23. Chapter 22 #2
She finished inventory a little later than usual, earning an eyebrow raise from Abbott, but nothing else. Halfway through her cleaning of the equipment, Liam rose from the chair and placed the graded tests on Abbott’s desk.
“Thank you, Liam,” she said. “There’s nothing else I need you to do today. You can leave if you’d like.”
“Right, then. I’m off,” he said. There was a rustling behind her as Liam grabbed his bag. “Cheers, Ivy.”
“Bye,” she said, waving a sudsy hand at him as he left. She peered at the counter next to the sink. A small collection of dirty beakers, vials, and flasks all had the same sheen of pink liquid that was left behind from whatever had been brewed.
With a roll of her neck, she went back to cleaning, determined to finish as quickly as possible. Maeve should know what she found. She’d tell Ezra when she saw him again, too. Except she had no idea where he was. A part of her hoped he would come into the library while she was there. But he didn’t.
Once she had finished everything, she said goodbye and grabbed her things before sprinting out of the lab.
She rushed back to the library, checking each row of books for Maeve, until she found her on the third floor, a few rows before the botany section.
And she was standing with Liam, who held the book out between them.
“Hey Ivy, didn’t expect to see you again today,” Liam said as she came near. There was a faint deep red color to his cheeks, and Maeve was less than amused, with her brows knit together and her jaw taut.
“What’s going on?” Ivy asked, staring between him and the book expectantly.
“I was asking Maeve if she could convince the librarian to go easy on me when I return this book,” he explained.
Ivy glanced at Maeve, who gave her a knowing look that she was fully aware that this book was the one Ivy wanted.
“And I asked him why he would do such a thing to a book,” Maeve argued, glaring back at him for a second. “That’s when you came around the corner.”
“I wouldn’t do this,” he insisted. “Hell, the only reason I’ve held on to this for so long is because I’m mortified at the state it’s in.”
Ivy crossed her arms. “If you didn’t, then who did?”
“Don’t know.” He held up his free hand in his defense against Maeve’s scowl.
“I know, I know how it looks, alright? But I swear it’s the truth.
Last semester someone broke into my flat and trashed the place, but the only thing they took was a bunch of pages from this book.
I don’t understand why they didn’t take the whole thing.
It was in shambles to begin with. Someone scribbled all over the pages that were taken. ”
“How did someone break into your apartment?” Maeve asked. “We set our own locks with magic after moving in.”
“My old roommate was a bit of a dolt. He was constantly locking himself out, so we changed it to a basic locking spell so he’d remember it.”
“Okay,” Ivy said. “I believe you.”
Liam’s shoulders sagged with relief, but Maeve gave a quizzical stare as she turned to Ivy. She shrugged and tried to gesture with her eyes that he had no reason to come clean about the book if he was the one behind the letters.
“I hate to break up the silent conversation playing out,” Liam said. Both their attentions returned to him. “Does this have anything to do with the envelope you found?”
Ivy pursed her lips before searching the surrounding area. The stacks were empty. The only noise was the birds chirping in the tree outside. She turned back to him and nodded once. “Do you remember the name Briar Mayclair?”
His lips turned down in a frown. “Yeah, devastating what happened to her.”
“What if…that’s not what happened?” She explained everything to him. The letters, the cipher, and Callum disappearing. Everything.
By the end, his mouth hung open slightly, and his gaze was distant. “That’s a lot.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Maeve said, patting him on the shoulder.
Liam said something back to her, but Ivy froze as something moved in the corner of her vision.
Behind them, on the other side of the bookcase, was the shape of a black hood.
She exhaled slowly, trying to play it off as if she hadn’t noticed she was being watched.
They were close to the end of the row. If she could fake out whoever was on the other side, maybe she could catch them.
Ivy shifted on her foot, stepping a little closer to Liam’s other side so she was right at the end. From the corner of her eye, the person moved an inch to reveal messy dark hair. Whoever they were, they weren’t tall. Ivy could barely see the top of their head beyond the books.
She took another steady breath, silently counting down.
When she reached one, she spun on her heel, grabbing the edge of the bookcase to use as leverage to fling herself around the corner.
Before the person could run, she reached out with her other hand, yanking on the back of their black sweatshirt and pressing them against the bookcase.
“Why are you following me?” she asked, her voice bordering on a snarl. Rushed footsteps and confused voices came from the other side as Maeve and Liam came around.
It was a woman, not much shorter than Ivy. She dressed in all black, baggy clothes with the hood of her sweatshirt covering her short black hair, which partially covered her face. But beneath were petrified, hooded brown eyes lined with black makeup.
“Follow you? I don’t even know you,” she asked, her voice quivering.
“Ivy, what are you doing?” Maeve asked.
“I…” She paused, looking at Maeve and then back at the woman in front of her. She cursed and released her grip. “Why were you listening to our conversation?”
“I wasn’t,” she said, her voice a little calmer. “All I was doing was finding a new book to read.” She reached for one of the books behind her and held it up. “See?”
Ivy’s brow raised. “The Expansive Philosophy of Irmina Voggnaute on the Mundane World?”
“I’m an insomniac,” she explained with a weak smile.
Ivy studied her and noticed that beneath the dark eyeliner was a ring of deep purple.
“Sometimes reading boring books in combination with homemade sleeping draughts helps me fall asleep for an hour or two when I run out of my medication.” The woman shrugged as she laughed awkwardly.
“I checked books out for her before. They’ve always been on boring topics,” Maeve said.
“What did you hear of our conversation?” Ivy asked.
“Nothing...okay, something about students going missing. But that happens all the time here,” she said, her brows rising high. “But I can keep a secret! Whatever you were talking about, I won’t tell anyone. I don’t really have any friends here to tell anyway.”
Ivy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Her gut twisted as if it were a towel being wrung dry.
She couldn’t tell whether the woman was lying.
If so, and the woman was her stalker, would there be another chance for confrontation?
What exactly would she do to get it to stop?
She swallowed roughly, clenching her jaw a few times.
That was something she didn’t want to think about. Not if she didn’t have to.
“Fine, whatever. Just pretend none of this happened and we won’t have a problem, okay?” Ivy said.
The woman nodded quickly. “Consider it forgotten.”