It was Tuesday. Two in the morning. Matt had promised his aid in the library’s monthly cleaning. The one day a month when all work was to be put aside and a thorough scrubbing was expected of all library personnel. A custodian came in during the mornings, but only long enough to sweep the floors and dump the trash, so dust collected like a film on every book and magazine in the place. The day-shift crew had taken it upon themselves to handle the bathroom—and thank God for that. Just the stench of the lemon cleaner they’d left him had Jaylin’s nose and stomach in strife.
Matt didn’t help one bit, of course. He spun in the chair, texting and singing along to Camila Cabello and finishing off the last of Jaylin’s soda. Then he left to meet a friend for late night fishing and Jaylin was alone with two floors to scrub and scour on his own. It was the price to be paid for a friendship with a lazy asshole like Matthew Richards.
The moment he’d left, Jaylin went to work with a bristle brush and that bottle of lemony chemicals. Music played from his computer speakers, but as he crawled on, the tune fell mum. In fact, Jaylin couldn’t hear a sound beyond the scrubbing of his cleaning brush. So many aisles of books existed within this place that he was easily lost within the catacombs. The shelves farthest from the doors were the most neglected, and the deeper Jaylin crawled, the more it felt like a graveyard where lonely old scholars read themselves to dust and bones.
As he dug at a stain in the hardwood, Jaylin heard a thud in the distance. It was an undeniable sound—the crack of a heavy book hitting the floorboards. He stood warily to his feet and listened to the silence. Then another thud echoed from every expansive wall of the old hollow library. Jaylin spun to the sound and for a moment, he wore he saw a flash of white pass between the gaps in the bookcase. Heard the woosh of the breeze it left behind. His heart bucked in his chest.
The lights were dimmed at night and the control room required a key, so Jaylin relied on the glow from his phone to search the area. And as he crept onward, he saw nothing but flecks of dust, floating specks in the light of the nearby window. He pushed himself to his feet and wandered along the bookcase, clinging to the grimy wood. Between the gaps in the old worn novels, Jaylin watched another flash of white whip past. He clung to the case and sought his way like a blind man, breath quivering and wood creaking beneath his feet.
He couldn’t see a thing. Whatever it was moved too fast. But he could hear a tac, tac, tac—the strummy sound Tisper’s nails always made when she tapped them against the table at the café downtown. But it wasn’t Tisper, rolling her expensive manicure impatiently on the table top; Jaylin was all alone here. Or maybe not so alone as he thought.
He didn’t want to pursue the sounds. He really didn’t want to, but it was his job to make sure no one disallowed entered the library after hours. So Jaylin followed the little noises, until eventually, they stopped altogether.
He searched the area with his eyes for a long while but Jaylin saw nothing beyond the crowded bookshelves. Then he heard a creak on the floorboards just behind him.
Jaylin turned and swung a fist. He felt the collision of knuckles to jaw before he heard the hiss of pain that followed.
When Jaylin recognized the face his fist had found, he clapped his hands over his mouth and gaped. Quentin Bronx stood before him, clutching his wounded jaw. He looked so different than he had at the party when he was peering over the banister like something royal. So different than the night he sat on the bathroom floor with French wine and eclairs. Tonight, he was somewhere in the middle. His hair was a shaggy black, hand-tussled mess and he wore sunglasses that hung from the neck of his shirt by their folded arms.
It’s night, Jaylin wanted to say. Why did he had sunglasses at night?
Quentin was suffering through the pain, rubbing his jaw with half his face hidden away in his hand. “You’ve got a hook,” he laughed.
“Sorry!” Jaylin somehow managed in exhale. It was a raspy, wrong sound. “I’m sorry. You scared me, I—How the hell did you get in here?”
“The door?” Quentin gestured behind him to the library doors, which Matt had so kindly left cracked open to every stray this side of the city. At least he had an explanation for the flash of white. Some filthy alley cat searching for a bite to eat or something to piss on, probably.
Quentin was still rubbing his jaw when Jaylin looked back at him. “Where did you pick up a punch like that?” he said. “Christ, and your hand doesn’t hurt? Really?”
It didn’t. Really. “You shouldn’t be here. We’re not open,” Jaylin said.
Quentin straightened, and Jaylin was curiously surprised that his fist wasn’t pounding by the look of that jaw. Strong and straight, cutting the line between the moon soaking in from the skylights and the shadows of the library catacombs. “I needed to find a book,” he said. “But if you’re going to lay me flat for it, I’ll stop by another time.”
“It’s two in the morning,” Jaylin sputtered. “Is it not just common sense that the place would be closed?”
“Is it common sense to leave the door open when you won’t allow anyone in?”
“The lights were off,” Jaylin scoffed.
“The door was open.” He was still tending to his jaw, and Jaylin felt admittedly smug at the sight.
“Listen, I’m sorry I punched you. But you’re kind of making me want to do it again.”
He wasn’t expecting Quentin to grin then, glaring white in the distant, screen-lit dark. He had the kind of canines that peaked just a bit longer than his other teeth. But just a bit. Less vampire, more kitten. “I’d say you owe me now. Do you know what this jaw is worth?” Quentin moved closer in a hard breeze that carried Jaylin’s confidence away. Maybe because he wore of much of his own. “This jaw landed me a duet in college with a French opera singer named Rosé—like the wine. It’s gotten me back-stage passes, it’s had beer with celebrities, steak with congressmen, wine with—”
“Let me guess,” said Jaylin. “Rosé?”
“Rosé with rosé,” Quentin propped his hands on his sides and laughed. “No, but I wish I’d thought of that.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Jaylin told him once again. “What do you want?”
Quentin said simply, “A book. What else?”
Oh, Jaylin wanted to hit him again. But eager to be rid of him, he waved a hand in the air and gestured for Quentin to lead the way.
It was a silent stroll to the back of the library—past the science and historical fiction and up the winding staircase. But despite that light shrug to his shoulders and that certain smirk on his too-sharp face, there was an attentive way about Quentin Bronx. Like he was listening to everything, like he was seeing all. Sometimes he’d look in one place for too long, and curiously, Jaylin would follow his gaze to the nothing that existed there.
Then there was the issue of him. Quentin. A wild nature to how he moved. Jaylin couldn’t help but concern himself with how his shirt slid over his back the way waves wash over driftwood. He’d seen muscular men before. There were a lot on the football team at Tisper’s school. But those men were dense and meaty, with tree trunks for necks. Quentin wasn’t like that. He was lean and limber. The kind of buff that comes without protein shakes and a high-intake diet.
Jaylin hadn’t noticed he’d stopped moving until he nearly bumped into him. Quentin had a book in his hands.
“Medicinal Herbs? You came here at two AM for that?’
Quentin looked to him from the corner of his eye, then back to the book. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Not really,” Jaylin admitted. “Not at all.” Just that he had to be loaded if he was marrying into the Sigvards.
“Perfect,” Quentin said.
“Perfect?”
“I’ll take the book.”
Okay. Jaylin mouthed to himself. In all honesty, he didn’t care what Quentin came for. He cared only that he left, as soon as physically possible. “Your jaw may get you steak and rosé, but it won’t get you into the library after hours. You can’t come back this late. I could get in trouble for…” Jaylin’s mouth clamped closed when he realized Quentin wasn’t paying attention to him—or the book. He was staring into the distance now, strangely stiff.
“Is there someone else here?” he asked, snapping his herb book closed.
“No, just me.” Jaylin watched him curiously, the way his neck extended. The way he hadn’t moved from his pointed position. Quentin Bronx looked every bit like a hound on the hunt. There was a calculation in his eyes and they swept from shelf to shelf like he was hearing something Jaylin couldn’t.
Jaylin watched with twisted brows, peeking back to get a glimpse of what he might be searching for. When Quentin noticed his confusion, he grinned that dazzling smile and Jaylin felt his mouth go dry. It wasn’t because Quentin was attractive—he was—but that grin was like the knife that cut the cherry that topped the frosting on the cake.
“Must be hearing things,” he said, giving the book a push into Jaylin’s chest. “Think you can…?”
It took Jaylin a good moment to get the gears rolling. “I’ll check you out. The book—I’ll check the book out.” Jaylin hugged it to his chest and whipped around, eager to escape Quentin’s eyes. It was a struggle not to look back, because Quentin was right about one thing. He had a hell of a jaw. A jaw so sharp that it could cut through all the diamonds and morals in the world. Rosé or no Rosé.
“What brought you to the party?” Quentin asked as he followed Jaylin down the stairs and towards the reception desk.
Jaylin thumbed over the spine of the book. “The party?”
“Our Fourth of July party. You were there, no?”
So he was watching. Jaylin flared a bit at the thought, then he said, “I was invited by a friend.”
It was silent again after that. A stiff, sticky silence that made Jaylin shiver with nervous sweat. It was only a conversation, but there was something about Quentin that made the silence in the room so much louder than it really was.
“Why are you renting a book anyway?” Jaylin asked, just to kill the quiet. “Don’t you have the money to go buy whatever the hell you want from wherever the hell sells it?”
“Sure I do, but it’s not exactly something you can order online.” Quentin was perusing the shelves as they spoke, but Jaylin kept an even pace a few feet ahead.
“Then why don’t you just keep it? I wouldn’t say anything.” Jaylin slid the book on the counter and skirted the desk to slip in front of his computer. “Doubt anyone would miss it.”
“Oh, I’m sure someone else would need it.”
“A book about…what? Fennel and parsley? Who the hell needs that?”
But Quentin had stopped talking. He was silent, chin high, like he’d caught a breeze of something wicked. He searched those dark corners with his eyes, pulling his wallet from his pocket and depositing his library card onto the desk. But never looking away from the darkness. Not for a moment.
“I’ll ask one last time,” he said—eyes so far from Jaylin, he couldn’t catch much but the tips of his black lashes. “No one else is here?”
“No one but the rats in the walls.” Jaylin ran the bar code under the scanner and flung the book back at Quentin, who caught it just as it hit his chest. “It’s due back in a week.”
Quentin left after that with not much more than a thanks. And for the next four hours, Jaylin clung close to the light of his computer screen. He hadn’t heard another noise since, but the thought put a shiver up his spine.
Quentin had heard something. And there were no rats in the walls.
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