Rami’s pulse quickened. “What happened?”
Claire was already shaking her head. “It’s not—I didn’t. I didn’t!” The last came out ragged, on the tail of a hiccupping sound that Rami guessed was Claire’s attempt not to cry again.
Rami fought the urge to push her. He knew Claire’s past, the secret she’d kept from everybody. That she’d attempted to leave the Library with one of her characters, and her mentor had died at her hands in the botched attempt. His fear rose at what that meant for Hero and he felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. He took two slow breaths. He’d had experience with trauma, too much experience, really, both personal and professional during his tenure at Heaven’s Gates. Panic could be felt without being acted on.
“Please, so I can help you,” he said quietly. She tried to stand. The raven launched herself off Claire’s shoulder, and Rami replaced the bird with his hand to steady her before she stumbled.
Claire’s throat worked before she could speak. Finally, her forehead came down on his shoulder, light and then heavy all at once. He caught her as she crumpled against him. “He wanted to be fixed. He was so certain I . . . I was stupid and weak.”
The words came out in a halting tumble, snared between sharp gulps of whatever misery existed between not-tears. When the extent of the loss had been relived, she managed to pull back and rub her face harshly. “I ran to the Unwritten Wing, of course. Hero is stamped; he’s special—he’s in Special Collections. That means Brevity could IWL him if—” If he still exists, Rami’s mind supplied. Claire’s words firmly dodged that. “But Brevity’s not there—no one is—and if I’m not the librarian anymore I can’t recall an IWL and I can’t face the damsels, so—”
Rami felt gutted as he slowly rubbed her back through another racking shudder of not-panic. Claire was not-crying, not-panicking, not-self-loathing. She was full of nots, which Rami had always known. He admired humans who went on in spite of the nots. She took a deep breath. “So we’ll search the realms one by one. Start with the Libraries, fan out from there. Someone would have to notice if a character . . . or a damaged book . . . appeared without warning.”
“You’re certain he would have been sent to another realm,” Rami repeated, gently but with a point. He wondered if she noticed when his voice wavered.
“Yes,” Claire said immediately, then: “No.” She looked down at her blood-splashed pearls as if the answer would be there. “I don’t know. But he has to be somewhere.”
“But if you leave without permission again, defy Hell once more—”
“The Hellhounds will have to keep up if they want me. Besides, I’ll be about the Library’s business, retrieving books.”
“You are Arcanist, not librarian. What’s more, you’re injured,” Rami said gently, and Claire turned a flinch into a frown.
“I don’t care if I’m Hell’s goddamned janitor.” She narrowed her reddened eyes, which showed too much white and wildness. “I’m going to find him, Rami.”
Rami remembered Hero’s face on the bridge, pale and defiant. Certainty as sharp as the razor edge of bridge beneath him, and the memory cut. Hero didn’t have to be somewhere, but Claire couldn’t operate on that possibility. Rami realized with a searing ache that he couldn’t either. He nodded and released Claire to juggle the baubles in his hands. “What do you want me to do with these?”
Claire already looked distracted with her own thoughts again. She was staring down the aisle. “Take them back to the front table and pack them in the satchel I’ve laid out. Take whatever else you need.”
She strode down the aisle deeper into the collection without looking back. The Arcane Wing wasn’t for looting—Rami knew he should remind Claire. The items in the Arcane Wing were locked away within the control of the Library for a reason. She’d used the Arcane Wing as an arsenal once before, but that was when the threat was in Hell. This would mean taking the artifacts out of the realm, and potentially out of their control.
But if it would save Hero, he’d loot it empty.
He looked down at the items in his hands. A tangle of tarnished chains held together a bramble patch of brooches. There was a dented crown, a scroll sealed with a fang, and at least eighteen ways to inflict death and mayhem between his palms. Rami didn’t like this, but he disliked imagining Hero’s fate even more. He took a steadying breath and carried the items back to the worktables.
Claire’s pet raven was waiting for him, hunched like a vulture over a leather satchel. Rami made a shooing motion as he approached, but the bird continued to worry at the leather strap.
“Off with you.” Rami set down his load and tried to gently scoop the bird into the air as he’d seen Claire do a number of times. She took a stab of his palm for his trouble, which distracted Rami long enough that by the time he finished cursing, the bird had hopped to the other end of the table with the dented crown in her beak.
Time felt as if it were running askew. Rami pressed down his fear and quickly packed the other items into the satchel. “I’m going to need that.”
The bird honked a particularly vulgar response and fouled the chair beneath her.
“Don’t care much for you either,” Rami muttered. He made a move to grab the crown, but the bird hopped to the next table over. Rami sighed, resisting the urge to skewer the bird on the end of his sword, and studied her instead.
The bird was a sullen mess of feathers and terrible attitude, as
