63. Lily
LILY
“I’m parking; en route to the library now.”
Lily jumped up, craning to see if she could spot him, but the storm was in full swing.
Snow spiraled down in wet, clumping flakes, bruising the sky into early dusk.
She stuffed her feet into her boots, not bothering with the laces, and clomped down the stairs, winding her scarf around her neck, her footsteps echoing.
The sole librarian on duty glanced up briefly as Lily stomped by.
They collided halfway across the quad, both of them quickening into something resembling a jog on the slippery walkway. Sebastian, coat still hanging open from the drive, caught her around the waist, lifting her and spinning them both. They landed in a snowbank, and he rolled to keep her dry.
“God, I missed you. That was an eternity.” He pressed his nose to hers. “Where’s your coat?”
“In the library.”
He helped her up, offering his hand like he was asking her to waltz. “Shall we?”
Back in the tower room, they rolled out the map from the winery and the library blueprints she’d pilfered across the floor.
The tower room had made significant strides in its hominess, thanks to Sebastian.
It now boasted a mini-fridge and a space heater, as well as an entire shelf of snacks.
He’d ordered an absurd number of impossibly soft blankets and throw pillows, which matched those in the suite.
“Look, here.” She pointed, and he joined her on the floor, rotating the maps, trying to make them line up. “There is a sub-basement. But how do we get down there?”
Seb bent over the maps, turning them this way and that. They’d put a temporary illusion on the blueprints, rendering them translucent so that they could overlay them properly.
“It doesn’t look like any of the stairwells align at all.
Not even that creepy elevator in the south wing.
” He shuddered. The south-wing elevator had been installed in the early twentieth century and never updated.
It was just large enough for two humans, or one human and a shelving cart, and closed with a wrought-iron gate that needed to be locked before it would move.
“Wait, what’s this?” Lily leaned forward eagerly, tapping a point on Windermere’s map that marked the center of the library’s grand vestibule.
Her eagerness evaporated as swiftly as it had arrived.
“Oh, never mind. I thought for a second it was stairs, but I think it’s just that design in the floor. ”
“Why would he put that on the map?” Seb’s brow creased with frustration.
Carefully, he slid the blueprints toward him, from underneath the map. His frown deepened as he scanned them.
“What are you looking for?”
“Stairs.” Lily watched as he measured the diameter of a staircase between his fingers. “Oh. Oh!”
She got it a moment after he did, but before he pointed to a set of spiral stairs on the blueprints.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Yes!” She slid the blueprints back underneath the map, lining up the demarcation of a spiral staircase on the blueprint with the design marked on the map. They were identical.
Seb shook his head. “That clever, clever bastard.”
Lily’s insides twitched with equal parts anticipation and fear. “Let’s get to work.”
They spent the next hour peering through the disc at the map and sketching out the pathway it revealed in Seb’s leatherbound journal, adding the cardinal directions based on where it intersected with the library basement blueprints.
Seb got to his feet stiffly, looking uneasy. “Let’s go through the checklist again.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.” He pursed his lips. “I’m just…who knows what’s waiting for us down there.”
“Probably dust. Speaking of, that’s what you’re wearing? You’re going to get filthy.”
He frowned down at his outfit—a sweater covering a collared shirt and slim-cut trousers.
“I hadn’t considered. I guess I can change my sweater, but…” He moved to the cabinet in the corner, pulling out a sweatshirt. “I don’t really have any more casual pants, anyway.”
“A pair of jeans wouldn’t kill you.”
He looked at her guiltily, then turned his back as he shucked off the sweater and unbuttoned his shirt.
She coveted the wing of his shoulder blade, the dip of his hip, through his white T-shirt.
Dismayed, she watched him fold his discarded clothes fastidiously and put them in the cabinet.
Lily had no idea how to fold a button-down, but she did know how to throw them on the floor.
“How much stuff have you secretly brought here? Are you planning on moving in or something?”
He grinned slyly at her. “Depends on the rent.”
She pulled him forward by his navy crewneck. “I promise you can’t afford it.”