Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(89)

And, more meaningfully, no guards. No Obscurist.

“Can you do this?” he asked Morgan, and pointed to the couch, the helmet. “Turn it back on?”

“Yes,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“London,” Jess said, and looked at Santi and Wolfe for confirmation. Wolfe shook his head sharply.

“Word is that the Welsh are already there,” Santi said. “They’re making quick work of English defenses. We could be trapped in the fighting, and how do you know your family hasn’t already pulled out?”

Jess turned to Morgan. “Can you send a message to my father on the Codex, and make sure no one else sees it? I can give it to you in code.”

“I think so. What do you want to say?”

“Tell him I’ll meet him at the warehouse. He’ll understand. If he’s not still in town, he’ll warn us off.”

“I’ll need a Codex,” Morgan said. Khalila ran back down the hall and retrieved one from a fallen soldier. Jess wrote out the words in code on a scrap of Glaudino’s note pages, and Morgan quickly copied it into the message page. Her words, Jess realized, didn’t even show on the page at all, as if the ink erased itself as soon as she put it to paper.

They waited tensely for a moment, and then the reply was written out in Callum Brightwell’s spiky, urgent hand: Go careful.

“He’s still there,” Jess said. “In London.”

“We still have a problem. The Serapeum is guarded,” Wolfe said.

“Not as much of a problem as you would think,” Santi replied. “The High Garda will be out defending the perimeter; London Garda will be engaged with the Welsh. There are three of us in uniform—that’s enough to cause confusion until we can win our way free. I know where the Translation Chamber is. We can make it outside, if your father can send us to safety after.” Santi studied Jess with cold intensity. “Will he? No half-truths this time.”

“He will,” Jess said, and then swallowed hard. “For a price. He’ll need something in trade.”

“Something,” Santi repeated. “Such as?”

“I don’t know,” Jess said. “I’ll think of something.” But he already knew. His father would highly value the information about how to switch off the automata, but if it wasn’t enough, Jess could offer the precious volume he’d translated for Thomas about the creatures. That was enough to buy all their lives ten times over. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”

Santi didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. They were well committed now, and any delays might mean capture, imprisonment, death.

Jess stretched out on the marble couch. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I’ll distract them with a story about fleeing a sneak attack on the High Garda in Rome. Send Glain after me.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Khalila said. “She’s injured.”

“That’s why she has to go next,” he said. “If I’m alone telling the story and she arrives . . .”

“It’s confirmation.” Santi nodded. “All right. Morgan, if you can do this, you’d better do it now.”

There wasn’t much choice. Morgan fitted the helmet over Jess’s head. He muttered the standard good-luck phrase under his breath and waited for the mouth of the wolf to close over him . . . But those jaws never shut. He felt the pressure of Morgan’s hands on the helmet, but there was no surge of energy. No power ripping him apart.

He tilted his head to look back at her. “What’s happening?”

Her eyes were round and shocked, and she said, “I don’t know! It’s as if—as if I’m blocked from that path. It won’t let me send you to London!”

“Is it malfunctioning?” Wolfe demanded. “Because we can’t stay here, Morgan.”

“I know! It’s not . . . The power’s there, but it’s only letting me go . . .” Morgan closed her eyes a moment, and Jess felt something this time—a slight tingle, like a surge of static electricity. She caught her breath and whispered, “No. Oh God, no!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Jess sat up and stripped the helmet off. Morgan’s eyes were filled with tears, her hands trembling as she raised them to cover her mouth. When she met his eyes, the tears spilled over. “Morgan!”

She gulped back what seemed like sheer panic, and looked from him to Wolfe as she dragged her hands back down and balled them into fists.

“I’m so sorry. They must have— They must have known we’d try this. I can take you only one place from here,” she said. “Just one.”

“Where?”

“Alexandria,” she whispered. “Into the Iron Tower.”

Wolfe stared for a moment, black eyes gone blank, and then shifted to send Santi a look. “This is my mother’s doing.”

Jess dumped the helmet on the floor with a crash. “We can’t go back to Alexandria. We have to fight.”

“Then we’ll die,” Santi said flatly. “And Glain won’t survive that injury unless she gets help quickly. We can give up, or we can take a chance. The Obscurist isn’t pledged to be loyal to the Archivist. She’s loyal to the Library. There’s a difference.”