The Lost Books by Sarah Prineas

Author:Sarah Prineas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

15

It had been a near escape. Another minute, and the queen would have kicked him out of the palace there and then. Fortunately Charleren had been a good sport about their fight. Alex would have tried to make the prince look better, to draw it out a bit more, but he didn’t have time. Two days, and that was it. Really only a day and a half, now, to deal with something that was a much bigger problem than anyone else realized.

And when he got back to the library, he found that his pages had delivered a letter.

It was from one of the assistants to the librarian in Far Wrothing—the librarian who had written asking about the marked book she’d found.

To the Royal Librarian,

I regret to inform you . . .

Oh, no. Alex fell into the nearest chair. Had his warning gotten there too late? With his elbows on the reading table and his hands gripping his hair, he read the rest of the letter.

I regret to inform you that Librarian Hockett has most unexpectedly died. There was nothing suspicious about her death; she simply fell asleep at her desk while reading.

“Gah! You idiot,” Alex mumbled. She hadn’t fallen asleep, he felt sure of it. She’d been reading, yes, but the marked book had been set in her library like a trap.

He’d never met Librarian Hockett, but her death hit him hard. He’d tried to warn her. Maybe his letter had arrived too late. Frowning, he read on.

In your most alarming letter you asked about L.B.

Surely, Royal Librarian, you know more than any of us about the L.B.s, and you know exactly what happened sixty years ago.

Alex gritted his teeth. “If I knew,” he growled at the letter, “would I be asking?”

At any rate, the less said about these things, the better.

I will be assuming Librarian Hockett’s duties here.

Sincerely,

Maren Rumsey

And she hadn’t sent the marked book as he had asked. The book that had, he felt absolutely certain, killed Hockett. How many more would die if he didn’t stop this?

Idiot. He crumpled up the letter and hurled it across the room. One of his pages swooped down, picked it up, and dropped it in a garbage can.

He remembered what Librarian Hockett had written in her letter to him.

I rather fear that the presence of this marked book means that one of the L.B.s is hidden here in my library, though I have not yet been able to find it.

Blast it. Another librarian secret that he might never figure out.

One thing he felt certain of—there was an L.B. in the royal library. It was marking books with its symbol, setting those books like traps for anyone who read them.

Wait. She had said it was hidden. Lord Patch had pretty much admitted that he was searching for something hidden in the royal library. Was it one of the L.B.s? And if it was, what did he want with it, especially if it was as dangerous as Alex suspected?

Well, Lord Patch wasn’t going to tell him what he was up to.

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