Page 67 of Dragon Unleashed
“Thank you.”
“And I was thinking,” she says, pulling me along again. “I like your idea.”
“Which idea was that?”
“My birthday drinks idea.”
“Oh.” I nearly trip as I whip my head toward her. “You want to go out with Mag?”
“What? Fuck no. I meant you and me... and your boy toy.” She winks. “We should make a night of it. Go to that bar you talked about.”
The answering adrenaline rush is like a punch to my gut. “Really?”
I try my best to play it cool, but this is it. This is how I get Aries home.
“Really,” she says. “Besides, you’re not a full keeper yet, so there’s no rule about not being in the same public place together anyway. Oh shit, there he is.”
I look up and find Morris directly above us in the alchemy section. He’s seated at one of the research tables, bent over a book.
I hesitate.
Impossibly, he chooses that moment to look away from his book—and directly down at me. A shiver goes up my spine. There’s something about him. Something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Blossom pulls her arm free and steps back. “A keeper test is nothing compared to that guy,” she mutters. “See you later.”
She slips away, and I sigh, climbing the steps to babysit for another day.
Morris isn’t at the table anymore by the time I make my way upstairs. Fred, the gnome who was watching him, however, waves at me then rides Kitty over the stacks and out of view.
Freaking gnomes.
Chuckling, I move further into the section, but still cannot find Morris. Confused, I head into the stacks, searching aisle by aisle for where he’s gone.
The first few rows are empty, so I make my way toward the back. The lighting is dimmer here, deliberately done to protect the ancient tomes stored along the back wall. The glass surrounding these books is impenetrable by anything other than the library’s magic. But at the very end of the row, the normally locked cabinet is hanging wide open.
My senses sharpen. I slow my steps, a sense of discomfort creeping in.
“...Apertum, Aperi, Retego, son of a bitch.”
The exclamation at the end jolts me into sudden action. Or maybe it’s the familiar alchemical commands coming from someone who has no right to utter them. I round the corner and stop short at the sight of Morris standing in the middle of the aisle with a locked book in his hands.
“How did you get that?” I demand.
“Paige.” His shoulders relax as if he’s relieved to see me here instead of startled at being caught with a forbidden object.
I stalk toward him and snatch the book out of his hands, noting the symbol on the spine representing which collection it's from. “Where did you get this?” I repeat.
“I found it. There.”
“How did you get the lock to open?”
“It was open when I got here.”
I don’t believe that for a second, though I can’t figure out how in the world he managed to do it. My wariness goes from shocked to guarded.
“This is one from the Vetus collection. It’s not available to anyone but the head librarian.”
As I say the words, I shiver. The Vetus collection is ancient and forbidden. Hoc has only ever mentioned these books to me in passing and, even then, only to tell me they can never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
