Andrew nodded. “My Stan is on the excavation crew. Been digging his whole life. If you can wait until nightfall, he’ll let you in. He’ll get in trouble, of course, but it won’t be the first time, and there’s not a prison built that can hold him.”
“Good man, Stanley Cripplegate,” Linda said with a satisfied nod. “Always such a help in the autumn when you need the daffodil bulbs planted.”
Stanley Cripplegate was a tiny whippet of a man with a pronounced underbite and the sinewy outlines of someone who had been malnourished since birth. Vampire blood had given him longevity and strength, but there was only so much it could do to lengthen bones. He distributed bright yellow safety helmets to the four of us.
“Aren’t we going to be . . . er, conspicuous in this getup?” Sarah asked.
“Being as you’re ladies, you’re already conspicuous,” Stan said darkly. He whistled. “Oy! Dickie!”
“Quiet,” I hissed. This was turning out to be the loudest, most conspicuous book heist in history.
“S’all right. Dickie and me, we go way back.” Stan turned to his colleague. “Take these ladies up to the first floor, Dickie.”
Dickie deposited us, helmets and all, in the Arts End of Duke Humfrey’s reading room between the bust of King Charles I and the bust of Sir Thomas Bodley.
“Is it me, or are they watching us?” Linda said, scowling at the unfortunate monarch, hands on her hips.
King Charles blinked.
“Witches have been on the security detail since the middle of the nineteenth century. Stan warned us not to do anything we oughtn’t around the pictures, statues, and gargoyles.” Dickie shuddered. “I don’t mind most of them. They’re company on dark nights, but that one’s a right creepy old bugger.”
“You should have met his father,” Fernando commented. He swept his hat off and bowed to the blinking monarch. “Your Majesty.”
It was every library patron’s nightmare—that you were secretly being observed whenever you took a forbidden cough drop out of your pocket. In the Bodleian’s case, it turned out the readers had good reason to worry. The nerve center for a magical security system was hidden behind the eyeballs of Thomas Bodley and King Charles.
“Sorry, Charlie.” I tossed my yellow helmet in the air, and it sailed over to land on the king’s head.
I flicked my fingers, and the brim tilted down over his eyes. “No witnesses for tonight’s events.”
Fernando handed me his helmet.
“Use mine for the founder. Please.”
Once I’d obscured Sir Thomas’s sight, I began to pluck and tweak the threads that bound the statues to the rest of the library. The spell’s knots weren’t complicated—just thrice-and four-crossed bindings—but there were so many of them, all piled on top of one another like a severely overtaxed electrical panel. Finally I discovered the main knot through which all the other knots were threaded and carefully untied it. The uncanny feeling of being observed vanished.
“That’s better,” Linda murmured. “Now what?”
“I promised to call Matthew once we were inside,” I said, drawing out my phone. “Give me a minute.”
I pushed past the lattice barricade and walked down the silent, echoing main avenue of Duke Humfrey’s Library. Matthew picked up on the first ring.
“All right, mon coeur?” His voice thrummed with tension, and I briefly filled him in on our progress so far.
“How were Rebecca and Philip after I left?” I asked when my tale was told.
“Fidgety.”
“And you?” My voice softened.