The Librarian: A Remnants of Magic Novel (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 2) by Casey White (reading list txt) 📗

boarded-up windows. Here and there, a distant figure trudged through the night, headed for home, but they were few and far between. None of them were what he’d felt.

Because the warning trill hadn’t died away. It sang louder by the second, until his eyes flicked desperately from street to street around them.

Olivia’s hand pressed against his shoulder. She pushed him back down from the ledge, and even though her expression was neutral, he saw her grab a brick from the pile. “What’s going on?”

Daniel took a deep breath. And he could hear it, then. It was more than just his imagination—the thrum of an engine drawing closer. Several engines.

And he knew.

Drawing his jacket about him more tightly, he pulled his hood up, offering Olivia a wan smile.

“They’re here.”

- Chapter Twenty-Eight -

“Shit,” Olivia whispered, the words tiny and small against the murk. Her eyes went round, and as if by instinct, she started lifting herself to peer over the half-wall.

Daniel grabbed hold, dragging her back down before she could give them away. “Stop that.”

“Is it them?”

That ominous feeling in his gut was still spreading, seeping all the way to his fingertips. Daniel nodded, sucking in a ragged breath. “Y-Yeah. I think so.”

“Crap.”

Daniel dug in his pocket for his phone. He needed to let Leon and the others know. They still needed to be careful—it made no sense for them to go to these lengths only for the three of them to get caught at this late stage—but they needed a warning, too.

As his fingers closed around plastic, the sound of stone scraping filled his ears. He stiffened, looking up.

Olivia leaned forward, on her knees, and cradled a brick against her chest. She had another in her other hand as well, braced on the roof.

“What are you doing?” Daniel hissed. “Olivia-”

“Quiet.” She grinned, but it came out looking more like a grimace. “J-Just call your friends, would you?”

Your friends. His mind was too filled with panic to really dissect her words, but even in that whisper-thin moment, there was just something terribly sad about the way she said it.

“Fine,” he said, tearing his eyes off her long enough to key his phone on.

The rumbling of the engines stayed there as he typed, growing louder by the second. Hurry, his senses sang. Type faster.

They’re here

With one final tap to send, Daniel flipped the phone shut, shoving it back into his pocket. Hopefully, Maya would know enough not to come charging straight in. Hopefully, they’d all remember the plan.

Slowly, half-turned on his side to keep from sticking his whole head over the ledge, Daniel peeked out into the night.

Two cars raced up the road, heading straight toward the garage they crouched atop.

“Is that them?” Olivia whispered.

Daniel chuckled. “They certainly don’t seem to fit in around here.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said. “Not enough rust.”

True enough. Daniel held himself still, watching them approach. They looked new, in a rental-car sort of way, without even a spot of rust on them. The fact they were roadworthy at all set them apart from the rest.

He lowered himself back down as the roar of their engines slowed. The two cars were stopping, pulling up to the curb in front of the garage.

Steady, he whispered to himself. Keep it together. Just wait.

Doors opened, and doors closed. Voices muttered to each other, too soft to hear, and then footsteps echoed across the night. Whoever it was, whoever they were, they scattered out around the building.

Checking the perimeter, then. Daniel smiled sourly. That checked out. If they thought they’d run him to ground, cornered and wounded, they’d want to make sure they had a hand on the situation before they charged straight in.

Somewhere beneath them, a door rattled.

“Locked,” someone said. “Figures.”

“He said this is the spot,” someone else said. “Keep trying. There’s got to be a way in.”

A shiver ran down Daniel’s spine. He recognized it immediately—the second speaker was Rickard.

“I guess,” the first speaker muttered. “Ain’t someone got a damn pick?”

The sound of someone walking drifted up to the rooftops, though. Someone was moving away. Rickard, if he had to guess. Daniel eyed the pile of bricks alongside Olivia, a bead of sweat running down the back of his neck.

He still didn’t want to hurt anyone—but now, having something hard and heavy to throw sounded like a halfway decent idea.

The low rustling of movement had dispersed by then, with only the quiet mutterings of the man trying to get through the front door left behind. Daniel hitched himself higher, shaking off Olivia as she grabbed at him, and peered back down over the half-wall.

A man fiddled with the door, brown-haired with a too-big sweatshirt on. Their two sedans waited at the curb, with a few figures lurking around them. Daniel drew back instinctively at the sight of guns peeking out from under their jackets.

A familiar figure paced just beyond, though. Indira. She strode back and forth, one hand folded into her armpit while the other pressed to her lips. Despite the dark and the distance, Daniel could see the bags under her eyes. Even the streaks of silver in her hair seemed broader, more pronounced. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to—the furtive looks she shot toward the garage’s front door spoke volumes.

Daniel lowered himself back down, glancing to Olivia. “Your boss is here,” he murmured.

Olivia drooped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “Crap. Figures.”

The rattling from below grew louder, and Daniel squirmed lower. They needed to move, and fast. Rickard and the others would probably stay distracted for another few minutes, but only up until they realized he wasn’t inside the garage. And as soon as they figured that out, they’d start looking for another explanation. It wouldn’t take them long to spot the ladders, at which point they were in trouble.

Judging by the way she squirmed in place, looking back and forth anxiously, Olivia had the same thoughts. “What should we do?” she whispered. “Did you-”

“Yeah.” Daniel bit his lip, his ears filling with the sound