Page 8 of Booked for Theft (Vigilante Magical Librarians #3)

EIGHT

“Did Ajani forgive me for abandoning her?”

While the chef managed to make my eyes burn a little, I kept my tears to myself. I did need some milk and yogurt to ease the burn, and I praised the woman in a raspy voice, earning a laugh from everyone except the Secret Service agents, who maintained their stoic expressions.

After dinner, we were guided to a bedroom on the first floor. Named the Lincoln Bedroom, it featured a rosewood and walnut monster of a bed and other pieces of furniture from centuries long past. Magic kept everything in good condition, and we were promised the room could handle anything we could toss at it.

I waited for the President of the United States and his security detail to leave before heaving a sigh. “He thinks I have enough energy to do anything other than change into my pajamas, crawl into bed, and possibly cry—and crying is questionable right now. Generating tears consumes energy I lack.”

Bradley smiled, gave me a gentle kiss, and retrieved my suitcase, the smallest of them. “In good news, I did bring enough clothes to last you until Saturday morning. In bad news, I dressed you to suit me best. I wasn’t expecting to be staying at the White House, so they’re going to witness us in casual attire.”

“If President Castillo didn’t want to see us in casual attire, he wouldn’t have invited us to stay in his house. I honestly didn’t even know they let people sleep in the White House.”

“They open up this bedroom every rare now and again to those who’d like to stay here. I checked the schedule, and it isn’t one of the weekends they have guests, so it makes sense to put us here. The Blair House is likely occupied. I’m glad we weren’t put there, because I would have had to go hunt for some precious book to add to their collection. That’s a tradition; those who stay at that residence bring a title to add to the library, and the general rule is it should be a rare or relevant book. If I got a precious rare book for the Blair House, I’d have to get at least two for my librarian.”

Once in my favorite pair of pajamas, I slid between the sheets, hoped the duvet wouldn’t roast us to death, and freed an arm long enough to summon my fiancé to bed. “We can go walk around an excessive amount and hunt for used bookstores in the area before the foot doctors decide if they have to amputate my foot this time.”

Bradley laughed, obeyed my command, and joined me. As was our way, we wrestled for the right to be the primary cuddler, which he won with relative ease. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve had better days. There really wasn’t anything I could have done for him, Bradley. Not a single damned thing, even if I was right there when the heart attack started. There was cancer just squeezing away at his heart, and even if I could have cut it away, he still would have died.” I drew a deep breath to keep from crying. “And unless I had been right there, he was down long enough before they got CPR to actually work that his brain cells had already started to die. The CPR prevented damage to the other organs, but it was unlikely he would have woken up. I might have been able to stop that, but not the heart damage.”

“It’s not your fault, and I’ll keep telling you that until you believe it. Still, I’m sorry. You liked him, and then you ended up helping transplant his organs.”

“Yeah. At one stage, I ended up holding his lungs to keep them properly oxygenated. I had a lung in each hand, Bradley. That’s going to haunt my nightmares.”

“I’ll wake you up if it gets too bad,” he promised. “As we are scheduled to do tourism tomorrow, we shall prep your foot for possible amputation through clocking in numerous miles of exploration. If I tire you out enough, maybe you’ll sleep tomorrow night.”

“It’s worth a try. Did Ajani forgive me for abandoning her?”

“She did. I’m sure your parents will handle taking care of our cat, our goats, and our horses. As a hostage condition, you will be required to ride my horse for at least an hour.”

Since our return home, I’d learned I loved riding my horse, and my mother had made a critical mistake when purchasing my animal.

She hadn’t confirmed if the mare had been bred or not. After the first vet visit, we learned I’d be having a foal by the end of the year, and I refused to ride a pregnant horse. As such, Bradley and I shared his horse, a gelding who wouldn’t be causing any extra unintentional babies in our barn.

After conferring with numerous experts in the field, my mother and father had decided to purchase a stallion prospect, a yearling eager and ready to run races with an excellent temperament. With the right magic, which a friend of theirs possessed and was willing to use for a nominal fee, the animal could race and had an aptitude for it.

The last I checked, my mother was learning how to train her colt, she’s already hired a jockey with a soft hand but good performance record, and she was ready to prove her little babies could go the distance.

“Sunflower is never going to forgive me,” I complained.

“Sunflower will still love you best, I’m sure. She just has to be a mommy first, and if we get lucky, she’ll toss us a filly, and you’ll have two horses while I only have Majestic.”

I snickered, as Majestic had gotten his name from tripping over his own hooves and trying to act like nothing had happened. If Bradley had been given his way, the horse’s name would have been Majesty as Fuck. Our parents had vetoed his choice of names, and he’d defiantly dubbed him Majestic. “And if I get a colt, we’ll see what happens. We have the breeding records for Sunflower since we asked the previous owner, so the foal will be registered in any case. We might be able to do a foal swap. My mother has been talking with some other owners of her breed, and they will surely have an equal quality filly. If he has a good temperament, he might be a stallion prospect.”

“Your mother has corrupted you, I see.”

“She really has. Since you’re my social secretary until Sunday at the earliest, please do pen me in for an hour on Majestic. Should you fail to, you’re penning me in for buying another buckskin I can ride. If Mom is going to be keeping stallions in her new stallion barn, and we can find a good buckskin stud, I can help Sunflower’s breed.”

I’d been horrified to discover my mother and father had gone all in with my horse, purchasing a good mare from an uncommon breed, the Sorraia.

Sunflower had been imported from Germany before being sold to us, and while she was technically a dun rather than a buckskin, we called her a buckskin.

The foal was a bonus, and I still didn’t understand why the owner had neglected to mention Sunflower had been bred until we’d asked if there was a registration of the covering.

“I’m sure I can make one of those two things happen on Saturday, Sunday after the funeral if things are too busy on Saturday.”

“Then it’s a plan. I will look forward to this to help me get through the next few days. This is going to be a shit show,” I predicted.

“I’m sure it will be, but we’ll endure. Just try to get some sleep, all right?”

“I’ll try, but I’m expecting a lot of tossing, turning, and nightmares.”

I slept far better than I expected, and Bradley lured me out of bed with sausage, bacon, and eggs. Someone had snitched on my caloric needs, as three huge plates were sacrificed to my stomach. While it took several minutes, I clued in that my wicked fiancé had somehow guided me to one of the dining rooms within the White House.

A rather amused President Castillo observed me with his wife, who grinned at my inability to handle life.

In a show of solidarity—or an attempt to redefine what it meant to be casual—we all still wore pajamas.

“Crap,” I muttered. As the damage was already done, I snagged a piece of bacon and nibbled on it.

“When Bradley had told me that you could be taken, in your sleep, just about anywhere with a plate of food, I wanted to see,” the President of the United States confessed. “I’ll confess that this is the first time I’ve ever watched someone eat breakfast in their sleep.”

“Clearly, I needed that extra five or ten minutes of sleep.” I regarded my fiancé with wide eyes. “How long were you trying to get me up?”

“I gave up after an hour, and then I asked one of the agents in the hallway where I might acquire some coffee as bait. The coffee did not work, although you drank it without spilling a drop, much to the fascination of everyone involved. At that point, someone notified President Castillo of the entertainment to be had.”

The First Lady giggled. “I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed, Janette, but it’s been a while since we’ve had such a relaxed or good morning.”

If I wanted to set myself up to be viewed as inconsequential, my food habits would help my cause. “It’s all right. You should see what I’ll do for roast beef when I’m asleep.”

“Bite,” Bradley informed them. “She absolutely will bite if the plate of roast beef is not relinquished and she wants it. She got a hold of the plate once, and I learned why her mother gives up and lets it go. Janette will bite anyone coming between her and her food. I deserved it.”

I shrugged, vanquished the bacon, and sent the final piece of peppery sausage on an adventure to the cavernous depths of my stomach. “Thank you for breakfast.”

President Castillo smiled. “You’re welcome. I’ve arranged for a car to take you anywhere you need to go today. If you’re nearby doing tourism and going to the hospital today as planned, the driver will wait for you here until she’s needed. Tomorrow, she’ll drop you off at the Library of Congress, as I expect you will stay there until the librarians are forced to kick you out.”

“I might have a reputation for not wanting to leave libraries. Where are we headed this morning, Bradley?”

“I have acquired everything you need to hunt books, and we will be going to our hunting grounds as soon as you shower and get changed.”

Fortunately for my sanity, the Castillos wished us well and excused themselves, sparing me from needing to tell them I wanted to head to the bookstore. Thus freed, I followed Bradley to the guest room, showered in record time, and got changed, chuckling at Bradley’s selection of attire, which involved a tight pair of jeans and a shirt with a plunging neckline, which offered him a view of my cleavage. “You were not joking when you said you were dressing me to your interests.”

“I have certain regrets right now, and that involves not being at home where I can pursue my interests. I was honestly expecting to drive home today. It did not work out that way. I’m planning on consoling myself with at least three new books and a trip to the toy store.”

I eyed him. “Which type of toy store?”

The last time I’d failed to ask that question, he’d taken me to an adult store with the intention of living the high life and indulging in some bedroom fantasies.

“Not the kind that I was hoping for when I selected that shirt,” he complained, and he heaved a sigh.

I laughed at him. “Now you have to wait until Saturday night at the earliest.”

“I am my own worst enemy.” Bradley grabbed my purse, checked inside, and wrinkled his nose. “I left your gun at home, and I’m thinking about taking you to a gun shop near one of the bookstores. I can bring the firearm into the White House, but it’ll be held for us by the Secret Service until we leave.”

“I do not need any additional firearms, Bradley.”

“They have a two round derringer I’d like you to have.”

That caught my attention. “And did Lenard approve this derringer?”

“He did, and he has three other guns he wants to attune to you, so it’s worth the hassle.”

Men. Give them an inch and a reason for concern, and they’d run a mile, flailing all the way. “We can indulge your anxiety while we’re hunting for books, just please warn the Secret Service agents we’ll have a firearm. We will not be acquiring ammo for the gun until we are home. I am an exsanguinator, Mr. Hampton. I am the weapon.”

“You’re about as offensive as a kitten.”

I huffed at him, lifted my chin, and went through the motions of checking my purse. The hint he wanted a good time came in the form of birth control stuffed into the zippered pouch. “We can indulge in platonic cuddling with our e-readers in the tub tonight.”

While it wasn’t what he specifically wanted, cuddling appeased the beast’s need for affection and did a good job of taming him.

“We should acquire some chocolates and other treats for this adventure.”

“I’m sure we can find such things while we’re exploring. Where are we headed first?”

“There is an antique bookstore on the other side of the Mall across from the Smithsonian. I’ll have the driver take us to the Smithsonian, we’ll tour that first, and then we’ll head to the bookstore. If we have time, we’ll check out the Air and Space Museum before we head over to the hospital. After your appointment, which I’ve been told should take no more than ten minutes, there are numerous bookstores nearby. We’ll explore them before heading back here. We’ll also replace my phone while we’re out, as I’m tired of having to carry a charger in my pocket or being plugged in.”

“Which vehicle did you bring with you?”

“I brought your baby because you weren’t there to tell me no.”

I snickered. “Well played, Bradley. Where is my baby parked now?”

“She’s still parked at the hospital. I got a pass from the hospital, and she’s in the employee lot. She should be fine. She’ll stay there until we leave.”

That would work. “They approved just leaving her in their lot?”

“And without billing us for it, too. They figured that was the least they could do for your help with the transplants, and I didn’t want to deal with driving her to the White House.”

I couldn’t blame him for that—and we had some hope the government wouldn’t mess with the vehicle. However, the instant we got home, I’d hand over the keys to Bradley’s father and have his company sweep the whole thing for unwanted additions.

When I’d purchased the vehicle, they’d taken a detailed photograph of every inch of her so they could reference it for any alterations.

“All right. I’m ready to go on an adventure, Bradley.”

He chuckled, checked his pockets, and headed for the door. “Hopefully, my plan for today meets your expectations.”

“The only way you can screw this up is if we don’t go to the bookstore.”

Bradley bought me several journals at the Smithsonian along with a set of ten fancy pens featuring elements of history, ranging from dinosaur bones to the invention of the plane. My favorite of the lot featured books, and it went into my purse along with a journal featuring a blue background and a golden sunburst with the museum’s name embossed near the middle of the cover. The trip in the museum itself evoked wonder, and they had pieces discovered long before the rise and acceptance of magic.

Due to construction at the National Archives, the Declaration of Independence was on temporary display within the Smithsonian, and of all the exhibits in the museum, I spent the longest staring at it, wondering how we’d fallen so far.

Then it dawned on me that I had no conception of the passage of time.

We recorded the years on a different calendar, one that better represented a magical society. We’d borrowed from the old Gregorian calendar, labeling the year as MR, which stood for Magic’s Rise. Someone had tracked back to the discovery of magic, set that to be Year 0, and we’d moved forward from there.

As far as I could recall, nobody had told me what year, in the Gregorian calendar, matched our current year.

Unlike the Gregorian calendar, we’d chosen to use a riff off the Hijri solar calendar, keeping the general naming conventions but adjusting each year based on the Earth’s actual orbit around the sun. In acknowledgement of its origin, we still used a set location in Iran to determine the start of each year.

Culturally, we still celebrated the first day of January as the New Year, but in reality, the calendar shifted based on Earth’s orbit.

For the most part, everyone ignored the technicalities of the MR calendar and pretended we still lived our lives according to a variant of the Gregorian calendar.

I christened my new notebook with a research question, which would inevitably send me on a scavenger hunt for information I feared the government had made efforts to hide. One of those efforts involved a failure to date anything beyond 2030 AD.

Scholars claimed that made an excellent year for the transition away from the Gregorian calendar due to ‘sufficient overlap’ in dating.

I was yet to associate any one event with both calendars, however.

How many years of history had been erased in an effort to blind people to the past?

After we left the Smithsonian and blitzed through the Air and Space Museum, Bradley kept his word, walked us across the Mall, and set me loose in an antique bookstore, the kind of place that might have the answer to some of my questions. If we were being watched or had been subjected to unexpected bugs, the poor bastards stuck with keeping an eye on us would enjoy innuendo, my interest in the Roman empire, and some indications I had a healthy interest in finding some raunchy romance novels so we could attempt to act out some of the spicier scenes.

While the place didn’t have any ancient books from the Roman Empire, there was a set of history texts from 1806 AD, bound in leather and preserved with magic, that would do my collection justice. The price tag, at ten thousand dollars a book, reduced me to tears.

“You realize I can afford the books, right?” Bradley asked, engaging me in a staring contest with a raised brow. “If you want the set, you can have the set.” He counted books and examined the spines, covers, and title pages of each one, wearing a pair of white gloves the shopkeeper had offered to him. “Three volumes are about the Roman Empire, and you clearly need those.” He set those into a nearby tray, which was lined in soft fabric to protect the precious volumes. “Two volumes are on the colonization of the United States, one volume is on the naval history of the United States, one volume is on general military history, and the rest are general history titles.”

Sixteen books in total went onto a series of four trays so nothing would be damaged.

I did the math, realizing Bradley could buy a nice car or several nice horses for the sum. I glared at the volumes, wondering if there was a nice way to inform my fiancé he’d lost his mind.

“Would you be willing to hold these for me until either Friday night or early Saturday morning?”

“What time Saturday morning?”

“Offensively early,” Bradley confessed. “We’ll probably be rolling out at three in the morning.”

“As I go to bed at two at night on Friday nights, as the wife takes care of the shop on Saturdays, I can handle that for you no problem.” The man pointed at the ceiling. “We actually live above the shop.”

I sighed at the thought of owning a bookshop and living above work. “Commuting sucks.”

With a laugh, Bradley handed over his credit card. “I’d also like to purchase the bundle of antique piano music you have in the display case.”

Of course he did. “Aren’t you going to ask how much that costs?”

“No. However, I’m going to ask how much the Bach manuscript is.”

“Half a million,” the shopkeeper replied.

I made a strangled noise.

Bradley smiled. “Please put it with her books and the bundle.”

The man took Bradley’s credit card, headed to the terminal, and rang up the order before bringing over the device so Bradley could finish the purchase.

The machine pinged, indicating the transaction had been approved.

Then, because my fiancé wanted to finish me off, he handed me a twenty dollar bill. “Buy one book you are willing to put in your purse. If you fail to do this, I will buy something else with the card.”

Well aware the evil man would do as threatened, I fled from the register, hunting through the more recent titles in search of something that met his basic requirements. I located a spicy romance and a thriller novel that spent all but a dollar of the twenty and brought it to the register.

Once armed with my dollar, I used it as a bookmark in the thriller so my fiancé would not get any additional ideas. “You spent too much.”

“I spent an appropriate amount of money on things that are precious,” he countered.

“You led me into temptation!”

“And I successfully tempted you. If you are expecting any shame over this, you are sorely mistaken, Future Mrs. Hampton.”

I put both books into my purse. “Please tell me this is not going to happen at every bookstore.”

“It’s not, but only because this bookstore blatantly had the Bach manuscript on their website, and I found it yesterday when left unattended.”

Clever, devious man. “I see. You used me as a scapegoat so you could come in here and buy antique piano music.”

“It has its certificate of authenticity and everything, and it’s magically preserved.”

“The directions on how to renew the preservation are included with the manuscript,” the shopkeeper promised. “And if you think my Bach manuscript is impressive, the music store down the street recently acquired several Beethoven manuscripts.”

“Music or writings?” Bradley asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Music. It’s for violin, much like your Bach manuscript. I’m sure they have some antique piano music as well.”

My fiancé frowned.

“I’m sure we can figure out how to go down the street and buy you some antique piano music, but you’re going to have to prove you can afford the Beethoven.”

“It’s a million and a half,” the shopkeeper stated.

Ouch. While Bradley had hunted money, and a lot of it, during my kidnapping, I struggled to comprehend spending that much on sheet music.

“Would you mind holding on to anything I buy there here for pickup?”

“That won’t be a problem at all. It’s not like those manuscripts take up that much space, and you bought a nice collection.”

That he had. Sighing, I surrendered to the inevitable. “If you want to buy music, go buy music. I will stay here and look at the books. Don’t take all day. I do have an appointment at three.”

“I’ll be back shortly,” Bradley swore before fleeing the store as though his shoes had caught on fire.

“Please show me something that won’t cost me a fortune.”

“I have a bin of books that are three for a quarter. Why don’t we go check those out after I put these away?”

I could work with three for a quarter. “I have a dollar, and I’m willing to spend it.”