Just then, everyone’s phones dinged, and the giant flatscreen overhead turned on.
“Is that the library on the news?” Naomi asked, pointing.
“Again?” Felix sighed, as the door to their office opened abruptly, startling them all.
“William,” Naomi said. “What are you doing here on a weekend?”
But William didn’t answer the question. “I just got the alert,” he replied, his gaze snapping quickly between all of them to make sure they were already aware of it.
“Oh my God,” Priya murmured. She turned her phone toward Felix, but she didn’t have to—he was already staring at his own.
“The chair of the NYPL has been murdered?” he cried.
XVII
The ticking called gently to her, like a beacon in the darkness. Nell wanted to turn her head toward the sound, but when she tried, nothing happened. Her eyelids felt as heavy as stone. But the ticking kept calling. A calm, even click that pulled her closer to waking inch by inch if she focused on it. Its steady rhythm gradually made her aware of her nose, her fingertips, the rise and fall of her chest, the pillow behind her head. And the pain.
Oh, the pain.
“Don’t try to sit up,” someone said to her. “Francis! Francis! She’s awake!”
It was Swann. Familiar hands softly pressed her shoulders back down.
“Welcome back, Nell,” Francis’s measured voice replied as it drew closer. She felt a light touch on her forehead and realized that he was checking under a fold of fabric—a handkerchief pressed there. “You really gave us a scare.”
“How is she? How are you?” Swann asked, the last question directed at her. Nell tried to muster a response, but it came out as a groan.
“The bleeding’s stopped, and the swelling isn’t bad. I think she’ll be all right.”
“She’s going to be all right?” Swann asked, deliriously happy.
Hands were back at the handkerchief, taking away the old wrap and replacing it with fresh material, propping up her head a little. She instantly knew that it was Francis again, not Felix.
Felix was not there. He hadn’t come back to find her after the fight.
“Do you remember what happened?” Francis asked her softly.
Nell’s eyes finally opened. The room was a fog of blurry streaks and dim lighting. She was reclined on a couch, a cushion under her head. Faintly, she recognized the tall shape and circular face of a grandfather clock in the background—the ticking that had been calling to her—but not much else. Swann and Francis hovered in front of her, crouching by the armrest, and two more blurry shapes floated behind them.
“Nell, thank goodness,” one of them said, and Nell’s eyes focused enough to recognize Eve’s face, and Ramona’s beside it. “I thought we were too late.”
“How . . .” Nell managed to whisper. Had they also been at the event? Had they come to try to help Francis dissuade her as well?
The attack came back to her in snatches, then. The fight with Felix, running into the Map Division to hide, the sound of the alarms, Swann telling her the police had stormed in, Irene’s murder, and clutching her tote bag to her in terror as something—someone—overwhelmed her.
Her tote bag.
“My . . . my . . . ,” she whispered. Her fingers grasped uselessly at her shoulder, where the bag’s straps should have been.
“Oh, my dear, it’s gone,” Swann said. “Stolen.”
No. Nell’s head fell back against the cushion. No. Her eyes burned, hot and wet.