Chapter 56
JUDE
I’d spent what passed for the night studying, flipping pages, drowning in centuries of handwritten notes.
I added my own thoughts in the margins: questions, theories, half-formed warnings.
The grimoire hummed under my touch, its energy a slow, steady current that soothed the hollow ache of my own fading power.
As a distraction, it was a poor one, since I had no urge to actually sleep, and would find myself staring at nothing wishing for Angel.
A half-dozen times, I heard the hellhounds pass by my door. Their growls vibrated through the stone; their claws clicked in the hallway beyond. Searching. Sniffing.
By the time a faint, pearlescent glow, the afterlife’s version of dawn, began to seep through the window, I was wound tight and desperate to do something beyond sitting here in solitude.
When the door to my room swung open, I flinched, half-expecting the library sentinels to finally give up on protocol and break the damn thing down.
But it was Nat. He stood in the frame, looking annoyed, a teetering stack of books balanced in his arms. He was muttering to himself, a low, irritated stream of consciousness.
“—tracking mud and sulfur all through the west wing, scaring the imprints half to death—which is a feat, let me tell you—”
He stopped. His sharp gaze landed on me, then dropped to the glowing journal open in my lap. His eyes narrowed.
“You.”
“Me,” I agreed, trying for casual and landing somewhere near busted.
He stepped inside, letting the door swing shut with a soft but final click. “Didn’t I tell you to rest?”
“How exactly does a ghost rest?” I shot back, closing the journal with a soft thump. “The energy zaps out of us and we just… sit here in bored non-existence? I was reading, and since it’s not a romance with a good, ass-pounding sex scene, it’s basically the same thing.”
He groaned, a sound of deep, cosmic weariness. “I knew taking your soul was going to bite me in the rear.”
“There are a lot more fun things to do if you like butt play,” I offered, aiming for distraction. “I could set you up. I know a few attractive, available men… if you’re into girls, that might be more of an issue.”
“What I’m into,” he said, voice flat, “is not having the archive’s warning alarms blaring. It leaves every restless half-soul stirred into a frenzy.”
“I just went into the library,” I said, defensive. “Looking for something that wasn’t… theoretical. I didn’t realize it was guarded by fire dogs with a taste for ghost.”
“They don’t eat ghosts,” Nat corrected, an edge in his tone. “They chase out demons.”
Demons? Was I a demon soul now? Was that what this felt like? “Ah, what?”
“And were you playing with the fax machine?”
“Define playing.”
He gave me a glare that might have made a bunny rabbit scared, but since he had his human face, rather than his skeleton one, I wasn’t impressed.
“I was exploring,” I insisted.
“You were trespassing in a classified archive,” he said, his voice dry enough to turn the air to dust. “Those sections are restricted for a reason. Some of those books don’t just contain knowledge, they are knowledge.
And they’re hungry. They could have devoured you.
Or worse, followed you out.” He gestured sharply at the journal in my lap. “And you took a souvenir.”
I pulled the book closer. Its warmth pulsed against my chest, a silent, stubborn protest. “It’s mine. You gave it to me. In fact, you gave it to me right before I died.” I eyed the glowing cover with new suspicion. “Is this book cursed? Or are you?”
“I gave you a copy,” Nat said, pinching the bridge of his nose as if fighting off a migraine. “A shadow of the original. That,” he stabbed a finger toward the glowing text, “doesn’t leave the archive. It doesn’t get… adopted. It belonged to the last Arbiter.”
Except it was in my hands, warm and humming, and I had absolutely no intention of letting it go. “Finders keepers.”
Nat stared at me. “What are you, twelve?”
“Dead,” I shot back. “Which, last I checked, eclipses library policy. It came to me. It wanted me to have it.”
He let out a long, slow sigh, the sound like pages turning in a forgotten tomb.
“It’s more than a book. It’s a record of woven time.
It reacts to power, and right now it’s reacting to the chaos you brought with you.
” Nat set the stack of books on the table with a solid thump, sending dust motes swirling in the pale light like agitated spirits.
“The hellhounds aren’t chasing you for shits and giggles.
You stepped through a boundary you shouldn’t have access to.
The deepest alcove of the archive is sealed to all but the highest ranks.
The last Arbiter’s personal library could wreak havoc on all the universe itself. ”
I stared at the book in my hands, its warmth seeping into my palms. I couldn’t have let it go if I’d tried, and that realization was its own kind of chill.
It felt like a part of me now, a grafted organ humming in time with my ghostly pulse.
Maybe it was filling the holes I’d torn in myself when I unraveled for my family.
“Arbiter?”
Nat waved his hand in the arm. “Judgment? It’s been centuries since we’ve had one. Probably why the weave is the mess it is, and realms are merging. I know little about it, or the books, as the room is warded against entry to all beings.”
But I’d entered without any real difficulty. “Are you saying you can’t go in there either?”
“I’m saying the book is trouble. The hounds sensed an anomaly. That was you bonding with a primordial grimoire.” He groaned again, rubbing his temples.
“The book feels like mine. What does that mean?” I asked, examining the book like it might suddenly sprout fangs.
Nat shook his head. “I’m not certain it matters. The book has already formed a bond with you. Severing it now could leave you both unraveled and useless.” He gestured vaguely at the glowing pages. “And you’re writing in it… that shouldn’t be possible.”
“Impossible is my brand, just ask my boyfriend,” I said, flashing a grin I didn’t quite feel. “It’s right there on my ghostly business card. Jude Holt. Professional Impossibility. Now with 20% more existential dread.”
Nat straightened up, brushing nonexistent dust from his sleeves. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“About what? Being impossible?”
“That the book chose you.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I gave you a journal on basic weaving. The rest,” he pointed at the added writing and glowing designs scrawled across the page, “should be unfathomable to you.” His gaze cut to the book in my hands. “And you know so little. Can you put it away?”
Put it away.
The thought sent a jolt of irrational panic through me.
Would it vanish if I let go? Would I fade?
My fingers tightened on the cover before I could stop them.
Carefully, I tried to set it on the table beside Nat’s stack.
My hand hovered, then withdrew. The book stayed put, but my skin felt cold where it had been. Empty.
“Uh…” I managed, staring at the book as if were part of me.
Nat’s sigh was long-suffering. “I don’t mean away from you.
Did you learn anything from the manifestation book?
You’ll need a pocket realm to store it. Damn thing is like a leech once it’s attached.
” He shook his head. “Focus your intent. You don’t have a pocket.
You’re a ghost, nothing more than a handful of frayed threads left to float in the universe unguided. ”
“Rude.”
He glowered. “But one hundred percent true.”
“I thought we were friends,” I grumbled, already trying to picture a pocket like the one in my favorite jeans. I focused, but nothing happened. The book just sat there, warm and present. “Maybe I don’t have enough threads left to make one.”
“You have a bond to the book; that is a thread, and the only one you need. Can you visualize your connection?”
I closed my eyes and stopped trying to make something.
It was there instantly, a thin, shimmering strand connecting me to the book. It glowed with black swirls of nebulous purple and blue, like a captured piece of galaxy.
“Good,” Nat murmured. “Now imagine tucking its thread into a fold between the rest of yours.”
I focused, picturing the shimmering strand not as a separate line, but as part of my own weave.
Gently, I imagined it shortening, coiling inward, drawing the book with it into a quiet, protected space within myself.
A warmth settled inside my chest, quiet and humming. Invisible, but I could still feel it.
Nat gave a single, slow nod. “Adequate. Now bring it back.”
I reached out with that same intent. The book reappeared in my grasp, warm and solid.
“Good,” he said, and for the first time, it almost sounded like praise.
“I didn’t know ghosts could have pockets or store books.
” I stared at the dark, hidden space where the book hid within a fold in reality only I could feel.
It made me wonder if this was how Nox carried his strange collection of titles.
A pocket between worlds. Maybe I could use it for more than forbidden texts.
Once I got back to the living world, a secret stash for snacks sounded like a pretty solid perk.
If I got back.
“You’re not a ghost,” Nat added, then immediately waved off my next question. “I don’t know what you are, but a ghost isn’t on that list.” Nat turned toward the door. “I’ll see if I can find any more engaging texts.”
“I could help.”
“Absolutely not. You’ve already caused enough chaos in the library.”
“Wait,” I said. “The hellhounds… are they going to keep chasing me?”
Nat glanced back; his expression unreadable. “They’re guardians. They respond to threat and anomaly. You, Jude, have just made yourself both.”