Key Trilogy (36 page)

She surrounded herself with books at work and at home. Her living space was a testament to her first and abiding love, with shelves jammed with books, tables crowded with them. She saw them not only as knowledge, entertainment, comfort, even sanity, but as a kind of artful decoration.

To the casual eye, the books that streamed and flowed over shelves in nooks, on tabletops, might look like a haphazard, even disordered, jumble. But the librarian in Dana insisted on a system.

She could, on her whim or on request, put her hand on any title in any room in the apartment.

She couldn’t live without books, without the stories, the information, the worlds that lived inside them. Even now, with the task ahead of her and the clock already ticking, she fell into the words on the pages in her hands, and into the lives, the loves, the wars, the petty grievances of the gods.

Absorbed, she jumped at the knock on her door. Blinking, she came back to reality, noted that the sun had set while she’d been visiting with Dagda, Epona, and Lug.

Book in hand, she went to answer, then lifted her eyebrows at Malory. “What’s up?”

“I thought I’d swing by and see what you were up to before I headed home. I’ve spent the day talking to some local artists and craftspeople. I think I’ve got a good start on pieces for my gallery.”

“Cool. Got any food on you? I’m starved.”

“A tin of Altoids and half a roll of Life Savers.”

“That’s not going to work,” Dana decided. “I’m going to forage. You hungry?”

“No, go ahead. Any brilliant ideas? Anything you want Zoe and me to do?” Malory asked as she followed Dana into the kitchen.

“I don’t know how brilliant. Spaghetti! Hot damn.” Dana came out of the refrigerator with a bowl of leftover pasta. “You want?”

“Nope.”

“Got some Cabernet to go with it.”

“That I’ll have. One glass.” At home in Dana’s kitchen, Malory got out wineglasses. “What’s the idea, brilliant or not?”

“Books. You know, the whole knowledge thing. And the past, present, future. If we’re talking about mine, it’s all about the books.” She dug out a fork and began to eat the pasta straight out of the bowl. “The trick is which book, or what kind of book.”

“Don’t you want to heat that up?”

“What?” Baffled, Dana looked down at the spaghetti in the bowl. “Why?”

“No reason.” Malory handed Dana a glass of wine, then took her own and wandered out to sit at the table. “A book or books makes sense, at least in part. And it gives you a path to take. But . . .”

She scanned Dana’s apartment. “What you yourself personally own would take weeks to get through. Then there’s what everyone else in the Valley owns, the library, the bookstore at the mall, and so on.”

“And the fact that even if I’m right, it doesn’t mean the key’s literally in a book. Could be figuratively. Or it could mean something in a book points the way to the key.” Dana shrugged and shoveled in more cold spaghetti. “I said it fell short of brilliant.”

“It’s a good starting point. Past, present, future.” Malory pursed her lips. “Covers a lot of ground.”

“Historical, contemporary, futuristic. And that’s just novels.”

“What if it’s more personal?” Malory leaned forward, kept her attention on Dana’s face. “It was with me. My path to the key included Flynn, my feelings for him—and
my feelings about myself, where I would end up, where I wanted to go. The experiences I had—we can’t call them dreams—were very personal.”

“And scary.” Briefly, Dana laid a hand over Malory’s. “I know. But you got through it. So will I. Maybe it is personal. A book that has some specific and personal meaning for me.”

Thoughtfully she scanned the room as she picked up her fork again. “That’s something else that covers a lot of ground.”

“I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of Jordan.”

“I don’t see how he’s in the mix. Look,” she continued even as Malory opened her mouth, “he was part of the first round, sure. The paintings by Rowena that both he and Brad bought. He came back to town with that painting because Flynn asked him to. That played into it, although his part should have ended with your quest. And his connection to Flynn, which connected him to you.”

“And you, Dana.”

She twirled her fork in the pasta, but her enthusiasm for it was waning. “Not anymore.”

Recognizing the stubborn look, Malory nodded. “Okay. How about the first book you ever read? The first that grabbed you and made you a reader.”

“I don’t think the magic key to the Box of Souls is going to be found in
Green Eggs and Ham
.” Smirking, Dana lifted her glass. “But I’ll give it a look.”

“What about your first grown-up book?”

“Obviously the steely wit and keen satire of Sam I Am escaped you.” She grinned, but drummed her fingers, thinking. “Anyway, I don’t remember a first. It was always books with me. I don’t remember not reading.”

She studied her wine a moment, then took a quick gulp. “He dumped me. I moved on.”

Back to Jordan, Malory thought and nodded. “All right.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate him with a rare and beautiful passion, but it doesn’t drive my life. I’ve only seen him a handful of times in the past seven years.” She shrugged, but it came across as a hesitant jerk. “I’ve got my life, he’s got his, and they no longer intersect. He just happens to be buds with Flynn.”

“Did you love him?”

“Yeah. Big time. Bastard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it happens.” She had to remind herself of that. It wasn’t life or death, it didn’t send her falling headlong into a vale of tears. If a heart couldn’t be broken, it wasn’t a heart to begin with.

“We were friends. When my dad married Flynn’s mom, Flynn and I hit it off. Good thing, I guess. Flynn had Jordan and Brad—they were like one body with three heads half the time. So I got them, too.”

You’ve still got them, Malory nearly said, but managed to keep silent.

“Jordan and I were friends, and we both really dug reading, so that was another click. Then we got older, and things changed. You want another hit of this?” she asked, holding up her empty glass.

“No.”

“Well, I’m having one.” Dana rose, got the bottle from the kitchen. “He went off to college. He got a partial scholarship to Penn State, and both he and his mom worked like dogs to put together the rest of the tuition and expense money. His mom, well, she was just terrific. Zoe sort of reminds me of her.”

“Really?”

“Not in the looks department, though Mrs. Hawke was really pretty, but she was taller, and willowy—made you think of a dancer.”

“She was young when she died.”

“Yeah, only in her forties.” It still brought a little pang to her heart. “It was horrible what she went through, what Jordan went through. At the end, we were all practically camped out at the hospital, and even then . . .”

She gave herself a hard shake, blew out a breath. “That’s not where I was going. I meant Zoe reminds me of how Mrs. Hawke was. It’s that good-mother vibe Zoe has. The kind of woman who knows what to do and how to do it and doesn’t whine about getting it done, and still manages to love it and the kid. She and Jordan were tight, the way Zoe and Simon are. It was just the two of them. His father wasn’t in the picture, not as far back as I can remember, anyway.”

“That must’ve been difficult for him.”

“It would’ve been, I think, if his mother hadn’t been who she was. She’d grab a bat and join in a pickup softball game as quickly as she would whip up some cookie batter. She filled the gaps.”

“You loved her too,” Malory realized.

“I did. We all did.”

Dana sat down, sipped at her second glass of wine. “So anyway, the Hawke goes off to college, gets two part-time jobs up there to help pay his expenses. We didn’t see much of him the first year. He came back for summers, worked at Tony’s Garage. He’s a pretty decent mechanic. Palled around with Flynn and Brad when he had the chance. Four years later, he’s got his degree. He did a year and a half postgrad and was already getting some short stories published. Then he came home.”

She let out a long breath. “Holy Jesus, we took one look at each other, and it was like bombs exploding. I thought, What the hell is this? This is my buddy Jordan. I’m not supposed to want to sink my teeth into my good buddy Jordan.”

She laughed, drank. “Later on, he told me he’d had the same sort of reaction. Whoa, hold on, this is Flynn’s little
sister. Hands off. So we danced around those bombs and each other for a couple of months. We were either bitchy with each other or very, very polite.”

“And then?” Malory prompted when Dana fell silent.

“Then one night he dropped by to see Flynn, but Flynn was out on a date. And my parents weren’t home. I picked a fight with him. I had to do
something
with all that heat. The next thing you know the two of us are rolling around on the living room rug. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I’ve never had that before or since, that . . . desperation. It was incredible.

“Imagine our chagrin when the smoke cleared and the two of us were naked on Liz and Joe’s pretty Oriental carpet.”

“How did you handle it?”

“Well, as I recall we lay there like the dead for a minute, then just stared at each other. A couple of survivors of a very intense war. Then we laughed our butts off and went at each other again.”

She lifted her glass in a mock toast. “So. We started dating, belatedly. Jordan and Dana, Dana and Jordan. It got to be like one word, whichever way you said it.”

Oh, God, she missed that, she realized. Missed that very intimate link. “Nobody ever made me laugh the way he could make me laugh. And he’s the only man in my life who’s ever made me cry. So, yeah, Christ, yes, I loved that son of a bitch.”

“What happened?”

“Little things, huge things. His mother died. God, nothing’s ever been as, well, monstrous as that. Even when my dad got sick, it wasn’t as bad. Ovarian cancer, and they found it too late. The operations, the treatments, the prayers, nothing worked. She just kept slipping away. Having someone die is hard,” she said softly. “Watching them die by inches is impossible.”

“I can’t imagine it.” Malory’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never lost anyone.”

“I don’t remember losing my mother; I was too young. But I remember every day of losing Mrs. Hawke. Maybe it broke something in Jordan. I don’t know—he wouldn’t let me know. After she died, he sold their little house, all the furniture, just about every damn thing. And he cut me loose and moved to New York to get rich and famous.”

“It wasn’t as cut and dried as that,” Malory commented.

“Maybe not. But it felt like it. He said he had to go. That he needed something, and it wasn’t here. If he was going to write—and he had to write—he had to do it his way. He had to get out of the Valley. So that’s what he did, like the two years we were together was just a little interlude in his life.”

She downed the rest of the wine in her glass. “So fuck him, and the bestsellers he rode in on.”

“You may not want to hear this, at least not now. But part of the solution might be to resolve this with him.”

“Resolve what?”

“Dana.” Malory laid both of her hands on Dana’s. “You’re still in love with him.”

Her hands jerked. “I am not. I made a life for myself. I’ve had lovers. I have a career—which, okay, is in the toilet right now, but I’ve got a phoenix about to rise from the ashes in the bookstore.”

She stopped, hearing the way her words tumbled out. “No more wine for me if I mix metaphors that pitifully. Jordan Hawke’s old news,” she said more calmly. “Just because he was the first man I loved doesn’t mean he has to be the last. I’d rather poke my eye with a burning stick than give him the satisfaction.”

“I know.” Malory laughed a little, gave Dana’s hands a squeeze before she released them. “That’s how I know you’re still in love with him. That, and what I just saw on your face, heard in your voice when you took me through what you had together.”

It was appalling. How had she looked? How had she
sounded? “So the wine made me sentimental. It doesn’t mean—”

“It means whatever it means,” Malory said briskly. “It’s something you’re going to have to think about, Dana, something you’re going to have to weigh carefully if you really mean to do this thing. Because one way or the other, he’s part of your life, and he’s part of this.”

“I don’t want him to be,” Dana managed. “But if he is, I’ll deal with it. There’s too much at stake for me to wimp out before I even get started.”

“That’s the spirit. I’ve got to get home.”

She rose, then ran a comforting hand over Dana’s hair. “Whatever you’re feeling or thinking, you can tell me. And Zoe. And if there’s something you need to say, if you just need someone to be here when you have nothing to say, all you have to do is call.”

Dana nodded, waited until Malory was at the door. “Mal? It was like having a hole punched in my heart when he left. One hole ought to be enough for anybody’s lifetime.”

“You’d think. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

T
HE
odds of finding a magic key tucked in one of the thousands of books at the Pleasant Valley Library were long and daunting. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look.

In any case, she liked being in the stacks, surrounded by books. She could, if she let her mind open to it, hear the words murmuring from them. All those voices from people who lived in worlds both fantastic and ordinary. She could, simply by slipping a book off the shelf, slide right into one of those worlds and become anyone who lived inside it.

Magic keys and soul-sucking sorcerers, Dana thought. Incredible as they might be, they paled for her against the power of words on a page.

But she wasn’t here to play, she reminded herself as she began dutifully tidying the stacks while keeping an eye on the resource desk a few feet away. This was an experiment. Maybe she would put her fingers on a book and
feel
something—a tingle, a hint of heat.

Who knew?

But she worked her way through the mythology stacks without experiencing any tingles.

Undaunted, she wandered to the section of books on ancient civilizations. The past, she told herself. The Daughters of Glass had sprung from the ancients. Well, who hadn’t?

She worked diligently for a time, reordering books that had been misplaced. She knew better, really she did, than to actually open the volume on ancient Britain, but it was suddenly in her hand, and there was this section on stone circles that swept her onto windy moors at moonrise.

Druids and chanting, balefires and the hum that was the breath of gods.

“Oh, gee, Dana. I didn’t know you were off today.”

With her teeth going to auto-grind, Dana shifted her gaze from the book in her hand to Sandi’s overly cheerful face. “I’m not off. I’m working the stacks.”

“Really?” The big blue eyes widened. Long golden lashes fluttered. “It looked like you were reading. I thought maybe you were on your own time, doing more research. You’ve been doing a lot of research lately, haven’t you? Finally starting on your doctorate?”

With a bad-tempered little shove, Dana put the book back in place. Wouldn’t it be fun? she thought, to get the big silver scissors out of the drawer in her desk and whack off that detestable bouncing ponytail?

She’d just bet that would wipe that bright, toothy grin off Sandi’s face.

“You got the promotion, the pay raise, so what’s your problem, Sandi?”

“Problem? I don’t have a problem. We all know the policy about reading on the clock. So I’m sure it just
looked
like you were reading instead of manning the desk.”

“The desk is covered.” And when enough was enough, Dana thought, you finished it. “You spend a lot of your
time worrying about what I’m doing, slinking around in the stacks behind me, eavesdropping when I’m speaking with a patron.”

Sandi’s perky smile turned into a perky sneer. “I certainly do not eavesdrop.”

“Bullshit,” Dana said in a quiet, pleasant tone that had Sandi’s dollbaby eyes going bright with shock. “You’ve been stepping on my heels for weeks. You got the promotion, I got the cut. But you’re not my supervisor, you’re not my boss. So you can kiss my ass.”

Though it wasn’t quite as rewarding as hacking off the ponytail might have been, it felt fabulous to just walk away, leaving Sandi sputtering.

She settled back at the desk and assisted two patrons with such good cheer and good fellowship that both left beaming. When she answered the phone, she all but sang out, “Pleasant Valley Library. Reference Desk. May I help you? Hey, Mr. Foy. You’re up, huh. Ah, uh-huh. Good one.” She chuckled as she scribbled down today’s trivia question. “It’ll take me a minute. I’ll call you back.”

She danced off to find the right book, flipped through it briefly in the stacks, then carried it back to the desk to make the return call.

“Got it.” She trailed down the page with her finger. “The Arctic tern migrates the farthest annually. Up to twenty thousand miles—wow—between the Arctic and Antarctic. Makes you wonder what’s in its birdy brain, doesn’t it?”

She shifted the phone as she caught sight of Sandi marching, like a damn drum majorette, toward the desk. “Nope, sorry, Mr. Foy, no complete set of American Tourister luggage for you today. The Arctic tern nips out the long-tailed jaeger by a couple thousand miles annually. Better luck next time. Talk to you tomorrow.”

She hung up, folded her hands, then lifted her eyebrows at Sandi. “Something I can do for you?”

“Joan wants to see you upstairs.” Thrusting her chin
in the air, Sandi looked down her tiny, perfect nose. “Immediately.”

“Sure.” Dana tucked her hair behind her ear as she studied Sandi. “I bet you only had one friend in elementary school, and she was just as obnoxious as you are.” She slid off the stool.

Speaking of elementary school, Dana thought as she crossed the main floor, started up the stairs to administration, she herself felt as if she’d just gotten hauled into the principal’s office. A lowering sensation for a grown woman. And one, she decided, she was sick of experiencing.

Outside Joan’s door, Dana took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. She might feel like a guilty six-year-old, but she wasn’t going to look like one.

She knocked, briskly, then opened the door without waiting for a response. “You wanted to see me?”

At her desk, Joan leaned back. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into in a no-nonsense bun that, oddly enough, flattered her.

She wore a dark vest over a white blouse that was primly buttoned to her throat. The material hung flat, with barely a ripple to indicate there were breasts beneath it.

Rimless half-glasses dangled from a gold chain around her neck. Dana knew her shoes would be low-heeled and sturdy and as no-nonsense as the hairstyle.

She looked, Dana decided, scrawny and dull—and the very image of the cliché that kept children out of libraries in droves.

Since Joan’s mouth was already set in disapproval, Dana didn’t expect the meeting to be a cheerful one.

“Shut the door, please. It appears, Dana, that you continue to have difficulty adjusting to the new policies and protocol I’ve implemented here.”

“So, Sandi raced right up to tattle that I was actually reading a book. Of all the horrors to commit in a public library.”

“Your combative attitude is only one of the problems we have to deal with.”

“I’m not going to stand here and defend myself for skimming a couple pages of a book while I was working in the stacks. Part of my function is to be informed about books, not just to point the patrons toward an area and wish them Godspeed. I do my job, Joan, and my evaluations from the previous director were never less than exemplary.”

“I’m not the previous director.”

“Damn straight. Less than six weeks after you took over, you cut my, and two other long-term employees’, hours and paychecks nearly in half. And your niece gets a promotion and a raise.”

“I was hired to pull this institution out of financial decline, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not required to explain my administrative decisions to you.”

“No, you don’t have to. I get it. You don’t like me, I don’t like you. But I don’t have to like everyone I work with or for. I can still do my job.”

“It’s your job to follow the rules.” Joan flipped open a file. “Not to make and receive personal phone calls. Not to use library equipment for personal business. Not to spend twenty minutes gossiping with a patron while your duties are neglected.”

“Hold it.” Baffled rage spewed into her throat like a geyser. “Just hold it one minute. What’s she doing, making daily reports on me?”

Joan flipped the file shut. “You think too much of yourself.”

“Oh, I see. Not just on me. She’s your personal mole, burrowing around the place digging up infractions.”

Oh, yes, Dana thought, when enough was enough you definitely finished it. “Maybe the budget here has had its ups and downs, but this was always a friendly place, familial. Now it’s just a drag run by the gestapo commandant and her personal weasel. So I’ll do us both a favor. I quit.
I’ve got a week’s sick leave and a week’s vacation coming. We’ll just consider that my two weeks’ notice.”

“Very well. You can have your resignation on my desk by the end of your shift.”

“Screw that. This is my resignation.” She took a deep breath. “I’m smarter than you are, and I’m younger, stronger, and better-looking. The regular patrons know and like me—most of them don’t know you, and the ones who’ve gotten to know you don’t like you. Those are some of the reasons you’ve been on my ass since you took over. I’m out of here, Joan, but I’m walking out of my own accord. I lay odds that you’ll be on your way out before much longer, too—only you’ll be booted out by the board.”

“If you expect any sort of reference or referral—”

Dana stopped at the door. “Joan, Joan, do you want to end our relationship with me telling you what you can do with your reference?”

Her anger carried her straight down to the employee lounge, where she gathered her jacket and a handful of personal belongings. She didn’t stop to speak to any of her coworkers. If she didn’t get out, and get out fast, she feared she would either burst into hysterical sobs or punch her fist through the wall.

Either option would give Joan too much power.

So she walked out without a backward glance. And kept walking. She refused to let herself think that this was the last time she would make this trip from work to home. It wasn’t the end of her life; it was just a corner turned.

When she felt the angry tears stinging her eyes, she dug out her sunglasses. She wasn’t about to humiliate herself by crying on the damn sidewalk.

But her breath was hitching by the time she reached her apartment door. She fumbled out her keys, stumbled inside, then simply sank down on the floor.

“Oh, God, oh, God, what have I done?”

She’d cut her ties. She had no job. And it would be
weeks before she could reasonably open the bookstore. And why did she think she could run a bookstore? Knowing and loving books didn’t make her a merchant. She’d never worked in retail in her life, and suddenly she was going to run a retail business?

She’d thought she was prepared for the step. Now, faced with stark reality, Dana realized she wasn’t even close to prepared.

Panicked, she leaped up, all but fell onto the phone. “Zoe? Zoe . . . I just—I’ve got to . . . Christ. Can you meet me at the place, the house?”

“Okay. Dana, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

“I just—I quit my job. I think I’m having an anxiety attack. I need . . . Can you get the keys? Can you get Malory and meet me there?”

“All right, honey. Take a deep breath. Come on, suck one in. Breathe easy. That’s it. Twenty minutes. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. Okay, thanks. Zoe—”

“You just keep breathing. Want me to swing by and get you?”

“No.” She rubbed the temper tears away. “No, I’ll meet you.”

“Twenty minutes,” Zoe repeated and rang off.

SHE was calmer, at least on the surface, when she pulled into the double drive in front of the pretty frame house she’d bought with her friends. In a matter of weeks, they’d be signing papers at settlement. Then they would begin, well, whatever it was that they were going to begin.

It was Zoe and Malory who had the big ideas as far as ambience, color schemes, paints, and posies. They’d already had their heads together over paint chips for the color of the porch, the entrance hall. And she knew Zoe
had been scouring flea markets and yard sales for the trash that she miraculously turned into treasure.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have ideas herself. She did.

She could envision in general how her section of the main floor would look when it had been transformed into a little bookstore/café. Comfortable and cozy. Maybe some good sink-into-me chairs, a few tables.

But she couldn’t see the details. What should the chairs look like? What kind of tables should she use?

And there were dozens of other things she hadn’t considered when she’d jumped into that dream of having her own bookstore. Just as, she was forced to admit, there were things she hadn’t considered when she’d, basically, told Joan to stuff it.

Impulse, pride, and temper, she thought with a sigh. A dangerous combination. Now she was going to have to live with the results of surrendering to it.

She stepped out of the car. Her stomach was still jumpy, so she rubbed a hand over it as she studied the house.

It was a good place. It was important to remember that. She’d liked it the minute she’d stepped inside the door with Zoe. Even the downright terrifying experience they’d had inside it—courtesy of their nemesis, Kane—barely a week before, when Malory had found her key, didn’t spoil the
feel
of the place.

She’d never owned a house, or any other property. She should concentrate on the very adult sensation of owning a third of an actual building, and the land it stood on. She wasn’t afraid of the responsibility—it was good to know that. She wasn’t afraid of work, mental or physical.

But she was, she realized, very afraid of failing.

She walked to the porch, sat on the step, and indulged in a good wallow.