“I don’t know how to do this by myself,” Kylie admitted to Tom. She had The Book of the Raven in hand, but Tom pretended not to notice the text and gestured for her to come sit beside him. He felt pins and needles. Right away, he sensed this was the book he’d been searching for.
Tom ran a hand over Kylie’s. “Let me help you,” he said.
A partnership such as the one they were forging was a dark agreement in which one person was certain to win and the other was fated to lose, a contract bound in desperation with red thread that grew tighter every time you tried to break what tied you together. Don’t think, don’t wait, you are here and they are far away. It is dangerous, it’s a risk, trust no one or trust the person beside you. In a daze, Kylie offered him the book that had been waiting for three hundred years for the right person to find it, only to be given over to the wrong man.
IV.
While the others slept, Vincent let himself out of the flat so that he might walk alone, something he’d done as a young man, an old habit that had been renewed ever since William’s passing. He walked blindly around the island where they lived, and then in Paris, a city he knew well. Here in London he took his time on unfamiliar streets. Before he knew it, morning had approached, and the black skies were turning to pearl along the horizon. It was the most difficult hour for Vincent, when he felt most alone. For more than fifty years he’d woken with William in his bed, and now sleep eluded him; he couldn’t bear to wake without the man he’d loved for so long. After a year, it still had not quite sunk in that William was gone; perhaps it never would.
Walking through London made Vincent’s heart impossibly heavy. He had become accustomed to having the company of the stray dog, Dodger, who was now enjoying the guest room at Agnes’s house. Still, Vincent had a purpose for this walk. He’d always been a finder, able to locate places, whether they were on the map or off the grid. He had come upon a reference book in the historian’s office marked with an unusual stamp formed with pale red ink and as usual he had been able to locate the address without a map or any guide, though it was a place that most people walked past without seeing. The Invisible Library. Bayswater. Vincent took his time crossing Hyde Park, happy for the solitude he found there. The only noise that could be heard were birds stirring in the bushes, and then, as Vincent approached the Serpentine, there was a sudden wild squawking from a group of ring-necked parakeets perched in the wavering branches of the lime trees. The birds were said to be descendants of two parakeets Jimi Hendrix had set free from their cage in Mayfair years ago. It was so early that Vincent spotted several foxes outside their hidden dens and a shadowy vixen at the edge of the lake. The streetlights were flickering out as dawn approached and the city looked ashy, a vista in black and white.
When he reached the street, he spied the outline of a building shrouded in protective spells, set off from prying eyes. It contained more magic literature than all of the museums and bookstores in London combined, much of it under lock and key, with access to its private members and occasionally available to serious scholars. Vincent stood outside the building and breathed in the chilly morning air. When the library came into focus, it looked like any other house on the street, a tall milk-white Georgian-style building, but there was no actual address, only the numbers 17608415 on the door, healing numbers that are meant to repel black magic. He went up the steps and did his best to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. When they find the lock, you’ll have the key, Jet had told him in his dream, but he had no way to unlock this particular door, for it was forged out of iron, then encased in hazel wood and painted a slick black so that it looked like any other on the street. Quite suddenly Vincent felt a fool when he thought of his dream. Perhaps he’d misunderstood Jet entirely. A lock needn’t be made of metal. A key was not necessarily something you held in your hand. He swore softly at his own stupidity. By now Vincent knew, nothing was what it seemed.
He returned to the park, where he sat on a bench facing the library waiting for someone to arrive. Vincent had never been terribly good at being patient; he’d been a rebel, too wild to listen to reason, he’d wanted what he’d wanted, but the years had taught him something. William’s harrowing illness at the end of his life had revealed what real patience was. Wait and see, William always said. Tonight might be better, tomorrow might be pain free. As William’s health plummeted from a cancer that was untreatable, he had appeared luminous, resolved to have as many days as he could with Vincent. They stayed in bed, the windows open, light reflecting from the sea. Love of my life, the one loss I will never survive. Yet he had survived, but barely, often wondering why he was still here.