Chapter 9 #3
“I’ve made some friends since the days I was Mark’s scared little sister,” the woman in red went on mildly.
“The days when he pushed me around, helped himself to my money, told me I was stupid to read so much. That books were a waste of time and wouldn’t do anything for me.
” She started back down the pier toward shore, but she smiled over her shoulder.
Her teeth were very white, and very sharp.
“If he wants to come looking for me? Let him.”
Meeting my first vampire rattled me sufficiently that I didn’t track the details of how the Librarian brought us all back home.
It was some complicated process involving the tablet and the copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, where we’d made our first jump.
Eventually the Whitby pier dissolved around us, re-forming into the endless shelves, the barrel-vaulted ceiling, and the emerald-green windows of the Astral Library.
Despite the Librarian’s assurances that the place could protect itself, I was still dreading that I’d see it all in ruins—books burning, clock shattered, windows broken.
But everything looked more or less as we’d left it; if anything, the atmosphere had quieted.
The clock’s terrifying bong bong bong had halted; the hands were spinning round the clockface as though they were on fast-forward, but that terrible abandon ship, here there be monsters tolling had ceased.
The huge door at the top of the sweeping double staircase was still closed, and there was no sign of intrusion.
The ghosts had even calmed down enough while we’d been gone to return to their endless Tbr stacks—in the corner I saw the spectral outline of Dennis with his floating copy of War and Peace.
But when I looked upward, I could see all wasn’t entirely well after all. Hundreds of books had flown from their shelves and were clustered along the ceiling like frightened birds, making that anxious fluttering sound as their pages ruffled.
“I hate seeing books afraid,” Sarah said.
“I know what you mean,” I agreed. “Books aren’t supposed to quake at the thought of invaders. Invaders quake at the thought of books, or at least they should.”
“I think they do.” Sarah sounded thoughtful.
“What that woman Elaine said about her brother making fun of her for reading . . . Tyler used to do that to me. If I picked up any women’s fiction or romance, I was a shallow bitch for reading chick-lit.
If I read a classic, I was a pretentious bitch showing off how smart I was.
If I chose a mystery or a thriller, I was a stupid bitch who couldn’t figure out a whodunit if her life depended on it.
And I never saw him read a single book himself the entire time we were married.
” Shaking her head. “I think it scares people like that, the sight of other people reading. Reading anything.”
“I had a few foster parents along those lines,” I said. “Some adults think it’s cute, a kid with her nose stuck in a big book, but some—”
“Think she’s a little know-it-all?”
“Bingo.” I looked at Sarah, her smooth hair and composed face. If she was afraid, she wasn’t showing it anymore. “You okay?”
“Furious.” She said it quietly, a river of rage running through that one word. “How dare that bastard ruin this for me? The one good thing I ever managed to get for myself . . .”
“He won’t,” I said, wishing I had something more reassuring to tell her.
“I know.” She gave a mirthless smile. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to go back to my book. I don’t care who I have to throw under the bus to get back there safe. I don’t care. I’m getting back.”
Her face was granite hard. It occurred to me that Sarah, despite all her soothing words and comforting hugs in handling the other Patrons, was not entirely a nice person.
I understood that. Survivors don’t tend to be nice people; niceness gets crushed out of them like juice out of a grape.
A lot of it had been crushed out of me too.
“Just don’t throw me under that proverbial bus,” I said, not really joking, and then we both looked up as the Librarian moved out into the middle of the polished floor, commanding every eye in the room.
She was back in her green cardigan and brogues, gazing upward at the anxious, rustling books clustered near the ceiling.
“Come down,” she called out in her brisk voice. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Everyone will be calm now.”
They didn’t all come at once. A few fluttered down; she gave a reassuring stroke along each spine the way you’d stroke a cat, and they went off to their shelves with a relieved flap of pages.
More came down then; some had to be held a moment before they’d go back home, but she coaxed the last one out of its corner with nothing more than a long, stern look.
The kind of sternness that reassures rather than reproves.
I could feel the Astral Library exhale a long sigh of relief.
“I’ve never seen the books in such a state,” a low-pitched voice said, and for the first time I realized there was a stranger here—a long lean figure rising from the armchair by the huge oak counter.
Very tall, black turtleneck, knee-high black boots.
I felt a lurch of alarm, but the Librarian came forward and the two of them exchanged cheek kisses.
“I got your email,” the newcomer went on in a faint French lilt.
I wasn’t sure about gender, so mentally I went with they.
“Goodness, you’ve got quite the entourage of lost ducklings here. Four Patrons to hide?”
“Three,” I volunteered. “The last one, um. She stayed behind as a Bride of Dracula or something. Frankly, I hope her brother does break into her book, because she’ll just eat him. I’m Alix,” I added as the newcomer shot me a bemused look. “I’m the new Page.”
“And I’m the Gallerist.” They looked at our nervous group of four in our assorted book-world costumes. “I think I can find paintings to hide you all in until the danger is past—”
“Wait, people can go live in paintings as well as books?”
The Librarian gave me a Can you truly be this dense? look. “Why not?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Bookworms disappearing into their favorite books, art lovers disappearing into their favorite paintings. Why not, indeed? “So there’s an Astral Gallery and you’re the head of it?” I asked our newcomer.
“Bien s?r,” said the Gallerist with a faint smile, and turned back to the Librarian. “More Patrons in trouble?” they asked, and I saw the Librarian stoop to pick up another red card.
“I know you said this all happened before,” I said, fighting my own unease. “But was it this many? The—the men who were trying to break in two hundred years ago?”
“It was nearly a dozen men, back then. We aren’t quite that badly off yet, Miss Watson.”
I took a deep breath. “Who were they?”
“Slavers,” she said, spitting the word like a nail.
“The Library provided escape for many, many of the enslaved during America’s age of plantations, shackles, and the transatlantic slave trade.
One Patron tried to go back, to bring more of her family through—she was caught by the man who fancied himself her master, and he forced the story out of her.
Once he realized it was all true, he formed a coalition of his friends to find out if any of their ‘missing property’ were hiding in other book worlds. ” Her words dripped disgust.
“You said they failed?” I heard my voice quiver. “How?”
“The slavers forced the woman they had captured to open the door into the Library,” the Librarian said, “and then the books ate them. Before escorting her back to her book world with the rest of her family.”
A certain silence fell at that. Until the Gallerist gently cleared their throat, looking at the little trio of Sarah, Larry, and Stephanie. “Can you come with me while I place them? With this many to transport I could use someone to help row.”
“Row?” I asked, but the Librarian was already answering.
“Afraid I can’t. Not with more Patrons to pick up.”
The Gallerist frowned. I stepped forward, trying not to sound tentative. “Um. Can I help?”