Page 89 of Eat. Prey. Love.
Panting,my heart pounds against my ribs as I skid into the library, the scent of old books and dust hitting me like a physical wave. Thursdays are supposed to be uneventful for me, a day buried in paperwork in Rockland’s office while I wish I was anywhere else in the world. But today is different—something is definitely afoot with the nasty corpse sniffer, so I paid as close attention as I could without drawing scrutiny. Afterward, my cheetah instincts screamed for urgency, but I had to take my leave for the day nonchalantly so she wouldn’t suspect what I overheard.
Spy shit is a pain in my ass—my Angel and Fitzy can have the glory. I hate this kind of shit.
“Whereare they?” I mutter under my breath, scanning the labyrinth of bookshelves for Aubrey and Renard. My gaze catches the usual corner where they huddle over texts and scrolls, but it’s empty. I weave through the aisles, my breathing still uneven, and my ears twitch at every sound, hoping to pick up their voices and not faint grunting. Finding out they’re a couple has made their occasional disappearances less like hide-and-seek and more like a coin flip as to what they’ll be doing when they’re found.
“Chester, why are you running in mylibrary?” Finally, I spot Aubrey, his head popping out from behind a stack of ancient mythology volumes with a glare that could scare the tentacles off a kraken. “Youknowthe rules about my?—”
“Yes, yes. No fucking—except you and our girl or Ren, which is completely unfair. No running, no red food or drink. No unapproved food or drink. No rap music. No video games…”
He looks amused for a second, then goes back to scowling. “Fine. You know the rules and yet you are moving at a pace that may not becheetahrunning, but on normal preds would be considered running.”
Ra save me from the pedantic leanings of a librarian dragon in his element.
“Damn it, Aubrey.” He blinks at my curse and I duck my head as a flush comes over me, then I have to shake it off. “I’mhurrying, notrunning, because I have news for you and Renard. Where is he, anyway?”
“Right here.”
I scream like a girl when he backflips off the top of a shelf, landing in front of me with the Giselle of my kind and the silence of a ninja. “Holy fucking shit… How is it that garoyles are enormous, rock hard, winged giants when they shift, but in humanoid form they’re like fucking panthers? It’s really goddamn ridiculous.”
Ren shrugs, giving me his very French, verylassez-fairesmirk.“We are a very exotic species,mon ami. No one knows why we are the way we are, only that it serves our purpose well.”
Great. I see we’re feeling prone to riddles today.
“I still want to know why you werehurryingthrough the most delicate part of the archive with little care for anything you might damage, Chester.”
Sucking in a slow breath, I try to calm my urgency a bit. These two are obviously in one of their contrary old fart moods and it won’t help any of us for me to get them to dig in further. I need them to listen, after all, and when they go into Waldorf and Statler mode, it’s impossible to get more than sarcasm. “I overheard some tidbits in the office today that I feel are important.”
I watch the realization dawn on Aubrey’s face, his eyes widening slightly. He gets the gravity of the situation without another snarky rejoinder and that’s what I wanted. Any whisper from Rockland’s lips could mean ripples of trouble or waves of disaster—but we have to prepare for both.
“Sit down, and we will talk about it,” Ren says, pointing to the cluster of chairs in the corner. They added them so Dolly can do homework comfortably while they research, and I’m suddenly glad.
Nodding, I follow the two of them to the small sitting area and get situated. They look at me expectantly and I swallow nervously. I’m not entirely sure about what I heard and I may have just been completely overly dramatic. “Rockland’s scheming, and it’s all hush-hush. I’m not sure exactly what I heard and how it relates, but it feels like it’s bad news. After Dolly’s triumph at the Pred Games...and that therapy session win...the woman’s got to be boiling over and ready to get revenge. She can’t stand for our girl to be happy even if it has nothing to do with her.”
Unspoken fears flit across Aubrey and Renard’s faces. They know this chick is ten pounds of crazy in a two pound bag, just waitingto burst open and get her mess all over everyone. It’s not a question of ‘if’ she goes nuclear, only ‘when’ she’ll blow. The difficulty in cleaning up the fallout will be decided by how much we can protect our girl against the explosion.
“Get Fitz and Felix here.” Aubrey grumbles. “We all need to hear this and then strategize from there.”
My fingers fly over my phone screen, sending a summons into the digital ether.
CSpot: We need you two back at the lair.
TigerWoody: I don’t have time for a deep dicking for lunch, Chessie. I’m dick deep in these stupid projects.
Tiger King: For fuck’s SAKE, Fitz…
CSpot: That’s not why. I have news about Rockland in her office today and Aubrey and Ren thought we should share.
I barely finish typing before I hear stomping. The twins materialize in the library with an urgency that mirrors my own. My eyes narrow at them, unclear on how they were able to thunder down the damn stairs that fast if Fitz was working on some projects.
“Why didn’t you say it was this important, baby?” Fitz asks, his gaze scanning me as if he might find answers written on my skin. “I would have been here faster.”
“You got here pretty damn fast,” I reply drily. “One would think you two were up to something.”
Felix arches a brow. “Even if we were, this is too precarious to put off. What do you know, Chess?”
“Whatever’s coming has Rockland giddy. She was swanning around the office, humming to herself, and not being careful about her voice level. I picked up bits of her phone conversationand possibly some long-winded video blog speech she was making to her culty readers. She hinted that something is coming, and a narcisistic bitch would get what’s coming to her.”
“Could the vampires be returning?” Renard throws the theory into the ring, his brow furrowed. “Perhaps our museum heist activated the supes who run the place?”