Free Capitol Magic by Mindy Klasky Page B

indications that scrolls and volumes had been checked out from the Library over the centuries. They wouldn’t amount to a stash this size. They couldn’t.
    But the evidence was before me, crystal clear. I saw the call numbers I had been unable to translate before Jane arrived. Each book was marked, branded as part of the Eastern Empire’s collection. Richardson had left a handful of legitimate notices indicating legal borrowing, but even then he had dissembled. He had completely obscured the true extent of his theft.
    I moved without thinking, my body flowing into the ancient poetry of wind and sand and dunes. One moment, I was crouching behind the witch and her familiar. The next, I was bowing before the works that I was destined to protect. I reached out to the closest item, a scroll that bore the ancient criss-cross of papyrus. I needed to touch it, needed to confirm that it was actually mine.
    As my fingers brushed across the millennia-old scroll, a shriek went up inside my mind. Sharper than glass forged from desert sand. Louder than the sirocco. Piercing to my sphinx heart.
    It was a message without words, a summons without speech. I had stumbled across a psychic tripwire. I had summoned a nest of vampires, a clutch of killers who had sworn personal loyalty to Maurice Richardson.

CHAPTER 7
    JANE
    â€œTHEY’RE COMING!” SARAH gasped.
    I didn’t have to ask who. The horror on her face made it clear that we were about to face vampires.
    Neko recovered before I did. “How long do we have?” he asked. “And how many are there?” I’d heard that tone in his voice before, that absolute determination. But every time he used it, I was still astonished. No matter how often Neko saved me from my own mistakes, I continued to think of him as nothing more than my happy-go-lucky, boy-toy familiar.
    Sarah shook her head and whispered, “I’m not sure… I can’t…”
    â€œYes,” Neko insisted, closing his hands around her upper arms. “You can. You felt the vampires awaken. Their threat bounced back to you. It was like an echo. How many responded to you? How far away were they?”
    I cast a quick look at my familiar. How did he know these things? Could he possibly be drawing upon the repository of knowledge he shared with other familiars, the same pool of information that let him know how to make the perfect mojito, how to wear his hair in the most fashionable of current styles?
    Sarah tried to pull away, muttering something about sand, about lemons. My familiar, though, merely tightened his fingers around her biceps. “Sarah, listen to me! Close your eyes. Concentrate.”
    And somehow, miraculously, she started to pay attention. Her eyelids fluttered closed. Her breath caught in her throat. She licked her lips, and then she nodded. “There are four of them,” she said. Her voice was high, strained, almost as if she was in a trance. She seemed to question herself, to be unsure, but then she nodded again. “Four. And we have five minutes. Maybe six.”
    Not enough time to call a cab.
    But enough time to get David. Enough time for my warder to spirit us all away to safety.
    My belly tightened at the thought. I hated being the damsel in distress. I hated being the wayward child who had to be rescued from her own foolish wrongs. I hated the fact that David would be angry with me for venturing here without him, that he’d be disappointed in my judgment.
    Neko had released Sarah. Now, he stared at me with the intensity of a cat stalking a garter snake. “Are you going to summon him, or should I?”
    I shook my head, but I was already reaching out for the link. It was strung between us, so comfortable, so familiar, that I could go for days without giving it conscious thought. But now, when I needed it, the connection was taut, like the line that linked a child’s pair of tin-can telephones. “ David ,” I thought.