I caught him digging between his teeth with a fingernail. “Need a toothpick?”
“I can manage.” He finished the task then cranked the van and pointed us toward home.
“You keep interesting company these days.” From this angle, Boaz wore a pinched expression. “I don’t think I realized just how interesting until this little ride along.”
A text notification pinged Linus’s phone and saved me from defending my choice in friends to him of all people.
“Bishop matched the signature to Eloise,” Linus informed me, but he didn’t look happy about it.
That ought to be good news. “What’s wrong?”
“The form was filed months ago.”
“Severine was alive and well then. So was Heloise for that matter.”
Unless they held breathing against me, the Marchands had no right to a grudge at that point.
“The authentication process takes time, weeks depending on the Athenaeum’s backlog, but it doesn’t explain why Severine would allow Eloise to act on her behalf. She was being tutored by her grandmother, which would have granted her certain liberties, but Severine was willing to disinherit your mother, knowing she had born a goddess-touched granddaughter, to preserve the family name. If Severine decided to let lifetimes of accumulated Marchand knowledge go, even out of spite, I believe she would have overseen the transaction personally.” He lowered his phone. “The collection is an heirloom. Marchands have bled for that knowledge, bred for that knowledge. It’s as good as blood to her, or it was.”
Rays of hope speared through me before I could pinpoint their origin, and I reached for him.
“The letter. The one Johan delivered. It matched the signature, remember? That means Severine didn’t write it.” The bright spot was lost to an eclipse when the larger implications hit me. “Eloise must have written it.” I ran calculations in my head. “The date on the slip. Check it.” I wet my lips. “I bet it was around the same time as my release from Atramentous.”
Linus bent his head and started typing. “I’ve sent him the date.”
“You knew it off the top of your head?” Granted, I had tried to put as much of that dark period in my life behind me as possible, but I couldn’t have given you an exact day I walked out of there. Detox from the drugs had left me shaky and my brain a foggy mess. “How do you remember this stuff?”
“The woman I had loved for half my life was being released, so yes. I committed the date to memory.”
“Well, when you put it like that.” I invited myself into his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You’re adorable, you know that?”
“I am the night,” he said with a straight face. “Fear me.”
Clearly, I wasn’t the only meme addict in this relationship.
“Nah.” I nestled against him, feeling my first laugh break free. “I’d rather cuddle you.”
“You’re murder on a reputation,” he chided, voice thick with amusement. “Potentates aren’t cuddly.”
“I beg to differ. You’re a potentate, and you’re quite cuddly. Why, I could probably—”
“Please stop.” Hood turned on the radio. “I have a full stomach, and it’s turning.”
“You and Lethe are just as bad.” I harrumphed. “You’re worse now that she’s pregnant.”
Hood narrowed his eyes at me in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t contradict me.
A call had Linus shifting my weight to one side so he could lift the phone to his ear. This close I heard both sides of the conversation, but I tuned out Mary Alice and Linus while they discussed the terms and conditions for borrowing the artists.
Nestling back against him, I let my hormones cool while I turned this new information over in my head.
Linus finalized his arrangements just as things were starting to gel for me.
“Whoever took the initiative,” I said, “it looks like the Marchand collection is now part of the Athenaeum. How do we find it? And how do we gain access?”
Two things the Grande Dame hinted were impossible feats.
“You want access?” Boaz twisted in his seat, his face gone pale. “Grier, no.”
“Boaz,” I sighed his name. “You can’t keep trying to protect me from everything.”
“You don’t understand. I’m an Elite. I’ve transported books for the Athenaeum, and I’ve done my time guarding its doors.”
The reminder drew me upright. “You know where it is.”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed his palms over his scalp. “You can’t go there, Grier.”
A creeping sense of dread crawled over me. “Where is it?”
Battling loyalties played across his face, but he exhaled, “Atramentous.”
“Atramentous.” I heard my voice as if from across a great distance. “I have to go back.”
Back to the damp, the mildew, the quiet sobs, and the smell. Goddess, the smell. Unwashed bodies, urine, feces. Death.
A whimper lodged in my throat where I could almost taste the dank atmosphere. No matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn’t clear my airway. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t…
The world dropped out from under me, and even with me in his arms, Linus couldn’t catch me.
The scents of fresh dough and sugar set my stomach rumbling, and I cracked open my eyes to find Lethe holding a donut an inch from the end of my nose.
“I told you this would work better than smelling salts.” She cast a smug grin over her shoulder. “Since I’m an excellent best friend, I’ll even let her eat it.” She looked back at me and mouthed, “No, I won’t.”
Rolling my eyes at her wasn’t happening just yet. I was still too woozy for that. “Help me up.”
Clamping the donut between her teeth, Lethe clasped hands with me and tugged until I was vertical on what I realized was the couch in the living room at Woolworth House. “Where’s Linus?”
“He was interrogating Boaz, but that was a while ago. You’ve been out for a couple of hours.” She took another bite. “He told me to let him know the second you woke.” Tilting her head back, she yelled, “Linus. She’s awake.”
The boards groaned beneath the couch, and Woolly’s presence bumped me in gentle inquiry.
“I’m embarrassed,” I told the old house. “Otherwise, I’m fine.”
The instant my brain put two and two together, that to view the whole collection rather than check out one title at a time I would have to visit the remnants of the Great Library, shelved in the basement at Atramentous, it got four, and it was lights out.
“Do you want a donut?” Crumbs flew when Lethe spoke. “I can grab you one.”
“Where did you get them?”
“An angel of mercy set them on a sorting table.” She licked her fingers. “I was told they were for whoever wanted them, and I’m a whoever, and I wanted them.”
“They were for the sentinels working the barricade, and the volunteers helping out here.”
“I’m a volunteer.” She attempted to look affronted. “I’m helping out.”
“You’ve also eaten three dozen already.”
Pulling on a frown, she cocked her head at me. “What’s your point?”
“Lethe,” I began, hoping to win her sympathy. “There’s something I have to tell you, about Midas.”
“You mean that he grew balls and claimed second in the Atlanta pack?
“Yes?”
“He texted me about it as soon as you left.”
Annoyed with them both, I thunked my head against the cushion. “You mean I was ravaged with guilt for nothing?”
“Not for nothing.” Her shoulders drooped when she thought about it. “He didn’t want it—doesn’t want it. But he did it. For me, and for you.”
“Where does that leave you?”
“I’m not sure.” Her eyes met mine, a curious light in them. “I’ll let you know when I decide.”
“You’ve always got a home here.” I patted her shoulder. “Both of you. All of you.”
“Thanks.”
Footsteps on the front porch caught my attention long enough for Lethe to escape into the kitchen where I had no doubt she murdered the remaining donuts before I took her up on her offer.
“I should have been here.” Linus hurried over and claimed Lethe’s spot. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re fine. You didn’t miss much.” I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I’m not sure if I was drooling, or if it was Lethe. She was holding a donut to my nose, so it’s possible this is her saliva.”
A throat cleared behind me, and I whipped my head toward the sound. “Hood.”
“Here.” He passed me a paper towel with two donuts stacked on top. “I saved these for you.”
A blur streaked across the living room, and he grunted as impact drove him into the nearest wall.
Alarm spiked Woolly’s wards, the music in them a sudden crescendo that pushed me to my feet.
“You stole my donuts.” Lethe knocked him down flat then straddled his throat. Her thighs squeezed, and her rounded belly covered the lower part of his face when she leaned forward to apply pressure. “My. Donuts. Mine.”
Dreads fanned across the planks, expression dreamy, he rasped, “Damn, you’re hot when you…”
His voice petered out, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The hand cradling the donuts hit the floor, sending them tumbling under the couch for the dust bunnies to feast on. Not that it would stop Lethe from picking off the lint and eating them. She’d done it before and would again.
“Grier.” Lethe clutched her stomach, but she couldn’t see all the way over it these days. “I killed him. My mate. The father of my child. And I murdered him over two donuts. They weren’t even cream filled. They were glazed. Glazed.”