Chapter 22
The silence fell all over again. My eyes stung. I couldn’t see the Board’s faces through the blur in my lashes, so I looked at Beau. He returned my gaze with a fierce nod. Behind him, so did Sarah.
“What about membership options?” Elizabeth said brightly, looking around the table. “A tiered paid membership offering the Astral Library experience on a level-by-level basis. Tours of book worlds offered at the highest price point, tours of the Library itself for mid-level members—”
“I like that,” the pretty brunette bobblehead said. “The system needs to be monetized, we can all agree on that.”
“Alix?” Larry said in a small voice. “What are we going to do?”
I looked at his pinched face, trying so hard not to show fear, and I didn’t know.
Because I’d given it my all and it still looked like I wasn’t going to be able to stop him from being returned to his Montana cult, or Sarah to the husband she so feared.
Or stop this place from becoming a theme park with tickets for admission, where the only people allowed to enter a book were the ones who could afford to fork over $69. 99 per month for the privilege.
“All the Patrons living in books would have to be relocated,” Elizabeth was saying, completely ignoring the cluster of men and women and children standing right there listening to her pass mandates on their existence. “Can we all agree thirty-days notice is sufficient?”
“Oh, more than sufficient. Doesn’t it feel a bit like freeloading, when you come right down to it? Really, who are these people and who’s subsidizing them to live in our books on our dime?”
“It isn’t your dime,” I tried to say. “You can’t monetize magic. And you are not going to talk about my Patrons like they aren’t right here—”
“I think I’d better get our people out.” Beau drew me away from the table, his whispered voice gone taut. “Back to their books, their paintings, wherever. Maybe they can go into hiding—”
“Fahrenheit 451,” Darla cried out from the nearest wall of shelves, pulling a volume down and brandishing it.
“A book like this, full of vulgar language, in a library setting where children could be corrupted by—” The book snapped at her fingertips.
She responded by wrenching it open and flattening it against the wall.
It was still trying to fight its way free when she produced a big red stamp and banged it down on the fluttering title page.
I had just enough time to see the bloodred word DISCARD before the book fell limply to the floor like it had been shot.
“Did you just kill a book?” I cried as Darla stepped over the volume and motored on to the next shelf.
Elaine gave a hiss that exposed every one of her fangs as that blue sleeve brushed past. On my other side, Wet Wipe was droning about special price points in the membership plan for Board members.
I couldn’t think fast enough to know which way to turn.
My head was pounding and Larry’s chin was wobbling like he was trying hard not to cry and I couldn’t think.
“As for the Librarian, what is the plan for her replacement?” the Bobblehead was saying.
“Well, she’s really at retirement age, isn’t she?
” Wet Wipe answered. “A suitable exit bonus for her long service, but really, a woman of her years should be putting her feet up. Which of course leads us to the question of who would step up to guide the Astral Library through this crucial transition period—”
“A lengthy job search would have to be convened,” harrumphed Pickle Mouth, “and surely a focus group should be canvassed—”
“Oh, we can dispense with that.” Elizabeth twinkled. “I’ll take on the job myself!”
And that—as Elizabeth claimed the Librarian’s place and Darla sent another book winnowing to the floor with her red DISCARD stamp—was when the panic and desperation churning in my corseted middle began solidifying back into fury, hard as a diamond.
I stormed back to my place at the head of the table, shoving my chair out of the way so hard it flew over backward and hit the floor with a resounding crash. All faces spun in my direction for the second time. Even the minute-taking woman looked up.
“There is no way in hell,” I snarled, “that I am letting you do this.”
“Really, Alix.” Elizabeth looked amused.
“We’ve been very fair here. You’ve added your contribution for the record; we’ve heard you out.
And it’s very commendable, you representing the Library with the Librarian out of commission—Patty, enter into the minutes an official thank-you from the Board to Ms. Watson for stepping up to fulfill duties for which she was never adequately prepared.
But it’s time for the discussion to move forward now. ”
“Elizabeth—”
“If you further disrupt the meeting, we will be forced to call Library Security and have you removed.” She overrode me. “Which would, of course, jeopardize our agreement about dropping charges of violent assault against poor Chad back in Boston.”
The other Chad stepped forward at her side, right alongside Chester—not the real-world human versions I’d once found so annoying, but the blank-eyed simulacra that existed in this limbo between worlds and could neither bleed nor back down.
I should have felt fear at the sight of them, but I didn’t.
The rage just billowed higher. “Get those bloodless abominations out of my face,” I snapped, and behind me I could feel the rising rustle of the books.
“You haven’t destroyed this Library yet, and until you do I’m in charge here, not you. ”
Elizabeth sighed. So put-upon, so patient, as she made a check mark on her clipboard. “Chad, if you can escort Miss Watson from the Library. Chester, you can begin the eviction process for all Patrons currently present—”
Chester was closest to Sarah in her Victorian print dress and cameo. His hand locked around her elbow before she could jerk away, but she brought her free hand up in a resounding crack against his ear. It didn’t appear to faze him at all. “If you will please come with us—” he began to drone.
Chad started toward me, I started toward Sarah, and Elaine showed her fangs again in a silent hiss, but Beau got there first. In one yank he freed the paper cutter’s arm from the table where it still stood embedded like the Sword in the Stone, and pointed the razor tip straight at Elizabeth.
“Lady, you tell your bullshit poly-blend zombies to back off or I will feed you that clipboard.” Taking a step closer so the sword’s edge fluttered the collar of her blouse. “Edgewise.”
Chester dropped Sarah’s elbow at a nod from Elizabeth but then took a synchronized step with Chad in the other direction instead, toward me. Elizabeth drew back around the edge of the long table, out of lunge reach even for Beau’s long legs. “Alix, please don’t make this difficult.”
“Discard,” Darla was muttering, flourishing that bloodred stamp. “Discard, discard, discard—” Books were dropping to the floor like victims of a firing squad. I turned back to my Patrons, speaking low and fast.
“The minute the fighting starts, you run back to your books and you hide there. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, Beau and me both—” Beau was already raising his library sword and I lunged for the silver pot of tea with a semi-hysterical thought of sending a boiling arc of Darjeeling right at Elizabeth, but neither Beau nor I had the chance to strike.
Behind me I’d been hearing the rising rustle of the books—all at once it rose in a kind of papery roar and I saw a dark swoop of flying shapes moving almost too quickly to track.
One entire wall of the Astral Library’s books rose like a wave and hurled themselves at the twin drones that were Chad and Chester.
The splat as they were crushed to the floor under a hundredweight of leather bindings was sudden, savage, gelatinous, and final.
For a moment the Board just stared at the angry heap of volumes where Library Security had been standing .
. . and then the books began to pull out of the pile, shaking themselves off a little bit, rustling their pages as they moved back toward Beau and the clustered Patrons and me, and circled around us like a castle’s moat.
“They’ll be back in just a moment,” Elizabeth said, looking at the gluey spot on the Library floor where Chad and Chester had been standing.
“You sure about that?” I asked. “This isn’t a book world; this is a whole different plane. The Library makes the rules here.”
“That is simply ridiculous.” Her voice rose. “A library does not make rules for itself. The Board makes rules for it, and—Alix, will you call those things off?”
“No,” I said. “In fact, I think we’re just getting started.”
Because the books were rising behind me now like a wall. Not just the ones that had attacked Chad and Chester, but all the books. Every shelf in the Library was emptying, every volume flocking to my back. And I could hear that angry rustling just growing louder and louder.
I looked at the enormous cloud of volumes swirling and rising behind me, and then I looked back at the Library Board.
I smiled, and I could feel that it was a smile with an edge, like a glint of light off a dragon’s fangs.
Because I was suddenly remembering what the Librarian said had happened to that group of slavers two hundred years ago, when they tried to force their way into the Library.
The books ate them.
“Uh-oh,” I said softly to Elizabeth with her clipboard and Darla with her lists and all the rest of them with their pages of notes. “You people made the books mad.”
“That is ridiculous,” Pickle Mouth said, and then he yelped when a hardcover copy of Bleak House snapped at his shoulder like a viper. He stared as the book flew to join me, trailing a swatch of tweed from Pickle Mouth’s sport coat.
“Oh, they’re definitely mad,” I remarked.
“Or they just have standards,” Beau replied. “Tweed in April?”
“Shouldn’t have got out that DISCARD stamp,” Sarah said venomously.