Ash and Quill(39)

They silently followed her. Jess had been hoping to drift closer to the wall, see the substance of it and more smugglers' marks, but she was going nowhere near it. Best not to push their luck.

He looked over at Morgan. The descending shadows gave her face smooth, strong lines and hollows. Like the sky, she was fragile and beautiful. Like this city, she could be lost, either in a firestorm or by slow, deliberate ruin, and it hurt him to know that he couldn't stop her. That he had no right to try. He silently offered her his arm, and she slipped hers into it. It felt good. It felt seductively normal, two people walking together in the beautiful, fleeting night with the stars burning overhead.


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He said nothing at all during the rest of their brisk walk, and neither did she; the parklike grounds in front of city hall were largely deserted, except for a couple in the shadows locked in a passionate kiss-two girls, he realized. He waited for Indira to react to that, but she simply avoided them and moved on with a businesslike stride. The Burners, for all their passionate fanaticism against the Library, had very little prejudice to spare for anything else. He was seized by a desire to pull Morgan into those leafy shadows, to kiss her in just that way, with no thought for tomorrow, no cares for plans and future troubles. He wanted to lose himself in her, while he still could.

He was a little startled when he felt Morgan pull him in that direction, into the shadows. When it was his back against the rough bark. When it was her sweet, urgent lips on his, her hands cool against his cheeks, her body pressing his.

But he didn't question it, and for a moment, nothing else mattered, until he heard Indira say sharply, "You two! Here! Now!"

Morgan pulled back, regretfully, and Jess realized they were both trembling a little. He felt on fire, everywhere she'd touched him, especially his mouth, and he tasted her on his tongue and desperately wanted more, like a starving man given a single drop of honey.

"Morgan," he said. "Please don't let Wolfe push you into doing more than you safely can."

"I could say the same to you," she told him, and smiled. "We both learned Flavia's lesson."

Then she slipped away.

He had no choice but to follow.



The doctor's housekeeper-a tall, strict-looking woman-managed to convey both disapproval and welcome at the same time as she let them in. Thomas had to duck to fit under the low doorway, and his head came perilously close to the ceiling once he was inside the small house. With all of them crowding in-except Indira and the other guard, who took up positions outside-the room felt crushingly tiny.

"Quiet!" the woman whispered at them as they shifted around. "The doctor is exhausted. He needs his rest. I'll take you to your friend."

As they filed after her, Jess got a better look at the place. It felt like a real home-more of a home, he thought, than his own house in London had been, though he'd had a mother, a father, one living brother, and rich enough surroundings to give it all the right appearances. Jess had never felt comfortable there, in the Brightwell family residence. He'd been happier in abandoned places, so long as they were quiet and had enough light to read by. 

Books represented home to him, and around every wall, the doctor's shelves were full to bulging, a haphazard organization of varied colors of binding, sizes, shapes. There was a happy disorder about it that made Jess feel something settle inside he hadn't even known was restless. Beside him, Morgan whispered, "So many!" in a tone that was half awe, half horror. Because these weren't Library editions, stamped with the seal and protected in the Archives. They were entirely illegal copies. Ink on paper. Vulnerable. "I didn't know they had so many!" The doctor's house, Jess realized, must be the unofficial library for the town. Nothing so formal as the pretentiously bound editions in Beck's office. Here was the heart of the town. The life that sustained it.

The hallway beyond was also narrowed on either side by shelves and shelves of volumes, and the smell of old paper struck Jess with memories of his father's warehouses, of curling up with a glow and an original volume in the rafters.

He'd never really been safe in his childhood, but the books . . . books had made him feel that way.

Their little group filed silently into the room at the end of the hall, where Santi lay unmoving. His color was some better, if still at least three shades off normal, and his exposed arm looked raw and glistening. Covered in a fresh coating of salve, Jess realized, and the skin beneath looked fragile but healthy. Already healing.