Chapter 6 #3
“Whenever your party’s over, I’m not fussy.
” That’ll be a lot longer than you think, I thought guiltily.
Once I was all set in Jules Verne Land—new name, new address, something else to wear—I’d have to see if I could return this gown to the Librarian to send back here.
I didn’t want Beau thinking I’d taken advantage of his IOU with a flat-out theft.
“And if you do want to keep it,” he went on, unaware of my guilty thoughts, “I’ve got payment plans. ”
“The day I go into debt for couture . . .”
“Hey, couture is the only thing worth going into debt for. I lived on ramen for a solid two months once because I found an 1803 Weston frock coat on a vintage fashion site. Blue facecloth, silk velvet collar, M notch and revers, gilt buttons by Charles Jennens . . .” He sighed.
“Who cared about food when I could swan around in that coat feeling like Brummell himself?”
“Look, who is Brummell?” I wondered. “I never got around to asking that.”
“Beau Brummell was a socialite and fashion arbiter of the Regency period, largely credited with turning menswear away from overly ornate excess to a look both understated yet perfectly tailored,” Beau rattled off.
“Were you actually named after a Regency fashion icon?”
“No, originally I was Bo for Bomont—after the little one-stoplight town in Texas where my dad grew up.” Making a face.
“By the time I hightailed my ass east for fashion design school, I decided I’d rather go for the Regency spelling.
And by the time I graduated fashion design school, I knew my dream shop was going to be named Brummell’s. ”
“Is it everything you imagined?”
“Ask me after the fashion sites drop the reviews for my very first red-carpet look.” He walked around to open the shop door for me, giving a sweeping bow. “Come back after your costume party, tell me how your ensemble went over.”
I won’t be seeing you for a long time, I thought.
At least not till I get back from Around the World in Eighty Days.
Which I regretted, because I’d have loved to hear him talk more about Mongolian and Korean influences on Star Wars costuming, and try to figure out if he had a replacement for Ysabel or Deryk yet and if he didn’t, would he consider me as a temp even if I didn’t have legs like a giraffe and spell my name Alyx.
But I just curtsied in answer to his bow, very badly, and went swanning out onto Newbury Street, collecting quite a few stares from all the early evening shoppers, not caring.
Where I was going, I wasn’t going to stick out at all.
“Not bad,” said the Librarian, looking over the top of her rectangular glasses as I came bursting through the Astral Library door in a storm of blue moiré.
No trouble finding that door; I’d stalked straight down the row of reading tables at the BPL Reading Room (ignoring all the double-takes my new outfit was attracting) and felt the lively, rustling breeze off to my left between shelves where an astral plane’s worth of books lived just a breath away, murmuring, rustling, dozing.
The door had practically flown open in front of me as I reached for my library card, and I’d had that feeling again that made me nearly gulp down tears: chosen.
Finally chosen. “Not bad at all,” the Librarian continued. “Artistic dress?”
“Based on a Rossetti painting,” I said, twirling for her.
All that rippling blue moiré cascaded out around me like streaming water, supple and clinging wherever it hit my legs, foaming and sliding where it fell loose.
The long sleeves covered my upper arms, which I’d always felt a bit self-conscious about, the skirts came down from a line at my lower ribs rather than my waist, which hid every roll of belly a girl ever had, and that low, square neck—well, I could see what Beau meant about my skin.
I looked like I had absolutely acres of creamy white breast and neck and shoulder.
I looked like the Lady of Shalott, like a fantasy-world heroine heading out on an adventure.
Hearing a little phantom clapping in the corner from the ghost reading the still-floating copy of War and Peace, I curtsied in his direction.
“Thank you, Dennis.” Amazing what you can get used to, given enough exposure.
“Quite period-appropriate,” the Librarian decreed. “The Library should know what to do with you based on that. Now—” She had another of those notifications in hand—ANNUAL BOARD MEETING: FOUR DAYS!—but she crumpled it up and sent it sailing into the nearest trash can. “Are you ready to go?”
I nodded, accepting the copy of Around the World in Eighty Days she took from the big oak counter and held out in one gnarled, emerald-studded hand.
I hadn’t bothered to head back to my apartment to grab anything, realizing there wasn’t a single thing back there I wanted to carry into my new life.
No friends I wanted to say goodbye to; no exes I’d miss; no keepsakes I treasured.
I already had my ancient Dawn Treader paperback and Library of Alexandria bumper sticker stuffed into the jet-beaded bag; I didn’t need anything else from my sad, soiled little life. “I’m ready.”
“Library card, please.” The Librarian started to scribble on it, and I realized with a tremble of excitement that I had no idea how this worked. Was there a portal, a gate, a leap of faith? I was just opening my mouth to ask when the clock chimed and the Librarian’s head jerked up.
Because this wasn’t the mellow single chime that meant Someone’s coming.
This was a series of fast, urgent strikes: bong bong bong bong, over and over, getting louder and louder.
“What is that?” I called over the sound, realizing I nearly had to shout.
It wasn’t just the clock; it was the books: they’d gone from their whispering rustle like contented pigeons billing and cooing on a roost to an anxious flapping flutter.
The Librarian ignored me. She was still staring at the clock, but her eyes flicked from one side of the Library to the other, and I saw the flare of her nostrils as though she’d smelled blood. “No,” she murmured. “It’s not possible—”
Something flew out of the book-drop slot next to the big oak counter. It dropped to the glossy wood floor and slid nearly to the Librarian’s shoe. It looked like a card from an old-fashioned card catalog, but I’d never seen one that was red before.
“What is it?” I asked as the Librarian picked up the card. Something was printed on it, but I couldn’t make out the words—and the bong bong bong of the clock was only growing louder.
“It’s a warning,” she said tersely, “sent by the Library Board—” And she took off straight down the length of the Library, nearly running.
With one hand she clutched the tablet and the red card; she ran the other along the nearest row of book spines.
The books calmed at her touch but it was one row in an infinite space: the rustling of pages was growing louder now, almost louder than the bong bong bong of the clock.
The books were panicking.
“What’s happening?” I shouted, running after the Librarian with my blue skirt billowing after me. From the corner of my eye I saw Dennis’s ghostly outline as he dropped War and Peace and dove into the nearest wall. “What’s happening?”
The Librarian came to a stop and pointed at the top shelf.
A book flew down into her upraised hand, a hawk soaring to a falconer’s arm.
She threw it open, eyes glittering as she searched feverishly through the pages—I had no idea what she was looking for but I knew when she found it because she opened the book wide and flung it down on the floor.
Another moment to tap something into her tablet, and the books on the shelves were nearly screaming now—I saw two or three take off toward the ceiling, crashing into the corners in blind panic.
“Please,” I begged, heart slamming up into my throat, “please just tell me—”
The Librarian snapped the tablet’s green cover shut, looking up at the endless shelves around us.
“I’m sorry, my lovelies,” she said to the books.
“You know this is the only way. You’ll be safe till I get back—” And then—I yelped at the sacrilege of it—she stepped forward, straight onto the open book lying on the floor.
Only she wasn’t stepping on it. She was stepping into it.
And as soon as I saw her fall through, I grabbed her elbow and brought myself tumbling along for the ride.