Chapter 7 #2
The silence stretched. Mrs. Hudson—Sherlock Holmes’s landlady in the flesh; I found it hard not to stare—came bustling in with a platter of piping-hot crumpets.
“For your visitors, Sarah dear, take as long as you like. If you start smelling acid, it’s just Mr. Holmes doing another chemical experiment upstairs.
” Out she bustled again, seeming to have very little curiosity about these two strangers who’d turned up out of the blue to visit her “niece.” I reckoned that was more of the Library’s magic.
If it could insert this woman in her rose-printed dress into the world of 221B Baker Street without anyone batting an eyelash, it stood to reason that the Librarian could sail right in and be accepted as part of the scenery: vaguely familiar, somewhat expected, certainly unthreatening.
If Mrs. Hudson cast any glances, it had been at me: the girl in artistic dress who’d waltzed in here without a hat.
“You really think Tyler is trying to find me here?” Sarah said, voice almost inaudible.
The Librarian held up the red card. “It doesn’t tell me who’s coming for you, but . . .”
Sarah’s hand rose to cover her throat almost involuntarily.
Protecting it, like someone had once wrapped his hands there and thrown her around like a rag doll.
One of my foster fathers had done that to his wife in front of all the kids—I got very good at walking around the edges of the walls in that house, to avoid him.
“We can hide you,” the Librarian went on. “And we can bookmark your place here—you can come back when the danger’s past. But you need to come with me now.”
Sarah’s hand came down from her throat, slowly. “Let me gather a few of my things.”
“Where are you planning to hide her?” I asked the Librarian as Sarah disappeared down a dark Victorian corridor. “Another book?”
“No. If he could track her to one book, he could track her to another. That isn’t supposed to be possible, but none of this is.
After the previous attack, there were safeguards put in place to prevent—Come on, you,” she muttered, jabbing at her green tablet.
“Oh, wonderful. Arbitrarily change the password on me, very mature.”
“It arbitrarily changes the password on you?”
“Have you ever met an electronic device that didn’t? This one’s just a bit more up front about the fact than most.” The tablet blatted, sounding somehow smug. “You’re just in a snit,” the Librarian told it. “Stop sulking and let me in, I need to send the Gallerist a quick email—”
Another rude electronic noise drowned out my “Who’s the Gallerist?”
The Librarian sighed, glaring at the tablet, and recited: “‘I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.’”
The tablet remained stubbornly blank.
“Moved on from Borges, have we? What about: ‘Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination.’” The tablet gave a purring sound and its screen lit up. “Sidney Sheldon, really?” the Librarian scolded.
“That’s its password?” I blinked. “Quotes about libraries?”
“It changes the quote on me when it feels unappreciated. I have to guess until its ego is sufficiently stroked.” The Librarian’s fingers flew as she tapped out an email. “In the old days we propitiated deities. Nowadays we propitiate technology. In my experience they’re about equally capricious.”
“Are we heading back to the Library now?” I ventured, reaching for a crumpet.
They were steaming hot, slathered in butter, and my stomach was suddenly snarling with hunger.
One little snack tray scone aside, I hadn't really eaten since . . . Was it this afternoon when I’d stormed out of the bank branch in Southie, cursing about the phantom Libby Bibb locking me out of my checking account?
I didn’t seem to get hungry in the Astral Library, which stood to reason since time didn’t actually pass there.
But here I could see that the shadows of the streetlamps outside the kitchen windows had moved since we’d arrived, and my appetite was awake with a vengeance.
“Yes, temporarily.” The Librarian thumbed another tab open expertly.
For someone hundreds of years old, she was certainly tech-savvy.
I said as much, and she snorted. “Even libraries must do a certain amount of moving with the times. I have no use for these tech snobs who wish we were all still using quill and parchment—”
A clattering of boots in the hallway interrupted her.
“Mrs. Hudson,” a man’s impatient voice called.
“The fire’s gone out upstairs, I need a steady stream of heat for—” He broke off as he came in, and yep, it was the man himself.
Tall, lean, hawk nose, piercing gray eyes that seemed to skip right over the Librarian to settle on me.
“Artistic dress in the style of fifteen years past, clumsily dressed hair, lacking gloves and hat,” Sherlock Holmes summarized. “Are you presenting me with a case?”
“Afraid not,” I managed to squeak out.
“American, East Coast, similar inflections to Mrs. Hudson’s niece.” The eyes flared. “Would you mind pronouncing the word charter? Her r’s have always intrigued me; if yours are the same—”
“Now, Mr. Holmes, don’t be alarming our guests.” Mrs. Hudson reappeared in the kitchen doorway at her employer’s shoulder. “Were you going to wait for Sarah, then?” she added, moving to the fire, where the teakettle was whistling. “She ran out in such a hurry, I wasn’t sure.”
The Librarian and I exchanged glances. “Ran out?” Sherlock Holmes said, beating me to the punch. “Your niece typically moves at a serene pace; locomotion at speed would indicate some kind of alarm.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but she went straight past me out the door without even collecting her coat.” Mrs. Hudson wrapped a dish towel around her hands and lifted down the steaming-hot kettle. “Not bad news, I hope?”
The worst, I thought in dismay.
Our Patron in danger had just gone missing.