The Library (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 1) by Casey White (ebook reader 8 inch .TXT) 📗

the wood, fighting the urge to tap his foot. “You good? I know I said Alex isn’t a dangerous place, but-”

“But you don’t want us wandering around by ourselves. I get it.”

He shrugged. “The last lot of you tipped a whole set of shelves over onto themselves. Can you blame me?”

“Bunch of idiots,” she muttered.

“Not arguing that.”

Olivia snorted. “Okay. Fine. You’ve got me. Just one more minute, and I’ll come back. Promise.”

Owl glanced around the room, taking in the paintings on the walls - and then back down to her. She had her sketchbook open on her lap. The oil and color of the finished piece was different enough from black-and-white pencil that it was hard to be sure, but it looked like she was sketching the paintings.

Is it for her? he whispered. All these pictures. Did she want to see?

The night-light glow of the braziers brightened for a moment, then dimmed again.

Owl made a face, kicking at the tiled floor. Yes, then. Olivia was working - so far as Olivia seemed to ever work. Judging from the half-finished piece on her lap, she wasn’t quite done yet, either. Which meant that if he walked away, she’d probably ‘forget’ that she was supposed to come back, and spend another few hours out here.

Olivia looked up as he dropped to the tile alongside her. “O-Owl? I don’t need a babysitter, I can-”

“Like hell,” he retorted, looking at her askance. “You’ll be out here forever. Come on.” He elbowed her, then nodded toward the finished painting. “Hurry up and draw your thing.”

“I...I’ll be fine, Owl, so-”

“Just do it, would you?” he muttered.

She made an exasperated noise, but lifted the sketch pad again. Her pencil flew across the sheet.

Owl watched her for a moment, letting the silence fall. “Can’t leave you alone for a second,” he said under his breath, chuckling.

“Bite me.”

His chuckle grew. Leaning back against the wall, he let his hands rest in his lap. It...wasn’t bad, when it came right down to it. Sitting there, with the lights starting to dim and the world filled with colors around him. “Nice spot you found,” he said, once the quiet had had time to simmer.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her smile. “Isn’t it?” she murmured. Her eyes never left the page, following her pencil as it darted this way and that. “Out here, with no one else around, I swear I can hear her breathe sometimes.”

“Alexandria, you mean.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said. Her legs flexed, sprawling out in front of her. “It’s nice, that’s all. Comforting.”

“Sitting inside a magical, breathing building.”

Her elbow jabbed into his side. “You know what I mean.”

Owl drew back, chuckling again. “Ow. Yeah. I do.”

“And...all of this.” She looked up at last, and her smile darkened. Tempered, like a bit of the mirth had left it. “It’s lovely.”

He lifted a judgemental eye to the myriad paintings. “It’s...It’s something, all right. I might use the term ‘garish’ more than lovely, though. Personally.”

“I mean...yeah,” Olivia said, her expression twisting into a crooked grin. “It is kind of a lot. But I asked her to pack it in.”

“Oh? You asked?”

“Just like you showed me.” Her voice teemed with smug satisfaction. “She listened, didn’t she?”

“You’re a guest,” Owl said. “She’s going to listen.” He looked back to the gallery. “Next time, ask for something less obnoxious, okay?”

“Oh, stop that,” Olivia said. The scratching of her pencil resumed, faster than ever.

That sketchbook...she’d carried it with her everywhere. And she seemed very into drawing. Owl eyed it, chewing on the question. “You’re transcribing them?”

She looked up, her dark eyes round. “What?”

He nodded toward the sketchbook. “The paintings. You’re drawing the paintings, aren’t you?”

Olivia blinked, looking down - and then back up to Owl. “Oh. These? Um...” She stroked the page, pressing her fingers into the paper. “Yeah. I just...I wanted to learn them. To remember them, for when I leave.”

“It’s that important to you?”

Olivia nodded. “It’s...” She sighed, rolling her head back until it touched the wall. “These paintings...most of them are gone. They-”

“Don’t exist,” Owl said dryly. “You know, this conversation feels really, really familiar.”

She lifted her head again, glancing at him. “Will?”

He nodded. “Will. He already gave me the spiel. About how stuff had been destroyed over the years, and-”

“Oh, that’s only half the battle,” Olivia said, waving a hand. “For his stuff, maybe. But art?” She gestured toward the paintings around them. “Half of this stuff never saw the light of day, Owl. It stayed stuck in the artist’s attic, or got pawned off to a nobody who didn’t know what they had. They wound up lost in estate sales, or, hell.” She shook her head. “Most of these artists’ best pieces never got finished at all. It’s a whole messy business, but...”

“You want to try and preserve what you can.”

Her eyes gleamed, lit from within by an odd light. “I can do it,” she said. “Somehow. If I can learn from these, I can become more. Pieces no one has ever seen. I can be better. I can-”

“Woah, there, tiger,” Owl mumbled.

Olivia froze, then subsided. “Ah. Hah. Right. Yeah. Sorry.”

He paused another moment, watching her face return to carefully-practiced neutrality. For a moment, as she clutched her sketchpad and looked out at the amassed accomplishments of a field, she’d looked entirely different. Driven. There’d been an ambition there he hadn’t seen before.

He watched her as she started to sketch again, mulling over what he’d seen - and the questions it brought up. A lot of questions, about a lot of things, but one in particular kept rising to the top.

“Hey,” he said at last.

Her lips curled down. She didn’t look up at him. “What?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she said, with what looked like a sneer.

“You want to be the guildmaster, don’t you?”

Her eyes snapped wide open - and her hand jerked, leaving a streak of graphite across the sheet. She didn’t seem to notice. Her head whipped around, leaving her scowling visage a few inches in front