The Memorist

Chapter 49

Tuesday, April 29^th-1:30 p.m.

David walked out of the National Library in the same section of the old city where the Heart Crypt was located, and descended the steps, distracted by a woman coming up in the opposite direction. What was it that made him pay attention to her? The way the sun made the auburn highlights in her dark hair dance? Her unnaturally straight back as she climbed the steps? The intensity of her gaze? The closer she came the more he felt pulled toward her. He wanted to stop and figure out what it was about her that was so arresting but he needed to keep moving. He shouldn’t even be aboveground during the day where he could be spotted with the concert looming so close.

As she passed him he looked away but she’d been close enough that he could smell her fragrance. It wasn’t the same perfume his wife wore but it reminded him that he’d once had a wife whose skin was always warm to his touch and whose eyes had always smiled for him. And then while he was seeing her in his mind she turned into a grotesque mask of charred flesh.

No, not again. He didn’t want to see it all again. Couldn’t bear it to see it all again.

Hurrying, David reached the bottom of the steps and headed toward the Kolhmarkt. This last effort had reassured him there were no drawings or maps of the tunnels among the city’s records. And that was good. If David couldn’t find any details, neither could anyone else. There were a hundred other things that could go wrong between now and the night of the concert but at least a blueprint left in some archive wouldn’t lead Paxton’s men to him. If he could feel happiness, he thought, he might be happy that this was almost over, but David couldn’t exactly remember what happiness felt like.

His pace accelerated. He needed to get back to the crypt, away from these memory triggers. The woman on the library steps had disturbed him even more than he realized. Tonight, he decided, when he went back underground to the tunnel beneath the music hall it would be to stay there with his rats until the night of the concert, and then long, long after it.