The Librarians ...and the Sleepwalking Caretaker (Budapest Mysteries - part 2)

Three problems

The Librarians and their Guardian couldn't take their eyes off Morgan and Jenkins.

"I thought that they hated each other?" Whispered Jake.

"This is another proof that the frontier between love and hate is very thin," replied Flynn.

Eve reached out for his hand and she squeezed it gently.

"What now?" She asked.

"Now? We wait."

The sorceress helped Jenkins to a sitting position, before taking place next to him. The Caretaker blinked a few times, obviously trying to make out his immediate surroundings. His eyes fell on Eve and the Librarians, and he frowned. There was no doubt in everyone's mind that he was trying to remember the events that had brought him in the cave.

"What are you all doing here? And by the way, where are we?"

His voice was still a little sore, but the tone indicated that he was fully awake and back to his old self.

Flynn was about to explain everything, when Ezekiel stepped in:

"Now wait a minute. Since when is she a member of the gang?" He was pointing at Morgan. "She might have helped waking up Jenkins, but last time I checked, she was still a member of Team Evil."

He faced the sorceress and bowed in a comical way:

"Thank you for your help, we are very grateful. You can go now. Bye!"

Eve and Jake exchanged a worried glance, but Morgan remained very calm:

"May I remind you that we have a common goal?"

"But it's done and over!" Reacted Cassandra. "Jenkins is awake now!"

The sorceress smirked:

"And how exactly do you intend on leaving this time and go back to your own?"

"What do you mean?"

The mathematician didn't like where the conversation was heading. She liked to be on familiar grounds, but so far she had been unable to build any pattern that would help explaining their situation and she felt extremely vulnerable.

"What she means is that we didn't simply travel through space as we usually do," quietly explained Carsen. "We also travelled into time."

"If someone would be so kind to jog my memory, maybe I would be able to help as well," said Jenkins.

Flynn looked at his friends, as if he expected them to complain, but this time no one spoke and he was able to fill in the Caretaker.

"Now that you know our side of the story, maybe you could tell us how you ended up here?" Suggested Baird when the Librarian was done talking.

The Caretaker sighed:

"I'm afraid that I can't. I have no recollection of coming here in the first place."

"What?"

Everyone looked at the sorceress who seemed quite shocked by Jenkins' reply.

"You didn't come by yourself?" Added Morgan lowering her voice a little.

Jenkins seemed quite annoyed by the question.

"Of course not! I might be a bit melancholic but you know well enough that it happens every five hundred years give or take a few centuries. I didn't plan on coming here!"

Eve was starting to get a headache from all those mysterious talks and she decided that it was time someone put some order.

"Alright," she said strongly. "We seem to be faced with two major problems. One, how do we go back to our own time? And two, who kidnapped Jenkins and why?"

"I think that you can add a third one to your list," sighed Jake. "What if those who brought Jenkins are still around? They won't be pleased to see that we have disrupted their plans..."

"What is this place anyway? Apart from being Merlin's tomb, that it," asked Cassandra.

"This," replied the Caretaker, "is our tomb. It's the place where Morgan and I will come to rest for eternity when we get tired of immortality."

"Oh great," whispered Ezekiel. "Someone has just decided that it was time for you to die..."