Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR, AND THIS IS REVOLUTION
Clara had to take a ride on an outgoing vegetable truck to get to the nearest library.
Her own town was too small and too rural for such a thing, unless one counted the small shelf in the school, which anyone was free to borrow from, provided they brought it back within a week and it was not sullied by animal leavings.
The real library was in what her neighbors jokingly called "the big city,” a town called Denville about five miles away, which boasted a tailor, a sweet shop, and two churches.
Clara's heart was so shattered, she didn't even have a moment to be terrified of the rattling horseless carriage she was riding over the unpaved farm roads, which sent sacks of turnips tumbling into her lap with every stone in the road.
Shiver was gone. She'd waited for him to appear when night fell, even knowing he wouldn't, and then she sat up all night, imagining every awful thing he must be going through. If he were even alive.
This was all Clara could think to do—go to the library.
She remembered the city library from when she had (too briefly) moved to Los Angeles. It was glorious, gigantic, quiet, beautiful. There were more books than she could ever read, and on more subjects than she could ever hope to imagine.
She'd heard whispers about the library in Denville. Spiritualism was a growing fad, even in the rural parts of the country, and books on the subject were cropping up everywhere, even at the risk of all involved being labeled occult.
Someone must have answers. Clara did not. She had red eyes from crying, sore hands from slapping at the floor, a heart so shattered it hurt her lungs and her throat, as if the glass from the break had gotten into the air for her to breathe back in. She had a thousand questions with no one to ask.
The truck rumbled to a stop in front of the Denville Library, and Clara crept out of the rear, calling her thanks to Mr. Hansen before he drove off.
It just looked like an ordinary building rather than a trove of hidden knowledge on every imaginable subject, but Clara had to hope she could find something, anything to grab onto.
When she stepped inside, a woman behind the counter looked up and smiled.
She was young—well, younger than “ancient," as Clara had supposed all librarians to be—though she had one of those faces that could belong to a woman of fifty or a girl of nineteen, depending on the light and whether she had switched to decaf for the day.
"Help you find anything, Miss?" The woman asked.
Clara hesitated. Left to herself, she wouldn't have a clue where to go in this maze —and yet she couldn't very well explain her problem to another person.
What could she possibly say? Hello, I've fallen in love with a demon who died to save my life, and I would really like to have him back and finish our conversation, but he's very likely being tortured in Hell at the moment, and I still have chickens to feed. Is there a book for that?
Rather than getting impatient with Clara's fumbling silence, the librarian looked at her with growing interest, picking up a small pair of glasses from her desk.
"You do seem to be in a fever for answers, miss," she said mildly, putting the glasses on and stepping closer.
Clara looked back at this woman, the clouds in her head beginning to part. Fever, she'd said. A strange choice of words.
"I'm looking for… a solution to a peculiar problem," said Clara, trying to choose her own words with care. Why did it feel like she was playing some sort of game without any idea of the rules?
The librarian nodded slowly, as if Clara had said something meaningful, when surely she hadn't.
"I've always found that the answer to any imaginable question is already here within the library," she said with just a whisper of a smile. "If you know how to ask."
Clara took a deep breath. What was it she really needed?
"I've lost something precious to me," she said at last, meeting the librarian's catlike eyes. "I want it back."
The librarian smiled. "There it is," she said, walking back to her desk and flipping her elegant fingers through a file of cards at a speed that made Clara's eyes burn. With a flick so sharp it might have been a sword unsheathing, the librarian held aloft a plain-looking index card.
"Spiritualism, row 13, F for Foster," she said as Clara reached for the card. The librarian's sharp feline eyes locked on Clara’s before releasing her hold on it. "That's downstairs, miss."
Clara felt the tiniest of shivers. She had been to this library as a child and never knew about a downstairs. Something in the way the librarian said it felt ominous. Clara wanted very much to ask if the librarian would go with her, but she knew this was her responsibility.
"Thank you," she said, and made her way across the empty hall to the door leading down to the lower appendices.
If Clara thought it was too quiet on the main floor of the library, the lower level felt even more so—quiet as the grave, it ate sound. The little taps of her shoes on the hard floors were instantly swallowed as she made her way to row thirteen, reading the title from her card.
Tricks and Traps of Bogus Hocus Pocus, by E.
Layden Foster. Clara frowned as she read the title.
That was odd—it looked like one of the hundreds of books denouncing spiritualism and the occult, detailing their investigations into mediums. How could such a book possibly help her now that she knew those mysterious forces intimately? Maybe a bit too intimately.
Clara drew her finger down the row of woven spines until she came to the right author's name, and there it was in a dark blue canvas bind, letters that might once have been foil-gilded swirling across the cover.
All Clara could think was that the Librarian meant to send a message—that if she was looking for answers from the beyond, she was a fool.
“Well, I already knew that," she huffed under her breath, thumbing through the pages as if an answer would present itself.
It looked to be exactly what the cover promised. Each chapter was some snide dressing-down of the practices of mediums and spiritualists. “Debunking The Seance,” “Knock Knock: It's A Farce,” “The Cards Will Tell You To Save Your Dime,” “Spellcraft or Baloney?”
It was in this chapter that something caught Clara's eye. With several sneering footnotes, the author detailed a ritual he uncovered in his travels, most unholy and unbecoming in its nature, said he.
The Binding of Souls: Tie Your Heart To Another Heart And Intertwine For Eternity.
Never to be attempted by an amateur! Choose wrongly and your companion in both life and death will become your most burdensome beast. (Author's note: Fearmongering with intent to distract from utter poppycock.
Attempted this ritual on my beloved lorikeet Lazlo, to zero effect.)
Clara couldn't stop her eyes from raking across the title of the ritual over and over. Binding of Souls. Tie your heart to another heart.
Would it take her to Shiver or bring him to her? Did he even have such a thing as a soul? Could this possibly even work if the author was so certain it was nonsense?
Clara certainly couldn't answer any of those questions herself.
Up till the present, she'd had no reason to contemplate the afterlife or whether one could interact with it, and even after very intimately interacting with it, she was no closer to understanding the nature of the universe.
She had come to the library for answers, and if this was her only option, she reasoned that she had to try it.
Upstairs, she clapped the book on the librarian's desk, jumping a little at the unintended bang in the silent room.
"Sorry. Yes. I'd like to check out this book, please."
The librarian's cat eyes flicked up to Clara's face and back down to the book. It had been her own recommendation, but there was something in her eyes when she looked at it, as if it made her a little uneasy.
"You're absolutely sure, Clara?" She asked, looking back up again. "Is this the one? The one?"
Clara blinked, and the mad thought wiggled into her mind that the other woman was not referring to the book at all, but to Shiver. Clara narrowed her eyes.
"How do you know my name?"
The librarian smiled and held up a small card.
"Library card, Miss Bailey, of course." She scribbled a note in her ledger, tucked a borrow slip into the pages, and handed over the book. "I just love a good love story."