Axer's eyes closed with something like bone-deep relief, then opened above a dark smile. His back slid down the wall to sit against it, head tilted back, an overwhelming languidness to his posture, like he had given himself permission to just...rest for a moment after days, months, years on duty.
“We can only communicate with the outside world for five minutes each hour of our time?” Axer was looking up at the books circling with a glittering edge to his gaze. His compass was spinning madly.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
Constantine snatched another book out of the air, read its cover, then flung it back into flight and snatched another. He did this a dozen times while we watched.
“Just give them something,” Axer said to him, a frankly concerning amount of smirk on his face as he leaned against the wall in a half-sprawl. “I'll make sure they don't eat you.”
Constantine’s gaze focused strangely on him for a moment, and a secondary tie that had been broken snapped fully back between them.
I could feel how much force it took for Constantine to hold the overwhelming emotions from his face as his expression became indolent as he looked back into the air at the circling predators. “Fine. Who wants a taste?” He touched his temple and pulled out a thin thread of magic, snapping it into the air. Like chum suddenly scenting the water, four books dove at him. They froze in front of him and I wondered how he had done that until I saw Axer’s fingers twitch in the held position he had at his side.
Constantine looked through his choices, pointing at the second to the right. “One chapter. You provide real time readouts on whatever we want for forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours in here.”
It vigorously nodded. Constantine tilted his head toward his roommate. Axer flicked his fingers, sending the three waiting books winging off. Easy. Like they had done this before in another library. Sometime long ago.
The selected tome—Communicating Off Grid—flew up to clamp his head like a strange man-eating hat. Constantine tried to look bored while the book duplicated whatever knowledge it was after.
Finished, the book shivered, then flopped open on a table Constantine raised from the floor. Constantine touched the open pages. A minute later, written data started to remotely write across the left side, but at a glacial pace of a single letter for each second.
The first line read: “How did you do that?”
I could almost hear the demand in each letter’s slant. Constantine smirked at Olivia’s handwriting. He responded, then touched another page that he labeled “news.”
“In other news, the intense stores of magic held in Crelussa have been moved to an undisclosed location. Helen Price stated that it was clearly the target of the Origin Mage and terrorists that she was working with and will be kept in locked secrecy for now. Some lawmakers have expressed unease with these secrecy conditions, though, further putting the Department in a pos—”
Constantine checked his time spell. “Ugh. Watching any more of that write itself out will give me dementia in one hundred seconds. Boring. Let’s set that to record.”
He hooked up a spell to duplicate newsfeeds to another book, then traded two more written quips—and a single heartfelt response of mine—to Olivia’s short follow-up sentence, as we waited for her to verify the time.
One minute had passed for them. Twelve for us.
Time.
I let myself bonelessly flop on the ground, suddenly understanding exactly what Axer's sprawl meant. I could just...do nothing for five minutes. The world probably wouldn’t end in twenty-five seconds, Stavros wouldn’t find us, no one would die. I closed my eyes and fought the sudden urge to cry. “Boring sounds great,” I said.
“Yes.” Constantine smiled. He flipped to another page and scrawled a detailed note. Olivia’s handwriting came through ten minutes later.
“Perfect.”
Axer was still splayed against the wall, but he had roused himself enough to have some sort of staring contest with Stealth and Tactics. Its brother tome had hunted him relentlessly at Excelsine. The book inched forward. Sacrificial Plays inched in behind it.
“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.
He tapped his bicep. “Plotting again.”
I scraped myself from the floor and Constantine and I experimented with the communication gaps for the next hour. Olivia got one hundred paragraphs of ours to every few of hers. But it made it so that I could write out, in less stuttering sentences, everything that happened with Stavros.
Constantine, on the other hand, took constant opportunities to input all sorts of offensive things Olivia couldn’t respond to in time.
Axer gave Stealth and Tactics his finger, while Sacrificial Plays vibrated behind it and Ludicrously Dicey Plans landed to wait its turn.
At the hour mark, we hooked back up for our five minutes of conversation with Excelsine.
“This is going to get old fast,” Olivia said sternly.
“But, Ren,” her voice was anguished. “You—”
“I know, I know. It's okay. It's all fine.” It wasn't fine.
“It's not fine. We had to put Nephthys in a medical coma. We're just bringing her out of it now.”
I shut my eyes.
“And, Ren...” Olivia hesitated. “The Department... Ren, Patrick's younger brother...he was attacked a few minutes ago. He's still alive, but the curse... Lifen's aunt suffered the same a few minutes before. The cure is only held by obtaining a piece of the caster. Delia's family just made it out alive and has gone dark. Will's family made it. But Mike's... ”
I choked on the knowledge. Stavros had said... “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” I whispered.
“No. Stavros will be,” Olivia said, voice implacable. “Find a way for us to get to you in the next six hours of your time. That's 30 minutes for us. We're scrambling, but will be ready. Tell Leandred no more irritating notes.”
Constantine waved his hand at me in a lighthearted 50/50 gesture of compliance, but his emotions were dark and swirling with vengeance.
The connection stuttered a warning. Five minutes went by surprisingly fast when you were trying to stuff so much debilitating information in.
“Ren, the Kinsky paintings, Stavros...be careful in Valeris's home.”
She was right, of course. Before he'd destroyed himself, Valeris had lived to a far greater age than either Kinsky or I. His breadth of knowledge, by years alone, would have been greater.
Looking around me at what he had built and imbued was all the evidence I needed of that.
But I could only be grateful. We needed to find Stavros, more than ever. We needed to destroy his plans.
Olivia gave a last strong embrace along the connection, then once more, we were alone.
“Wait,” I said, looking at the time. “We had thirty seconds left.”
“Yes.” Constantine was already connecting to another call.
“Constantine,” Stuart Leandred's voice was sharp. “What—?”
“There's no time. I'm sending you a list of names. You need to protect the people on the list. I'll contact you again in an hour.”
Stuart said nothing for a long moment. “I'll take care of it. You have my word. Wait—” Stuart stopped Constantine before he could disconnect. “Be safe.”