Archive of Our Own

Cassandra was so glad she’d moved to Portland.

As the crow flew, her new apartment was situated about halfway between the bridge — where the Annex was — and the local harbor. The two were pretty close to each other, so Cassandra often walked to work: it worked for her, because she couldn’t drive and because, well, it was always a good idea to get her blood pumping before she almost got killed by any of the things they dealt with as Librarians.

(She was still picking bits of Exploding Troll out of her hair from last week. Learning to run quicker was one of her… more recent goals.)

If she didn’t have a morning walk, Cassandra thought, she’d miss out on it — even after living in Portland for six months, she was still finding new things out about the city. Small businesses popped up left and right and disappeared just as quickly. She’d gotten on speaking terms with a couple of the fishermen, and though their sea stink made her taste invisible salt and see a deep, sludge brown whenever she walked past, they were… nice. Weird, because Portland was weird, but nice people.

There wasn’t a familiarity, an attachment — she was free to make friends how she pleased, and if those new friends gave her a discount at the market, well, Cassandra was eating well that night, that was all. She kept on meaning to invite her two fellow LITs over, share what she had, but… it was hers. She’d never had anything that was just hers that wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

Plus, she wasn’t sure where Stone lived in Portland — he could live on the other side of the city, realistically — and Ezekiel, the last she’d heard, still had his apartment in Paris that he got to through the Back Door of the Annex at the end of the day.

…Cassandra didn’t want to inconvenience them, really. Stone didn’t trust her and she couldn’t blame him; Ezekiel and she had nothing in common apart from the things that made them good candidates for Librarianship anyway. It was just the way things were.

She exited the market with her food for the week, meaning to go back to her place to put it away. Before she could, though, someone collided with her — a flip of long blonde hair, not really smelling of peppermint but bringing the feeling of it to Cassandra — and sent her spiraling to the ground.

Ouch . Cassandra had been working with Eve to improve her reflexes but she still — obviously — needed work. She rubbed the arm she’d fallen on — it and the fruit she’d just bought were definitely going to bruise. (The Library provided a lot of things, including money, but it didn’t stop the wince that wasn’t connected to the injury.) It was a woman she’d walked into — one with a better reaction to being bumped into than her, judging by the way she was still standing.

The woman stared at her for a long moment.

Then her face morphed into a concerned one that didn’t… well, it didn’t match what Cassandra thought she’d have looked like, concerned. She’d just met the woman, but Cassandra did have a working bullshit meter — she’d dealt with a lot of doctors who’d deferred to her parents over the years.

“Oh my gosh,” the woman said, horrified expression still glued on her face. She stuck out a hand, a practiced laugh caught in her breath. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see you there!”

“Me neither,” Cassandra said, noting a barely-hidden ripple of pleasure over her face. “Are you alright?”

The woman’s lips thinned, as if Cassandra had beaten her to the punch — as if she was supposed to ask Cassandra if she was alright first and Cassandra had won whatever game it was they were playing.

“Oh, I’m just fine,” she chirped, reaching to help her pick up her things-that-weren’t-really-edible-any-more, deftly putting them back in Cassandra’s bag. Cassandra didn’t… remember giving it to her. She pushed the bag back to Cassandra’s chest, and then — well, she stopped, eyes narrowing. The mask had dropped.

“I know you from somewhere,” the woman said. It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Cassandra said anyway, cautious. It would be perfectly reasonable for Stone and Ezekiel to assume that they’d met the woman on a job — but Cassandra would’ve remembered. She remembered everything, entirely too much, and everything she saw them as within her synesthesia. “I’ve only just moved to the city.”

The woman — she was shorter than Cassandra — crossed her arms, attempting to loom, clearly not satisfied.

“Were you on the Louvre job? No, I would’ve remembered that. Actually, no, I only remember the security system — really easy to crack, by the way, so embarrassing. Hm,” she said, reassessing, pacing. “Are you following me? Have I seen you around? Because that’s really rude, and Hardison could so totally ruin your credit score if I told him.”

Cassandra didn’t have much of a credit score to begin with, but still. “I’m not following you. Thanks for helping me,” she said, cautiously, heading to remove herself and possibly walk a different route to her apartment. To tell the truth, it wasn’t even the first time this had happened in Portland. “I’m, uh… well, it was nice to meet you…”

The woman moved quickly, blocking her path. “I know,” she said and pointed, accusatory. “I saw your photo on Hardison’s phone!”

Cassandra stopped, feeling decidedly off-kilter. “I’m sorry, you what?”

“I remember, because of the big, colourful scarf you had on,” the woman continued, quickly. “He has the same kind. He said it was a pity he had to build up a fake profile with a lot of matches, because you looked like a nice person that obviously knows her sci-fi. Eliot said you were out of his league; Nate ignored them both. It was a couple of months ago?”

Cassandra blinked. “I knitted that myself,” she said. “Why was he building up a fake profile?”

The woman grinned. “I’m Parker,” she said, eyes crinkling. “I’ll tell you over coffee.”

Things didn’t improve with Stone over the next few weeks — but at least she wasn’t overextending herself to try to make him trust her. She was starting to be her old self again, or at least she was beginning to learn who that old self ought to be. If she closed her eyes, Cassandra could almost see who she was becoming. It was a breath of fresh air, liking it.

She began to get closer to Ezekiel, though, which was nice. Thanks to Parker — they’d swapped numbers after the incident — she’d learned bits and pieces about conning, about the art of the steal: nothing she could put into practice, but enough to recognise that, yes, she really was fighting sorcery with the greatest thief alive. She finally showed him her market — and her apartment, and he took her to the eleventh arrondissement to see some theatre.

“He sounds nice,” said Parker, phone obviously wedged between her ear and her shoulder. I’m on a job, we’re in Kentucky, you’re on the line, she’d said. “You guys should go on a date or something. That’s what normal people do, right?”

“That’s what normal people do,” Cassandra confirmed. She was in the depths of the Annex, searching for a book on kelpies, bored out of her mind. Whoever came up with having to do manual searches in a magical library was officially on her list. “I like having him as a friend, though. I don’t really have very much of them.”

“Me neither,” said Parker. She paused. “Wait, you’re not a normal person either, are you?”

Cassandra laughed. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Eve looking up at her from the Annex floor. She quieted, shaking her head. “No chance of me being normal,” she said, voice light. “Absolutely none at all.”

“Good,” Parker said, sounding ecstatic. “I like being surrounded by weird people.”

Cassandra huffed another laugh, not catching how Eve’s lips quirked upwards at the sound. She’d already turned back to the stacks. “What are you doing?”

“Right now? Uh, I’m scaling a building,” Parker said, and, yes — if Cassandra had a normal life, that sentence would sound odd. “Hardison built me some new suction cups. I’m testing them out. He’s good at gifts,” she added, “but I’m better.”

Parker had already told Cassandra about last year’s round of birthdays. There’d been old Doctor Who DVDs involved — and first edition copies of Harry Potter novels. Stolen, of course; the books, not the DVDs, as Parker had been building up a small collection from thrift stores between jobs.

Cassandra was immensely jealous of Hardison. If she ever met him, she decided that she’d tell him so.

She took the thief-bait. “So, why are you scaling a building?”

“Oh, trade secret,” Parker said. Cassandra was a tad disappointed, but she understood. Librarian-ship was a secret too, in and of itself: she was sure that Parker knew she wasn’t being totally truthful about her job, but it was a shared understanding.

When she called Parker, bored out of her mind, she told her the truth: she was categorising things, or sorting books onto shelves. Yes, those things were sometimes objects from ancient legend — Jenkins was still giving her the stink eye after she almost dropped Beowulf’s armour — but that was the point of, well, trade secrets. It felt bad not telling the complete truth, but, as Cassandra understood, that was to be expected.

By the time Cassandra had gotten her latte, the first time they’d met, Parker had already told her about her last five cons. She was a thief — that was clear to Cassandra, after so many weeks of Ezekiel talking about his own heists — but she seemed more interested in Cassandra’s job.

“Libraries are cool,” Parker said, when Cassandra asked why. “People can get knowledge for free, can use the computers for free. And they aren’t bothered.” She shrugged. “I always liked the library when I was a kid.”

“So did I,” said Cassandra, choosing to raise her coffee to hide her smile.

She was snapped back to the present by Parker humming. “You should meet my friends,” she said. “I think you’d get along well with them,” she added.

Parker felt like an open book, sometimes; Cassandra had grown up in a hospital, poked and prodded at by everyone, so she really couldn’t be if she wanted to feel like she wasn’t still there. She just wasn’t used to being herself around a stranger. She admired that about Parker: their differences.

But they still had things in common — it turned out that Parker was just as practiced at making friends as Cassandra was, or at least had started making them at a similar age. “Hardison, Eliot and, uh, Nate and Sophie?” It seemed like a lot of people to meet at the same time. “I’d have to check my calendar.” Or the magical clippings book. “Yeah.”

“I meant my friend Peggy,” Parker said. “Nate and Sophie are doing gross couple retirement things like going on cruises and running cons on the management. Anyway, I think you and Peggy would get along. You both knit. You both don’t steal things.”

Cassandra could do one person. “That sounds great, actually.”

She could hear Parker pulling herself onto the roof of whatever building she was scaling through the phone. “I better hang up,” she said. “I’ve been off comms for twelve minutes and Hardison gets antsy when I do… exactly that.”

“Have fun,” Cassandra said, and grinned at Parker’s enthusiastic whisper-shout back — “I will!” — before turning around.

Baird was standing there, a crate of what looked to be — yes, books on kelpies — between her hands. A distinct and familiar rush of hot shame and embarrassment coloured Cassandra’s cheeks. She was grateful for any help, especially when it came to awful menial tasks like this, but… she almost wanted the world to know that she could do things like this herself. On her own. Without other people’s input. It was silly, Cassandra thought, but it was true.

“Thank you,” Cassandra said, anyway. It wasn’t Baird’s fault she’d grown up thinking that way. “Was starting to feel a little overwhelming, you know?”

“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Baird shrugged, putting the crate down. She didn’t quite understand Cassandra’s relationship to her synesthesia, but Cassandra knew she respected it and that was good enough for her. “Your friend?”

“New friend,” Cassandra said, smiling. As she leant down to scour the books, she thought: wasn’t it nice to say that out loud? It kind of was, even.

“Ezekiel Jones, greatest thief alive,” Ezekiel said. He puffed out his chest. “At your service.”

Parker fixed him with a stare. “I had your wallet when you walked in,” she said, dismissive. “What are you doing in Oklahoma?”

“Library… things,” Cassandra covered, very smoothly. “A book we’ve been after for a while’s just come up for auction after the owner’s death.”

The book? Just your average library data catalogue, the sort used for tracking rented-out books. The original owner? Studied at the lost Library of Alexandria. They hadn’t found out what sort of significance the catalogue had to the writer, or even the place, but it was likely it was big. It was insane to think about, really.

(Sometimes, Cassandra wondered if the Library was the Library of Alexandria. It was probably wishful thinking, but it was totally the kind that made her squee.)

She cleared her throat. “What are you doing in Oklahoma?”

“An auction,” Parker repeated, in thought. She steepled her hands over the diner table, then slapped them down, standing up. “That wouldn’t be held by Fell and Crowley Auctioneers, would it?”

Ezekiel jumped in his seat. “Er…”

“I’m not sure, sorry, but the name does ring a bell,” Cassandra said. Now she was thinking of it, she was sure their names were mentioned in the newspaper clipping: a years-old announcement— in the Montreal Gazette of all things —  of the auction house being built. The church that had been on the land before had been burnt to the ground. “Are they why you’re here?”

Parker leant in close. “Keep your ear to the ground,” she said, quickly, before grabbing her bag. She pointed between the two of them. “I was never here,” she hissed.

Cassandra made a show of locking her mouth and throwing away the key; Ezekiel just gave a uneasy wave and watched her go.

He turned as soon as she was clear of the diner. “That —”

“— Was Parker,” Cassandra finished.

If it were possible, Ezekiel’s mouth dropped open even more.

He cleared his throat, “…The Parker? She pulled the Rokeby Venus from the National Gallery! She basically wrote the book on how to crack safes with hermetic seals efficiently — I might call myself the greatest thief alive,” he added, “but Parker is a literal god in our world!”

“A god of thieves,” Cassandra mused, leaning back. She eyed Ezekiel’s breast pocket. “She also took your wallet.”

Ezekiel patted his jacket done; the look of shock and awe didn’t wane. “An honour,” he insisted, as Cassandra felt a smile play at the corners of her lips. “I mean, come on — it’s not everyday you meet your hero.”

Stone approached the table from where he’d exited the restroom. His brow furrowed. “What did I miss?”

“The fact that you’re paying,” Ezekiel said, as Cassandra broke off into a peal of laughter. Stone only looked more confused.

They met up with Colonel Baird at the auction house.

Baird had spent the morning not trying to find good-coffee-for-math-brain — or ‘history-brain’, or, indeed,’thief-brain’: instead, she’d gone ahead and used her badge to blag their way into the auction. Judging by the way Fell (or was that Crowley?) kept looking in their direction and mopping his forehead, she’d made an impression.

Good , Cassandra thought, sharply. If Parker’s crew were on the case, there was clearly something up with the two.

As they filed into the main room — 7-by-9 rows of seats, multiplied twice (with space in between) equaled 162 seats to fill — Cassandra found her eyes searching the room for the top of Parker’s head. She found 15 blondes in total — including Baird — but none of them were said thief friend.

(Ezekiel nudged her as she wedged herself between him and Stone. She looked up. There was a vent cover above the door. Ah, Cassandra thought.)

As the auctioneers began the sales — the first entry was a complete set of antique plates, which if Cassandra was here in any other situation she’d buy in a heartbeat — Stone leant in. “You see that crack above the window?”

Cassandra frowned, focusing. Behind the podium, there was a large stained-glass window — sure enough, capped by a small, sharp crack in the wall. But there was something wrong, something not quite right, that made her taste plastic: the angles were too direct. If it wasn’t there from years of use, Cassandra would think it was made on purpose. “What about it?”

“That —” Stone pointed with his pinkie — “is a rune. I’d say Elder Futhark, but… there’s something off about it. Actually, I read a paper a couple of years ago — peer-reviewed, actually,” he said, “about some French-Canadian sectists coming up with a new way of writin’ runes. Démonaique, they called it.”

Ezekiel snorted. “Bit on the nose,” he said.

“Be that as it may,” Baird said, under her breath, “there’s another one above the fire exit.”

Cassandra looked. There it was — and another on the opposite wall, and one more just under the vent Parker was probably in. Four corners of the room — four directions — four classical elements. Four, four, four. Fire was one of those elements — hadn’t there been a fire before the auction house was built?

…Probably erroneous, but there were other coincidences. Things in twos — two, half of four. Two thieves in one place; two auctioneers; Démonaique runes being French-Canadian and the newspaper they received being… French-Canadian. Montreal.

Wait. Go back.

“The auctioneers are from Quebec, aren’t they?” she said. But even as Cassandra said it, she knew it to be true: the Gazette had said ‘a home grown boy from the city moving to Oklahoma to make his name with a newfound business partner’ . The boy — Fell; the newfound business partner — Crowley. It was too obvious not to be connected.

Before Stone could answer, shouts rang out from the front of the room. Cassandra turned in her seat — a familiar-looking man was wrestling the microphone from Fell’s hand. He succeeded, bringing it to his lips in a grand flourish — “Hello, Tulsa! How are we feeling in this auction house tonight? You guys know that most of this stuff is stolen, right?”

Crowley lunged to snatch the microphone, but the man turned at the right moment so the auctioneer fell — ha — to the floor. He twirled the mic in his hand, then handed it to — oh. To Parker, who mouthed Thanks, Hardison, and said: “If all of you look under your seats, there’s money to distract you while we steal this back. Woo!”

Above all of the chaos from around them — people following Parker’s directions, no doubt — Cassandra could barely see the two arguing with Fell, whose face seemed to get redder by the minute. If she strained her neck, she could see Crowley, picking himself up off the floor.

She could hear a chair scrape behind her, the sound tasting like black liquorice. “We can’t let them get that book,” Baird said, now stood as Cassandra turned to see. “Whoever they are.”

“Whoever they are?” Ezekiel snorted. “That’s Parker. Personal friend of mine —” Cassandra rolled her eyes — “and just as good of a thief as me. There’s no way we’re getting that book without them getting it first — or after.”

“We have to try,” Stone said, crossing his arms. “There’s stuff in the Library — and stuff that should be the Library — that can’t fall in any other hands but our own. Hold up,” he said, suddenly, eyes squinted, pointing. “Is that it? On that tray over there?”

Cassandra looked. Sure enough, there was a stack of tarnished, aged scrolls on a cart in the corner. It sort of broke her heart how they’d just been… dumped there: these were priceless parts of history, not anything random. “They haven’t been auctioned off yet,” she pointed out. “If we can get to them first, maybe we can clear out of here before anyone notices.”

“It’s a plan,” Baird said. “Ezekiel?”

Ezekiel had already slipped out of his seat and was slinking toward the cart. Cassandra sighed and followed.

Up close, the scrolls almost looked charred. Ezekiel made a considering face. “You don’t think —”

“It was in the Library of Alexandria when it burned?” Cassandra frowned. “It would be ashes if that were true. How would it’ve survived?”

And then, suddenly: “What are you guys doing?”

Cassandra most certainly did not jump. Parker was stood there, smiling — but her eyes were on the scrolls between Ezekiel’s hands. She was very suddenly reminded of the reason why Parker and her team were here in the first place, and how it probably looked to her. “I can explain,” she said.

“Those are stolen,” Parker said. She gestured to the rest of the room. “All of this is stolen. We ’ ve been preparing to make a move on these guys for a month now. I don ’ t appreciate being used. I really don’t like it.”

“Used?” Cassandra spluttered. “I didn’t use you!”

“Really? Why do you need two thief friends, huh? Weird!”

“You have four! And Ezekiel and I work together!”

“At a library,” Parker hissed, shaking her head. “I don’t even think you’re a real librarian!”

Ezekiel cleared his throat. “Uh, guys…”

“I am a Librarian!”

“Guys!” Ezekiel said. Cassandra and Parker looked at him. Then they looked up.

The cracked demonaique runes in the walls were lit, bright as a roaring fire — if Cassandra really looked hard, she could see embers spitting out from the symbol; she could smell a faint whiff of smoke, too. If the runes didn’t contain it, the whole auction house and everyone in it could burn to the ground. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t. Not to any of her friends. Not to Parker.

“Uh, this isn’t us,” Parker said, dragging Cassandra back to reality, before she put a finger to the earpiece in her ear. “Hardison? Eliot?”

“ Little busy!” Cassandra could hear Hardison yell from across the room — both Crowley and Fell were still trying to get him off the stage. Neither had noticed the runes. It was probably for the best, she thought, the only clear one amongst the panic she felt. Everyone was already so excited about the cash under their seats — if everyone saw the small fire, it could lead to a stampede.

“Donne-moi ça, imbécile !” Crowley screeched. “You’ve interrupted the illusion!”

Hardison looked taken aback. “The — the what? Hello?”

“You don’t know?” Fell said. “Your associates said you were Librarians!” Oh, Cassandra could definitely hear the capital ‘L’ there. “You can’t fool us! I saw you with one of them!”

She blinked. Hardison had been talking to Eve? Or… Stone, even? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Now get off my arm, man!”

Cassandra turned to Parker and Ezekiel. “We need to get all of these people out of here,” she said. “You were quick with those checks under the seats. We need something similar, okay? Something that gets people moving and fast. I’ve got a feeling that we can’t stand around long enough to argue about that!”

Parker then very much looked like she was about to argue just for the sake of it. But then one of the runes cracked further along the wall — searing and crumbling the paint beneath like it was paper being lit on fire — so she made an angry noise instead, plastered on a fake smile, wheeled around and started to herd people out of the room. Cassandra was so glad that she knew Parker to be as efficient as she was.

Ezekiel coughed, waving his hand in front of him. The smoke was starting to rise. “Fire spells? Pretty ironic idea, seeing as though that church that was here before burned to the ground.”

Cassandra felt like slapping her forehead in realisation. “That’s it! The spell!”

Ezekiel blinked, then clicked and pointed at her. “Like that old guy said — it’s an illusion, right? They didn’t rebuild this church at all. The real church is just ash underneath our feet, isn’t it?”

“They’re not just scamming all of these people out of their money, or selling things that weren’t theirs in the first place: they’re doing all of that in a place that doesn’t exist anymore,” Cassandra said. “How are any of these people going to be able to track down Crowley and Fell when they can’t even find where they got scammed?”

“That’s where we come in,” Parker’s voice came from behind. Cassandra turned. “Just when you think these guys couldn’t get any scummier…”

“I — Parker,” Cassandra said. A beam crumbled from the ceiling of the church, bringing with it part of the roof; it burned up like a meteor before it even touched the ground. “How — how much of that did you hear?”

“Uh,” Parker said, “all of it. Not the weirdest thing that’s happened on a job. Now, I ’ m getting you two out of here: come on,” she said, grabbing both of their arms to rush them out. “By the way — you didn ’ t tell me you had an Eliot.”

“A what?” Cassandra asked, stumbling as she was pretty-much strong armed out of the building. “Isn’t Eliot your friend? No — wait — stop!”

“Woah!”

They’d cleared the church now — everyone was standing outside, including Baird and Stone, who was… in the middle of a pretty heated-looking conversation with the long-haired guy who had Crowley in a headlock. Cassandra felt a frown crease her forehead, but she turned her attention back to Parker.

“The scroll’s still in there,” she said. “If there was even a chance I could get it out, we’d have a piece of the Library of Alexandria to read, to study from. Who knows what we could find out?”

“We could get trapped,” Ezekiel returned. “Normally I’d be up for it, but we’ve got no idea how much time there is in there. You have to plan these things, Cass.”

Cassandra crossed her arms, incensed. “What things?”

Ezekiel stammered. “Taking things!”

“Okay!” Parker said. “You ’ re both right. Jeez. It ’ s dangerous — yes. But we can do these things without plans! Plans are fun! Awesome, even! But improvisations —” she clicked her fingers — “that’s the fun part.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Cassandra stressed. “Either we go in there now, or —”

“We go in there now,” Parker said, eyebrows bouncing. She promptly turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the hall.

“I’m not,” Ezekiel said, making a face, without finishing. Cassandra took the hint, running after her alone.

“So how much is this thing worth?” Parker shouted, as they ran towards the trolley, dodging falling pieces of wood and stone. “Ballpark, in the tens? Hundreds?”

“Priceless,” Cassandra yelled back, distracted. “Hey, Parker —”

“We could split the price, fifty-fifty,” Parker interrupted. “I know a couple of good fences.”

“Parker —”

Parker coughed into her sleeve as they reached the trolley. “It’s fine. You don’t have to say anything, okay?”

“Parker, no,” Cassandra said. A wave of deja vu-slash-panic was washing over her, the taste of aniseed on her tongue. Hadn’t this happened with Stone? She’d made one wrong move — betrayal — and lost his trust forever. She couldn’t go through that twice. “I shouldn’t have talked to you that way. And I should’ve been straight with you. You told me so much about your job, and you trusted me, and I just — I lied. I’m sorry.”

Parker gave her a look of appraisal, then bent to gather the scrolls in her hands. “I don’t trust easy,” she said, at length. Then she cleared her throat. “And — I don’t think — neither do you. Magic librarians. Oh, Hardison’s going to freak,” she said, relishing the word.

Scroll secured, they started to sprint back outside. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”

“First: it’s magic. That’s so cool. Honestly, I could think of so many jobs that would’ve benefited from that. Probably all of them,” Parker said, tucking the parchment more carefully under an arm. “You have to teach me some. Besides that: in my line of work, I’ve seen so much weirder. You have no idea what some of these CEOs get up to!”

They reached the doors, spilling out to the church grounds.

Cassandra raised an eyebrow, bending over to catch her breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Parker’s friends making their way over. “Really?”

Parker let out a short, exhilarated laugh. “Well, I’m really — oh, ouch!”

Cassandra saw the light on Parker’s shocked face before she registered the fire. The scroll had spontaneously lit up in flame. She snatched it from Parker’s locked grip and threw it to the sidewalk, sparks spitting up into the air. “Parker, are you okay?”

“Thanks,” Parker said, voice shaken, frowning down at her hand. “And it’s nothing a little ointment can’t fix.” Her eyes flickered over to where Cassandra had thrown the piece. “It’s — it’s gone.”

Gone? Cassandra turned to look. It had turned into ash before it hit the ground. She stared, horrified, even as the other LITs came to her side.

“Guess that’s how the book survived,” Stone said, arms crossed. “Same spell that restored the church from ashes. It was never together in the first place.”

“I hate magic,” Baird said. She crouched before the silt-like ash. “So annoying. How in the hell am I going to justify trip expenses to Jenkins now?”

“Just grab a baggie and scoop it up,” Ezekiel said. He elbowed Cassandra. “Hey, you alright?”

Cassandra stared at the pile of soot. She couldn’t believe it. A last link to the Library of Alexandria — two millennia of secrets — it was all gone. “Disappointed, I guess,” she said. “Not every day you run into a building on fire to save a book from being burned forever. Burned forever again,” she added, crossing her arms. “The irony.”

“Hey, we’re Librarians,” Ezekiel said, patting her shoulder. He straightened his back. “We do this twice a week. I’m pretty sure Stone does it in high heels backwards.”

Stone scowled. “I could smoke you in high heels,” he said. “Easy.”

Cassandra laughed. Before she could reply, Hardison’s voice, wrecked by worried resignation, cut through their little crowd. “Parker, woman, please — would you stop poking Eliot — tell me me why on Earth you ran back into a burning building?”

“He’s poking me,” Parker complained. “I don’t know, stealing some expensive magic scroll? Ask Cassandra.”

“Hey, I’m only pokin’ you because I’m wrapping your hand in gauze,” an extremely familiar voice sounded. It sounded exactly like Stone. She could feel her fellow Librarian freeze next to her, his whole body stiffening. “Believe me, I’d start running toward a scroll from the Library of Alexandria too. Doesn’t give you the right to go scarin’ us runnin’ into fire, Parker.”

Parker huffed with her entire body. “It wasn’t like I was playing with it. Again,” she said.

“Er,” Cassandra said. All eyes slid onto her; she felt slightly over-exposed. “Hi. How did you know it was from the Library of Alexandria?”

Parker shifted slightly so she could see the guy — Eliot — fully. He — oh, wow. He looked like Stone, too. And that was an understatement: they were seriously identical.

She could suddenly understand why Crowley had thought he’d seen Hardison and Stone talking. The only difference that she could see was that he carried himself differently and that his hair was longer. That was truly all there was. What on Earth?

“It’s a very distinctive scroll,” Eliot said, snapping her back from her musings. He frowned. “Are you Cassandra?”

Stone spoke, instead. His voice sounded… soft, raw. “Eliot?”

Eliot blinked. He stood, abandoning Parker’s now fully-wrapped hand. “…Jake?”

“I…” Stone trailed off. Cassandra suddenly felt immensely awkward standing between the two. She drew back as he stepped forward, tentatively, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I thought you were dead. They — the Army — they told Dad, Mom, me — they told us you died.”

Eliot looked shaken. Silence reigned for a second. Baird found her voice before he could. “We should let you two talk alone,” she said, softly. “We’ll be over there, Jake,” she added. Use of his first name. Yeah, Cassandra thought — the situation warranted it.

“Us too,” Hardison said, clasping Eliot on the shoulder. “See you in a minute, man.”

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Cassandra asked. They were all stood together on the other side of the road — subtly-and-not-subtly glancing over as the two men talked. “Must be a shock.”

“Stone’s made of strong stuff,” Ezekiel said, shrugging. “If anyone could survive meeting their secretly-not-dead twin, or whatever, it’s him.”

“Eliot’s the same,” Parker said. She turned to Baird. “I’m Parker. Cassandra’s friend,” she said, extending a hand. And something within Cassandra lifted at the word — her spirits, maybe. “You’re Colonel Baird. Colonel Baird with the top secret NATO authorisation and all the government secrets at her fingertips.”

“Uh, and I am Hardison,” Hardison cut in. He squinted at Cassandra. “…Have I seen you somewhere before? You look really familiar.”

“Yeah,” Cassandra said, a smile breaking out. After all, it had been the way that her and Parker met. “Well, I’m pretty sure our dating profiles got matched up…”

“I have never seen an arm wrestle last as long as this,” Cassandra remarked. She was leaning on the bar of the brewpub, sat on a stool. “Or be as intense.”

Parker, who was in the middle of mixing a cocktail of things that were probably not meant to be together, ever, nodded. “Especially when you consider, you know, Eliot. He gets mean.”

“Because of the whole ‘hitter’ thing?”

“Because of the whole competition thing,” Parker corrected. She poured the drink with a flourish and immediately turned to pour the liquid down the drain with the same amount of finesse. “No clue if the whole sibling part is making it better or worse.”

“Both,” Cassandra said, going back to watching her friends. “Maybe the assumed-death part too.”

Sure, there Stone and Eliot were, still locked in competition — but Baird was stood nursing her own drink in their corner, chatting to them both. And there was Ezekiel, too: currently bent over his phone with Hardison. She wondered if he’d told him yet about his break-in at the Tower of London using only an e-reader and a toothpick. He definitely had.

(At least, that’d been how he’d told it to her. It was a little funny — if Parker had told her she’d done it that way, Cassandra would’ve believed her straight away. Greatest thief alive indeed.)

“Why don’t you go over there?” Parker asked. “Hang out with your friends? The brewpub’s really not going anywhere. I mean, Eliot totally rejected mine and Hardison’s plans to put this place in the air after we all watched that movie — you know, How’s Moving Castle? ”

“I’m with a friend already. What, are you trying to get rid of me so you can commit more food crimes?”

“Drink crimes. And, no, that would get me murdered very creatively,” Parker said, flatly. “You know, Eliot names his knives? Not even the cool ones — the ones he uses for cooking.”

“Stone names his journals,” Cassandra offered. “Birds of a feather, or something.”

They stayed in silence for a moment, watching from the outside — Ezekiel, Hardison, Baird, Stone, Eliot, all on the other side of the brewpub. Parker cleared her throat. “Well, if you’re not going over there, I am. Ezekiel wants to talk to me about the Louvre job — you know, the one I talked to you about when we first met?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Cassandra smiled. She’d been knocked to her feet by it — literally, she supposed. “I’m coming, don’t worry.” After all, Eliot and her were thinking of planning a trip to the market together near the harbour where her and Parker first met — haggling with the best of them.

And Hardison had started to make some noise about commissioning her for another Fourth Doctor’s scarf on the flight back from Tulsa to Portland: Cassandra was fairly sure that the Leverage team hadn ’ t been on their flight there, but it definitely wasn ’ t above the technology experts on both of their teams to futz with airport security a little bit.

Parker and Cassandra made their way over together, arm in arm. It ended up being a long night of, yes, arm-wrestling, but also Stone (Jake, after tonight) realising that his brother had kept up with his papers through every pseudonym and nom-de-plume — it’s a very distinctive writing style — Baird connecting not one but two of her NATO missions to former Leverage jobs, Ezekiel wrangling lifting lessons from Parker and Cassandra herself learning the best way to clone credit cards from Hardison. It was a long night, but a good one. One of the best she’d ever had, probably.

Yeah, she decided, surrounded by friends — Cassandra was so glad she’d moved to Portland.