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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE DISHONEST APPROPRIATION OF PROPERTY BELONGING TO ANOTHER WITH THE INTENTION TO PERMANENTLY DEPRIVE THE OTHER OF IT

A lthea stretched and shook her aching fingers. She checked the enormous clock on the wall. They had ten more minutes before they had to dash for the tube back to Percy and Joe.

She copied down the text in front of her in a frenzied, mechanical haze of thoughts. There was no way she’d get it all finished in time. And how was she supposed to smuggle a book that size, that old, out of the British Library? She’d checked it for security tags and failed to find any, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something hidden somewhere in there, waiting to set off a sensor if she tried to escape with it. And she wasn’t about to go to jail over something she didn’t even understand. Like possession.

She’d heard stories growing up—seen with her own eyes men who claimed to be possessed, eating shards of glass and stabbing themselves to prove it during religious ceremonies. But somehow the distance of London and all the years of trauma had pushed that childhood terror into the background, where she could ignore it—believe it was myth or trickery. But here it was, back with an undeniable vengeance.

Or was it? All she’d seen from across the airport was Joe, leaning into Percy, just as sweet and desperately misguided in his choice of boyfriend as he’d always seemed to be. And then he dropped. Joe on the floor, at Percy’s hand. The rest happened so fast, and Percy was too scary to challenge about any of it.

She felt she owed him. He said she didn’t; he acted as though she didn’t—as though she was barely an acquaintance, since they’d met at the airport. She wasn’t worried about any repercussions if she didn’t follow through with whatever he requested, but… she was terrified of him. Without a doubt. He switched hot and cold, with no rhyme or reason she could figure. She’d seen him crush five men with a car just for scratching his boyfriend’s cheek. He was right to do it, because in hindsight they were most likely zombies, but it’s not as though he knew that at the time.

Life was cheap to Percy. Any and all life except Joe’s was Althea’s supposition, and she didn’t want to put herself in the crossfire of a weapon like that.

Yet here she was, scrawling desperately lest she disappoint him, while she knew she should probably be at the police station reporting him instead.

This, she figured, must be how Leo felt. Under the thumb, too scared to fuck up, living on a perpetual knife edge of anxiety. And how had he got Leo under his control like that?

A pile of papers settled noiselessly on the table beside her, followed by Leo settling into a chair. He threw back that dark curl of hair that hung perpetually over his gorgeous cheekbones, and Althea’s heart sprang like a mousetrap. “All done?”

“Yeah.” He glanced nervously at the clock, just the way she had. After leaving Percy, Leo had dropped her at the library, then gone directly to get Percy’s ‘tools’ and meat. By the time he got back, she had swaths of supernatural-related discourse for him to photocopy. He’d done three loads, but there was more and more again to be assessed and copied and brought back to Percy. “We’d better get going soon.”

She licked her lips, turning a few pages forward. Long and large pages full of dense, small text. “It’s all about possessions. And there’s also those ones I’ve marked there.” She indicated two tall piles of books, ripped Post-it notes sticking out to mark the important places.

As though reading her mind, Leo said, “We’ll never get it done in time.” He reached across, brushing Althea’s shoulder, allowing her a scent of him. He smelled exciting, like travel. He smelled like a hint of Paris and train stations, then fresh country air and adventure and coffee. He pulled her book down onto his knees beneath the table, cast a furtive glance around the room, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a flick knife.

She audibly gasped. “You can’t do that!”

He wrapped the knife in his fist, rammed the blade into the paper, and slashed a line down the book. He cut far more than he needed, only asking afterwards, “Where does it end?”

Her quick fingers searched the edges of the pages beneath the desk. “I think it’s?—”

“They’ve seen us.”

Althea jumped, in full panic, eyes darting around the room.

“Joking.” Leo’s smile was too close and too, too cheeky. It was the sort of smile that suggested he would, regularly, go too far with any and all hijinks. And that it would always be fun. His eyes rested on her with an expectant sparkle.

Althea was hopeless at hiding her feelings around Leo. Pink and smiling wide, she whispered, “Stop it. You scared the shit out of me.”

She soon separated the pages they needed, and Leo slammed the book shut the second her fingers were free. “Cover me.”

“Wha—”

He lifted his shirt and pulled out the waistband of his jeans, and Althea got a full and compelling view of his abs and the top of his underwear. A new madness of confusion swept over her, and she didn’t know whether to keep looking down his pants, which was what 99% of her wanted to do, or whether she should do as he asked and cover him somehow. The one percent of intelligence remaining grasped her yellow puffy parka from the table and swept it over his lap, pulling several books with her as she went. The lot crashed to the wooden floor with a deafening echo all around the room, and every single eye in the gigantic space settled on the pair of them. She looked around, mortified, then infuriated by the unnecessary “Shhh!” the man a desk over felt the need to level at them, as she froze there, arm wrapped around Leo, like a lizard playing dead.

A fluff of hair tickled her cheek as Leo tilted his head a little closer to whisper, “Stealthy.”

She slipped straight to the floor to die of embarrassment. And to pick up the books she’d dropped.

Althea adored Leo with all the fanatic passion of a teenage girl, only multiplied roughly one million times by the bizarre circumstances in which they’d met. Her, running from an evil princess, being chased by zombies of all things, alone with two enormous, completely mad, dangerous and armed men. She’d spent half the trip wondering if she’d be better off back with the princess. But then there was Leo. A touch of normal. So handsome. Refusing to stick her in the baggage hold like Percy had told him to. Leo on the line first thing when she woke up in a new country in a strange hotel room. Leo talking her down from running away, promising her that Percy could be trusted. Then Leo, by her side in the fanciest restaurant she’d ever set foot in, quietly showing her which cutlery to use. And then he kissed her there in the middle of the night. Then nothing.

Nothing but a friendly phone call to ‘check in,’ when he had stayed on the line until it got awkward, then hung up. Nothing until she phoned him in a panic after Percy’s call, and then it was all business. All business until just now, when she wanted to believe he hadn’t kissed her that night just because he was drunk.

She heard the soft rustle of papers beneath the loud rustle of her parka as Leo finished secreting the information, and just as she got her fallen books in order, he leaned down to take them from her. She held them, the two paused there, and she whispered, “There must be a better place to do this.” She climbed to standing, then pulled the books into her arms, as though they might serve as a shield against her embarrassment. “Come on.”

She took off somewhere, anywhere, imagining there must be some private space to be found. She soon heard Leo behind her, carrying her noisy parka, and the noisy bags of things he’d bought for Percy. She walked and walked, but it was all brightly lit tables. More tables and more, full of people and lamps and sunshine streaming in, and she decided it was a stupid library—not at all like libraries should be. Until she saw the restroom sign.

She spun around, perfectly flustered to almost crash into Leo for the second time that day, then squeaked, “Wait here.” She dashed into the restroom, not stopping to think twice, checked the cubicles, and finding the room empty, she reached back around the corner for Leo and yanked him in. The two tumbled into a tiny stall, his shoulder smacking the door back against the wall so it rebounded twice as hard into them, knocking Leo against the other side, where her puffy parka just about pushed her over, and she almost fell onto the tampon bin until he caught her and pulled her up. She slammed the lid of the toilet down, climbed up on it, taking a seat on the cistern, leaving Leo lost as to where to dump his armful of everything.

“Don’t you dare let my parka touch that floor,” she said, eying him carefully.

“I wasn’t,” he mumbled, trying to turn and hitting two walls. “Is this really better?”

“Better than you cutting books up in front of everyone, yeah. Give me your knife.”

“I—” He twisted his hips sharply to the left, as though he could pull the thing out of his pocket with an elbow.

“Let me.” She slid the books onto a high windowsill, all dust and dead flies, then, resting a hand on his shoulder for stability, climbed down into the small space between the toilet and the wall. “Which pocket?”

“It’s, uh—the—uh—left.” She reached around him, breasts against his back, squeezing her hand around his ass, before he could bluster out, “Front—front left—it’s not…”

“Oh, okay. Just let me…” She felt her way across, beneath her parka, fingers searching along his belly, down over his belt.

He flinched back as her hand trailed lower. “If you could just hold my meat…”

“Hold your…” Eyes inches from his, hand over his zipper, she froze.

His mouth dropped open. “My—no!—Not that meat—not—I mean—Ah!— Could you hold Joe’s meat? P-Percy’s meat? Someone’s meat! But not my meat!”

Althea burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggles, and lunged for his knife as his head slammed back against the door in mortification. She turned her back on him, climbing up onto the toilet seat, and reaching the first of her books down, unable to stop herself, saying, “You don’t want me to touch your meat?”

“That’s not—” he blustered. “I didn’t say that ?—”

She found her place and slid his knife down the page. “So, you do want me to touch your meat?” She couldn’t help a glance back at his red face, his eyes shut tight.

“Al—no—I mean. Uh?—”

“Is there someone else that’s…” She balanced the freed pages on top of his bulky load. She had been feeling confident enough to say it, until he looked up, and she saw his eyes were bright and full on hers, expectant but worried. She felt a wave of bashfulness, and she moved for another book.

A silence followed, broken only by the ruffling of pages, the slit of the knife, and the rustling of her parka as Leo shifted awkwardly. After a time, he said, “There’s no one else.”

Her fingers shook slightly as she added to his paper pile. Why would he tell her that if he didn’t want her—specifically her —to know that?

Probably because she’d asked…

But he would have lied if he wasn’t interested. Wouldn’t he? That’s what she’d?—

“Are you?” came his tentative voice. “Seeing… anyone?”

She flipped open another book. “No.” She threw a nervous glance over her shoulder at Leo, and Leo smiled. He smiled a smile that looked relieved and hopeful. Althea’s heart grew so big on the spot that it threatened to blow out her eardrums. “Is that… Um…”

Another silence. A tense and full one

Althea slipped the next excerpt under her arm and pushed another book against the wall in readiness. It was huge and heavy and hard to balance.

“Al…” The small sound sat there. She wasn’t sure if she’d like it if anyone else called her that, but she liked it from him. “You know, I’ve been getting your new passport organised. Your real one. And I saw that your birthday’s coming up.”

Another dangerous flutter of her heart. “Tomorrow.”

“Yeah. And, before this happened, I thought…” Long silence. “I was going to check with Percy, but I thought…” More silence. “I thought maybe I’d catch the train over and, um, depending what your plans were…” She turned around to look at him, so he dropped his gaze to the floor.

“That would have been fun.”

His eyes lightened and flitted back to hers, briefly, before lingering somewhere on the wall. “I thought I could get you your first official drink. Or something.”

Althea slammed the final book closed and clambered down to the floor. “I thought you weren’t supposed to drink.”

“I can. If I want to.” There was a rebellious anxiety in his features, mingled with what looked like irritation.

She took the teetering pile from him, impressed he hadn’t spilled it already. “Actually, there’s this place that does cheese toasties. And they use really fancy cheese. I think even Percy would approve. It’s got onions and… I don’t know, they put butter all over it, and garlic, and it all kind of crisps up and the cheese is all melted on the outside and inside at the same time and… Could we do that?”

“We could!” he virtually shouted.

Leo glowed. Positively glowed. He nodded, and Althea knew that one smile would keep her running for a good six weeks. “Okay. Let’s get this back so we can?—”

“Yeah.”

The wad of papers was, by this time, as heavy and as thick as her small hands could hold. As thick as stealing one of the larger books would have been. And Althea needed to stash it fast. “I don’t think this will fit down your jeans.”

“I could put some in these bags.” He shuffled them a little, smacking the meat dankly into the wall.

“Actually…” Althea disentangled the handles of the first bag, steadily cutting a red line into Leo’s fingers, and shoved it up onto the cistern. The meat sagged over the edges, but the containers of blood held it steady. Next, she took his other bag, which gave a metallic jangle. “This is heavy. What’s in it?” She dumped it on the closed toilet lid.

“Just tools,” Leo mumbled, turning his relieved wrists around

“Well, let’s see how much we can fit.” She pressed Leo’s arm to turn him, then lifted his shirt. He complied, and she went about shoving papers against his back, trying to keep the thing some sort of professional. Trying not to think too hard about how beautiful his slim, naked back was. Trying not to think too hard about that kiss. Trying not to wonder if he might turn back and kiss her now. If she should just kiss him. If he was half as turned on as she was thinking about kissing his neck. “Leo?”

He swivelled back around, pulling his shirt down over the stash with one hand, trying not to let the gigantic parka touch anything with the other. “How much is left?”

She pressed the remaining papers against his chest, he caught them by instinct, and perhaps having taken temporary leave of her senses due to the closeness of Leo in the toilet cubicle in the British Library during the theft of bookish goods, she ripped her shirt off, having remembered she was wearing her favourite purple bra, which she hoped would pull Leo a step closer to the kind of intimacy they’d shared in Italy. “Can you help me?”

Leo’s face turned blank, his cheeks turned pale, and he took several seconds to recover himself, which was both amusing and endearing to Althea. She pressed a hip towards him, but when he secured the papers, it wasn’t with the careful, smooth, moulding movements her hands had traced over Leo’s form. He arranged the papers brusquely, quickly. He blushed, but the sweet embarrassment was gone, and his eyebrows knit tightly. The documents being thus stored, he handed over her shirt, rough and uninterested.

Horrifying, the way she felt the need to turn away to put it back on. She slipped it down over the stolen pages, then felt the press of her parka against her elbow. She pulled it over the top of everything and zipped it right up to her chin.

When she faced him again, he had gathered his bags, and his hand was on the latch. There he paused with averted eyes just long enough to say, “As friends. Us going out, I mean.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, the hot press of humiliation burning against the back of her eyes. “I know. I didn’t think it was… something else.”

He gave a nod and opened the door, keeping about five paces ahead of her all the way to the station, where they boarded the train, then stood opposite one another, saying nothing all the way back to the safe house.