Chapter 11
There you two are.” The Librarian stood frowning at another pair of red warning cards as the Gallerist and I stepped out of the art book and back into the barrel-vaulted splendor of the Astral Library.
Strange how it was already starting to feel homey to me—I headed right for the big oak counter where the blue Wedgwood teapot sat issuing the smell of hot, fresh-brewed Darjeeling, and poured myself a cup.
That glimpse of my mother (not my mother, I reminded myself, sugaring up my tea) had rattled me more than I really wanted to admit.
She’d been gone from my life for longer than she’d ever been in it; why couldn’t I seem to escape the thought of her now, of all times?
I took a long gulp of tea, feeling like a Freudian cliché.
“These next Patrons are staying in Jane Austen so that’s where I’m off to next,” the Librarian was saying, sweeping another reminder about the annual Board meeting off the oak surface into the trash with one dismissive arc of her hand.
“And I’ve already retrieved these two, if you can take them and hide them?
” Directing the Gallerist’s attention to a pair of teenagers curled up in big chairs by the fireplace nook.
Boy and girl, both black-haired and pinch-faced, brother and sister from the look of them.
“I can help,” I said at once, putting down my cup, but the Gallerist was already addressing the Librarian.
“I’ll take these two but I can’t hide all your ducklings for you. This would go a lot more smoothly if you’d email the Programmer.”
“Over my dead body will anyone email the Programmer,” the Librarian stated.
“I know you won’t. Which is why I already did.”
“You backstabbing French cretin—” the Librarian began, overrunning my inquiry of “Who’s the Programmer?”
The Gallerist cut us both off with an indescribable and very French gesture that involved shoulder and wrist and a flick of the chin all at once.
“We need help with more than hiding Patrons. These cards—” Pointing at the latest two squares of red.
“There is something off. The attack two hundred years ago, it didn’t happen this way.
It should have come by now—why do you simply keep getting more and more warnings? ”
The same thing that had bothered me, and from the crease in the Librarian’s brow, it was bothering her too. “Perhaps they have tried to attack, whoever they are, and failed,” she said, more to herself than either of us. “The safeguards we put in place two centuries ago must be holding.”
“Then why do you keep getting warnings?” I asked. “Why is nothing else happening? What are they waiting for?”
Whoever they were. Was it really a coalition of angry spouses and partners and parents? Or something else?
“I need to check a few things,” the Librarian said, black eyes flicking down some invisible list. “I need to test the wards, the margins. But my Jane Austen Patrons—”
“They can wait an hour,” said the Gallerist. “You’re exhausted—I know how margin-travel takes it out of you.
Let the Library restore you for an hour, and use the time to check the wards and margins.
Check everything.” The Librarian opened her mouth to argue, shut it with a scowl.
“An hour,” the Gallerist said persuasively, and I had to admire just how deftly they were handling the Librarian.
If I had a centuries-long friendship like this one, would someone come to know me that well?
“Your Jane Austen Patrons will be safe for another hour, je t’assure.
The clock would be chiming at us and the books would be panicking if anyone was truly getting close. ”
“I can help,” I said again, straightening.
“She can,” the Gallerist agreed with a smile. “Alix est très serviable.”
I stood there trying to look whatever serviable was. “I can help you check these wards, whatever they are. Or retrieve your Patrons from Pride and Prejudice, or wherever they’re staying in Austenland—”
“I do not need you traipsing unattended through the works of Jane Austen, Miss Watson. I do not need you underfoot.” The Librarian waved an irritated hand, barely seeing me. “I need to think. I need to see what I’m missing here.”
The Gallerist stepped forward, casting a glance at the nervous-looking brother and sister. “Let me settle these two, then—”
“Yes, yes. Stash them away somewhere safe. And Alix, go—do something. Do something somewhere else. Just give me an hour. I need to think,” she muttered again, and began to rummage under the big oak counter.
The Gallerist drew me off with a whisper, before I could feel more than a smidgen of hurt at being sent out of the way like an underfoot toddler. “Leave her be for an hour. She’ll drill down on this attack, who’s behind it, and probably have it solved by the time you come back.”
“Should I come to the Gallery with you, help you settle those two?”
“Something tells me they will take longer than an hour to place. Siblings, they never agree on anything.” The Gallerist arched an eyebrow at the dark-haired brother and sister, who were having a hissed argument in Spanish.
“I would wait here—just keep yourself busy and out of her way.” A smiling look at my blue gown.
“Don’t you need a different costume, if you’re headed to Austen next? ”
They had a point. “At least your Gallery does free costume changes,” I muttered, heading for the Wardrobe Department’s crowded racks.
“The Astral Gallery didn’t have their budget slashed by five percent at every annual Board meeting for the past six years,” the Librarian called back testily over her shoulder.
“Just give her an hour to work her magic,” the Gallerist repeated to me, probably not being metaphorical about the magic part, and headed toward the two teenage Patrons who were now looking decidedly worried. “Come along, ducklings . . .”
I hesitated, looking at the costume racks.
As usual, nothing to fit me. I bit my lip, looking at the Librarian now rummaging among a stack of ledgers at the oak counter.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said, making a decision.
“An hour—” But I doubt she heard me as I disappeared back out into the Boston Public Library.
“Czarina?” Beau blinked, opening the door of Brummell’s. “Back already?”
Right. It felt like about three weeks had passed since I’d been here getting fitted in my blue gown, but from Beau’s point of view it had been less than twenty-four hours.
Enough time had passed in the various book worlds while margin-traveling (not to mention my time in the Astral Gallery, and I had no idea how fast or slow time passed there) that I’d emerged into the Boston Public Library about midmorning the day after I’d last entered it.
“Hi,” I said, out of breath from jogging three blocks in all that blue moiré.
“I need to swap this out for a different dress.”
“Don’t tell me something’s wrong with that one. That dress is one of my finest creations and you are gorgeous in it.”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong with it. The, um, costume party I was going to?
My friend called and said they’ve changed themes.
” I managed a rueful chuckle, a little eye roll.
“It’s Jane Austen–themed now. Can I swap this dress out on my original IOU?
And can it be quick?” I added, checking the clock on the wall.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, waving me inside the shop.
He was still in the same clothes I’d seen him in last—the taut breeches, the brocade vest, the billowy-sleeved shirt—and there was a crease on his cheek as though he’d dozed off with his head on his sewing table.
“Sure. Okay. Regency, got plenty of stuff in that line in back . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I said, belatedly registering his weariness.
He was what, a month from the movie premiere of Belle?
He didn’t have time to be catering to someone like me who wasn’t even a close friend, much less a rich client or one of his usual glamorous posse with endless legs and y’s in their names.
“Look, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I can get a costume somewhere else.
” I wasn’t sure where, but I was really just killing time anyway.
Giving the Librarian space to work her magic.
“Over my dead body are you getting some rayon-blend horror off .” He was already heading to the back, wheeling a bulging rack out from the wall. “Teal velvet, no . . . white muslin, authentic but simplistic . . .”
“How do you have so much stuff in my size?” I couldn’t help asking, as he threw a yellow voile gown across the nearest table, nixed a black velvet, looked consideringly at a printed silk organza. Because in my experience, being a size 22 meant you got the dregs when it came to clothing options.
“I costumed a body positivity–themed Pride and Prejudice in college,” he said.
“All different figures to work with; taught me a lot about dressing people outside your standard double-zero models. No pay, but I got to keep the best of the costumes.” Holding a red velvet spencer up against me consideringly.
“You made all these by hand?” I rubbed the velvet between my fingers. “Just you?”
“Everything in this shop is by me. Someday I’ll have a team: embroiderers, seamstresses, clerks, but for now . . .”
“When do you sleep?” I joked.
“What’s sleep? You want red-carpet commissions before you’re thirty, you gotta hustle.
” He cast a glance at the sheeted dress form that came close to loathing.
“I haven’t slept more than five hours a night since I was about fifteen and getting into historical fashion design, but for the last month, I swear it’s been more like two hours a night. ”
“And here I thought it was all those glamorous parties that put the circles under your eyes,” I teased, stepping up onto the dressmaker’s dais. “You and your influencer friends in all those Instagram reels, all the VIP tables and bottles of Cristal . . .”