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Drummond acknowledged the joke with a glance. “Kind of,” he admitted. “We’d spend hours talking about the books, theorizing about what the books could do.”
“Like time travel,” Cassie said.
“Right,” Drummond agreed. “We’d have long debates about where the books came from, what the source of the magic was.”
Cassie watched the group as Drummond spoke. The man, Wagner, was now listening to Yasmin’s story, and after a moment both he and Lily laughed at whatever the punch line was, exchanging a glance with each other. They were happy, enjoying catching up like old friends after a long time.
“This is where it gets uncomfortable,” Drummond murmured. “Uncomfortable and weird.”
At the far end of the park, toward the back of the Public Library, Cassie saw Drummond, a younger Drummond, strolling toward the table. He was less gaunt than the man next to her, his body looked stronger and more filled out, and his hair was brown, with no strands of gray.He was handsome, Cassie realized, a handsomeness that now seemed to appear only when Drummond smiled. Whatever had happened to him in the intervening decade had hidden away his natural good looks.
“There I come,” he muttered. “God, is that what I look like when I am walking?”
“You look fine,” Cassie said, and he threw a puzzled glance at her. “Not like me, all lanky and clumsy.”
“You look fine too,” he murmured distractedly, and Cassie’s cheeks warmed as if she was blushing. But Drummond wasn’t looking at her, he was paying attention to what was happening in his past.
The three people at the table spotted the younger Drummond as he approached. Chairs were pushed back, and the group stood up to greet him with hugs and fond words before they sat down once again. They chatted together, laughing and smiling.
“I wanted to see this again,” Drummond murmured. “For real. I have my memories, but reality is always better. I wanted to see us happy again.”
“I get it,” Cassie said.
After a few minutes the group of friends rose together and walked along the edge of the park toward where Cassie and Drummond were sitting. The pair ducked their heads slightly as the group passed, but none of them looked their way, caught up in their conversations.
“It was a great afternoon,” Drummond said, following the group with his eyes as they headed out of the park at the southeast exit. “We walked for a while, just chatting, catching up. Wagner was talking about moving to a new university in the Netherlands. Lily was talking about politics and China and Hong Kong and what the future looked like. Yasmin was talking about retiring from her work. And her daughters, one of her daughters was getting married, I think. It was just normal chat.”
“It sounds nice,” Cassie said.
“It was,” Drummond agreed. “It was and I miss it. I miss my friends.”
“I miss my grandfather,” Cassie replied, and they held each other’s gaze for a moment, taking comfort in their shared sense of loss. Then Drummond turned his eyes back to his friends.
“We went for dinner, a restaurant down in SoHo. We had a privateroom at the back. We ate and we talked, and we told each other stories about books we’d learned of. We gossiped about book hunters, and the Bookseller...”
“The Bookseller?”
Drummond waved his hand as if the Bookseller was a distraction. “Lottie,” he said. “Down in New Orleans. She sells books for those book hunters who are in the game for the profit. Kind of a middleman. She auctions them off. Makes a fortune off it. It was a long-running sore. It’s like those people who trade on the black market in priceless artifacts. You ask any archaeologist, and they’ll have strong views on it. So we bitched about her for a while.”
Cassie waited, sensing the end of the story was coming.
“It was late when we left the restaurant, and we walked back north together, heading to our hotels. We were going to meet again the following day and we were discussing that, what we would do, where we would go. And then... and then we got to Washington Square Park. It was quiet, and the day had turned strangely cold. Not like now.” Drummond gestured to the blue sky above them. “I remember a mist suddenly coming down, almost freak weather. And then a woman appeared across the park.”
“What woman?” Cassie asked.
“I don’t know her name,” Drummond admitted. “I just call her ‘the woman.’ I had never seen her before this day, I had no idea who she was. I still don’t. But she knew who we were, and this day was the day she made herself known to us.”
“How?” Cassie asked.
Drummond didn’t answer. Cassie wasn’t sure if he hadn’t heard, or if he didn’t want to say any more.
“How?” she asked again, placing a hand on Drummond’s arm to get his attention.
“They all die today,” he said, his face serious. “Wagner, Lily, and Yasmin. The woman kills them. I was the only one who survived, and she’s been hunting me ever since.”
Cassie’s eyes widened in shock. “Why?”
“Because she wants the Fox Library,” he said. “This is why I hid itin the shadows. After this day, after I saw the woman for the first time. It was...” He seemed to struggle to find the right word. “Devastating,” he said after a moment. “Awful.”
