Chapter Thirty #2
Seeming to sense the unease, Andrew placed his palm on the small of her back.
Juliette’s shadows rose higher, swallowing the group in velvet blackness, and the dim light of the library was snuffed out.
Blindness fell. The world was nothing but breath and a heartbeat—her own—ragged, quick, and too loud.
Then Andrew’s arm drew more fully around her waist, anchoring her, and she leaned instinctively into him.
Her hand shot forward, landing against his chest, fingers curling tight into the fabric of his shirt.
His steady warmth pressed against her cheek as she buried her face into his shoulder, bending her head to fit against him.
But she did not choke. She could still breathe. This darkness was not the same. This was Juliette’s protection, not an attack—and Andrew’s nearness made her believe she would come to no harm.
A gruff voice cut through the blackness, closer than she expected.
“Do you think she’s left?”
Another answered, softer yet sly. “The librarian that’s always here? It looks like she’s finally gone.”
Andrew traced small, reassuring circles near her waist with his finger.
“Juliette, can you create a small opening so we can see what they are up to?” Edmund’s deep voice was quiet, but it still startled her to hear it so close.
At eye level, a tiny peephole shimmered into existence in front of her and Andrew, the shadows bending to Juliette’s will.
It wasn’t a clear view of the room, more like looking through a pair of dirty glasses.
Isla still didn’t know exactly why they were hiding, but she trusted Edmund’s judgment—his instincts, honed from years as a soldier.
The newcomers’ hope that the librarian had left heightened her suspicion.
Isla shifted slightly away from Andrew to peer through the opening, her panic easing as she’d begun to feel more like she was in a cozy blanket rather than a suffocating haze.
His arm remained around her waist, and his cheek brushed hers as he joined her, looking through the tiny peephole.
The two men were striding with purpose toward their corner.
“We won’t have long before the caretaker comes to clean and turn off the lights. Let’s be quick about it,” one of the men said.
The men stopped at a table with a chair next to it.
It was a private study area in one of the furthest corners of the library, where students who truly wanted to get some work done came to study, out of the way without fear of interruption.
The first man lifted the books from the table and tossed them aside carelessly.
The shadows around their peephole twitched, almost reactive to a sharp gasp that escaped Juliette’s lips—a librarian’s horror at such wanton disrespect for the printed word.
Juliette started to mutter under her breath, something along the lines of, “Handle a book like that again and I’ll .
..” Her threat was cut short, muffled. Isla suspected Edmund had placed his hand over Juliette’s mouth to prevent her from speaking further.
The two men moved the table, then the rug that lay beneath it. Isla caught a glimpse of a symbol etched into the tiled floor, though the details remained obscured.
“Well, get on with it—we haven’t got all night,” one of the men commanded.
The larger of the two men grunted, focusing on the floor.
Isla sucked in a breath as a soft green glow shimmered down, illuminating the library’s uneven stone floor, casting the room in an otherworldly light.
A perfect square of stone and earth rose gracefully from the floor, lifted, and was gently set beside the gaping hole now exposed.
Isla could only imagine Juliette’s rage and Edmund’s attempt to prevent her from dashing out to give these men an earful as to what they were doing to her precious library.
The second man extended his own hand, white emanating from his palm. Soon, a medieval-looking chest appeared from underground carried on a platform of ice; it was effortlessly placed on the table they had moved aside.
Andrew’s hand tightened slightly at her waist from the display of power before them—reflecting off the towering shelves and arched windows.
The men lifted the lid of the ancient chest. With careful, almost reverent hands, they removed a large book.
Isla noticed how gentle they were with this particular volume; they treated it much better than the books they had cast aside.
Opening the text, they studied the page with their eyes only—their mouths firmly shut.
Curious about what this book could be, she glanced around at her companions, but it was clear that the secrets being revealed were also new to them, who had all known about the Aetheric Arts long before she did. No one in her group had ever seen this book.
After a few moments, one of the men huffed—the Aqua Summoner.
“Well, there are our instructions, though I see I get the harder job of the two of us,” he muttered.
“I have to arrange a group to track down that Oxford snob and make sure they dispose of him in a more effective way than blowing his engine. Did you hear about the pathetic attempt at drowning that doll in the swimming pool? Maybe I should try something like that. If I had been the one to drown her, I’d at least have made sure to do it right. ”
Andrew let out a quiet growl beside her, anger radiating from him—she could feel his palm grow cold on her back, his Aqua powers subtly radiating beneath it.
She turned her head and whispered into his ear, her lips brushing against his skin.
“Wait ... trust Edmund.” He stilled at her words.
She hoped Edmund did have a plan. She wanted to get away from these men as quickly as possible; she felt sick knowing that they knew of her attack at the pool and were talking about it so callously.
“You are a Summoner; your pay grade is well above us mere Wielders,” the Terra Wielder replied. “Though drowning a pretty lass like that would have been a shame.”
The Aqua Summoner laughed. “True enough. And this job’s worth it if I can get myself a new Bentley VI—I need to impress the ladies.”
“Ha,” the Terra Wielder chuckled. “You’ll need all the help you can get on that front. And don’t forget who your wingman is when you’re driving around in your fancy new car.”
“Whitcombe and Hawthorne aren’t going to pay up until we get the job done,” the Aqua Summoner said.
“True enough. We have our instructions—let’s get out of here before we’re caught. We don’t want to have to explain another dead body.”
Isla’s stomach roiled at his casual reference to dead bodies. The image of Ray surged to the forefront of her mind—he had been killed by an Ignis. How many were in this group?
She felt Edmund stir beside her. A faint crackle filled the air, followed by a blinding flash as two bolts of lightning arced, leaping from the shadows in which they hid with terrifying precision.
The electric tendrils struck both men simultaneously, sending them crashing to the floor, their bodies twitching as the power dissipated.
Isla’s heart raced with the display of his raw elemental force.
Juliette dropped her shadow barrier as Edmund said, quite calmly, “I think we’ve heard quite enough, don’t you?”
“Did you ... kill them?” Juliette asked, her voice a mixture of horror and curiosity.
“No,” Edmund replied, “Just enough to knock them out. A controlled discharge precisely timed and directed—enough to overload their nervous systems momentarily without causing permanent damage. There’s a fine line between stunning and harming; I aimed to stay well within it.”
Juliette looked at him. “We really should call you Volt warden.”
“Andrew, please restrain them,” Edmund directed, ignoring Juliette’s admiring glance.
“With pleasure.” Andrew lifted his palm and a shimmering frost spread outward, quickly solidifying around the men’s wrists and ankles. The ice hardened, binding them firmly in forged handcuffs of frost.
“What on earth did we just witness?” Juliette asked, her eyes wide as she looked from one to the other.
“It seems we’re finally beginning to unravel our mystery,” Edmund replied. “Do any of you recognize these men?”
Isla studied them carefully. Now that they were closer, the shadows no longer obscuring her view, she could see the details of their faces.
“I recognize that man,” Isla said, pointing to the Terra Wielder. “I don’t know him personally, but he works in the stables. I’ve seen him tending to the horses.”
“What about the Aqua Summoner?”
Isla studied the man, frowning. “I don’t know him ...”
“I do,” Andrew said, his jaw clenched as he looked down at the man in anger. “He’s a final-year student. I don’t teach him, but I have seen him.”
Edmund let out a long sigh. “I feared as much. It seems the university has some internal rot.”
“It sounded like they were employed; this wasn’t their idea. Who are Whitcombe and Hawthorne?” Juliette asked.
“A respected London pharmaceutical firm, known for its lucrative sulfa-drug line.”
“They don’t sound so respectable if they’re willing to pay people to commit murder.” Isla huffed.
“No, indeed,” Edmund agreed. “It seems we now know why—and who—has been preventing the development of penicillin, but we don’t know whom they hired.”
“You’re saying that widespread access to penicillin would decimate their profits?” Andrew asked.
“That’s exactly what I am saying.”
“And what about this book?” Juliette asked, her eyes wide with wonder at the item of historical significance lying on the table. “It sounds like instructions were left for them to follow. It’s so old, though.”
“This part I don’t understand,” Edmund said, moving closer to the book as the others gathered around him.