The Librarian: A Remnants of Magic Novel (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 2)

by Casey White

  Contents

  Title Page

  More from Casey White

  Copyright

  Dedication

  - Chapter One -

  - Chapter Two -

  - Chapter Three -

  - Chapter Four -

  - Chapter Five -

  - Chapter Six -

  - Chapter Seven -

  - Chapter Eight -

  - Chapter Nine -

  - Chapter Ten -

  - Chapter Eleven -

  - Chapter Twelve -

  - Chapter Thirteen -

  - Chapter Fourteen -

  - Chapter Fifteen -

  - Chapter Sixteen -

  - Chapter Seventeen -

  - Chapter Eighteen -

  - Chapter Nineteen -

  - Chapter Twenty -

  - Chapter Twenty-One -

  - Chapter Twenty-Two -

  - Chapter Twenty- Three -

  - Chapter Twenty-Four -

  - Chapter Twenty-Five -

  - Chapter Twenty-Six -

  - Chapter Twenty-Seven -

  - Chapter Twenty-Eight -

  - Chapter Twenty-Nine -

  - Chapter Thirty -

  - Chapter Thirty-One -

  - Chapter Thirty-Two -

  - Chapter Thirty-Three -

  - Chapter Thirty-Four -

  - Chapter Thirty-Five -

  - Chapter Thirty-Six -

  - Chapter Thirty-Seven -

  - Chapter Thirty-Eight -

  - Chapter Thirty-Nine -

  - Chapter Forty -

  - Chapter Forty-One - To Read More

  Acknowledgements More from Casey White

  Bonus - The Wastes of Keldora (Prologue)

  Chapter One

  THE Librarian

  - A Remnants of Magic Novel -

  Casey White

  More from Casey White

  ——————————

  Independent Series

  ————————

  The Flameweaver

  Saga

  Chosen

  Charred

  Nightsworn

  Ascendant

  Halfway to Home

  Unknown Horizons

  Richard “Quickdraw”

  McCallister

  A Eulogy

  Shorts

  Black Skies

  Worlds that Never Were

  Deposition of the Departed

  The Aedanverse

  ————————

  Remnants of

  Magic

  Silvertongue

  Wanderer

  Legion

  The Librarian of

  Alexandria

  The Library

  The Librarian

  Spark of

  Divinity

  Survival’s Edge

  Fortune’s Fool

  Terra Rising

  This is a work of fiction, and the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Likewise, certain characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Librarian (Book Two of The Librarian of Alexandria)

  Copyright © 2020-2021 Casey White

  All rights reserved.

  One door closes, another opens.

  May the memes rest in peace.

  - Chapter One -

  The soft padding of footsteps drifted through the hallways.

  A figure slipped through the packed-in shelves, sucking in his gut where the books had been stacked a little too enthusiastically. The mess of soft leather and parchment ate up the noise of his passing, until the whole Library seemed swallowed in a pensive, breathless silence.

  Owl smiled, letting his hand linger on a pile of texts. No glove, this time. It was only his hand, and besides. Sometimes, you just needed to feel things for yourself.

  “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” he said. His mask-hidden eyes swept across the racks as he pushed down another, even narrower hallway. Something caught at his jacket, and he stumbled. “J-Just, maybe...maybe you could give me somewhere to walk?”

  The Library around him tittered, like birds singing in a place where he knew damn well there were none. Owl sighed, rolling his eyes, but couldn’t keep himself from smiling. There was no mistaking it—Alexandria was in good spirits.

  His hand drifted to rest against the sling over his shoulder, testing the weight on the strap. He had a few more books to distribute, but...not that many. Not many at all.

  Back after the dreamer had wreaked havoc on the Library, it’d seemed like he’d never be free of this. The work. However much he knew that he’d fix her eventually, it had been hard to see the end when every morning brought with it book after book after book. He’d found tables stacked high in every study, carts waiting around every corner. Hell, she’d taken to blocking the doorway of his room with tomes. Briefly. They’d had words about that one.

  It was hard to say where things had shifted. He’d spent so long buried under the heaps of work that it’d become something close to normal. Somewhere along the line, his chores had started to lighten again. They must’ve.

  Because now, strolling through Alexandria’s interior, she seemed almost whole again.

  Almost. He turned the corner, and froze at the sight of the blurry room beyond. “More?” he said with a sigh, drooping. “I’d...I’d kind of been hoping that maybe-”

  A candle flared from the end of a bookshelf, gently illuminating the mound of books below. Owl smiled tightly. “Yeah. I get it. Not just yet, then?”

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed off the door frame and started walking toward the shelves. This was his fault. It was the mix of his inattention and that bitch’s games that’d led to him being distracted enough for a dreamer to lose their grip. If he’d only been watching, then Alexandria wouldn’t have gotten torn apart in the ensuing maelstrom.

  But he hadn’t been, and she was, and now, mending her hurts was the least he could do. Putting a smile back onto his face, Owl unslung the bag of books from around his frame and got started.

  * * * * *

  “There,” Owl groaned, slumping against the shelf. “That’s the last of them. Anything else, Alex?” He waited, his fingers curled around the wood, but she didn’t deign to reply.

  Fine. He was used to that. Starting to grin, Owl turned away and trudged toward the doorway—a doorway that’d changed at some point in his chores, transforming from a winding hallway mostly-obscured by texts into a grand archway. He froze, eyeing the familiar sight.

  “Am I...Are you telling me to go back?” Owl said, letting his gaze flick sideways to the books before returning it to the entry. There was no mistaking it. That was the gate to Alexandria’s central hallway, the artery that’d take him straight back to her heart. “You don’t have any more chores you need from me?”

  He’d been Librarian for a long time. Centuries, if you counted the twisting, irregular chronology of the Library. And over those centuries he’d learned how to read Alex. In the end, everything was her decision, mind. He was just a passenger in the ship that she steered.

  But he could usually figure out when she was starting to nose them into port—and when he gazed down the hall, noting dim-burning braziers and a dark, hazy world beyond the skylights, he could guess what was coming. His smile went crooked. Just a little while ago, he’d been so eager to leave. Now…Now, it almost felt like he’d be abandoning her. “If y
ou want to send me back, I’m not saying no. I just...I’m here. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

  Silence.

  Owl made a face, crossing his arms. “You’ve been spitting me out pretty fast. I’m not that tired, yet. Maybe I could hang around, fix up a few more-”

  A gust of wind billowed through the hall. Owl jumped. The room behind him went dark—and he didn’t have to turn to know that the candles would all be cold and smoking.

  Message received.

  “Okay,” he said instead, lifting his arms into a shrug. “It’s up to you. Thanks, Alex.” He reached out, rapping his knuckles against the stone-lined walls.

  His feet knew the way, no matter how deep into Alexandria he’d wandered. He let them steer, operating on automatic as his thoughts churned. He...couldn’t quite deny the emotion that had ignited in his gut at the sight of the mostly-out lights. Disappointment. You have no reason to be disappointed, his internal thoughts hissed. You get to go outside. If Alex is going to let you leave early, take it and run with it.

  Fair enough. He’d certainly enjoy being out in the sunlight again, especially with summer starting to wind toward fall. Soon enough, going outside would be...unpleasant. He should enjoy it while he could.

  But he hadn’t seen Leon this trip.

  His lips pressed together, tightening into a thin line that matched the furrows in his brow. It wasn’t just this trip, either. Leon’s visits had been conspicuously absent for visit after visit, straight back to when he’d allowed Alexandria to be damaged so grievously.

  “It’s just the repairs,” he whispered, shoving his hands into his pockets. “The Library is closed. It’s not letting anyone in, Leon or not. That’s all.”

  Only, the Library had been closed before when Leon arrived. Alexandria hadn’t seemed to care. So…

  Owl made an irritated noise, hurrying through the final doors into the sitting room and reaching for the latch to his quarters. It was just a temporary thing. That was all. Before long, everything would be back to normal, and everyone would come back.

  They would.

  A sigh slipped between his lips, though, as he kicked the door shut and started to unbutton his jacket.

  * * * * *

  “You okay, there?”

  Daniel flinched, jolting back to awareness. “U-Uh.”

  Lucas leered back at him, just a few seats away at the bar. “You falling asleep, man?”

  When he started laughing, bringing their other friends in on it, Daniel chuckled along with them. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just- Tired. I’m just tired.”

  “I guess,” Nate drawled, from Lucas’s far side. “Didn’t figure you’d be the one to miss all the action, though. Gotta step your game up.”

  Again, Daniel laughed with them—but quieter, now. Across the bar, he watched as his friends turned back to each other, satisfied in their efforts to pull him out of his shell. And, they weren’t wrong. On any of the other nights they’d been out, he’d have been the one trying to bring women back to their table, or sidling over to join a man at the counter.

  Tonight, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Daniel shook his head again, drumming his heels against the ground and trying to force himself back awake. Plastering a smile onto his face, he leaned in, rejoining the conversation.

  That worked. For a while. He was able to slip by without drawing even more notice to himself, filling the role of nodding, smiling friend at the edge of the group.

  The longer he went, though, the more it itched at him. They’d been his friends for...well, for a long time. A good, happy couple of years, at this stage. But something in him had changed over the last few months, like a switch had been flipped. He was here, but mostly because they’d blown up his phone pestering him. It’d been easier to go along with them than explain why he wasn’t interested.

  So here he was. He laughed, and nodded, and offered polite responses if anyone directed a question his way. But it wasn’t real. It was a pleasant mask he wore while he wheedled a bit of amusement out of them.

  It really wasn’t any different from how the guild had treated him. He wasn’t that different.

  The moment the thought crossed his mind, it drove home, slicing through the thin veneer of his good mood like a knife. It wasn’t true, he told himself. He was here for fun. For them. He didn’t have ulterior motives.

  But he did, didn’t he?

  “Dan?”

  Daniel blinked. He was on his feet, he realized, one hand clutching the edge of the bar. Nate and Lucas were both looking up at him, confusion plain on their faces. Lucas leaned a little closer, his lips pursed. “You good? Something wrong?”

  “No,” Daniel said, drawing in a deep breath. “No, no. Sorry. I just...I haven’t been sleeping great.” He fixed a sheepish smile on his face. “Had some late nights for, um. Work.”

  “Man, whoever’s footing the bill this time has you running yourself ragged,” Nate said, dropping his elbows to the bar. “Hopefully you’re at least making bank?”

  “Y-Yeah,” Daniel said. “Definitely.” He was making bank. He was making very, very good money from the investments he’d squirreled away, in fact. Not that either of them needed those details. “But...sorry. I think I gotta bail.”

  “What?” Lucas said. “But, we drove. Are you-”

  “I’ll walk back,” Daniels said, waving one hand at them furiously while using the other to mask a pointed yawn. “I’m...I’m good. Just tired. It’s not that far.”

  “It’s going to be like an hour long walk,” Nate said, his eyes narrowing further.

  “I’ll call an Uber if I get tired,” Daniel said. He glanced toward the bartender, but she was completely occupied with another customer. “Uh...tell her to put it on my-”

  “We’ll handle it,” Lucas said. “Don’t get run over, okay?”

  “Won’t,” Daniel said. He was stumbling backwards by then, letting his hand fall into a tiny wave. “Later, guys. Maybe- Maybe tomorrow?”

  His friends nodded, calling their reassurances, but he hardly heard. The door pushed open at a touch. With a final, cool wash of evening air into the warmth of the bar, he was gone.

  The laughter from within died as the door swung shut behind him. Daniel trudged out into the dark, his ears still ringing with their voices. He shouldn’t be running, he knew. He shouldn’t be acting so weird. Why not enjoy himself? He worked harder than any of them knew. So why not have a bit of fun?

  Only, he wasn’t having fun at all. He wished he was, but...he wasn’t. So here he was.

  A car blasted past him, the headlights tearing a hole through the growing night ahead. Daniel drew back, wincing. There was a sidewalk, at least, which he could follow for most of the way back. It’d be a bit of a walk, but he could use some time apart. Besides. He smiled, letting his head fall back until only the first glimmers of stars shone in his eyes. It was halfway nice that evening. If it kept looking like this, then he might just find himself getting attached to the outside-dwellers’ sky.

  Even as his heart settled, though, his thoughts kept racing as steadily as ever. With the only sounds around him drifting from the ever-dwindling city, there was little to stand in the way of his deeper worries.

  And he had plenty of those.

  Another sigh slipped from his throat. With every step he took, his eyes drooped lower. “Would you give me a break for, like, a single night?” he whispered, knowing Alexandria would never hear. Out here, there was simply too much of a distance between them—but he knew, knew that this was her doing. At least in part. She was weak, and tired, and suddenly he was weak and tired. He didn’t have to be a genius to piece it together.

  “...Fine,” he whispered, a crooked smile curling at his lips. “You can leech off me for a little while longer. But you’re going to have to let up sooner or later.”

  Sooner or later. His mood darkened again, flopping with terrifying ease. Sooner or later, Alex would stop draining him for energy—because sooner or
later, she’d be whole again. She wouldn’t need to be nursed along, isolated and coddled back to health. She’d be back to normal.

  And she’d want to have visitors again.

  Daniel tucked his chin lower to his chest, his expression darkening. There it was—the problem that’d haunted his mind ever since he started mending Alexandria. She was what she was—a magical accumulation of knowledge. A being like her wouldn’t be satisfied simply existing, apart from the rest of humanity.

  She’d want to be read. And if she wanted to be read, it was his job to find people to read her.

  “What do you think, Alex?” he murmured. Away from the lights of the downtown area, he was by himself here. Even if anyone heard him, they’d just think he was a crazy person talking to himself. And, well, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. He chuckled. “Was I...Was I too harsh on them? Olivia and Will?”

  He could still remember the look on her face as he’d spit words at her. The shock. The fear. But through that entire moment, the mask she wore hadn’t slipped. Not even once. Forgiving them would be the easiest route to mending bridges. Also a stupid route, but easiest.

  Sucking down a quick breath of air, Daniel shook his head once. Sharply. No, no. He wouldn’t be caving and letting them run back to Alexandria’s skirts so easily. Not after they’d tried to...not after what they’d done. His cheeks burned, flushing to red. It was the cold, he told himself. Just the chill in the air.

  Nothing to do with the way Olivia had crawled on top of him, all but sticking her hands down his pants. It had nothing to do with what he’d been ready to do with her.

  And she’d been lying to him the whole time. Playing him. Keeping Will safely back in the study, away from her. I thought you’d enjoy the privacy, she’d said. Daniel snorted, his throat tightening.