The Hidden Library

by Heather Lyons

  I am on the verge of offering a long-overdue apology when he once more clears his throat. “It was used to make a pact. You know, the kind that requires blood?”

  My hand slips to his knee and squeezes. “Your blood?”

  His sigh is barely voiced. “Mine and another’s.”

  I think back to the call he took yesterday, the one that left him on edge and distant for much of the day. “Tom’s?”

  He doesn’t look at me when he answers in the affirmative. And I’m taken aback, because there’s anger there, and, if I’m not mistaken, disillusionment, too.

  “Alice, I . . .” He shakes his head and focuses instead on our hands rather than my face. “I don’t know how much you know about my history with Sawyer, but—”

  “Nothing,” I quickly assure him. “And, Finn, I apologize if I am overstepping my bounds. I was just curious about—”

  He takes my hand. There’s a vulnerability clouding his eyes that until today I had yet to see before on this normally confident man. “No. It’s fine. You have every right to ask me these things. All I meant was . . .” He swallows, as if the words he’s saying are difficult. “Sorry. It’s just, talking about my fucked-up childhood isn’t my favorite of topics.”

  “We do not have to talk about it then.”

  He nods, and yet words slowly trickle out anyway. “Sawyer and I used to be . . . I guess you could say we were good friends. Three of the books for my Timeline focus on that relationship and our adventures together, actually. And I guess some of the fourth does, too. Just not as much, thank God.”

  There is no misinterpretation concerning his scorn toward this Tom Sawyer. I lift our conjoined hands and press my lips against the back of his knuckles. And then, more meaningfully, his mouth.

  Little steps, I tell myself. He and I, we have the rest of our lives to reveal such small, intimate details to one another.

  BY THE TIME WE reach the graveyard, I’m in a weird place mentally. For one, I know I was dodgy when I balked at Alice’s questions. I mean, shit—I’ve seen her past in vivid color, haven’t I? I was in it, and felt its blood on my hands. She knows me, yes, but she knows the me of now. She knows the me I want her to know.

  I tell myself, as a highly pious man named Joseph lectures us on how God will most likely look down upon us for the sins and atrocities we’re about to commit and yet still willingly hands me a shovel he carried for a not-so-short distance in blustery conditions, it’s not like Alice willingly offered up her past, either. I had to actually go to Wonderland to get answers out of her, and I think if I hadn’t, she would have gone right on keeping them inside her. Honestly, though, her refusal to talk about it was one of the things that really attracted me to her in the first place. She obviously had a painful past and knew how to hold onto it like it was both a lifesaver and concrete boots molded to feet. It was something I could understand, something that made me feel less like the odd man out in the Society. Brom’s was checked, but he fully embraced it. “The past makes us who we are,” he often told Victor and me. “It lets us mold the future. I would not be the same man sitting before you, had I not been who I was in my youth.”

  Victor’s past is easy, despite the seemingly never-ending slew of shitty genetics his biological father saddled him with. I mean, he was found when he was so young that he doesn’t even have concrete memories of his Timeline. Katrina and Brom raised him in such a way he never knew real hardships. He went to elite schools, had British tutors who refused to allow him even the slightest bit of an American accent, and had parents, friends, and family who loved and respected him. He had shrinks and treatments. His life has been charmed—he went from the son of a whore, living on the streets, to becoming a very rich, influential doctor.

  Mary isn’t much different. While she grew up in India (okay, well, she was a rotten kid back then, from what she tells us, and was trapped in a building when everyone else died around her) and England (where nobody died and she learned to garden and miraculously coax bedridden cousins to walk again), she’s all about embracing her checkered history. It’s something she pulls out and hugs like a goddamn teddy bear.

  Nobody else seems to wish that they could just take an eraser to it all. I mean, hell, the A.D. brags about his jail time like he was in Tahiti, on a beach with a bunch of hot girls in bikinis rather than a flea- and rat-infested hellhole riddled with criminals who would think nothing of sticking a shank in your side for a scrap of bread. And Wendy, who lived in an orphanage most of her childhood, sees it all as a magical experience as she waited for Peter Pan to come and whisk her away.

  But me? I wish I could go back and erase Tom Sawyer’s entire existence from my life and my original Timeline. I’d erase our adventures and the fact that my biological father was the town drunkard and that, if I was lucky, I found welcome barns in shitty weather or even have people give me the time of day. I’d even erase going on the lam with Jim and the sweet taste of freedom we both finally got to savor. And maybe that would mean I wouldn’t be here, doing what I’m doing, but part of me viciously thinks it would all be worth it.

  But I can’t go back and change any of it. That sonofabitch still claims a large influence over a decade of my life, and he’s still done what he’s done. And I’m here and he’s there, and now I’m about to dig up some lady’s grave all so I can take a piece of jewelry away from her. For a good reason and all, but still.

  A fine mist coats our skin and clothes as we come to stand before a trio of graves: two men and one woman. I suppose it could be worse: at least it isn’t straight-up raining. Damp is preferable to soaked. “Do you know their story?” Nelly Dean is asking us.

  “Only a little.” Alice takes the second shovel from Joseph. “We perused a bit of the book to get the lay of the land.”

  “Surely, miss,” the man exclaims, “you are not thinking of digging, are you?”

  I can tell she’s fighting back the urge to put him in his place. “Unless you are willing to help us,” she says tightly, “I certainly will be.”

  He makes the sign of the cross. “Grave robbing is a sin.”

  I mutter, “So is murder and mass extinction.”

  Joseph has, according to Nelly Dean, been in the know about the Society nearly from the first week we made contact with her. Apparently, he spent much time in church praying for all our souls, and for Mrs. Dean’s, too, as he initially accused her of devil-inspired insanity. But he came around for one of her status checks, and I guess, outside of the witchcraft he initially accused her of, also came around to believing we were legit. That hasn’t stopped him from reminding us every so many minutes that what we’re about to do is pretty damn awful.

  Look, I’m not arguing with him. Does he think I want to be out in these godforsaken, damp moors, digging up some woman who locals claim is a ghost that haunts the area to this day? Hell, no. But I also don’t want to find out that a popular book like Wuthering Heights has its Timeline destroyed because the Society was too squeamish to get their hands dirty.

  Joseph prays loudly as Alice and I tear into the grass covering Catherine Earnshaw Linton’s grave. The Librarian told us a little about what to expect once we uncover her coffin. One side will already be open, so the body will most likely be in poor condition. Apparently one of these dudes wanted his coffin open, too, so they could, what, stretch their dead hands out to one another or something? To this day, some people think crap like this is romantic. FYI: it’s not. For all we know, the ghosts of both Cathy and her lover (brother?) Heathcliff will come and scare the shit out of us for daring to desecrate their resting place. But I’ll give it to Alice—she’s right here with me, digging into the grass and dirt, acting like she’s having tea in her palace back in Wonderland rather than sweating and freezing all at once in a graveyard. It takes us longer than I thought it would before our shovels hit wood, though, and even then, we both pause and look up at Mrs. Dean and Joseph.

  “Last chance,” I say kindly, even though I’ll be pissed if
Alice and I did this all for nothing. Alice, for her part, is breathing hard but doesn’t complain once.

  God, I am so taken with this woman. I mean, she didn’t even blink when she found out what we had to do. Well, she mentioned it was ghoulish, but it wasn’t like she said no or even had doubts. And that’s another thing that is so crazy attractive about her—she does what has to be done.

  Dean and Joseph exchange anxious looks; there is anguish and fear on both their faces. They’re spooked, I realize, and have spent the better part of the last half hour glancing around the graveyard like they expect ghosts to pop up, too. Hell, I’ve been in some crazy Timelines before, but never actually encountered a ghost before, so this is all pretty damn unnerving and their behavior isn’t helping matters. But after a long, meaningful moment during which nothing is said, they both nod. “Yes,” Nelly Dean says softly. “If it means our . . . Timeline, as it is, will be spared the horrors others have had to face, then yes. Catherine would not wish us all to go to hell.”

  Joseph glances around fervently. “Heathcliff would.”

  Mrs. Dean does not argue with him.

  Alice and I carefully scrape the rest of the dirt off the top of the grave, leaving the side the Librarian referenced untouched and still covered as best as possible. Then I take out a small crowbar I brought along with us to 1847BRO-WH and gently pry up a couple of the planks on the other side. The last thing I want is an unstable coffin to collapse.

  Beneath me lies a dirty skeleton and scraps of a dress. More importantly, a necklace peeps up at us.

  Thank God we got to it before Todd.

  Mrs. Dean gasps as she peers down into the hole Alice and I are wedged into, a trembling hand covering her mouth. Joseph prays louder and harder. Even though I already know the answer, I ask them anyway if they want to be the ones to extract the locket ringing the skeleton’s neck.

  Joseph doesn’t stop praying to answer me. Mrs. Dean chokes out a definitive no. And I’m not going to let Alice do it, even though I have no doubts she would if asked. So I awkwardly squat down and fight to unclasp the fragile necklace and not break out in the shudders threatening to overtake me. The bones that my fingers brush against my skin are cold and now damp, thanks to the mist, and all I can think is: Holy shit, those ghosts better not show up right now or I might actually vomit all over this grave.

  Which would be super manly and all.

  Once the necklace is free, I pass the locket over to Alice. She glances up at the housekeeper. “Would you like to see it one last time, Mrs. Dean?”

  The woman shakes her head. “No, miss.”

  Alice carefully wraps the necklace in a handkerchief and stuffs it into her coat. “I wonder what’s in it.”

  “Hair,” Mrs. Dean says. “Hair from the gentlemen whose graves surround poor Cathy’s. She loved them both, see.”

  I situate the planks to their former positions and ask Joseph to pass down the nails and hammer he’s brought. A few quick pounds and soon, Alice and I are filling the hole back up. As we lay the sod back into place, carefully so that no one will be able to tell we’d been there, I realized I’m exhausted both physically and mentally. So is Alice, but damn, if she isn’t acting like she’s not.

  It makes me want to kiss her, but I’ve just been desecrating somebody’s resting place, so maybe I ought to at least wash my hands first.

  Jesus, my priorities are so screwed up.

  But then I look at the trio of graves before us, and then at all of the others peppering the graveyard, illuminated by the pale candlelight of the lanterns we’ve brought. Thoughts of kissing disappear. Even though I’ve tried so hard to hold it back, to ignore it, to pretend this isn’t a thing, it hits me anyway like a sucker punch.

  I sit down, hard, on the damp grass that I just replaced.

  Without missing a beat, Alice says in that regal voice of hers, “A moment, please? We just want to catch our breaths.” Mrs. Dean and Joseph quickly wander off to the entrance to the graveyard.

  Alice sits down next to me. Her dirty hand reaches and wraps around mine. I can feel fresh blisters on her palm.

  She never complained. Not once.

  I stare at the plot before me, at the name of the woman whose body I just manhandled. I think about graves and of bodies and of death and of how absolutely, brutally unfair life can be. It hurts to think these things. It hurts like hell.

  I think them anyway.

  The wind picks up, whistling and howling through the branches of the trees nearby. “Finn?” She squeezes my hand, not even seeming to care that I was just manhandling a skeleton. “Are you all right?”

  No, I want to tell her. No, I’m not all right. I’m about to tell her I am fine, though, when different words fall out.

  I tell her, “Someone I know is dying.” Someone who, no doubt, will have a grave just like one of these. But before Alice can finish her condolences, I keep going. “Katrina doesn’t have a grave.”

  The back of my eyes burn, and it’s not from exhaustion, although I’d like to claim otherwise. My adoptive mother, the only one who has ever counted in this pathetic life of mine, does not have a grave we can visit. Her life was cut short when Todd or one of his cronies destroyed the catalyst for her Timeline and there is no body to mourn over, no grave to visit, no proof outside of photographs and memories to highlight how bright she burned in my life and others.’ Brom put up a memorial to her at the Institute, but it’s a small plaque decorating some hideous statue that he thinks she would have approved of. She wouldn’t have, by the way. Her taste was way more refined than his. And the thing is, how many people walk by that thing and never think twice about the person who it’s dedicated to? Too many.

  I do, though.

  My mother deserved better than she got, and I’m going to track down the motherfucker who did that to her and exact justice, whether Katrina would have wanted that for me or not.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alice is whispering. She shifts my hand to her other, so an arm can wrap around me. “I’m so sorry, Finn.”

  Graves are funny. They’re actually incredibly selfish things. Dead people don’t give a shit whether or not they’re buried in a grave or cremated or frozen or sent into space or scattered to the winds. The dead are dead. They’re beyond caring. But we who remain, the greedy survivors, we need something like this. We selfishly take a body and put it in a plot of land that could be, I don’t know, used for a variety of other things other than letting skin and bones rot within, and we selfishly put up a slab of marble or concrete and we then use all these things to let us cling to the past.

  Katrina doesn’t have a grave, though. And that’s acid in the pit of my stomach. I loved my mother. I still love her.

  And yet, the absence of my mother’s grave isn’t the only one that cuts deeply. So does Jim’s. One of my oldest, truest friends, one of the very few who treated me with respect and as an equal when I was a kid, doesn’t have a grave, either. So, yeah. Sweeney Todd is going to pay for what he’s done to my mother and countless others. And when I’m done doling out that bit of justice, I’m finally going to go avenge Jim, just like I should have all those years ago.

  Tom Sawyer is going to pay for what’s he’s done.

  FINN HAS GONE TO speak with his father, so I am the one who must deliver our latest acquisition to the Librarian. It takes me a good ten minutes to pass through all of the security measures before I enter the Museum, a cavernous yet elegant holding room buried deep beneath the Institute. Instrumental music that Finn informs me is called elevator music fills the space, and no matter how many times I’ve heard it in this room or her office upstairs in the library, I still cannot seem to succinctly draw the line connecting such peppy tones to the inscrutable woman who calls herself the heart of the Society.

  She loves it so, though.

  I find the Librarian dusting books on shelves within a small office that consists of little more than a pair of overstuffed chairs, a turquoise telephone, and a coffee table tha
t is made from a large slab of raw rock and quartz, cut open and polished until it shines like glass. “Ah,” she says, not even bothering to turn away from her cleaning duties, “I was wondering when you’d come.”

  I suppose this is less insulting than her frequent charges of my tardiness.

  “Was there any difficulty in obtaining 1847BRO-WH’s catalyst?”

  I’m annoyed she asks such a thing, when I’m confident she already knows the answer. “Outside of the labor, none at all.”

  She finally turns around and offers me a wide smile. She is truly beautiful, with thick dark hair and bright eyes more shrewd than kind. “Why, Alice. You and I both know you are no stranger to getting your hands dirty.”

  “Contrary to what your crystal ball must tell you, until last night, I had never robbed a grave before.”

  Her laugh fills the small room. “Could you relate to Cathy, though?”

  It’s a challenge to hold back my irritation. “Dead and possibly a specter?”

  “Torn between two loves.”

  Honestly, the gall of this woman. I drop the handkerchief-wrapped locket in her outstretched palm, refusing to rise to her bait.

  The Librarian unwraps the catalyst and pulls it up by its chain. The small locket is dirty, yet manages to glint in the bright light anyway. “Catalysts are always symbolic,” she muses. “This, for example, represents the enduring struggle between two lovers its owner was torn between during both life and death.” She picks up a small cloth conveniently sitting on her desk and begins to polish the stolen jewelry. “Did you see her ghost, perhaps?”

  My answer is clipped. “No.”

  “Some people believe that beloved objects such as this can be haunted by their owners.” She flashes me an indulgent smile. “Do you think that possible?”

  “If it is,” I say tightly, “Mrs. Linton will be haunting you down here in the Museum.”

  Another laugh. “She would have much company then.”