Page 55

He looked down at his book. “Reading.”

“No.”

His hand stilled on the page.

“You always put yourself between me and the door,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“Why?”

There was a long pause, and the lamp ticked as its metal warmed. “Habit,” he said.

“From what?”

“Being near doors.”

If Kit had said that it would have been a dodge hidden with a joke but Linden said it like a complete answer and I knew from everything I’d seen of him so far that I wouldn’t get anymore out of him. I let it go for now, because I didn’t really have another option unless I wanted to push one of the few people I counted on in this place past where he was comfortable.

The ivy near one of the high windows had grown down the stone in a long dark rope. I didn’t remember it being anywhere near that long when we’d started. A single tendril curved toward Linden’s shoulder, leaves gone glossy in the lamplight. In the open book by his elbow, a pressed fern somebody had left behind as a marker was green near the stem and brown at the tips. It looked as if life had come partway back up into it and then thought better of the effort halfway through.

I looked at the fern, then at the ivy, then at Linden.

No.

Too many questions were rolling around in my mind already, I wouldn’t add to the chaos right now, so I shoved all my observations away.

The lamp started to burn low as time ticked by, so we gathered the stack of books to reshelve them. I reached for the bottom book, and my hand closed around a cover with no title on it at all. The hand-bound one.

Linden’s hand came over mine fast, in a reflex quicker than thought. For one second his fingers covered mine on the book, warm and startlingly alive for someone who held himself so still the rest of the time. His face had gone pale under the low lamp, and it was not anger. Nor was he afraid of me. He may have been afraid for me though, and that made me nervous.

“That one’s mine,” he said as his hand stayed over mine for one heartbeat longer than the words needed before he took it back. The contact didn’t prickle like Kit’s fire or spark like Cormac’s glove had. It grounded.

That was the only word I had for it, and it wasn’t a good one, but it was true. My breath, which I hadn’t noticed going shallow, came easier. He took the book and held it flat against his side, protecting without wanting to appear as though he was.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mine.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I have.”

The answer was quiet and final but not cruel, and that was the part that undid me. He’d given me more in two hours than most people in this whole stone place had given me in weeks, and the book was the line, and he was allowed a boundary. I could respect that, I might hate it because it made me curious, but I could respect it.

“Okay,” I said.

The surprise showed on his face, which did something to me I did not have the time or the room for. I stood and tucked my notebook under my arm and pretended that the warmth still living in my hand was left over from the lamp and not from his touch.

“I have some more studying to do,” he said as he sat down in his usual chair. Linden opened the hand-bound book. The wrong shelf-mark on its spine caught the light, the same letters and numbers I’d copied into the front of my notebook without understanding them. They were his family marks, maybe, or something older than any family.

The ivy leaf nearest him moved, though no wind touched it, and I went very still. Then Linden looked up, and the leaf was only a leaf, and I was only a girl with too many secrets inventing patterns in the dark because patterns were less frightening than chance.

“Good night, Billie,” he said.

I nodded in return. It was the first time he had ever said my name, and I wasn’t proud of the secret smile that tugged at my lips once I’d turned away from him.

SEVENTEEN