Page 72 of The Librarian’s Familiar

“Good. Then we stay here tonight and head out tomorrow at first light.”

They should be leaving now. The sooner he got out there, the sooner he could start unraveling it. “I know it’s not smart, but we need to leave sooner rather than later.”

August pressed his lips together. “Is it that urgent?”

“Yes. Trust me, I don’t want to be hiking at night.”

“I guess there is an upside to leaving sooner rather than later.”

“What’s that?” Because, as far as Charlie could tell, there wasn’t one. They were rushing toward the danger.

“We won’t be under my parents’ roof when we strengthen the bond.” August kissed him again.

Every time he did, another strand was added to the bond, thickening the connection, but his magic was still unpicking it like it had nothing better to do. He was about to use his magic on an impossibly large task…

What if he was only good enough to untangle shoelaces and deconstruct bugs?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“So the previous librarian is behind this?” August said cautiously, having listened to Charlie’s theories, which he claimed were mostly guesses and vibes. When it came to magic, sometimes that was enough.

Charlie’s face was only lit by moonlight; it illuminated his skin, leaving his eyes dark as he stared straight ahead. “Maybe.”

They’d kept silent as they’d left the town, hugging the foothills but not venturing up to the lake, as that was the wrong direction to the prison. August had suggested a quad bike, but Charlie had refused, claiming that the witch would sense it and they needed to be as unnoticeable as possible.

“You laid out a pretty convincing case, except for the why. He’s a Coven Agent—that has to come with a retirement plan and health insurance. Why fuck that up?”

“I don’t know. Money? Love? The why is where everything falls apart, but he has the knowledge and the skills…” Charlie shrugged.

“I’m sure there are plenty of other people who also meet that criteria.”

“Yeah, but not that many who are familiar with the area. And the magic is building in the same area as last time, except the closest town no longer exists.”

August stared at the ground as he walked. “My grandparents’ death was chalked up to misadventure. A few people said they shouldn’t be flying at their age, but they’d passed their tests every year, and those remote towns relied on them. They had friends in those towns.”

“You came home for their funerals.”

He nodded. “It was easy to avoid coming back after that. I didn’t want to be reminded they were gone, so I made excuses until I ran out.”

Charlie was silent. The only noise was the crunching of their boots on the dirt. The night seemed still and clear; it was hard to believe there was magic brewing and trouble heading toward them. This was the first time he’d had a purpose since trying to headbutt a puck and coming off second best. While he wouldn’t go so far as to say he liked it, he liked doing something, and he liked being with Charlie.

“Your grandparents knew a lot of people?” Charlie’s voice was soft, as if he didn’t want to press on the old wound.

“They knew everyone.” It had taken a while, but he wanted to talk about them. They had been a huge part of his life. “While they didn’t always speak the language fluently because some of those languages are spoken by less than a hundred people, they knew enough to get by. Most of the pilots do the runs between Claw Lake and the nearest cities; my grandparents did a lot of the smaller runs, especially as they got older. They would fly out in the morning and stay the night in the town before coming home. They were retired, so it wasn’t as though they needed to pack in as many flights as possible. They liked flying and spending time with friends…plus keeping up on all the gossip.”

“And they happened to be in that town when the storm sprang out of nowhere?”

“Storms can do that here. They sweep in and leave a trail of damage. Ice and hail and winds…” He scanned the sky automatically. At first, there’d been hope that they’d escaped by shifting, but by the time help reached the town, everyone was dead.

“Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but what if they knew something?”

“Even if they did, that doesn’t help us now, does it?” He didn’t see the point in rehashing the past when it wouldn’t change anything, but like his grandparents, he was heading towards the storm. The only difference was that he had a witch.

“No…I guess not. What about the little town? Do you know anything about that?”

“It was a human town, mostly older as the young people had moved away seeking opportunities and wanting more than scraping by on the edge of nowhere.” If people thought Claw Lake was small, they struggled to imagine some of these other places that existed almost as though time had forgotten about them. “I went once with them, I must’ve been home for the summer school holidays, and I hadn’t started shifting yet either, so maybe fourteen or fifteen. Old enough to be in boarding school but not having to deal with being a part-time polar bear.”

“It’s a bit shit, isn’t it? Your voice is breaking, hair is growing, and then all of a sudden, magic kicks in. Like puberty isn’t confusing enough.”