2. Crisis Averted?
J ahla Greene closed the front doors of the library behind her, but left them unlocked. Heading up the stairs, she paused as she reached the top, frowning on not finding her friend and boss, Ollie, or his cat, Red, waiting for her.
She pursed her lips. It could mean one of two things. He was too sick to get out of bed, or he was being dramatic somewhere.
Shaking her head, Jahla moved behind the circulation desk. Setting her bag down, she quickly ran to the restroom. Once she had thoroughly washed her hands after she’d finished, Jahla wandered back to Ollie’s office.
She doubted he was stuck in bed, as Jahla usually had some warning ahead of that. Warning in the form of Ollie wandering around slowly in the days before, as if his batteries were on low, while pretending to be excessively cheerful and helpful. As adding more to your load while sick was always the way to go, she thought with irritation.
Though, Jahla supposed he could have passed out due to his low blood pressure—again. But that normally only happened after noon, as Ollie was pretty good at eating in the morning. It was just at all other times that he forgot.
Walking through the open door of Ollie’s office, Jahla stopped and stared. Laid out on the floor in the middle of the room, face down, was Ollie. And sitting on top in the middle of his back, was Red.
Meow, Red said as he stared at her.
The cat really had one of the most monotone meows she had ever heard. But the unworried sound was enough to tell her that Ollie was, in fact, fine, as the cat would be yowling at her if she had anything to be concerned about.
“You know, normally, if I walked in and found someone down on the floor like this, I’d think ‘dead’. But with it being you, I just think ‘oh, my eccentric, dork of a boss is having a meltdown again’, or more serious, ‘Oh, shit, Ollie’s passed out from his blood pressure again’, which in my mind is a very good reason why you should STOP doing this.” Jahla sighed. “What is it this time? Favorite pen run out of ink? Another random infestation of moths?”
Ollie lifted his head up with a sniff at the question. “I ate, my blood pressure is fine! And I—I tore a PAGE!” he cried, pointing toward the open book.
Point made, he flopped back down. How could he make such an amateurish mistake?! A precious, irreplaceable piece of history—RUINED! Years of experience and—well, part of it was Red’s fault. Maybe he needed to get him a bell collar?
He nixed the idea as soon as he had it. The cat would never agree to that. The few times Ollie had tried to put a collar on him, he’d always found it torn to shreds within the hour.
Ollie continued to lay there as he listened to the noise of Jahla’s boots softly crossing the room. He popped up to his feet on a gasp at the sound of pages being flipped. “Are your hands clean?!”
He eyed her, and Jahla stared back through her own rounded glasses. Full-figured, Jahla stood about two inches taller than his five-foot five height, and was looking as beautiful as always. With a light dusting of makeup on her light sienna-brown skin, she was wearing a red tint today on her heart shaped lips. A black beret was perched on her head, and the woman’s hip length black locs were free today, with some of the shorter locs hanging around and framing her heart shaped face.
Outfit wise, Jahla had paired together a checkered, short sleeved, button-up shirt with a black tank top, baggy blue jeans, and her normal thick-soled—as she liked to call them—ass kicking black boots. Not necessarily his style, but he liked it. But as nice as it was to stare at his friend in a non-creepy way, he would however like his question answered.
“Well?” he huffed.
“Am I new here?” She rolled her eyes, her cute rounded nose wrinkling. “They are clean, you dork.” Her gaze flicked down to the book as she turned the page back before asking, “Are you sure you tore it? I don’t see anything.”
“Of course I’m sure.” He walked over with a frown.
Jahla moved out of the way, and he examined the page she was on, his frown deepening as he did. It was the title page, yet…
Ollie ran a finger over the edge, before flipping it over and back, letting out a soft puff of air as he found nothing. No tear, or even a bend.
“That’s odd.” His lips pursed. “I could have sworn…”
He would have sworn—well, Ollie had thought he both saw and heard a page tearing. Yet…he supposed he had not.
“Huh, well, that’s good then, that I was mistaken!” He shook his head, deciding it wasn’t worth overthinking or worrying about. Ollie had been wrong, and he would leave it at that. “Now that the crisis has been averted, let’s get ready to open the library!”
Noble’s hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger when he met Elisa Agathorn’s gaze. He hesitated as she stared quietly even without the gag, her eyes fearless now.
Elisa’s hair was long and brown, her skin tanned golden by the sun. There was dried blood along her hairline, some having dried in drops on her forehead. But while she was paler than she had been when he’d first come down, she was no worse for wear. No new blood had been added to the chair that many witches before her had sat.
He hadn’t always carried them off. At one time, Noble would have just killed them right out of the gate. No questions asked, no worries, just a conviction that he was right, and that the world was better for what he was doing.
Noble had killed them all callously, cruelly, with hatred and numbness, yet also with sick glee. Even when he’d started keeping them captive for a while, when it came down to the final blow in the past, there had never been a shred of doubt or hesitation.
There should have been. He should have known, should have questioned. But he hadn’t, and now it didn’t matter, as there was no fixing or undoing the things he had done then, or even in the recent past—all things willfully done in ignorance. ‘Willfully’ being the key word there.
As the doubt Noble felt now had been building for years . Doubt that he had ignored, denied…squashed, as he turned a blind eye from any proof that what he was doing was wrong. Noble…hah, should keep doing that. For the sake of his sanity, he should keep lying to himself. He had done it for long enough, who cared if he kept doing it—besides the poor witches he killed, that was.
And he had tried. Noble had tried to go back to how he’d been, he’d tried to put the blinders back on, and…it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t working. The last one he killed had been…
His hand started to shake as the man’s lifeless blue eyes flashed in his mind, his stomach twisting with acid as he heard his last desperate pleas.
“Fuck,” he cursed. Tossing the dagger aside, he re-gagged the woman and stomped back upstairs, slamming the door shut behind him.
Swallowing hard, he bolted the door before sliding the shelf back in front of it, and slowly walking out of the pantry. The weight of exhaustion was once again feeling like it was about to crush him.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Noble pulled out his phone. Typing in a number he had long since memorized, he stood there staring out of his kitchen window once again as he waited for it to connect.
“ Hello there, Harbinger , reporting in ?” a smooth deep voice said over the line as it connected.
“ Spectator ,” Noble grunted in place of a hello. He was barely holding back the urge to gag at saying the man’s stupid codename out loud. “Assignment finished, no outside connections to clean up.” He lied easily, without emotion, trying not to think of the still very breathing witch that remained chained in his cellar, who was no closer to death than she had been before she’d gotten on their radar.