Get the fucking book. Get the hell back to the mansion. Shoot anyone who gets in the way. Get home and bring the house down behind you. Simple. Right?
“Fuck,” he hissed, sweeping the catwalk under the upper shelves with his flashlight as Yevgeny and Yuri methodically took the lower galleys and the librarian’s counter.
“Is fucking library. How the fuck we meant to find right book?” complained Yuri. He poked his gun barrel at a stack of unshelved books at the front desk, dislodging them.
“Index cards. Stop that. If it is a mess, search will take ten times longer.”
“Index cards—” Yuri processed—“in English?”
Alexei forced himself not to clout his subordinate. Yuri was not the sharpest hammer in the toolbox. “Yes, Yuri, in English.” Except according to Intel, the book had been deliberately misfiled. Fuck.
Their forced entry hadn’t exactly left the library in pristine condition. There were cracks in the plasterwork and dust everywhere. Broken glass and books on the floor, tumbled higgledy-piggledy in the gloom. Gas lamps hissed but barely beat back the darkness. No blood, dammit, and Alexei wanted to see blood badly, wanted it with an urgent and righteous anger. Because fuck this job, fuck these English assholes with their smug magical mojo, fuck this shithole version of London—he hadn’t seen this much poverty since the time he’d been posted to the favelas outside Rio—fuck. All this shit for one goddamn book?
He shone his flashlight towards the door at the far end of the room. Broken lock, clear signs of a hurried exit. Books strewn around the path of the defenders’ stampede. They wouldn’t be so stupid—he told himself, even as he strolled towards the big leatherbound tome that someone had dropped facedown on the floor in their hurry to escape the flash-bangs. Well, maybe. He grinned humorlessly and reached for the magic compass doohicky on a cord that hung around his shirt collar. It twisted in his grip and tugged straight at the book on the floor. “Hey, Yuri, is your lucky day,” he called softly as he edged towards it, every sense on full alert for trickery, “or is maybe an IED.” Because if he was mounting a staged withdrawal he sure as fuck wouldn’t leave his target lying on the floor—but he might yank the cover off and use it as bait for a trap.
But the charm-fetish-thing still tugged towards it. Which meant it was full of magical go-juice. Well. Maybe it was a trap, but—Alexei bent towards it. There was nothing to be seen: no wires, no pads, no infrared beams visible in his night-vision scope. “Yuri. Does this look clean to you?”
Yuri joined him in his inspection. “Sure, boss. What, you think they drop it while run away?”
“Why, yes, Yuri.” Alexei straightened up. “That’s what I think.” He forced himself to relax and shake the tension out of his neck and shoulders, even though his heart was still hammering and he was on a hair-trigger in case the asshole with the submachine gun popped up again.
“Then why we not—” Yuri bent towards the book—“take book and go home?”
He straightened up, cradling the book across his body as he looked at Alexei expectantly.
Alexei gave him a hard stare, then nodded to himself. “Yes, Yuri, why not,” he breathed. Raising his voice: “Yevgeny? Target acquired! Going home! Last one to the bar is buying!”
He turned and strode back through the ruined front doors of the reading room, into the lobby, and then into the Whitechapel night. Behind him, Yevgeny and Yuri followed.
His ears still ringing from the flash-bangs, he didn’t hear the glockenspiel tinkling that followed them out of the library.
Game Boy waited for the angry bowler-hatted Russians with the very big guns to leave, counted to fifty, then sat up. He clutched his head and suppressed a moan of pain as he blinked furiously, trying to flush away the purple and green afterimages. He’d had his head turned to the wall when the flash-bangs detonated, but the wall in front of his face was painted ivory and the flashgun aftermath was taking its time to fade.
“Fuck,” he whispered, frightened to move: even breathing seemed like a dangerously risky activity. But his sixth sense twitched, prodding him. He needed to make a speed run and start nownownow or it’d be toolatetoolatetoolate—and through the muffled buzzing in his ears he heard nothing else, no footsteps or grumpy Slavic tongues. He rolled over and looked down on a scene of devastation by gaslight. Books and broken glass strewn everywhere, furniture smashed or pushed aside. Across the galley from his niche he saw shadows stir. “Becca?”
“Shh.” The whites of Del’s eyes were startling in the darkness. Her drab gown was draped unevenly about her, like a fallen curtain or a pile of dirty laundry.
“They’ve gone and I’m on my way.” He straightened up and dropped lightly from his hiding place. Del followed, a rustling fall of cloth across the shadowed floor. “They went out the front door. You go out the back and meet me round the side.”
Game Boy nerved himself to move. He pulled his top hat tight around the crown of his head, shot his shirt cuffs (then thought better of it, and tugged his gray coat sleeves down over their bright white shine), and cleared his throat. Bad men with big guns. Well yes, but he’d done it a million times before in games, done it for reals as well—stolen a letter right out of Becca’s new girlfriend’s grasp, ducked and weaved between security guards—but bullets. Game Boy swallowed. Then he ghosted out through the drunkenly askew front doors, feeling the familiar prickle of knowing where to put his feet, where to lean his back, nudging at the back of his skull with a hungry, chattery feeling like insects chewing on his tension.
It was still night out there, and a sea of mist rose nearly to his
