Chapter 14 #2
I plunged into the rest of it then—the book worlds and the painting worlds and the game worlds, who lived in them, who the Librarian and her colleagues were, and exactly how things had started going wrong—but I wasn’t sure how much of it was getting through.
Beau ended up sinking down with his back against what remained of the huge oak counter, munching from a huge bowl of caramel popcorn the Library had helpfully served up at his elbow, mumbling, “I don’t have a hundred yards of silk gauze to hem tonight.
I don’t have to finish the sleeve tabs tonight.
I don’t have to complete the goddamn spine embroidery tonight . . .”
I decided to let it all sink in before telling him about the attack on the Library, and went back up to the door at the head of the stairs.
Still sealed, and with a stonelike solidity that meant the door panels didn’t even rattle as I gave a thump with my fist. It might as well have been a painted door on a granite wall, and I had a feeling it was going to stay that way.
The raft of books sealed over the broken window was still holding firm; I couldn’t hear so much as a flutter of those damn cards from the other side.
The Librarian was still motionless on her chaise lounge.
“What do I do, Dennis?” I asked the ghost, seeing War and Peace hovering in its usual space where he drifted reading, but he only ruffled a page nervously and edged farther back down the Library shelves.
Other ghosts hovered behind him, barely more than flickers of motion clutching their own books, but none of them said a word.
Well.
I retrieved the green tablet from the carpet where it had fallen when I came crashing off the dragon’s back, taking a moment to remember the password phrase. Sarah J. Maas, right. “‘Libraries are full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.’”
The tablet’s screen remained stubbornly dark.
“Oh, come on,” I begged.
It gave a pissy blat.
“‘I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.’ What, you don’t like Virginia Woolf?
” I demanded as the tablet blatted again, sounding even more offended.
Maybe it didn’t like the idea of being ransacked.
Couldn’t say I blamed it. “Okay, what about Erasmus? ‘Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.’”
A sulky electronic snort this time. The tablet evidently didn’t want to be chided.
I gave it a shake, about to threaten it with a system update, but then I felt a breath at my shoulder as Beau spoke.
His voice had dropped half an octave into a velvet rumble that curled my toes up like walnuts.
“‘My paradise,’” he quoted, voice lowering still further into a bedroom whisper, “‘is a library.’”
The tablet gave a seductive buzz in my hands and opened right up to its home screen. I pushed down a little whimper of my own, clearing my throat instead as I looked over my shoulder at Beau. “Who, um, said that?”
“Karl Lagerfeld. The man had a library of over three hundred thousand volumes.” Beau grinned at my expression. “What, you think fashion and fiction don’t overlap?”
Words scrolled across the tablet screen:
Welcome, Alix
Provisional status: Page
“So, a magic tablet,” said Beau. “Gotcha. What does it do?”
“As little as possible,” I said, swiping past the welcome screen to the email icon. If I could only get a message to the Programmer or the Gallerist. They could tell me what to do here—
Access denied. Email function accessible to Librarian (status) only.
How to reverse shush, I typed into the search bar.
Access denied. SHUSH protocol accessible to Librarian (status) only.
Library Board evil? I typed.
Access denied. Library Board bylaws and member list accessible to Librarian (status) only.
“Effect of meat grinder on library tablet?” I snarled, typing.
Pending, said the tablet, practically LOL’ing at me.
“Who’s the Library Board?” Beau asked, having watched my search-bar typing. “And why are they evil?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, and somehow found myself curled on the bottom step, leaning against the carved mahogany balustrade as I told him the rest of the crisis that had stranded me here with the books in a hysterical flock just under the ceiling and the Librarian unconscious on a sofa.
“All along, she’s given me the impression the Library Board is her boss.
The higher authority. The good guys, or at least the guys on her side.
Only now they’ve suddenly turned out to be the bad guys, the ones coming after her all along.
” Not enraged slavers, not pissed-off husbands and fathers.
Her own bosses. “And I don’t even know who they are. ”
Beau shrugged one elegant shoulder. He was sitting on the step above mine, long booted legs stretched out—he’d never looked more Bridgerton. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it does! How can you fight something when you don’t know what it is?
If it was another dragon coming at us, or a villain from literature, I’d at least have an idea where to start.
” What I’d give to face the White Witch from Narnia, or Smaug from The Hobbit.
Captain Hook from Peter fucking Pan. At least with them I knew their weak points.
“And since when is it plausible for the villain to be some . . . faceless corporate board?”
“Oh, honey.” Beau laughed. “Don’t you have student loans?”
“Foster kid here. You think college was ever a possibility for me?”
“Touché.” He gave a salute. “Well, speaking as a guy with nearly six figures of student loan debt, let me tell you it is entirely possible for a faceless corporate board to be a force of complete and utter evil.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Who hikes student loan interest rates up so high no one can ever pay them off? Faceless corporate boards. Who shuttles kids like you around from one foster home to another? Faceless boards. Who closes libraries down?” Beau held up one of the flyers that papered the floor with its paragraphs of bureaucratic twaddle. “Boards.”
“But we were attacked. Violently.” Picking up another of the flyers. “The Librarian was half blinded. I could see that happening because of a coalition of slavers, or a cadre of abusive parents and husbands, but a board vote?”
Beau pointed at his own face—that brown, beautiful, intriguing mix of a face.
“I’m part white, part Black, part Japanese, part Pakistani, and all bisexual,” he said.
“Just reaching for the very, very low-hanging fruit when it comes to the history of those latter population segments, I give you slavery, Japanese internment, colonization, and chemical castration. All, at some point, legal and accepted—and how? Because a lot of men claimed the right to sit around a table and bring exceptionally evil things into practice, while pretending to be polite, civilized, and moral human beings. Boards, committees, legislatures”—Beau’s hand encompassed all of them, and more—“can be the ultimate gaslighters and normalizers of the inhumane.”
I gave a silent salute and touché of my own.
He went on. “So—what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.
I’m a Patron with provisional Page status—this wasn’t supposed to be my fight, it was supposed to be my way station on the road to a new life.
” My breath hitched in my chest, and when I looked down I realized my hands were trembling.
I couldn’t stop staring at the Librarian, thinking how that chaise lounge looked like a bier.
“And now the place is a wreck and she’s been laid out cold and—”
“Hey. Hey.” Beau’s voice was soft. “Breathe. Just breathe. In and out.”
I breathed in and out. His hand rested on my ankle, a soft touch tethering me to the ground. I breathed in and out till my hands stopped shaking, remembering how the Patron named Stephanie had had a panic attack in the middle of Jane Eyre, how Sarah and I had soothed her.
Sarah. Something pinged me there, something to do with the resourceful brunette we’d relocated from Sherlock Holmes to Thomas Cole’s Rome, but my disjointed mind couldn’t quite grab hold of it.
“Better, czarina?” Beau’s voice was so calm.
“I need the Librarian to wake up,” I said, and was glad to hear my voice was no longer wobbling. “I don’t know what to do, but she does. I need her to wake up.”
“Okay,” he answered. “What do we do to make that happen?”
I looked at him. “We?”
“I’ve been in this place less than half an hour, and I already know I don’t want to see it shut down.
” He smiled. “And I’ve been sewing my life out on a red-carpet gown twenty hours out of every twenty-four for the past two months—I need a break, and since time stops here, I can actually afford to take one. So how can I help you save the world?”
I chewed my lip again, looking down at the flyer in my hand . . . or else more stringent measures and/or involuntary retirement options will be deemed necessary in the essential modernization of the ALBM (Astral Library Business Model) . . .
And the clock began to chime again—that same series of fast, urgent strikes that had first tipped me off that something bad was coming down the pike for the Astral Library. Bong bong bong bong, getting louder and louder, and the books began fluttering and flapping all over again.
“What’s happening?” asked Beau.
I looked at the window, but the book shield was still holding—the cards weren’t breaking in, so what was it?
I put my hand on the nearest stack of books to quiet them, but they wouldn’t be quieted.
A flicker of movement at the corner of my eye, and I turned in time to see another official-looking sheet of paper slither out of the book-drop slot.
Dear Alix,
We know your in there, and we’re here to help!
This is an internal matter, we’re deeply sorry the Librarian chose to involve you.
If you have been granted provisional Page status, you should be able to unlock the Library for us when the Board arrives soon for the Annual Board Meeting—instructions forthcoming. We appreciate your cooperation!
Best,
Library Board President
“Who’s the Library Board president?” asked Beau.
“No idea.” I imagined a jowly, self-righteous, three-martini-lunch type in an expensive suit.
Or maybe some prissy PTA-mom type with a blond bob.
Either way, it felt oddly comforting to imagine a face at the head of this faceless Board.
I had an enemy—enemy, singular. And I’d have known they were my enemy even if they hadn’t tried to blind the Librarian and paper-cut me to death, because if there’s one thing any ex–foster kid knows, it’s that adults who lead with We’re here to help! very rarely are.
Plus—my eyes went back to the first line of the note: We know your in there. And the comma splice in the sentence right after it! “Anyone on a library board should know how to spell,” I muttered, thumb-typing a question into the tablet. And finally, it kicked up an answer I wanted to see.
Book margin-traveling and costume changes now granted to Page (status).
“Thank you, you beautiful bitchy machine, you,” I breathed, and typed a few more quick questions.
This wasn’t going to be pretty, but I didn’t need pretty.
I just needed fast. Grabbing the Library Board president’s note, I turned it over and scrawled a note of my own with a pen from the splintered counter.
Beau was gently shifting the cushion under the Librarian’s wounded arm so it supported her elbow better. “What are we doing?”
“What do you feel like?” I yanked a book off one of the endless shelves, opened it up, and tossed it down on the floor just as the Librarian had done when the Library’s first alarm sounded.
For what I was going to do next, I needed a handy list of books I knew very well—down to the chapter, plot point by plot point.
Fortunately, that made a long list. Thumbing mentally through it, I asked, “How about some F. Scott Fitzgerald for starters?”
“Wherever we’re going I could use a drink.” Beau snatched up his top hat. “I could murder a gin rickey.”
“Me too.” I turned and looked at the books, fluttering anxiously all over the place. “You’ll look after her?” I asked, and smiled to see the way that circular parapet of books drew itself closer around the chaise lounge. “Right. You do your part, I’ll do mine.”
“What is your part?” Beau asked as I strode over to the book-drop slot.
“Diversion,” I said, and crammed my note through.
Dear Library Board President,
Go fuck yourself. You want to talk to me, come and get me. Bring something scarier than your pissant card catalog this time, you comma-splicing hack.
Best,
Alexandria Watson
Page of the Astral Library
And I grabbed Beau’s hand and jumped into limbo with him, feet-first into another book.