneaker-clad feet, as if he were trying to figure out which one I’d used to kick David. It was actually kind of funny. I knew I’d seesawed between thisshocked hesitation and angry sass with him, but I doubted he had ever once thought I’d be capable of physical violence.
“He fired me,” I continued a bit more boldly when he kept staring, but any hint of judgment remained masked by his surprise. “And then he made sure I couldn’t get hired anywhere in Boston again.” Not just Boston—pretty much any major institute had been out. Everyone wanted references before hiring, and my jerk of an exwasmy reference. He made sure nobody wanted me. Grandma Liz might be the only person who hadn’t called David to check on my work ethics, or perhaps she had, but she’d seen right through him. I could see that happening.
The air around us shifted as the last of my sentence hung between us. Luther’s eyes glowed faintly silver, edged with something dangerous. He’d never shown me much of the other side of him, not yet, but now, a hint of fang flashed as his lips parted. “This man,” he said softly, “will not escape consequences. Trust me on that, darling.”
Instead of fear at the sight of something so dangerous and otherworldly, I felt wonder, even acceptance. This town had already taught me that some monsters were happy to be your best friend or your most passionate lover. Perhaps I really had found my place when I answered Grandma Liz’s ad at my lowest point in life.
“Really? You want to kick his ass? Perhaps we’d better avoid him, then…” I said with a smile. The light in his eyes flashed, then dimmed, and his mouth tilted up at the corner—not quite a smile, but amused—although I sensed that his anger had not abated. When I pulled him down for a kiss, he came, mouthbrushing mine so very tenderly that I knew he wanted me to know that he cared.
Plans formed quickly after that, but I didn’t realize how fast Luther could move when he felt the situation warranted it. We weren’t leaving that weekend or tomorrow; no, we were traveling today. In short order, I found myself saying goodbyes to people in town. Gwen hugged me tight when I ran by the B&B to tell her. She was sorting tools in the basement so she could refinish the library table tomorrow. “I heard you guys had a lead, so I figured I’d take care of the table while you were out!”
Grandma Liz, at the town hall, was neck-deep in her own research, it appeared, on the computer. She made a funny sight, leaned in close with a beautiful hand-knitted scarf around her shoulders. I expected glasses perched on the tip of her nose, but apparently, werewolf eyes didn’t need that kind of help. She waved Luther and me away like we were pests. “Yes, yes, go, you lovebirds. I have a lead of my own to chase down.”
Belfry insisted on coming, despite Luther’s gentle reminder about the Boston coven and the other familiars he despised that lived there.We need my protection,Belfry declared, a mutinous look in his beady black eyes. I had discovered him waiting by the car with a huge (for a bat) satchel full of silk vests in various shades of red. Luther made no further comment, but picked up Belfry’s luggage to put it with our own.
I found myself returning my rental car at the nearest airport a few hours later. Then, boarding a first-class flight beside a vampire and a bat nobody even looked twice at. I was pretty sure you couldn’t just take a bat across state lines, but Belfry might as well have been invisible to the staff. As the plane lifted intothe sky, Luther curled his fingers around my hand and gave a gentle squeeze. The dread building in my stomach twisted with something else: hope. For the first time, I believed I might be able to face Boston again. With him.
Chapter 25
Luther
Boston always thrummed like an exposed nerve. Even sealed inside a private car with tinted windows and reinforced wards humming softly beneath the leather seats, I felt it: the press of humanity, ambition, and memory. It scraped at instincts I had honed centuries ago. I did not like cities that believed themselves invincible. They were so bright and glittery, with so many dazzling lies; I much preferred the quiet simplicity of my home in the Hollow.
Still, I was relieved to have Jade away from Hillcrest Hollow. Danger lingered there like rot beneath fresh paint, and though the town had rallied admirably, I hated leaving her within reach of something that tore knowledge apart with teeth and claws—literally, in this case—though, in a way, the passage of time had done the same to our memories, long as they were.
Bringing her here felt like trading one threat for another, but at least this one I understood intimately. The local covens would not bother us if we were just passing through, and I very much intended for this to be a simple trip. No special visits, no talking to vampires stuck in their little, decadent bubbles.
On the flight, we’d each done some reading, but we’d also talked. She didn’t like discussing her past life here in the city, but she’d offered me glimpses when I gently prodded. About growing up as a surprise kid to much older parents, and how strict they’d been about which friends she could play with, how she’dretreated into a world of books because those were the friends you could always rely on.
Then she’d smiled at me and told me about Maggie, the roommate she had in college. “You would hate her, I think,” she had told me, with a twinkle in her eye. “She’s a very free spirit.” I couldn’t immediately picture my sweet librarian being best friends with a girl who thought dancing naked under the moon was fun, and who majored in art and mathematics at the same time, because those things were fun too.
