“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
I settled back down and fidgeted with my phone.
“Your mom’s wrong, you know.” The keys clicked in the silence. “You don’t have PTSD, and I doubt you’re an alcoholic. You’re just different.”
“Different good? Or different bad?”
I hadn’t realized how important the question was to me until I waited with baited breath for her to pronounce her verdict. I trusted her judgement and didn’t know what I’d do if she thought something was wrong with me.
“It’s too soon to tell.”
I released the breath I was holding.
“I’ve found something you can help me with,” she said abruptly. “Wait here.”
She grabbed a cart and vanished into the stacks.
“Okay. Guess I’ll just wait here.”
I waited and waited, finally getting up and walking around the study area. With the lights dim and the stacks cast in shadow, the library had an air of creepiness, like it was just waiting to pick us off one by one. Give me a city back ally or warehouse any day. I didn’t know how Caroline could stand spending her evenings here.
The creek of wheels announced Caroline’s presence long before she appeared out of the gloom. The cart was piled high with books. There must have been dozens of them.
“What are those?” I asked, eyeing them with distaste.
“I told you. Most of the camp’s records were never digitized. These books have parts of those records. We’ll have to go through each one to see if we can find what you’re looking for.”
“We?”
There was a reason I’d refused Mom’s offer to send me back to school. Spending my life looking through a bunch of dusty old books held no appeal.
She raised one eyebrow. “You didn’t think I was going to go through all of these by myself, did you?”
I had thought that.
“No, of course not. That would be rude of me.”
“Right.” The tone of her voice made it apparent she didn’t believe any of the words out of my mouth. “None of the names on the list you gave came up in my search.”
That meant the draugr had never intended to give me its name and had no intention of letting me find its baubles. I really thought he’d given me at least one real name. Given the number of books on her cart, it would be nearly impossible finding one person in all those pages.
“I combined some of the first and last names and had a couple hits,” Caroline continued. She slid a piece of paper with three names on them. “It’s a long shot, and of course, the original names might be in here but just haven’t been referenced yet.”
She selected several thick books and slid them towards me. I picked one up and flipped through. Words, words and more words. This was going to take all night.
“Start with those. I’ll find the rest of the books on the list and then help.”
There were more? I gave the stack a disbelieving look.
She unloaded the rest of the books and then wheeled the cart back towards the library stacks. She had a smile on her face, I realized. She was enjoying this. It made sense. She’d always gotten a perverse thrill out of a challenging project. The more difficult it was to hunt down the information, the bigger the charge she got. For all her protestations, I’d handed her the perfect task.
I slid a chair back and seated myself, pulling the first book towards me and opening it to the first page. The going was tedious and required lots of skimming. It wasn’t long before I’d sunk into a rhythm, flipping through page after page and making notes of interesting pieces of information. Caroline joined me, the stack of books she’d gone through growing in front of her at a greater rate than mine.
Several hours passed before the aches and pains in my back and neck forced me to sit upright. I stretched, raising my hands high and twisting back and forth. It felt like I should have a pizza or a frou frou coffee in front of me or something. College students still did that, right? I looked around. Maybe not in the library, though.
The lights flickered overhead. Once, twice and then a third time. Caroline didn’t bother looking up from the book she was studying, the lamp she’d turned on enabled her to read despite the flickering.
