Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(8)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

The problem with the All Ways door was that the library became a required stop no matter where you were going. While we could walk to the library and wait for Librarian to notice us and open its hidden door, the easier method for entry—and the one most guild members used—was the All Ways door. All you had to do was stick your membership key into any old nearby lock, open the door, and you’d be there in seconds. We used the one on the linen closet in our North End apartment more often than not. Once at the library, we could use the key again on the knob of the All Ways door to continue to wherever we were headed next.

 

We’d be passing through again on the return trip, and my stomach turned, imagining multiple doses of this gathering.

 

The tension in Cabell’s face eased a bit as he leaned back, looking down the long, polished hall to the central chamber of the library. The warm glow of candles was an invitation and made the white flecks in the stone floor glow like a trail of stars.

 

“It’s not Friday, is it?” I asked. Friday-night show-and-tells were dedicated to the Hollowers drinking and preening about various relics they’d found and vaults they’d survived. Any hope I’d had of quickly saying hello to Librarian before heading out crumbled like clumps of sand in a fist.

 

“Tuesday. Looks like Endymion Dye and his crew are back from whatever expedition they were on, though,” Cabell noted.

 

Hating myself for my self-sabotaging curiosity, I stole a quick look down the hall. Sure enough, Endymion Dye stood at one of the work-tables, surrounded by guild members, all of whom were chirping and fluttering around him, trying to get a word of worshipful praise in. His shock of pure-white hair still came as a surprise, no matter how many times I saw him. It had been the parting gift of a sorceress’s curse three years ago.

 

My jaw tightened. There was something unsettling about him beyond his obscene wealth, beyond the fact that his family had founded this guild and he got to set the rules, beyond even the piercing gray eyes that seemed to cut straight through you. He had an elusive air, as if none of us deserved the privilege of knowing his true feelings or intentions.

 

Even Nash, the man who grinned his way through chaos, had given Endymion a wide berth. The guy’s into some hinky shit, Tamsy, he’d said one day as we’d passed him on the way to the sole guild meeting Nash had decided to grace with his presence. You steer clear of him, hear me?

 

The rare instances when I’d seen Endymion, he’d always been so perfectly composed that it was almost unreal to see him now, speckled with dust and grime from a recent expedition.

 

Still, he wasn’t half as annoying as his son, Emrys. The younger Dye, when not blowing through the inheritance no seventeen-year-old deserved, or bragging about whatever relic he and his father had found, seemed to exist solely to test the limits of my sanity.

 

“You don’t see Trust Fund around, do you?” I asked.

 

Cabell leaned into the hallway again. “No. Huh.”

 

“Huh, what?” I said.

 

“Weird his father wouldn’t take him,” Cabell said. “But I haven’t seen him around the library in weeks. Maybe he started at some new bougie boarding school?”

 

“I can only hope.” There was no chance in any hell Emrys would give up hunting for relics, even temporarily.

 

Endymion ignored the chatter of the Hollowers, his gaze concealed by the firelight reflecting off his thin-framed glasses.

 

Cabell put a comforting hand on my head and said, “Wait here. I’ll pull the job notices so you don’t have to deal with them.”

 

I reached for the supply bag Cabell had draped over his shoulder, relief threading through my whole body. “Thank you. I’ve run out of witty retorts for the day.”

 

I leaned against the cold stone wall, listening as the other Hollowers exuberantly greeted Cabell like a prodigal son. After they’d gotten over his edgy tattooed loner exterior, they’d embraced Cabell. His deep laugh and the trick of rapturous storytelling he’d learned from Nash almost outweighed his unfortunate association with the Lark family.

 

But every time he shuffled off for a show-and-tell or to meet one of them for drinks, I had to bite my tongue to keep from reminding him that they all still called us the Larcenies behind our backs.

 

Which might have offended me if it had actually been clever.

 

They didn’t respect him, and they sure as hell didn’t care whether he lived or died, either. They never had. When the two of us had needed their help as children, the guild’s so-called unity was nowhere to be found.

 

That was the first lesson Nash taught me—in life, people only looked out for themselves, and to survive, you had to do the same. At least the sorceresses were honest about it and didn’t go through the motions of pretending to care about anyone else.

 

Cabell hurried back toward me, holding up three job notices, all written in Librarian’s emerald-green ink. “A couple of good ones, I think.”

 

I took all three, studying the names of those requesting recovery work. Most seemed to be Cunningfolk. Good. We needed a break from sorceresses.

 

A fresh wave of gleeful hooting made me glance down the hall again.

 

Endymion was removing the protective wrappings of his find with agonizing slowness. Then, with the kind of dramatic flourish these people couldn’t resist, even when it meant manhandling priceless artifacts, he dropped the relic back onto the table. The thunder of the impact rolled through the library.

 

The massive book was leather-bound, its cover cracked with age and heat. The thick stack of pages, edged with silver, looked as if they’d spent the last few centuries attempting to escape. Only a heavy metal lock bearing the tree symbol of Avalon held it all together.

 

A pang of envy, one I resented the hell out of, sliced through me.

 

“The Immortality of Callwen . . . ,” I said. A collection of the sorceress’s memories written in blood upon her death. While it was common practice for sorceresses to create them now, this was rumored to be the oldest of its kind.

 

The library cats, hidden in the upper shelves, hissed at the presence of the curses woven around the tome. The sound was like rain sizzling against a hot roof.

 

The other Hollowers pounded the tables with their fists. My pulse outran the raucous beat as I faced the All Ways door.

 

“All right,” I said, sliding our key into its knob. “Where to first?”

 

 

 

After hours of crisscrossing between Boston, Savannah, Salem, and St. Augustine, we’d struck out on all three jobs. Two had been completed by another Hollower from a different guild, and for the third, the client had been hoping to pay us with her extensive button collection.