"Roses are red."

"What?"

I glanced up at my light-haired companion before continuing. "Violets are wet."

He stopped walking, eyebrows furrowing deeply over his green eyes. He raised a hand and placed the back of it gently over my forehead. "Bree, are you sick? What does that even mean?"

The rain did not pause in its persistent downpour. The corners of my mouth turned down in a remarkably irritated fashion as cold water spattered against the back of my neck despite the upturned collar of my coat.

"I am wet. Everything's wet," I finished sourly. "I hate you."

Ezra, the towering beast beside me, retracted his hand with a suddenly exasperated eye-roll. "I get that. We'll be out of the rain soon enough. Think you can handle a couple more blocks, m'lady?"

No, I snarled inwardly. We'd been walking for what felt like forever. My feet were hurting and I was cold and wet and still didn't know where we were going or why. All I knew was that before we had left the apartment, Ezra had presented me with a gun. It was small enough to fit comfortably and unnoticed inside my coat, but he had given me no explanation as to what I could possibly need it for.

I sighed. "Do you swear it's gonna be warm and dry?"

His eyes widened into an expression of suspicious innocence. "Would I put you through this if it wasn't?"

"Yes," I said flatly. He frowned in response.

"Alright, fine. It'll be warm and dry, but we won't really have that much time to focus on it. We've got bigger things to worry about."

This admittedly sparked my interest, though my first thought was as to whether he was using his standards, or mine. Not much was more important to me at the moment than being warm and dry. Preferably dry.

"Like what?"

"I'll tell you when we get there!"

Fifteen minutes later, we were indeed warm and indoors. Still soaking, but at least being given the chance to slowly dry off. It was a huge building, seemingly more of a modern castle than anything else. A huge mahogany staircase stretched upwards before us, while the tile beneath our feet was white marble. Expensive, brightly colored canvas paintings lined the walls one after another.

"Where are we?" I whispered, gazing around in awe. I felt as though I'd stepped into the Queen of England's palace.

"Never mind that," Ezra said lowly, waving a hand dismissively. "I need you to go up those stairs in front of us."

I rounded to face him. "Why?"

He continued without much pause. "There's a woman up there--presumably in the library; she's always in the library--named Mrs. Abbey. Find her, tell her the package has been compromised, and get her safely to the roof of the building. Through a window if you must."

"Are you crazy?" I gaped at him, eyes wide. "What is going on?"

"Don't worry about it. Just do as I say."

"And how am I supposed to find her?"

Ezra frowned. "Ask the servants, of course. They're everywhere. But be careful. There are others arriving shortly that will be looking for her as well; they might already be here, I'm not completely sure. We have to find her before they do."

"But--"

"You won't know them if you meet them," he continued, plowing over my question before I could get it out. "So if someone gets too nosy, just... y'know, shoot 'em."

"Shoot them?"

"Politely."

"Ezra--" He shushed me and gave me a nudge towards the staircase.

"Go!" he whispered urgently. "I'll cover you from down here!"

So up the stairs I went. The first thing I was met with was a hallway on either side, and I groaned. There were so many doors. How was I supposed to know which one led to the library? What was going on? Why did he drag me into this?

Right, something in me whispered, and I dove down the hallway in a jog, trying the first door I came to. The doorknob jiggled, but wouldn't open. The next door, however, did open, and the young woman I encountered inside simply stared, perplexed. She was cross-stitching in an uncomfortable-looking chair beside the window at the far side of the room. There was only a four-poster bed, a dresser, and the chair she sat in; the only light filtered hollowly through thin white curtains.

"May I help you?" she asked tentatively, and I raised my eyebrows as my mind drew a blank.

"Uh... can you, um... Would you, please God, happen to be Mrs. Abbey?"

The woman stared a moment longer before bursting into laughter. "No, mum, goodness, no. She's in the library, as always."

"Okay, great." I moved to shut the door, then swung it back open and popped my head back inside. She raised one expectant, slender brown eyebrow at me. "Would you happen to be able to tell me where that is?"

"Fifteenth door on the left," she supplied easily. "Is that all?" Overly polite. Freakish rich people. I nodded awkwardly.

"Um, yeah." Politely. "Thanks."

Continuing quickly down the hall, I began counting doors, fuming as I did so. Who has fifteen doors on one side of a hallway? Who even has a hallway that long? Who needs a hallway that long?

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. I grasped the heavy brass doorknob and twisted, shoving with all my might. I stumbled forward as the door caught momentarily on its own frame and then gave way... to reveal the largest sum of books I'd ever seen in my life.

"Whoa..." I gasped.

"Hello?" an older woman's voice called out, interrupting my thoughts. "Who's there?" she called again, sharper this time. Fearful. How odd.

"Mrs. Abbey?" I responded loudly, closing the door behind me. "Can you tell me where you are? My name is Gabriela, I'm a friend of Ezra's. He told me to tell you... the package has been compromised? and to get you out of here."

A brief scuff several rows of books back gave away the woman's position, but she appeared herself only a second later. She was a small old woman, several inches shorter than myself, and thin, with frail features. Her graying blonde hair was curly and cut short; large light green eyes peered out from behind a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, crooked with age. I squinted slightly in thought.

Is she... Ezra's grandmother?

Mrs. Abbey smiled. "Oh, you, dear. You're just as pretty as he says. Come here, darling." She hobbled forward and wrapped her skinny little cardigan-covered arms around me.

"O-oh... Um, yes. Hello." I hugged her back awkwardly. "Um... He said I need to get you to the roof...?"

The little woman pulled back, grasping my arms tightly with her little fingers and staring gravely up at me. "So it's come to that?" she asked solemnly.

"I--" I stuttered, wide-eyed at her sudden seriousness. "I don't even know what's going on. He just told me to get you to the roof before some other people find you."

She nodded briskly. "Well then let's go, sweetheart, we haven't got time to waste. Chop-chop, I say!" She began making her way as fast as her legs would carry her towards the back of the room.

"Wait--" I began to protest, but as was seemingly the custom of the day, I was not allowed to finish my sentence before a loud bang cut me off. I crouched and threw my arms up reflexively, peering between them to see what the ruckus was.

"Mrs. Abbey, come out, come out, wherever you are..." My blood ran as cold as the ice in the distinctly male voice. I turned my gaze to Mrs. Abbey, and saw that her face had quickly gone pale. This was who Ezra had been talking about. How had they gotten past him in the first place? He had a gun. I knew he had a gun, I had watched him slip it into his pocket earlier, before we'd left for this place.

Gun. The word sprang out at me from my own thoughts, and my hand jumped to pull the small handgun from my pocket. It fit awkwardly in my hand; I had never even held a handgun before, let alone been taught how to use one.

A large man, presumably the owner of the deep, icy voice, rounded the bookshelf separating myself and Mrs. Abbey from the door. He wasn't particularly tall, but what he lacked in height he made up ten-fold in muscle and intimidating bulk. His skin was tanned and criss-crossed with scars, and dark hair was cropped close to his skull in the true biker-esque fashion. Small, subtly evil dark eyes fell on myself and the small woman behind me, and lit in recognition, his lips drawing themselves into a tight-lipped grin.

"Ah, yes, the one I wanted. And a bonus!" His eyes traversed my body up and down once, then settled on the gun held uncertainly in my palm. One dark eyebrow raised itself speculatively. "Honey, do you even know what that is?"

"Hardly," I replied grimly, feeling my stomach sink. "Can I have a pointer?"

He looked shocked for a moment, then laughed in surprise. "Funny, girl. Let me at the old hag."

"Hag?" Mrs. Abbey piped up indignantly from behind me. "Watch your mouth, you old boat."

"Mrs. Abbey," I growled through clenched teeth. "As the person I am supposed to be protecting, I love you by default. But this is so not the time for that."

The man chuckled lowly and took one lumbering step forward. "I'm gonna ask you one more time, girlie, to get out of my way. I may look mean, but I don't want to hurt more people than the situation calls for."

My thumb fumbled with the safety on the gun, and I pushed down hard, trying to be inconspicuous. The switch barely budged. Aw, come on.

"Don't make me do this," I pleaded. "I really don't know how to use this thing."

"All the more reason to just let me do my job," he allowed. "Move, sweetheart."

I frowned. "Don't call me that." Stalling. Trying to find a way out of this. Shoot, please don't make me do this, Ezra. I don't know how to shoot a gun. So I sucked in a deep breath and screamed.

"EZRA!"

The screech seemed strangely more muted than I had expected; there were too many surfaces around here to suck up and bounce back the noise. There's no way that carried down a hallway with fifteen doors. Blasted aritocrats.

The big man sighed, shoulders slumping a little in false resignation. "Alright, well, you brought this on yourself." He rushed forward, and suddenly, I felt like an American football kicker facing a linebacker.

"Back, back!" I yelled at Mrs. Abbey, panicking. My fingers scrambled with the gun, trying to get a hold on something, anything. I felt it click in my hand. Ah-ha!

I whipped it up, closed my eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The huge boulder of a man was perhaps a yard away when I did it.

The bang was surprisingly louder than I had expected, and the kick was not something I had prepared for. I dropped the gun in surprise, and it fired again as it hit the floor, sending a bullet through the palm of the intruder's hand. I flinched and screamed with the second bang and covered my ears. Everything was silent for a moment before Mrs. Abbey pushed past me and strode forward to inspect the man lying on the floor, blood seeping from where I'd managed to shoot him in the chest.

"Oh, hush all that racket," she said impatiently. Ezra burst through the door a moment later, stopped dead in his tracks, and stared, dumbfounded, at the man I'd just shot. Then he glanced up at me.

"You actually shot him?"

"Twice," the man choked out. "B****."

I smiled wanly. "Sorry."

"Sorry?" Ezra repeated incredulously.

"You said politely!"