Chapter 11
“You’re—” Lucy blurted out.
“Be quiet,” he snapped. “Unless you’d like to announce to the whole of the floor what we are.”
“We,” Lucy echoed. Her thoughts were firing nearly as fast as the patter of her heart—her words couldn’t keep up. “So you’re—”
“Yes, dear,” said the ancient creature—the vampire—with an elegant wave of his hand. “We’re in the same club. Though”—his eyes swept the length of her body once, cursorily—“you don’t appear to be a full member of that club just yet.”
Lucy’s throat closed, even as her mouth hung open.
The vampire regarded her with impatience—if she couldn’t see it in his face, she would have felt it in the weight of his presence.
But before Lucy had been a not-human not-vampire, she had been a cashier.
She knew how to gauge whether or not someone would cause trouble.
And while the reference librarian wasn’t happy, he wasn’t tensed to strike.
He was angry, but it wasn’t an anger with heat.
It felt more like jaw-clenched resignation.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she said slowly. It felt like wishful thinking to say out loud. But she knew as soon as she said it that it was also true. She’d been surrounded by hunters, of one kind or another, all week. His was a completely different energy.
The vampire huffed. Since he didn’t need to breathe, she assumed it was for emphasis. “Obviously I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t eat from others’ plates. Please do give the little prince my very best. Or better yet, don’t tell him that you saw me at all.”
Her heart rate picked up, fast enough to make her nauseous. “You know him.”
“Every farmer knows the local wolf,” the vampire said, regarding her again. “And its pups, I suppose.”
“I’m not his pup,” Lucy said.
“You’re worse,” the vampire said. “You’re his thrall.”
“And what’s that?”
“Tomorrow’s meal,” he said darkly. “Listen, girl. I sympathize. But you should go enjoy what’s left of your mortal life. All that brat wants is attention. You don’t have to give it to him while you’re still alive.”
He moved to turn his back to her. That strange pressure gave her a little push as he moved away. As if the air itself were gently trying to turn her around and walk her back where she came from.
Lucy was not going to be walked back where she came from, though. Not yet. She lunged forward and locked both hands around one of his wrists.
She could feel the shift in the atmosphere as he rounded on her. That crackling summer storm feeling. But it no longer mattered to Lucy that she was talking to something several times older than electricity. She’d come here for an article. As far as she was concerned, she’d found something better.
“Even as you are now,” he said, his eyes unblinking, “you must be able to feel a fraction of what I am. Don’t you?”
Lucy’s grip slackened. This was instinct, too.
She forced herself to ignore it. This was what Jillian had been preparing her for all her life, wasn’t it?
To turn some unfortunate corner and find Death waiting there for her.
She wondered if she’d live long enough to tell her mother that Death was a librarian.
Lucy took a breath, shifted her stance, and held on to his wrist, which looked deceptively thin and delicate in her own hands. He wasn’t going to hurt her. Though he wanted her to know that he could.
“You are the reference librarian, right?” she said. “I’m trying to look up an article. If you can help me find it, I won’t bother you anymore.”
There was no way to make that request sound casual. The vampire certainly didn’t seem to think it was. “We’ve got a lovely catalog you can browse,” he said. “Very intuitive search engine.”
“It wouldn’t load. So I came to ask you.
” Lucy chose her next words carefully: Even if this vampire truly wasn’t dangerous, that didn’t mean telling him everything was wise.
“Someone called into a campus radio station with what they claimed was Vanya’s full name.
Ivan Volkov. If you don’t want to get involved, I can leave right now.
No matter what happens to me, I won’t tell him that I saw you.
But there are people who are helping me.
Even if I don’t survive, I want to give them their best chance.
I just want to see if this article tells me something they can use. ”
The vampire’s cold, flat look shifted. “Someone called Pallas Radio. With his full name.”
Lucy tried not to look surprised. If she were a vampire on a college campus, she probably would have been very aware of the local vampire-hunting radio show, too. “That’s right.”
Another prickle of indignation made its way through the air. But at the very least, this time it didn’t seem to be directed at Lucy.
“The person who left the message,” he said. “Did his voice have the cadence of poetry?”
“I…don’t know that I could tell you what that sounds like,” Lucy said. But after a few more seconds of thought, she added, “I guess there was something a bit musical about it?”
“Of course,” the vampire said, matter-of-factly. “Right, then. You wait here a moment. I’ll just need to kill him.”
And with that, the vampire swung elegantly on his heel and made a beeline for the closed door at the back of the stacks. His long legs took him all the way across the room in just a few soundless strides.
Lucy faltered. It was probably best to do what he said. Waiting at the desk did seem like the safest bet. But there was a boldness coursing through her that she knew she couldn’t afford to lose. Maybe it was all the time with Natalie. She was getting pretty good at the yes, and mentality herself.
She took off following him across the library floor. As she slipped through the door at the back of the room, she caught sight of the nameplate nailed to it:
L. ROMAN
REFERENCE LIbrARIAN
L. Roman, who barely acknowledged her presence this time, reached over her to shut the door. And then he hissed, in the direction of the corner, “Hiro. Are you using fucking court whispers at my place of employment?”
Lucy noticed only then that the office wasn’t empty.
Curled up in an armchair in the corner, buried in a book despite the low light, was an East Asian man in a light blue button-down and loose, flowing slacks.
He had a thick-knitted cardigan draped over the back of the chair, and his black hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck.
He looked soft, approachable. But it didn’t take long for Lucy to guess why the storm-cloud sensation was even heavier here.
She was no longer in the presence of just one vampire.
“Our place of employment,” Hiro said, as if by reflex. He lowered the book, his face slipping between pleasantness and confusion as he spotted Lucy. “Hello. Hi. Welcome to the reference floor. What court whispers?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said L. Roman, brushing his hand through his elegant hair. “Maybe something to do with your call to Pallas goddamned Radio?”
Hiro blinked, nonplussed in the face of L. Roman’s mounting rage. But as he looked back to Lucy, he sat up so quickly that his cardigan slipped to the floor.
“Oh my,” he said. “Caller number thirty-two?”
Lucy waved weakly. “Hi there.”
Hiro leapt from his chair to grasp one of her hands in both of his. “I am such a fan,” he said. “When you said, ‘Oh, I’m way ahead of you’? Chills, my dear, chills!”
L. Roman’s delicate hand landed hard against the wall. Lucy heard a distinct crunch. “I thought we agreed—”
“Not to get involved with the radio children,” Hiro finished, almost dutifully. “But they were stuck. They needed a little push. How was I supposed to know she’d show up here? You’re the first one to say that the children don’t utilize their library resources enough.”
L. Roman looked as displeased as Lucy had ever seen anyone look. “You agreed to start wrapping up your affairs here.”
“Which I have been doing, as requested,” Hiro said. “But if we’re leaving anyway, why not give the radio children a helping hand on the way out?”
“A helping hand straight into that brat’s jaws?” L. Roman said.
“Well,” Hiro said, “that’s some kind of conclusion, isn’t it?”
“I’m not joking,” L. Roman said.
“Neither am I.” And abruptly, Hiro really wasn’t joking anymore. For the first time, Lucy saw a shadow cross his youthful face. The barest hint of his age. “At least they’ll go with eyes open. Isn’t that better than those poor girls got?”
The silent standoff that followed went on long enough that Lucy’s back foot slid a little closer to the door. She still felt reasonably sure that no one here wanted to hurt her—but she didn’t want to be here if they decided to hurt each other, either. Finally, Hiro uncoiled.
“I didn’t mean to go behind your back.” He really did have a poetic lilt to his voice. “But this place has been good to me. I wanted to leave it with a farewell gift, of sorts.”
L. Roman’s anger shifted into something remarkably sulky. Hiro laughed. “Goodness, what a spectacle. Have you at least introduced yourself to our new friend, or have we given her a preview of our dinner table conversations before we even shared basic pleasantries?”
“She’s not a friend,” L. Roman said. “She’s the little prince’s next meal.”
“With that attitude, she will be.” Hiro’s smile gentled as he turned back to Lucy. “Forgive our manners, dear. Hiromasa Minamoto. The disagreeable one is Laurentius of Rome. And I assume you don’t go by caller number thirty-two?”
“I…Lucy,” she managed. Her brain was moving at a crawl, and her tongue was moving even slower. “And by ‘Rome,’ you mean—”
“Laurentius of the Roman Empire, to be more exact,” Hiro said. “Had you guessed already, with that ridiculous alias of his? ‘L. Roman.’ You won’t be surprised to hear that he’s not a man of much flair.”
“I thought we weren’t subjecting her to our dinner table conversations,” Laurentius of Rome said moodily.