Chapter Five
‘H ERE ARE SOME more,’ she said brightly, setting down a pile of books for Eric to input. He was sitting on the stool, bent over and almost cross-eyed with concentration as he tapped in the book information.
‘I’m just cleaning the feeder, dears,’ Mrs Cook called to them.
With Eric and the librarian both busy, Chloe checked around the library for customers.
Some loitered, too shy to ask for help. Others needed to see that she wasn’t too busy before they could approach her and ask about recommendations.
Chloe had worked in retail shops during her time at university, and every now and then people would regard her with faint loathing if she dared to greet them, as though suspicious she was going to try and force them to buy something.
It was one thing Chloe loved about working in the Wellbridge Library.
She could offer help without people assuming she was trying to pitch a sale.
She smiled to herself. Libraries really were a blessing.
Her thoughts strayed to the man she’d met the other day, the grumpy one who had borrowed the fantasy book.
He wasn’t sitting on the armchair where he was earlier.
He must have left. She found herself relieved; he hadn’t openly begrudged her help but her first impression of him hadn’t been all that great.
First impressions . . .
The library turned out to be empty on this quiet morning, so Chloe arranged the shelves, making sure the books were in the correct places and in the right order.
She thought of the book she had passed earlier, recalling the way it had glowed, how she had ignored it.
The strange sense of warm air washing over her.
Would the book still be there, waiting for her to open it? Before she could stop herself, Chloe went over to check.
The glowing tome this time was in the historical romance section, a thick paperback with that strange orange hue around it.
She wasn’t imagining it, then, and there was no way she could blame the lighting.
No other books around it were glowing. It was like the pages themselves emitted their own light, separate from the electric lanterns above her head.
Chloe glanced around, making sure there was no one else lurking around the shelves.
Then anticipation rose in her as she snatched it from the shelf.
The book felt warm in her hands. Almost alive.
She thought of the man in the old-fashioned garb she’d met that rainy night, how oddly like a certain book character he had seemed.
Maybe she should test this, see if what had happened was real.
She had almost convinced herself it had been a joke or a prank, but somehow that didn’t make any sense.
And now she held a different book in her hands, one that almost shivered with hope.
Swallowing, Chloe opened the book. She knew this story. It was a series about time travel in Scotland, with battles and strong men in kilts and heartbreaking romance. Chloe read a random line aloud, then listened closely.
At first, nothing happened, and she stood there holding the book. The air was silent except for the sound of her own breathing.
Then a floorboard creaked.
Eric, perhaps, or Clementine returning to find a spot to relax behind the curtain?
A whisk of cloth and the sound of a man clearing his throat. She thought about calling out, but instead she stepped out from between the shelves, looking left then right.
A man was leaning against the far-off shelf. He was enormously tall and wore a kilt and a grubby jacket. He looked like he had been wandering hills and roads for a long time, old dirt clinging to his clothes and dark leaves in his curly red hair.
Chloe hadn’t really expected it to work again. But she knew this man wasn’t a regular visitor. He hadn’t rocked up to the library with his sporran and mud on his bare knees and scars on his arms, looking around in confusion and suspicion as he half-crouched, as though sheltering from gunfire.
Her throat felt tight, but she managed to croak, ‘Hello.’
The man glanced up, eyes narrowed. ‘Who are ye? Where am I?’
As she had expected, his voice was rich and deep with a strong Scottish accent. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, especially when she spotted the dagger at the man’s hip. This was real. It was actually happening.
‘Um, Wellbridge,’ she said. ‘In a library. It’s safe,’ she added quickly, recalling that in most of his book, he was decidedly un safe. ‘You’ll be back in Scotland very soon, I promise.’
He looked her up and down, as though assessing whether she was a threat.
Then he straightened to his full height.
He was immensely tall, his shock of red hair fiery in the lantern light.
A crooked smile appeared on his face. ‘Don’t know if I trust ye on that, but I don’t hear or smell any more sassenachs about. ’
Chloe raised her hands, sweat springing up on her back. ‘I just want to talk.’ She gestured to a nearby set of armchairs, trying hard not to glance at his dagger. ‘You’re safe here,’ she repeated.
‘Despite ye bein’ a sassenach, too?’ The man still sounded suspicious, but there was also a tone of amusement in there.
‘Despite that, yes.’ She managed a smile.
She stared at him for a long time, marvelling at how this had indeed happened. He didn’t glow or emit any kind of otherworldly vibe. He just looked like a normal guy in the flesh and blood. He smelled a bit of dirt and sweat, but that was hardly surprising.
‘Do ye suppose I’ve moved through time?’ he wondered aloud.
‘You could say that. But you won’t be here for long, you’ll see.’
‘Fine. What did ye want to talk about, lass?’
‘I won’t keep you.’ Chloe had to treat this as an experiment.
The last time this had happened, the character had been wanting to get back to his party.
She wondered if reading a line from the book made the character emerge from that exact scene.
It made as much sense as everything else so far.
‘I’m Chloe. I was wondering if you could tell me where you came from. ’
‘The last thing I remember, I was sleepin’ in the stables. I closed my eyes, and I must have drifted off. And next thing I knew, I was standing here.’ He glanced around. ‘I wonder if this is a dream. I’ve never seen so many books in one place before.’
Chloe marvelled at this. She was actually somehow pulling out characters from their books. Though it seemed it was the stories themselves that decided, not the characters. Clearly, they didn’t know how or why they came here, either.
Clementine appeared, looking from Chloe to the newcomer. She picked him up and petted him, and her new friend smiled down at him.
‘Och, a cat. Good for getting rid of rats. Do ye get a lot of rats here?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Chloe wrinkled her nose at the thought. ‘They’d chew on the books.’
‘All the better to have one of these little beasties around.’ He petted Clementine, and the cat leaned into his large hand, purring. So Clementine had no problem with the library’s magical visitors, either.
Magical. An improbable word, not one that she’d say aloud, but there wasn’t any better way to describe it.
The red-headed Scot didn’t seem worried about being here, or maybe that was because he was used to much more frightening dangers than finding himself in a library with one woman. ‘Aren’t you concerned?’ she asked anyway.
‘Naw, not really.’ He leaned back in the armchair, shifting as though appreciating how comfortable it was. ‘There are a lot of things I don’t fully understand, but there’s no harm in having some faith in them.’
‘Yes,’ said Chloe, thinking on those words. ‘I think you’re right.’ She hesitated. ‘Thank you for talking to me. I just wanted to check something.’ She showed him the book in her hands. ‘This is how I’ll send you back. Are you ready to go back to the stable?’
His crooked smile made her heart flip over. ‘Aye, if I have to.’
Chloe opened the book, making sure to go near the back of it.
She didn’t want to repeat his own words back to him, words he had said before in his life, and freak him out.
She read aloud a random line, expecting him to disappear from in front of her eyes.
Instead, he gave her a questioning look.
He was indeed handsome, and she felt her cheeks warm.
‘Bear with me.’ She flicked closer to the end. When she had sent back the nineteenth-century noble that rainy evening, had she done something different? Finally, she flicked to the last few pages of the book, an idea striking her. ‘All right, let me try this.’
She found the last line uttered by the character in front of her, then whispered it, loud enough for him to hear. Clementine leaped to the floor beside her feet, meowing softly. He stood on his back legs, gently laying his ginger paw on the page.
A gentle wind rippled over her. Chloe looked up.
The Scot had disappeared.
A shiver ran across her skin. There was no doubt about it now.
Somehow, she had managed to pull out a character from their story.
When books were ready to let their characters emerge, the tomes glowed and waited to be picked up.
Then she spoke a line aloud from the book and the character would come out.
That was how much she had gleaned from what had happened so far.
And if she wanted them to return, she only had to read aloud their final line.
It sounded simple enough.
Nope, no, it didn’t.
The book tumbled from her hands, landing with a loud thump on the floorboards. She buried her face in her hands as Clementine gave a soft mew, jumping onto her lap. This was all utterly impossible. Or so she would have believed if it hadn’t happened to her twice now.