“Why did you put—” he recited in the old language.
“Stop with the old language! It’s sacred to us!” She also hated the way it sounded delicious sliding off his tongue.
He smirked. “Shame, it’s a beautiful language.”
“I didn’t want to get fees,” she admitted, somewhat painfully. Her book return success rate was immaculate, not even a forbidden book could mess that up.
“How would you have gotten fees on a book you stole?”
She sighed. “You don’t understand—the librarian’s owl sees everything; it was the one that helped me find it.”
Felix raised a brow. “The owl pointed it out to you?”
She furrowed her own. “Yes, why?”
“Interesting,” he said. “Who does the owl belong to?”
“The librarian.”
“Hmm.” Her eyes flicked to his neck, a flutter forming in her stomach at the way his throat bobbed up and down. “Where’s the book then?” he asked.
Narrowing her eyes at him, she walked past and started climbing the ladder to the top, where the book should have been. Instead, she found an empty shelf and a dust-free rectangle. Even the dust bunnies had moved out. She looked around at him, confused, then glared.
“It’s not—Are you staring at my ass?” She looked down at him from the ladder, folding her skirt against her skin to obscure his view.
“What if I were?”
“Well…” She wasn’t sure what she would do; she hated even more to admit that she kind of liked it. “Stop it.”
He looked her in the eye with a lazy smirk plastered on his face.Asshole.
“The book isn’t there.”
His smirk fell away. “Well, it didn’t just fucking grow legs and walk away, did it?”
Avery searched the rows of books high and low, searching for any sign of the giant forbidden text that, honestly, should stick out like a cat among mice. There was no sign of it. Her memory wasn’t fantastic, but she knew she had placed it right back where she found it.
I bet those dust bunnies ate it just to spite me.
Did someone take it? She raked her mind for answers. If they knew, then why hadn’t they turned her in yet? None of it made sense. All of it made her brain hurt. She loved a good mystery, that was why she loved riddles so much. But there was nothing to go off, no definitive logical answer to this puzzle that was forming.
“Do you think the librarian could have taken it?” Felix questioned.
Avery shook her head. In all her years here, she had only ever seen the librarian move once from her chair. The librarian was ancient. Her wrinkles had wrinkles. She didn’t want the witch beauty treatments they sold to the rich humans. The only time that she had seen her moving was only a few feet away from her chair, and it took her almost a full day to get back. She had always been on death’s doorstep, but out of pure spite, she survived day after day.
She wasn’t ruling it out. It could be a farce. Maybe it was just some horrid skin suit she wore around the students while she astro-projected her spirit around the library. Shivers skittered over her spine at the thought of it. The librarian hadn’t been crossed off the list.
She pondered who else it could be. “I think someone planted the book for me to find.”
“You’re only now catching on? I expected better,” he said, trailing the books with a finger.
Avery’s hands balled into fists at her side, nails digging into her palms. “Fine, shifter, who do you think it is?”
“Shouldn’t you be consulting your crystal ball?”
She rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be eating children?”
“Really?” he deadpanned. “What stories have you been reading about shifters?”
