Page 94 of He Who Sleeps

“No, an actual drink, being puppeteered about is not my idea of a good time.”

"Drunkenness is an altered state of consciousness," Carter smirked, helping Rix to his feet. "I'd stick to the OJ, buddy."

“I didn’t say get drunk...have you ever known me to get drunk?” Rix argued with him as he helped him up the stairs.

"Alcohol is a drug," Carter said seriously. "If you're feeling under the influence now, I promise that a shot of tequila isn't going to help."

“Not under the influence, more like someone was moving my body against my will.”

"That doesn't sound like a lot of fun," Carter admitted, turning off the lights as they headed back up the stairs. "On second thoughts, maybe we shouldn't go and wake everyone up right now. It's almost two in the morning. Maybe we should all just go to bed and come back to this bright and early. Those books aren't going anywhere and we know where they are now. What do you think, Em?"

“I think we have been flying blind for three years,” Emerson offered as they hefted Rix up the last stairs. “And I think we have a limited amount of time,” he sighed and threw himself into the chair closest to him. “We have what...a week ‘til Thanksgiving...and then three ‘til we need to be in the Balkans for the festivities? What amounts to a month to figure out how to keep her safe...how to keep us all safe and bring Him back to His glory.”

"I know, but there's no point in burning ourselves out by working every hour in creation," Carter told him. "You'll be better able to assess all this when you've had a few hours of sleep. You were up most of last night, too. You're no good to us or Petra when you're half dead from exhaustion."

“He’s right,” Rix said. “We only have so long left here, Car, at the house. Our lives are calling Monday morning, and after that...aside from this asshole who can be playboy of the year and just research everything, the rest of us have jobs, jobs we need to go to to keep up appearances.” He looked to their friend. “Easton is on his frayed edges...”

"What about a compromise?" Carter suggested. "We box it all up tomorrow and ship it to the city so we can go over it in our downtime. Hell, I can stay behind on Monday and hire a van and drive it down myself if necessary. I can put the bike in the back with the boxes."

“I don’t think we should bring it outta this house,” Emerson said. “He went through a lot of trouble to hide it from them...” He shook his head. “And if we succeed we can’t let them fall into the wrong hands. We still don’t know who we can trust, aside from ourselves. Go...go to bed. We found the stash. Tomorrow we spend as much time as we can to read and go from there.” He looked to Rix. “Aspirin. It’s what helped me after my little tête-à-tête with Him. I will go crawl into bed with her, sleep a few hours so Carter doesn’t lose his shit. I’ll set my alarm for four hours, and then I’m up and working on this.”

"Okay." Carter was relieved. He understood the urgency, was feeling it himself, but they both looked dead on their feet. At least they were all here and could split up the search between them. If it came down to it, they could take photos of the pages instead of trying to read everything and take the digital copies. A promise of four hours sleep was good enough.

Waving them off up the stairs, he went to his room where Brutus was sprawled across most of the bed, despite knowing full well he wasn't supposed to be on there. Still, Carter couldn't fault him. The mattress was incredible. With a rueful grin, he stripped off, pushed the dog aside enough to actually get under the covers, and settled in for what would be a very short rest.

Chapter 33

“Where is the wine?”Petra asked as she settled on the large cushion on the ground in front of the low table covered in books. Six days after Rix, Emerson and Carter had found the hidden library, they were settled into a rental house in the northern Liberties, officially celebrating the feasting holiday. It was after dinner, Petra creating one hell of a meal for all of them. Now, she was relaxing in the living room while Leo and Carter cleaned up the kitchen.

Since finding the books, things had been slightly different. Emerson was focused on figuring out what exactly the right course was, and her sexy psychos had, for the most part, become less so, though she had a feeling that that wasn’t who they all were at their core. Learned behavior wasn’t inherent behavior.

And her guys seemed to be enjoying it all.

“Here,” Rix said and poured more of the crisp white wine into her glass.

“Thank you. Now where were we?” They had been working on everything since they got there the afternoon before, between prepping for the meal and sexy bouts of indiscretions.

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