Kai handed her the map reflexively, then stared at her. ‘What do you mean, I’m doing this? What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to slow down pursuit.’ She tucked the map under her arm and quickly unwound the locket from round her wrist, fastening it around her neck again and hiding it beneath her blouse. ‘I’m going to delay them while you get Evariste out of here. We need answers from him.’
‘But what if he wakes up?’
‘Gag him, tie him up, whatever; tell him it’s all my fault. You know what I can do – assume he’d be able to do the same. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of tying me up to keep me in one place.’ The way he avoided her eyes confirmed her suspicions. ‘Come on, Kai, we’re running out of time here.’
‘And what if Qing Song takes offence at something you say? He does have wolves, after all . . .’ But he was already dragging the table away from the wall and bundling the unconscious Evariste over his shoulder.
‘I’ll make it clear that the Library knows exactly where I am. Right now, you’re my big ace in the hole.’ Irene tried the room’s other door. It gave onto a small hallway leading to a little kitchen and an even smaller bedroom. The window looked out onto the back of the building. ‘As long as they don’t know you’re here, or who you are, I want to keep it that way. Come on!’
She wasn’t surprised to find that the window giving onto the fire escape had been well oiled, and the furniture had been arranged to make it easy to climb out. Irene held the window open while Kai dragged the other Librarian through it and gave them a cheerful wave. ‘Be careful!’ she said.
‘Oh, certainly, I’ll just follow your excellent example,’ Kai said drily. He closed the window behind him with a thump.
Irene quickly moved to check Evariste’s bedroom. It was small, dingy and packed with books. She checked the underside of the mattress, the bedside chest of drawers, the washstand, and everywhere else that came to mind. But there were no convenient caches of secret documents or diaries, hidden stashes of gems or anything else that might explain Evariste’s behaviour. She left the room as it was, with the drawers open and the covers pulled back. It would support the story she was going to tell.
A glance out of the front window showed that the wolves had gathered at the door of the building. The street had, unsurprisingly, emptied of bystanders.
A number of things were coming together now in her mind. The books scattered around this apartment were a jumbled assortment of fiction, ranging from cheap dime-novels to second-hand hardbacks going mouldy at the edges. There was only one reason why a Librarian would have gathered such a haphazard assortment of low-cost texts and then not even tried to put them in order. Evariste hadn’t been collecting them to read: he’d been using them to create a Library ward. By creating a metaphysical link between this apartment and the Library, he’d been trying to hide from someone or something. And, given his reaction to Kai – and to the wolves outside – it was a reasonable deduction that he’d been hiding from dragons in general, and from Qing Song in particular. Though she didn’t yet know how Hu and Jin Zhi were involved in this picture.
She’d told Kai that he was her ace in the hole – that she wanted to keep him a secret. But there was more to it than that. The moment Kai came into conflict with other dragons here, he would have to decide which side he was on. Whether he was going to help the Library, or whether that would be a betrayal of his family and his own kind. And for both her own sake and Kai’s, Irene intended to put off that moment for as long as possible.
Outside, the wolves set up a clamour. Irene took a deep breath, mentally crossed her fingers for Kai and Evariste, and walked out of the apartment. She began to descend the stairs.
There was a crash. Probably someone kicking the building door open. The growling of wolves echoed up the stairwell.
Irene reminded herself forcibly that if the wolves were randomly attacking anyone who came near them, Captain Venner would have known about it. She kept on walking.
Unless they completely devoured the victims and disposed of the skeleton, her imagination inconveniently suggested.
Don’t be stupid, wolves can’t dispose of skeletons, she told herself firmly. Even unnaturally intelligent wolves that are the personal pets of dragons. That’s the sort of thing a dragon has human minions for . . .
She turned the last corner on the stairs and looked down at the ground floor below. Although there were only half a dozen wolves, they managed to fill the corridor with a sea of dark fur and gleaming eyes, weaving back and forth and around each other. Their breathing was loud and heavy on the air, a raw edge against her nerves. But even when compared to the pack of predators, it was the two men behind them who drew her attention.
She paused in her descent, trying to slow her suddenly rapid heartbeat. If she didn’t get them on the defensive immediately, she’d already lost.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, raising a disdainful eyebrow. ‘What are you doing here?’
The frozen pause at the other end of the corridor gave her a better chance to assess the men – one clearly a dragon, the other not – as they stood there. The one in the lead was obviously in charge, from his poise, his manner and the fact that his suit looked about twice as expensive as the other’s. His skin and hair were both black, though his hair had a very slight tinge of dark green to it, like the sheen of a starling’s wing. He was broader in the shoulder than Kai. He looked up at Irene, with an air that suggested he’d rather have been looking down. He had the same powerful presence as Jin Zhi. He stood like a statue formed from the living earth, a more-than-human entity that had temporarily taken on the form of a human.
The second man was instantly classifiable as a professional – the sort who fixed problems for his employer, permanently. He was dapper and smooth-looking, but his eyes were thin and careful, and he didn’t stop scanning the room. But he held back, waiting for the first man to speak. Bodyguard, Irene decided, though he might not know his employer’s true nature.
Finally the first man spoke. His voice was bass, clear and definitely not local. ‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’
Irene stamped down her inner flame of relief that she hadn’t been eaten already. ‘My name is Marguerite,’ she said coolly, ‘and I work for the Library. I assume you know of us?’
Now was that a flash of guilt she saw flicker across his face? How very interesting. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And I assume you know who and what I am.’
Time to roll the dice some more and hope they came up as a winning combination. ‘Naturally. Lord Qing Song, I believe?’
He didn’t visibly react. But the wolves did. They retreated to surround him, pressing against his legs and raising their heads to rub against his hands.