Chapter 17
Good news: The Library was rebuilding itself.
The massive oak counter had somehow resurrected after being whipped to splinters by the Librarian’s lashing tail when she was in dragon form; the huge bronze globe was back in its stand though it had yet to resume spinning; all the broken green glass had re-formed itself whole and uncracked from where the Librarian and I had crash-landed through the window.
No sign of Chad, Chester, or the Library Board.
Bad news: the Librarian still lay on her couch motionless as a waxwork.
The horrible fear that she had stopped breathing clawed through my stomach, but Beau said, “Look—” and dug a vintage art nouveau compact out of his damask waistcoat pocket, flipping it open and poising the mirror above her faded lips.
Holding it up, he showed me a faint mist of breath on the surface.
“Okay.” I straightened, claws in my stomach easing a little but only a little.
She looked shrunken somehow, old instead of ageless.
Her wounded eye was covered by a bandage now, her arm wrapped in some sort of sling, and I wondered briefly how the Library had applied the first aid—a book, fluttering and flapping above her torso?
One of the ghosts, Dennis with his eternally floating copy of War and Peace?
The Library will take care of me, the Librarian had slurred as she slid into her coma. It’ll just—take—a while.
How long was a while in a place where time didn’t pass in the normal way?
“I was hoping she’d be showing signs of waking up so she could .
. .” I trailed off, not quite wanting to admit that the end of that sentence was tell me what to do.
About the Library Board—who had sent another flurry of red-bordered notifications through the book drop, I noticed.
About Chad and Chester, Library Security, who might not be able to wedge their way in here, but were undoubtedly waiting to pounce the moment I went margin-traveling again.
About my terrible suspicion of Sarah, tucked away in her Thomas Cole painting, and whether I was onto something there or completely off base. About all of it.
Tell me what to do, I begged silently, but there was only the quiet tick of the Library’s clock, the anxious fluttering of the books, who sounded like frightened birds, Beau looking at me expectantly like he thought I knew what I was doing.
Well, fake it till you make it. Right?
“She’ll wake up at some point,” I said firmly, like it was a foregone conclusion.
“In the meantime, we’ll just keep on leading Library Security away from the Library.
Jump into another book and keep jumping.
” It had worked so far, hadn’t it? “How do you feel about Gone with the Wind? Is that public domain?” Plenty of new ways to bump off Chad and Chester there, if so: marauding Yankees, burning cities—
“Absolutely not,” Beau said. “No antebellum bullshit. I’m a shade too dark to blend in at the Twelve Oaks barbecue.”
“Point taken. The Arabian Nights? Shove Chad and Chester off a flying carpet?” I began swiping on the tablet again.
“Can we get something to eat first? I was starving hours ago, and those little Three Musketeers cookies didn’t really take the edge off now that—” Beau paused. “Wait, why am I not hungry anymore?”
“It’s the Library,” I said absently. “Time doesn’t pass here, so you don’t really experience hunger or thirst or the need to pee.”
He cocked his head. “But we did when we were in The Great Gatsby and The Three Musketeers?”
“Yes, time actually passes in books. You pass a week there, a month, a year, it actually counts.”
“But not when we leave the Astral Library and go home, right?”
“No, it does. Time in books is time in the outside world too. Which makes me wonder if our world isn’t just a book too, on somebody’s shelf,” I added, still looking for The Arabian Nights in the tablet’s catalog. “Come on, I know it’s in here—”
“Wait.” Beau’s voice sounded suddenly tense. “How much time have we spent in all those different books?”
“Um.” I paused, trying to think. Only an hour or so in Gatsby, less than that in Bleak House.
Longer in The Bride of Lammermoor; we’d taken some hours to rest in the shelter of a craggy outcrop, letting Chad and Chester exhaust themselves striding around the cliffs for a while as I dozed off the margin-traveling weariness and Beau kept watch.
How long had that made it, by the time we headed for a few more hours in Dumas’s Paris?
“Eight hours, maybe? Oh, there it is—” I clicked on the listing for Arabian Nights and began swiping chapter headings.
I felt a flutter of tattered cloth around my knees and realized I was back to wearing the shredded Regency dress from Beau’s shop—what costume change would the Astral Library give me once we jumped through the margins to Scheherazade’s world?
“I really hope I don’t end up in some harem pants outfit.
Feels just a bit culturally appropriative on a basic white girl like me—”
“Alix. Have we lost eight hours on the outside, by jumping around all these books?”
I looked up. Beau’s face was taut, all the creases and crinkles of his heart-stopping smile wiped utterly away. “Um. You didn’t realize that?”
“Eight hours. Shit.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Shit. You told me that whatever time it was when I came in here, I’d come out again and no time would have passed!”
“Yes, if we’d stayed in here. But it’s different when you start traveling to books.
” I knew I’d told him that at the beginning, when he arrived.
I repeated it now, as close as I could remember to how the Librarian had explained it to me.
“In a book, time moves forward just the same as it does in our world. Go from here to a book, spend a year in the book, then come back to the Astral Library, you’re a year older.
And if you go back to your original life outside, time will have advanced there by a year as well. ”
“You didn’t tell me that.” His voice was getting louder. “You only said time didn’t pass!”
“Beau, I did tell you—”
“You hit me with a fire hose of information—apparently I didn’t catch every single detail, okay?” He reversed toward the stairs that swept up toward the big ornate door. “But you knew what a time crunch I’ve been in, and you didn’t think to say something when time actually started passing again?”
“I was a little busy keeping us one step ahead of Library Security.” I heard my voice rising too, as I followed him. “Beau, listen, this isn’t a disaster. It’s just eight hours, and time’s paused again now that we’re inside the Library. You can make up the work you missed—”
“Alix, I don’t have eight hours to lose.
I’m so behind—if I don’t get the dress done in time, I am screwed.
” Beau stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning back toward me.
“I don’t get the exposure and commissions from the premiere, I can’t make my rent.
I can’t pay my dad back, my brothers will be lining up to say We told you so—”
I blew out a breath. Less than an hour ago we’d been kissing—how had we gotten from there to snapping at each other?
“Beau, I’m sorry you didn’t realize you were losing time, and I’m sorry I didn’t think to remind you.
I’m still figuring out how everything works here, myself.
But you can make the time and the work up.
We’ll find a way to bring that damn dress here to work on, if you like; you’ll have all the time in the world then to get it all done. ”
I think it would have been all right—the corners of his mouth softened just a little, he took a half step toward me. But the book-drop slot spat out another red-bordered sheet of paper that came sliding across the floor toward our feet, and we both saw the greeting across the top:
TO BOMONT SATO-JONES FROM THE LIbrARY BOARD!
Beau bent down and picked up the page. “How does the Board know my name?”
“Well, you did just spend the last eight hours helping stab, drown, and defenestrate Library Security,” I said, trying for a smile—but I saw the color drain from Beau’s face as he read the notice. “What does it say?”
He thrust the page at me and took the stairs up to the huge Library door two at a time.
Dear Mr. Sato-Jones, the page read:
Please be advised that your trespassing on Library grounds, and in serious violation of bylaw 3.
92.111, Paragraph J, Sub-Paragraph 113c, in the act of giving aid to Ms. Alexandria Watson, who is illegally occupying the premises.
Please remove yourself from the Library or its very likely we will be forced to take legal action.
Future communications from our legal department will be sent to your place of business, Brummell’s on Newbury Street. We have already been in communication with the landlord and understand you are in arrears as to rent—
There was another six paragraphs of legalistic droning, but I dropped the notice because Beau had bounded to the top of the stairs and started wrenching at the door handle. “How the hell do I get out of here?”
“Beau, wait. Don’t fly out in a panic.” I tried to make a joke of it. “They can’t even spell you’re or it’s correctly; don’t let people like that try to scare you—”
“Yeah, well, it’s working. They’re scaring me. I have to get back.” Aiming a kick at the door panels. “Make this place cough up a key.”
“You’re just going to run away?” My voice scaled up; I nearly fell over my tattered skirts as I ran up the stairs after him. “That’s what they want. You don’t run from people like that, you—”
“Fight them? With what? I’m a fashion designer, Alix, not a goddamn knight. I only stayed here at all because I needed a break from my sewing machine.”
That’s the only reason? a small, hurt voice asked, somewhere deep down. I pushed it aside for now. “You can’t let the stupid Library Board blackmail you into—”