20. WEN

Ten days.

Ten angeldamned days.

Since Godric disappeared. Vanished.

They feel like ten weeks. Months. Years.

When I said that to Sarah this morning, she looked pained at my distress, but at a loss at my exaggeration. I wished I could explain why it wasn’t one.

These altered states I fall into when I sleep, and increasingly when I’m awake, make me experience the passage of time differently. I now realize something like that, if on a much lesser scale, has always been triggered by danger. A moment stretched in my awareness to what felt like a minute or more, making it possible to analyze possibilities and come up with solutions in deadly situations. I probably owe my life a few times over to this ability.

But it has become an affliction with my stress over Godric so constant. It now stretches every second of his absence, intertwining with my ratcheting worry for him, giving each the impact of hours, even days.

If that’s not bad enough, it’s not the only reason for my response to his disappearance. Or why I feel I’ve known him for far, far longer than just over three months.

That’s still a good chunk of time, even when it’s not filled with the rollercoaster of life- and fate-changing events I’ve been through with him. That time alone, along with what filled it, would have probably made me feel distraught, even without the time distortion. Knowing myself, I would have still obsessed over his disappearance, and gone to any lengths to find any news of him.

But while everything we shared, my transformation at his hands, and my time-warping faculty all play major roles, it’s this connection I feel we forged that’s at the core of my condition.

At first, I used to feel it only within the Mindscape. Then it started exiting that plane. I wanted it to, so I could experience it in my fully conscious and voluntary mind. It continued to be vague, yet to me, it was undeniable. A constant current that permeates me, magnifying my emotions and perceptions. An endless rope between us that can, and did, span realms.

Now it has been—disconnected, and the loss of the other end, his end, makes me feel cut adrift. While his absence has both been an emptiness that’s hollowing me out, and a weight that’s been suffocating me harder with every distorted second of the last ten days.

And then there’s the void …

Shying away from examining that literally bottomless factor, I drag my mind back to my latest concern. That one of my two remaining methods for finding any news of Godric has vanished, too.

Lorcan, the only one now sharing my worry over him—even if on a much less bonkers level—left the Academy a couple of days ago to look for him. I haven’t heard from him since. Which means there’s nothing he can tell me. Nothing good.

Now I’m down to my last long shot.

Thatdepends on a rickety rationalization I came up with yesterday. That if the present won’t give me clues to what happened to Godric, I might find some in his past.

But I haven’t been able to find anything about him, except in the book I stole from the Metatron Library a few weeks before the Trials. The one currently in matchbox size.

At the time, I thought the Library was doing me a solid when it shrank it, allowing me to smuggle it out. Then I failed to expand it, and it has since been a useless occupant of my magic bra, next to my Angelescence bottle and demonic piss-dipped switchblade.

I’d stopped trying because there’d been no pressing need. Now my need is crushing. It’s my only source of info on the new generations of Nephilim in general, and Godric in specific. Every other resource is classified beyond my non-pay grade.

Which brings me to my current mission.

My plan is simple, in both meanings of the word. But I have nothing else.

I have to reverse engineer my heist.

Yeah. After I miraculously got away with stealing a classified tome from that sacred repository of all knowledge, I’m now returning to the scene of my crime, carrying the evidence no less.

My hope is that the Library will feel my need as it did the first time, and will guide me again to the secret alcove where I found this book. My working theory is that once I hover it back on its pedestal within that energy sphere, it would grow to its previous size. Then it would bite me again, and take the blood the magic binding it demands to open it.

Of course, the more feasible outcome is that I’d end up arrested, and thrown into the catacombs that allegedly span the width of the whole region. I hear those the Celestials discard there, never exit again. Not even to an afterlife.

“Take your meds, Space Cadet. We don’t have all day.”

I start at the snide voice, turn around to find a Second-Year nephilim sneering down at me.

Gah. I zoned out and the queue behind me had tripled.

“Your hand, cadet.”

I swing back at the bit-off words, and find the female nephilim librarian glaring down at me, brown-tinged cream wings arching above her in a sweep of disdain.

Putting my palm down on the dais before her, I plaster on what I hope is an apologetic smile.

I shouldn’t have bothered. Her scowl only deepens, and she slams the magical seal down on the back of my hand.

Daughter of a Celestial bastard and a human bitch! She almost shattered my metacarpals!

But I have no time to passive-aggressive her semi-Heavenly butt over it. The glowing countdown runes she tagged me with will expire in two hours, then I’d have to leave the Library. I don’t have a second to waste.

Holding my smarting hand to my chest, I force myself not to run from the hangar-sized vestibule. Around here, even the assholest of cadets walk in measured reverence.

This place feels like, and probably doubles, as a temple. I’ve been hearing there are a lot of Metatron worshippers. And that they’re the fanatic types. Which makes my past and current transgressions even more dangerous. I can’t afford to trip their zealot wires.

Heading to the distributing area leading to the Library’s thirteen wings, I stride as fast as I can get away with. Once the soaring gates come into view, I groan in frustration. There are hundreds around. Navigating them will take too long and?—

I almost jump out of my skin at the shocking sensation originating between my breasts.

Staggering to a halt, I stare down at the movement distorting my uniform. It looks like something is growing beneath my skin and would tear its way out, like that sci-fi horror flick.

Right now, I’d take an alien baby bursting out of my ribcage and running amok in the Academy over what’s really happening.

After weeks of being dormant, that damn tome has decided to expand!

If my terrible luck holds, it’s a matter of minutes before it rips out of my clothes. Or, since they’re pretty indestructible, it will only tent them. I doubt anyone would believe the massive book-like protrusion sticking out of my chest is a Shifting Grace manifesting in the vicinity of the incalculable amount of books around here.

Tearing my backpack off and pressing it to my front, I snap my gaze around, dreading finding everyone gaping at the squirming action beneath my clothes.

Thankfully, the few glares skewering me are disgruntled ones for blocking their way.

Striding again, I hiss under my breath, over and over, to whatever listened to me the first time. “Take me to that alcove, please, please, please!”

Suddenly, a path illuminates in my mind and I know exactly how to reach my destination.

Heart bursting with a crazy mixture of relief and anxiety, and no longer caring about maintaining library protocols, I flat out run towards the Ninth Wing.

Once I clear the gate, I hop from one walkway to another, from one escalator to the next. This place is probably endless, with the wings in different pocket dimensions, and transportation depends on these quasi-teleportation pathways. But unlike Godric’s fast-forwarding ability, I register no details while they zoom me from one location to the next.

When I finally stop, I feel like I’m dying. But I don’t care. This place guided me back to the alcove!

Staggering the remaining distance towards it, I tear down the stretchy collar of my uniform, and fish the book out.

As if hitting the air accelerated its reversion, it snaps to its full size in a blinding flash,

“Heavenly Shit!”

The shrill exclamation hits me like a grazing bullet to the head. And I speak from experience.

Lurching with fright, I freeze, the damn toddler-sized book wobbling in my white-knuckled grip.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I squeeze my eyes as a dozen fabrications zoom in my head. But I don’t see any working. I’ve been caught book-handed, and only Godric can bail me out of an offense of this magnitude. Which means, I’ll probably spend the rest of this year, or maybe my life and beyond, in some Celestial cell.

Or—I put whomever it is in a coma.

I bet in my state of agitation, I’ll see their Life Essence. The moment they approach, a good yank on it should drop them before they know what hit them.

Yeah. I like that option better.

Gritting my teeth, I turn around to face my would-be victim.