Booked for Kidnapping (Vigilante Magical Librarians Book 2)

by R. J. Blain

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I wish I knew. She didn’t even hesitate. I mean, she was pretty upset with you this morning. She had picked a switch.”

  I gasped. “She hadn’t! Don’t you lie to me, Dad.”

  “It was a willow switch,” he informed me, holding his hands apart. “This long, pretty thin.”

  I turned my attention to my mother, and I gasped again, as dramatically as I could. “You were going to switch me for going to a funeral?”

  “I was going to switch you for doing something dangerous. It just happened that the funeral could have been very dangerous,” she informed me. “I have decided on a better punishment.”

  When my mother doled out punishments, she meant them, and as I’d pulled a rather effective disappearing act for years, I would go along with her demands as a repentant child should. “What punishment? It wasn’t actually dangerous, unless you view talking to strangers to be dangerous.”

  “Talking to strange politicians is one of the most dangerous things you have ever done, young lady.”

  Someone had gotten to my mother and convinced her she could show her true colors to our family friends and my co-workers. I recognized when I would lose, and I eyed the only escape I had, which was my bathroom. I took care with creeping across my own damned living room, dodging the people who’d taken over the floor. Fortunately, they had mercy, and when I couldn’t get by without potentially tripping, they moved. Once a safe distance, I said, “Not even my pride was damaged at the memorial service. I promise. But if I can have a significantly reduced sentencing, I would be appreciative.”

  “You will share sleeping accommodations with Bradley. Your personal room rights have been revoked.”

  Bradley’s brows shot up, and he relaxed into my couch while I debated beating myself over the head with my own cane to escape. He smiled and said, “I accept your punishment. That will make it a little easier to keep track of her.”

  Traitor fiancé. Rather than beat myself into unconsciousness with my cane, I used it to limp into the bathroom to hide.

  The respite lasted all of ten minutes before I accepted I needed to leave my bathroom and face my mother, who would pile on the hints about what I should be doing while Bradley enjoyed her antics. They’d left my favorite spot on the couch free, and I limped over, careful to minimize how much weight I put on my foot. My work had done wonders for my pain levels, but until the inflammation came down on its own, any weight on it hurt.

  With the damned bracelets unlocked so I could control them, my new daily routine would involve cleaning the infection out and changing the bandage, and I’d play stupid when my doctor questioned my swift recovery.

  I longed to walk without having to grit my teeth due to the pain.

  “Have you accepted your fate?” my mother asked in her sweetest voice.

  “When did you go from mortified you had switched me once to gleeful in your desire to teach me my manners?” I asked, and I crossed my arms and sulked on my couch. “You’re supposed to be mortified at the thought of a switch. Weren’t you the one to claim I’m too sweet and adorable to switch?”

  “I put some thought into the situation, and I have decided I was generally incorrect on my beliefs. You aren’t too old or too cute to switch if you insist on doing dangerous things. But I think my other plan is better. Maybe Bradley will have better luck keeping you out of trouble.” She sniffed and went to Meridian, who continued to charm my cat. Ajani accepted my mother’s attention with a purr, especially as the woman armed herself with the brush to bribe her way into my fluffy goddess’s affections.

  Bradley’s mother emerged from my bedroom, strolled over, and handed me my cards and the pad of paper. “Personally, I don’t care where you sleep, but sharing a room with Bradley seems much better than a round with the switch. I don’t think your father is responsible for her change of heart, but I do think you need to be more careful. You might become rich if you keep these antics up. Also, we might want to investigate everyone who sent you a card. There seems to be an abundance of guilty consciences. Every gift card for the bookstore is three hundred and fifty dollars. You should be able to buy a nice piece of jewelry, too. I have it on good authority my son has been jewelry shopping, so you should splurge on something you like and will be useful to you. Perhaps a nice watch? You don’t seem like the diamond and pearl necklace type, really.”

  I tore the piece of paper with the values of the gift cards off the pad and stuffed it, along with the cards, back into the main envelope. “I will cope with their generosity later.”

  “I see you have refined your avoidance tactics.” Bradley’s mother sighed. “She wouldn’t actually switch you, but she thought it’d be funny to threaten it in an effort to forward her other nefarious plans. Honestly, I’m impressed she followed through.”

  “I practiced last night,” my mother announced with pride in her voice. “It took almost an hour of pretending to call before I could do it without wanting to cry.” My mother turned to my father and scowled. “And no commentary from you.”

  My father shrugged, refusing to look my mother in her eyes.

  I could guess how my father had reacted to my mother’s antics without needing to think on it. “You laughed at her, didn’t you?”

  “Until I cried,” he confirmed. “The first three or four times, she cried from guilt, and she hadn’t even actually called you.”

  My mother sighed. “It’s true, I really did. He’s going to make me go to therapy over this.”

  “It was a single spanking because I did something life-threatening. My childhood was not ruined, I learned to look before crossing the street, and I have a healthy respect for parental discipline now. You did just fine. Dad’s right. You need therapy. We all need therapy.” I needed more therapy than most of the others in the room combined, with the exception of Bradley, who likely needed an equal amount of therapy to get over the consequences of the crash I hadn’t been able to avoid. “But I get the award for requiring the most therapy, with Bradley claiming the second-place prize.”

  “What is the second-place prize?” he asked, regarding me with a raised brow. “If it’s you abiding by your mother’s punishment, I don’t mind.”

  “Therapy.”

  “I would prefer to abide by your mother’s punishment, honestly.”

  I snorted at that, placed my poor, abused foot on the coffee table, and opted to ignore my fiancé. “I’ll make a list of everyone who sent me a card, and I’ll compile a collection of pictures I took from the service. I’ll also return calls to be polite and see what comes out of that. Since all of you came over, there surely must be a reason you’re here?”

  “Intel,” my mother announced. “We have come to the conclusion we reacted before we really considered the situation.”

  That matched with what Bradley had said, although he’d painted the situation to be less amicable in terms of their willingness to admit they were wrong or cooperate. “Okay. Can we agree to disagree on how things were handled and try to make use of the information I was able to get? In the meantime, I think we need to do a full evaluation of all politicians in the senate and the house. I think we need to understand the political environment that led up to Representative Kennedys proving he’s an insufferable asshole.”

  Everyone exchanged glances, and once again, my co-workers focused on Bradley. My parents opted against participating in the silent discussion, and Bradley’s mother chuckled.

  “Mrs. Hampton?” I asked.

  “My son is developing overprotective tendencies, so nobody wants to trip his trigger again. He was fairly upset you ended up going to the service alone.”

  “He would have been eaten alive by politicians, who are somehow aware we’re engaged. It was best only one of us dealt with that nonsense. I just told them we hadn’t made an official announcement yet because we’re planning some party. Hey, bitch. Plan my engagement party so I don’t have to.”

  Beatrice snorted. “No. There isn�
�t enough money in the world to deal with that adept nonsense. You can dress me up as your bridesmaid of honor, though.”

  “Wouldn’t you be a matron by then?” I asked. “Mickey, you’re not supposed to be slow marrying her.”

  “I’m as slow as she wants me to be,” he replied in a dignified tone.

  I chuckled. “That was actually a really good answer to that question, and I can’t argue with it at all.”

  “I’ve learned it’s the only answer I can give without annoying someone.”

  “But she’s so easily annoyed. How do you breathe without annoying her?”

  “If I pose while breathing, she sometimes opts to ignore that I’m breathing,” he replied with a rather crooked grin.

  “I see how it is. Gang up on me.” Beatrice managed to scowl for almost a minute before she cracked and laughed. “It was still dangerous.”

  “Yes, politicians are dangerous. A scourge on this world, even. But I am capable of handling a few politicians on my own. And anyway, I bet everyone went through tough security. The President was there. I guess they just presumed some chick in a wheelchair couldn’t possibly be dangerous.”

  That got everyone laughing, to my relief.

  With a smirk, Bradley said, “I don’t care if people think you’re dangerous or not. When do I get to send you to your room?”

  I grabbed the nearest safe object to throw at him, which was a box of tissues. He caught my attempted assault, kept on chuckling, and set the box back on the coffee table.

  “How are you going to send me to my room? According to my mother, I don’t have a room anymore.”

  “Oh, right. I have to send you to my room instead. Everyone, out. I must send this woman to my room, and I don’t need or want an audience.”

  To my astonishment, everyone obeyed, and I spluttered and waved my fist at their departing backs. When they were gone and had closed the door behind them, I heaved a relieved sigh. “That was wholly unproductive, and while I love them, I’m glad they’re gone.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be a productive session. It was meant to make sure you had survived the service unscathed. They just didn’t think to come over and stalk your apartment until you showed up. I can’t tell if I win or lose points for hanging out here until you showed up,” he admitted.

  “You win points, especially since you fed us lunch. Were you aware of my mother’s ploy to send me to your room?”

  “No, but I would have been an enthusiastic supporter of the plan. I have a list of ways to make it backfire on them, and they’re ways that’ll make you happier, I think.”

  “Does it involve sharing this rather small apartment, especially when I have to return to work?”

  Senator Godrin’s murder had kept the library doors closed, and the renovations, which were about to begin, would keep them closed for at least a month, after which the library would reopen better than ever, with two whole new floors for patrons to use.

  I looked forward to returning to my regular life, although I would have adjusted records to match my real ability rating and skills.

  “I’m looking for somewhere near here that’s a bit bigger for us, but yes. That’s the idea. I’m not going to ask you to give up the work you want to be doing. If you want to go to nursing school, I’ll make it happen.”

  “I’d like some more formal training, but as long as I can volunteer, that’s good enough for me. I do just as much good as a volunteer, and I can read between emergencies that way.”

  “That’s really clever. So, what are our requirements for a new home?”

  “Three bedrooms, so one can be turned into an office, and the other can be a guest bedroom or a bedroom for other purposes.”

  “Does other purposes include kids? Because I’ve heard enough stories from your mother to imply I’m going to be cruelly used so you can have many children.”

  I laughed. “I can’t help it. I see children and want an entire flock of them. I love kids, even when they’re being obnoxious little pests. So one day, at least one kid would be nice. But first, we need to deal with this problem of that bill and the assassins. Should any children come around, I want them born in a world—and a country—we can actually be proud of.”

  “On that, we’re agreed. Want to bet they think we’re practicing to have kids right now?”

  I loved insane people. “That would not surprise me in the slightest.”

  “Rather than practice, why don’t we work while they waste time? I think we’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

  “That’s the best thing anyone has said to me all day.”

  FOUR

  I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill so many.

  The first sign of trouble was rarely the true beginning of a problem, so in order to get to the heart of the murders and the events leading up to Representative Kennedys writing a human rights violation of a bill, we needed to investigate the political climate triggering his decision to write legislation designed to murder twenty percent of the population. With that firmly in mind, I began trolling news outlets starting a year before Representative Kennedys had written the original bill.

  I compiled a list of all mass incidents, magic or mundane, any notable political uprisings, riots, and incidents, and after several hundred entries, I questioned everything I knew about the United States. Violence infected society. The symptoms of the violence epidemic had become a center point of my life.

  Without the risk of violence, Bradley wouldn’t have needed or wanted a bodyguard.

  Then again, knowing what I knew about my fiancé, I suspected he would have found some other way to acquire a contract for me. The contracting system, for temporary and for lifers, had been established long before Representative Kennedys had concocted his little scheme to get rid of the unwanted people from society, myself included.

  The contracting system offered the perfect way to create loopholes the wealthy and influential could manipulate.

  The changes to the system the bill would force would change how the contracts worked, too. The wealthiest would be able to pluck their favorite people from the clutches of the military while the rest served—and died—under a permanent draft.

  I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill so many. The entire concept boggled my mind and chilled me. I expected to lose a great deal of sleep over the situation. Rather than curse at the circumstances, I began my search with investigating movements concerned with population control of so-called civilized countries.

  I could see an extremist group obsessed with global population control attempting something as callous and hateful as eliminating hundreds of thousands during a war, leaving only those they favored as the survivors.

  Keeping a few of the unwanted, like me, made some sense. We’d be treated like animals in a zoo, alive but in captivity, bred at the command of those who believed themselves to be the rulers.

  “Hey, Bradley?”

  He looked up from his laptop. “What’s up?”

  “What do you know about zoos?”

  He blinked. “Did you say zoos? Like the place where we go to see animals?”

  “Yes, zoos.”

  “Help a man out here, Janette. What about zoos? How did we get to zoos?”

  I pointed at the limited notes on the killings Bradley had dumped in his briefcase. “The bill essentially is a breeding program, isn’t it? Like what if humans were the animals in the zoo? The bill is meant to control what parts of the population survive long enough to, well, breed. Am I off the mark?”

  His eyes widened, and he leaned forward to grab a few of the papers, sorting through them and retrieving three, which he read with a frown and furrowed brows. “I mean, I can see where you’d get that idea. Get rid of the unwanted, send them to war so they can’t make families and raise children, leaving the wanted elements of society to have children and promote the growth of the ‘good’ people. The exemptions allow for certain talents to be preserved, entering marriages through contr
acts. More importantly, it makes certain only those who fit a certain demographic with dangerous abilities stay out of the military and the government’s control. They’d be viewed as allies and less likely to rise up against the ruling powers.” He wrinkled his nose and tossed the papers onto my coffee table. “I think your aim is pretty accurate, really. That is a disturbing possibility. What made you think of zoos and breeding programs?”

  “I was trying to think outside of the box. Or, more accurately, I was trying to think about why someone might cook up a bill meant to enslave and kill off a huge number of people. But if the goal is to get rid of those who might become a threat to the powers that be, it makes sense. There won’t be much of an uprising if those who might rebel are drafted and working for the military.”

  “I’d be more concerned about the military rising up and overthrowing the government. That has been bothering me for a while. If your entire military is loaded with unhappy people the government is trying to kill off, and they’re trained and armed to kill off another nation’s people, probably in conditions required for us to take heavy losses, then they’re an armed and hugely dangerous population. Military coups have happened in the past, and they’ll happen again in the future. What’s stopping everyone being recruited from doing just that?”

  “Unless that’s the goal,” I said, joining him in scowling over the plethora of possibilities. “That couldn’t be the goal, could it? To take over the country through its military?”

  Bradley sighed. “If you put a bunch of dangerous talents in that position and could point them all in the same direction at the same time, I don’t see why it couldn’t work. Let’s say you were recruited for the military. You are an army when you want to be. If you have a visual of your target, that’s it. You win most draws. If you can’t hit them with your magic, you can hit them with your gun. If you put all exsanguinators in the military, you have some serious fear-factor going on. Even a mid-grade exsanguinator is not to be trifled with. You’re respected in general, especially after the shooting. It’s hard to judge all exsanguinators when you got shot and put everyone else above yourself. Not even the active opponents of exsanguinators peeped after the shooting.”