Shadows Falling: The Lost #2 by Melyssa Williams Page A

world.”
    “ At the moment, yes. I suppose so.”
    “ And fast?” I sit up straighter, and I guess there must a gleam in my eye, for he laughs again.
    “ Not particularly.”
    “ Can I drive?”
    “ No. Now shut up so I can remember which road will get us there.”
    “ Great. You’re cryptic and bossy. Two of my favorite qualities in men.”
    “ Pout later. Open the glove box and get me a map, would you?” It takes me a moment of fiddling with the latch before I swing it open. Besides the proverbial pair of gloves, it’s empty. “Hey, Sherlock, where else would you have put your map?”
    “ I haven’t the foggiest. What I wouldn’t give for a GPS in this bloody century.”
    “ I would think you would organize this lovely car better. I know I would if it were mine,” I point out, only a little bit smugly, I’m sure.
    “ Perhaps it doesn’t belong to me either. Perhaps I stole it.” He turns his eyes back to me, and waggles his brows suggestively.
    I roll my own eyes and hope the road signs to Oxford aren’t few and far between.  The next few minutes pass in silence, but since I’ve never been a girl who knew when to shut up, it isn’t long before I am talking again.
    “ What’s a ghee-pee-esque?” I inquire.
    “ What?”
    “ You said you wanted a ghee-pee-esque in this bloody century.”
    “ Oh. It’s a handy device for navigation. Very cutting edge.”
    “ Do sailors use it?”
    “ I suppose they do. Are you going to talk all the way to Oxford?”
    “ I suppose I am. How do you know Rose? Is she your...” I want to say lover, but at the last second I am too cowardly. “Your sister?”
    “ No. Not my sister, but very dear to me.”
    “ I’m sorry she’s so troubled. Has the hospital helped much?”
    He laughs shortly and, I think, bitterly. “Bedlam has hurt her more than helped her, I’m afraid. But it’s better now. Better than it was before, I mean.”
    “ In the olden days, you mean? Yes, it must have been awful for the patients then. Today we’re so medically advanced! Really, she’s lucky to be with us. I mean, to have been with us. In this enlightened scientific time. And we prefer Bethlem, you know, as opposed to Bedlam.” Never mind that I typically call it that myself, and usually worse.
    I can ’t be sure, but it seems as though it’s Mr. Connelly’s turn to roll his eyes. “If you say so. Medically advanced, my right foot,” he mutters.
    “ And there you go with the cryptic comments again. You’re an odd man, Mr. Connelly.”
    “ I’ve been called worse,” he replies, mildly. “Now why don’t you get some sleep and give my ears a rest? They’re beginning to bleed from all the chatter. I’ll wake you when we get to Bodley.”
    I quiet down and close my eyes, but I cannot sleep.
    He called the library Bodley.
    But he said he had never read the diary. How did he know its nickname?
    “Silly girl,” I chide myself after my heart stops racing. He’s an educated man. I suppose everyone in all of England knows the names of libraries—everyone but silly orphan sandwich fetchers.
    I tell myself to relax, but it ’s no good. I’m on edge, and I’m beginning to feel there might be something sinister about my new comrade that I didn’t see before. Was I foolish to get in the car with him? My reputation isn’t something I ever cared a fig for, so driving off with a man without a proper chaperon doesn’t matter to me, but I hadn’t thought things through to an unsavory or dangerous element. I was so on fire to get to the last place I knew meant something to Rose.
    Who was this Mr. Connelly, really? Was I foolish to trust him so? I wish I had been more specific in informing Miss Helmes of our destination, and I pick tiny flecks of red lipstick off my lips with my fingernails in a distracted fashion the rest of the car ride .

9
    The library is so beautiful, and grand. More grand than anything I have ever seen, though to be fair, I haven’t seen much in my