Episode 9: Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler, Chapter 2

The Library stretched out around Jenkins and Charlene, a silent haven for all things magical. It ought to have remained that way but, over time, temptation had proven too much for those in search of power time and time again. Time, Galeas thought. How could anyone with his extended lifespan so often find himself so short of time. There was never enough of it. Time with his family, time as a young man, time with his friends, time with his wife, his Flora. And now time to have a talk with the boy! There was never enough time!

Charlene finished checking off items on the list in her hand. She crouched down and peered at one on a low shelf, then stuck up a hand in Jenkins' general direction. "Gadget."

Rolling his eyes, Jenkins sighed and placed the requested item in the outstretched hand. "It is called a thaumometer."

"This one works, it's real," reported Charlene, pushing herself to her feet and handing the device back to its maker. "Urgh, my knees are definitely not as young as they once were."

"Is anything in here?" Jenkins sniped back, replacing the thaumometer in his pocket with a sniff.

"Speak for yourself," drawled Charlene. "I think you predated that last artefact!"

"Hmmm," hummed the Caretaker, strolling along behind the not-so-retired Guardian with a glare that would have put off cats.

"What do you think he took, then?" Charlene enquired, leading the charge into the next aisle.

"Hmm?" Jenkins hummed again, eyebrows raising in a silent query.

"Don't you hmm me, you old relic! You know precisely who and what I mean!"

"Ah," breathed Jenkins, for variety. "Leonardo. Yes. Well, we can assume he is the reason we failed to find Fenrir's Chain. Beyond that though: the possibilities are as infinite as the Library itself. I do believe the Colonel neglected, in her plan of attack, to consider the artefacts recovered after the last attack of the Serpent Brotherhood. That little weasel had as much opportunity to replace them as anything else. Mister Stone mentioned that he had been researching the giant Surtr, for example. I believe he collected said giant's sword. Such a thing would be a perfect talisman to produce an avatar."

Charlene turned on him. "Then why didn't you say something sooner?"

Jenkins shrugged. "What we're doing is necessary and, while we're doing it, I have been compiling a mental list of artefacts the two-faced little snaoa might have been interested in."

"Two-faced little what now?"

"Snake."

"If you're going to call him names in obscure languages, you might at least call him obscene ones! I could give you a few suggestions. I'd say you could question his parentage, but we all know that's questionable enough as it is!"

"Well, I would," mused Jenkins, briefly scanning everything he passed with his thaumometer, "but we invented that one. At least as an insult, it remains exactly the same!"

"Huh!" Charlene chuckled. "You don't say! So what else you got in that mental list of yours?"

"Well, since you mention it, there is one other item we should have that they might want."

XXXX

"My love, I still think we would be better trying to get the items back from the Serpent Brotherhood before they effect their transformations," said Flynn, brushing a strand of hair back from Eve's face.

"Oh sure, I know we would," countered Eve, "and we will. But we have to have a plan in place for when things all go horribly wrong!"

"What makes you so sure they will?" Flynn chuckled, shrugging.

"How many apocalypses have you stopped now, Librarian? How many of them went to plan?"

Flynn had the decency to look at least slightly mollified. "Okay, I take your point, but still…"

"Better safe than shortbread," she warned him.

"Oh, I knew that would come back to bite me in the…"

"Go see if our team has finished their tasks," cut in Eve, patting him on the not quite aforementioned area. "You take fairy-tale, I'll take star-crossed. I want a word with him."

"As my princess commands," bowed Flynn, backing away. "If they're fairy-tale and star-crossed, what does that make us?"

Eve grinned. "When I work it out, I'll let you know."

XXXX

Ezekiel Jones looked down at the pair of lists in front of him. They were interesting, in an odd, morbid kind of way. When you looked at the lines tying the two lists together, they were also more than a little depressing. What worried him most was the description of one of the characters. He sounded more than a little familiar, if only it hadn't been for the law thing.

"How are things?"

The voice made Jones jump. It was a rare thing to have someone sneak up on him. He was supposed to be the sneaky one. The Colonel had learned to sneak up on people for a living too, though, and it wasn't as if he had been terribly focussed on listening out for anyone. He turned to face her, lists in hand.

"All done," Ezekiel reported, waving the paper at her.

"That's good, but that's not what I was talking about and you know it," chided the Colonel.

"I'm fine," muttered the thief, turning back to the desk he had been working at. He busied himself in closing and tidying the reference books he had been using. By the sound of the nearing footsteps, the Colonel was not buying his response. "I just need to focus on this."

"And when this is over?" Eve persisted. She moved aside a pile of books and perched on the edge of Ezekiel's desk. "What will you focus on then?"

Ezekiel shrugged. "Whatever the next case is. There's always something."

"And when there isn't?"

Ezekiel sighed and looked up at her. "What am I supposed to do, Eve? She can't leave the castle. Ever. She's gonna live for centuries and spend them all stuck in a huge, elaborate cage! Sure it might have fab views, amazing gardens, and more rooms than you can shake a stick at, but it's still a cage!"

"And you don't think she'd want company in that cage?"

"I'm a Librarian," Ezekiel shrugged, staring blankly at the piece of paper turning over and over in his hands. "My place is here."

Eve placed a gentle hand over Ezekiel's. The paper stopped turning. "Your job is here," she reminded him. "You spent plenty of time out of here after hours when we didn't have a case and you still had your apartment. Maybe now your apartment can just be a bit, well, bigger. It worked for Jenkins and Flora for years. Decades."

"That was different," Jones insisted, dropping the paper and slipping his hands out from under Eve's to wrap his arms around himself. "Flora had already had kids and made sure the fairy blood was passed on. Seonaidh hasn't and I… we..."

"I know the idea of children is a scary one, Ezekiel, believe me: I know how mine turns out and I'm still terrified I'm going to screw it up somehow!" Eve laughed half-heartedly. "You two are still young. You have years before you two…"

"We can't ever!" Jones blurted out, still staring at the paper. "We can't have kids. We both have magic in us. Magic that would be passed on. It would be too much magic. It could cause problems."

"What kind of problems?" Eve frowned. "Who told you this?"

"I overheard conversations," he replied, shaking his head. "Jenkins. Flora. They both seemed convinced the child of a fairy and a Librarian would be dangerously powerful."

"Dangerous to whom?" Eve queried, her frown darkening. "Dangerous to the Library and its friends? Or dangerous to the Serpent Brotherhood and its allies?"

"I don't know," sighed the thief. He dropped his head into his hands, fingers smoothing out the creases in his furrowed brow. "I don't know. I don't know!"

It was Eve's turn to sigh. She patted the young man on the shoulder and got up. "Okay, let's put a pin in this for now. Don't give up, though, Ezekiel. Please don't. When this is all over, you and I are going to have a little sit down with Jenkins and talk this through. He'll give you some straight answers. I'll make sure he does! Right now, though, we have an apocalypse to stop. Again. Grab your notes and let's go fill in the others."

XXXX

Flynn paused by the door of Jenkins' laboratory. Cassandra had chosen the spot as one where she felt most able to construct theories, and even sometimes simulations, of what the Serpent Brotherhood might be able to do with the ingredients they had gathered to achieve the goals they were known to be aiming for. Stone had agreed because the room gave them peace and privacy to work. Considering what they had all just been through with da Vinci, Flynn was substantially less than surprised that Cassandra wanted something for her extraordinary mind to focus on, and that Stone wanted some time alone with Cassandra. He was like Eve. He felt responsible for protecting those he cared about. Especially Cassandra. He would have wanted to make sure she was really okay after what had happened in the vault. Flynn bent an ear to the door for a moment, then knocked.

"Come in, Flynn," called Cassandra.

The Senior Librarian blinked, frowned, and entered. "How did you know it was me?"

Cassandra smiled softly, the corners of her lips sliding up to meet the crinkles of her eyes. "Da Vinci was right when he said there was a lot of magic in you. It shows through the door. There are only two people here with more than you. One is Charlene, but her aura is slightly different. She's not as connected to her magic as you are. That's probably because her use of it has been limited, what with her being a Guardian first, then a Secretary. I'd say she can still access it though. The other is Jenkins and he totally outshines everyone else! Then there's Ezekiel, then Jacob, and then Eve."

"So you can tell everyone apart by their magical aura?" Flynn grinned, absolutely side-tracked by this new information. "Where do you fall in this little line up?"

"Oh, I can't tell that," Cassandra shook her head, waving a dismissive hand at him. "It's like looking out a window: you can see which one everyone else is standing in in the building across the street, but you can't see which one you're in on this side of the street."

"True," nodded Flynn, entering geek mode, one expostulating finger raised, "although you can usually work it out by a process of visual…"

"You here for a reason, Flynn?" Jacob broke in, trying to suppress the grin attempting to force its way onto his own face.

"Hmm?" Flynn switched his attention to Stone and blinked back to the reason his beloved had sent him there in the first place. "Oh. Yeah. Eve wants to know how you're getting on with the spells side of things."

"We think we know how they're planning on using the items, and I think I know how to replicate the spell," reported Cassandra, holding up her own expostulating finger.

"I ain't so happy about that one," nodded Stone, a grim look flitting over his features.

"Oh-kay," commented Flynn, eyebrows raised. "Well, I guess it's time we got the band back together. Come on."

XXXX

The crossing had been easy, relatively speaking. Everything was relative now. The dark, gaunt, silent, hooded ferryman had deposited him on the farther bank without ceremony then vanished into the mist. All it took then was to stretch down an arm to the water's surface and dip the opened bottle into its inky depths. The water had covered his hand to the wrist, chilling it to the very marrow of the bones: a painful but necessary step and one with an added benefit. No more would he be plagued by the myriad small injuries and worse that can befall a fighter's hands. At least on his left side. A thought struck him and, stripping off his shirt and unstopping the bottle, he poured its icy contents over his head. Again he filled the bottle. Again he doused his body in its contents, careful to cover as much of his once warm skin as possible. A third time he stretched out an arm to the water's surface: his right this time. Deep into the obsidian depths of the stream he sank his hand, bottle still clutched in his slowly freezing grasp. Bubbles popped on the surface as the bottle filled, disrupting the dark reflection of his handsome face. At last, he drew back, raising his arm from the depths. Almost had the bottle broke the surface when something strong and determined, and so cold it burned, wrapped around his wrist. At first he thought it just a water weed, tangling itself unthinkingly around the invader of its home, then he felt the grip on his wrist tighten and pull, dragging him back downward. No water weed could do that.