The Demon's Librarian

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Well, she never does anything halfway. “Thanks, Paul.” And he meant it. The Malik was decent, at least. He hadn’t mentioned what any fool could see: that Ryan was in a knot over this woman and had gotten a little too close for comfort. “Really.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. A potential.” Paul winced as he eased himself out of the booth and into the stinging rain. The booth was in the corner of a grocery store parking lot, the main avenue one block away and buzzing with the sound of traffic. “I’ve been moving from bolthole to bolthole, one step ahead of Inkani with no time to call in. It’s been pure fucking hell. Looks like you got yourself in trouble too.”

  You’re lucky, if that’s all you got from the Inkani. This is light damage, we both know it. Ryan grabbed the other man’s shoulder. The faint tingle of healing sorcery spread over his palm, slid down into Paul’s body; the Malik sighed and straightened when he was through. “Better? Can you breathe? That was a nasty shot to the ribs you took there.”

  Paul nodded. His pulse was a little too fast, and he was breathing in short shallow sips. He smelled of fear, too; that was normal. “I can breathe. I’m good. Where do you think she went?”

  Who knows? The important thing is, she got away. You drew the Inkani fire to allow her to get away. I owe you my life. “Probably back home. I mean it, Paul. Thank you.”

  Amazingly, the Malik shrugged. His handsome face lit with a shadow of his old feckless grin, a shadow Ryan was suddenly glad to see. At least Paul understood Drakul and how to keep them in line. “You’re a good Drakul, Ryan. The last thing you need is any static from me. So you like this girl? Is she nice?”

  Nice? I can’t figure out if I want to shake some sense into her or kiss her breathless. “I guess. Let’s get you off the street, we’ll catch a cab. Her apartment’s warded, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “Warded. You do that?” Paul hitched himself up straighter. He was indeed a sorry sight, from his torn clothing to his battered bag; he also looked, extremely happy to see Orion. Damn near bursting with glee, under the sour stink of fear. Well, he should be. I’m the Drakul, I’m here to take care of anything too big for him. Living without me for a while might have taught him a little serious appreciation.

  But then he thought of the soldier-demons, each maggot one of them intent on getting past him, and the shudder almost managed to become visible. “No, she did it. It’s what alerted me.” That and the Fang.

  She’d been terrified, of course. Her eyes had been huge, and she’d resisted him; the Inkani spider was something any skin would have trouble with. And the corpses inside the room had been hosting baby brilnac; he was damn lucky they hadn’t hatched where Chess could see. He hoped he hadn’t frightened her, hoped she would go straight home from the subway. At least she’d gotten away safely. He couldn’t do anything right now except get his Malik to safety and hope.

  Paul hunched his shoulders miserably against the rain. “Let’s get out of here and hope she has the sense to go home.”

  “It’s not sense. Home is the one place she shouldn’t be going.” But I told her to. “If anything happens, come back here and wait for me.” She’s smart, she’ll remember. He checked the street absently, all clear. If Chess hadn’t run for the subway he might have been able to track her, even with a wounded Malik in tow. But now her trail was broken in the subway and the thing for him to do was go back to her house and wait for her to come trundling home. Combing the city at this point would just confuse the issue—especially with a wounded Malik in tow. “But she doesn’t know that. Let’s move.”

  They moved off, Ryan checking the street frequently and keeping himself to Paul’s slower pace. She got away, he thought, his heart suddenly pounding with relief and fresh frustration. If this kept up he might well have a cardiac arrest right out in the open and save the Inkani a load of trouble. She got away. Paul held them long enough for her to get away. Thank you, God.

  However much of a skirt-chasing idiot Paul was, he’d saved Chess. And indirectly, he’d saved Ryan too.

  After all, if a Drakulein’s mate died . . .

  Don’t think about it, he told himself, hailing a cab with a swift motion and a thread of glamour, the thin illusion that made both him and Paul look like normal businessmen caught in the rain instead of battered, bloody Knights of the Order with demons to escape and a potential Golden to find. Just come home, Chess. Come home like a good girl, and we’ll get this all straightened out.

  * * * *

  “Nice place.” Paul snapped the towel, hung it up neatly. The bathroom door was mostly closed. They were both glad of a chance to clean up. “Interesting girl. Good books.”

  She dances while she cooks. Hope she doesn’t mind us using her soap. And for God’s sake, leave the toilet seat down. “She’s a librarian.”

  “I’ve been thinking.” Paul limped out into the main room. He’d had extra shirts in his backpack, both for Ryan and himself, he lowered himself down on the couch with a sigh.

  God save us all. Ryan held up the small blue jar of ointment. “Thinking? You? Christ, more trouble. Here. Put this on your leg, and try it on those bruises too. She makes it, it’s fantastic stuff.”

  The blind, turned-off television watched them both as rain smacked the windows. Ryan sat cross-legged on the floor, mending the NIN T-shirt; he’d been waiting for the chance to do that. It just didn’t seem right to have destroyed the only thing she’d given him so far. A stack of DVDs sat by the television—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers—no Three Stooges, but there were several Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films too. And a DVD of Casablanca, strangely enough. She was indeed an interesting girl.

  The more he thought about it, the more uneasy he was. She might have been in shock, pale and stumbling, the chemical odor of her fear so thick it threatened even now to trigger the rage in him. He took a deep breath. Come home, Chess. Come back. If anything happens to you . . .

  Paul grimaced. The smell of wormwood and mint filled the air, over the smell of Chess’s skin and the deeper smell of Drakulein. Paul coughed. He still reeked of fear, but thankfully the smell of Inkani was less. “Christ, this is foul. Does it work?”

  “Works well enough. What are you thinking?” The smell of her rooms soothed him on a basic level, made the demon retreat into watchful silence. Waiting. Waiting for her to come home.

  “She’s a librarian.” Paul rolled the leg of his jeans up, smoothed some of the greasy goop on his calf. “Ouch . . . oh, shit. Damn. That stings.”

  Ryan kept his eyes on the black cotton he was mending. Thin threads of etheric force bled out through his fingers, fueled by the demon part of his inheritance, and the rips in the fabric blended together seamlessly. “I know she’s a librarian. Does it work?”

  “Damn. It stings, but that’s better than it was.” Paul sounded grudgingly admiring. “Smart girl.”

  Too smart for her own damn good. He thought of her eyes, flecked with gold and wide with fear, thought of how she’d shook his hand to make them partners. Thought of the soft smell of her hair, herbal shampoo and that fresh golden scent. Come home, Chess. Or I just might do something stupid like going out to look for you, Inkani be damned. “Very smart. Don’t try any of your charming little tricks on her.” He filled his lungs again with her scent, the smell they made together.

  “You kidding? Not my type. Too bookish. The sheela, now . . . she was something else. Wish I had made that dinner. Anyway, I was thinking. She’s a librarian in the building Halston worked from. I managed to do a little checking in the public records. Halston endowed the library with a trust.” Paul rolled the leg of his pants gingerly back down. He was still shaking, from adrenaline overload and fear. Was he combat-sick? “What if the cache—Halston’s books—are somehow in the library itself?”

  Ryan’s fingers stilled. “Huh.” It made sense. It made too much sense. Chess, you sneaky little girl.

  Paul spread a generous glop of the luminescent blue ointment along hi
s bruised but no longer cracked ribs. He moved gingerly, blowing out short little chuffs of pain. “So check this out: librarian is a potential, she’s poking around in her library and finds the cache. She starts playing around, ends up triggering her abilities. She starts changing, and somehow a skornac ends up getting killed here.”

  “She killed it.” His heart gave a nasty leap again at the thought of her facing down the skornac.

  The Malik let out an unsteady laugh. “You know, a few days ago that would have surprised me. So she killed a fucking skornac. Luck, or talent?”

  “Both, I think. Mostly luck. After all, what demon expects to face an almost-Golden with a Fang anymore?” Christ, you could have been killed, sweetheart. Come home so I can tell you never to do that again.

  Paul gave a slight groan, agreeing with him. “Anyway, we end up running across her before the Inkani have a chance to, just out of—again—sheer, dumb-fucking luck.” Paul capped the small jar with a vicious twist of his wrist. He settled back on her blue couch, looking oddly out-of-place—a tall Malik sitting right where Chess liked to sit, her legs curled to the side, watching television. Ryan strangled the flare of territorial anger. The Malik’s short sandy hair clung to his skull, and he had a large dark circle under his unwounded eye. He’d dabbed a little of the goop over his shiner, too, and that was starting to look better. “Just how involved with her are you, Orion?” Suspicion colored his voice.

  Don’t ask me that. He dropped his gaze again, looking down at the shirt. He was almost done mending it. The claw-swipe he’d taken to the ribs was almost healed. He was lucky.

  Silence stretched between them, broken only by the persistent rain. He could imagine her curled up under her down comforter, reading and sipping hot chocolate. He could imagine her standing at the window watching the rain bead on the glass and slide down, the gray light touching her sleek dark hair. Where are you, sweetheart? Come home. Get your ass back here so I can be sure you’re all right.

  “Christ.” Paul let out a long-suffering sigh. “Now you’ve gone and done it. She’s a Golden, Ryan. And she’s . . . God. You’re a good Drakul, why’d you do this?”

  Like I had any choice. “She went out to kill a skornac because it was taking schoolchildren.” And she sat right over there at that table and cried. She’s treated me like a human being, like I’m untainted. She’s . . . goddammit.

  The silence returned. Paul sighed again. “So the Inkani have been in town for a while. And she just went out to take care of it. A fucking skin went out to take care of it. A skin girl. A librarian.” It was hard to figure out what gave him the most trouble, Chess’s job or her gender. “You’ve gone and gotten attached to her, haven’t you.”

  Of course I have. Right now I’m trying like hell not to pace, or go out that goddamn window and start tearing this city apart brick by brick to find her. He stared at the T-shirt, the last rip melding itself together under his fingers. The burning threads of etheric force sank in, tied themselves off. He said nothing.

  “Jesus. How am I going to get you out of this one?” Paul was making himself comfortable on the couch. The sounds of his movement were nothing like Chess’s, but they were close enough that something hot burned behind his eyes. Dark would start falling soon, the rain was intensifying. Where was she? How long would he be able to hold out before the mounting frustration forced him into action? “Well, she’s a Golden. I’ll see what I can swing, all right?”

  Don’t do me any favors, Malik. It was altogether more reasonable than he’d thought a Malik was capable of being about this sort of thing. “Sure.” He held up the T-shirt. It was good work, and he felt slightly mollified at having repaired it. Paul’s breathing evened out, and he dropped into slumber with the ease of a man who had learned to sleep where he could. As soon as he was safely sleeping, Ryan stood, wincing a bit as his leg reminded him he’d almost been eaten alive by three Inkani spiders at once, more on the way, his entire world narrowing to holding the hall so she could flee. He couldn’t ever remember fighting with such incandescent rage before. The thought of the dogs going after Chess had triggered a fey madness in him. He paced to the window, looking down at the alley. What a view, for her. Nothing but a blank wall, a slice of sky, and the Dumpsters down below. She deserved better.

  Rain ran in rivulets down the window. The warding on it shimmered uneasily, brought to humming alertness by the presence of a demon, even a half-demon like him.

  Half-demon. Drakul. Tainted. Impure.

  He felt like an intruder here in her comfortable, cluttered apartment. And when she came back, Paul might . . . what? Send him back to the Order in disgrace?

  I’m not going. I don’t care what they do to me. I’m not leaving her. I can’t.

  He hoped like hell she came back soon. Even if she was furious at them for taking over her couch and using her soap. He should make something to eat, too. They would both need a protein load with all the energy they’d expended.

  Come home, Chess. Please be safe, and come home.

  Thirteen

  It was past nine p.m. by the time they reached Chess’s apartment building. She felt a little more sanguine, having napped on the couch in Charlie’s office while her sister finished up some paperwork. All in all, she actually felt pretty good. Relieved.

  Of course, the fact that she’d performed a spell or two to prove this was real and she was sane might have something to do with it. It felt good to show someone else, good not to look at her sister with the profoundly empty feeling of keeping a secret.

  “Only you would live in an apartment building without an elevator,” her sister complained, her heels clicking on the stairs. “Is it a secret demon-hunting lair?”

  “Shut up.” I thought she’d have more of a problem with this. But I guess the fiat lux trick convinced her. Hard to argue with a woman who can throw light like a flashlight. And that trick with the glass of water—boiling, then ice, then boiling, then ice—helped too, although the cleanup’s a bitch. All in all it had been easier to convince Charlie than she’d hoped.

  Then again, Charlie read science fiction when she wasn’t reading law; it was a family quirk. She didn’t have to be hit on the head to be convinced. Besides, she trusted Chess implicitly. I’ve never been so glad to have an older sister.

  But Charlie hadn’t seen a demon yet. That was kind of the point at which all this stuff became well-nigh unbearable. And Chess hadn’t mentioned the murder on Harkness Street. There were some things even family couldn’t handle.

  How about that? I just saw Ryan kill a man with his bare hands, and I’m still protecting him. Keeping a secret. But to be fair, the man he killed was stretching out like that kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And growing big bony claws. Not to mention coming for me, and I don’t think he was going to ask me to dance. She shivered, a shudder rilling up her back.

  “I’m just asking.” Her sister sounded delighted. “Ooh, is there a secret handshake? For demon hunting?”

  “No. But I get tossed into Dumpsters. Oh, and held up against walls and sniffed. Not to mention taken underground by trolls.” And kissed. Did we forget kissed?

  She hadn’t forgotten the kiss. She was glad the stairwell was only dimly lit; the hot feeling in her cheeks had to be blushing. Ryan. I hope he got away okay.

  “No wonder you haven’t been answering your phone.” Charlie apparently couldn’t resist one little goose. But all in all, she was taking this calmly.

  They reached Chess’s floor, and she pushed the fire door open. A slice of yellow light pierced the gloom of the stairwell, and her own familiar hall stretched away toward the other door, the one she’d banged out to go down the utility stairwell and out into the alley. Her bag weighed against her shoulder, and she felt greasy and cruddy. “I’ll pack, and then we can stop at that Thai place on the way to your house. I really appreciate this, Charlie Lou.” She held the door for her sister, who still looked immaculate despite finishing a day of work and dealing with a crazy
younger sister and the news that there were, after all, demons in the world.

  “Don’t call me that, Chessie Ray. I wish I could have seen this guy get rid of Robert. Didn’t I tell you he was bad news?”

  Chess winced. Trust Charlie to pick the most embarrassing instead of the craziest thing about this. “You were right.”

  “He really tried to barge into your apartment? Creepy.” Charlie made her “men-are-idiots” noise, a slight, sharp puff of air past clenched teeth.

  “Way.” Chess glanced over the hall. Uneasiness crept under skin, and she reached into her bag, pushing the flap aside and curling her hand around the hilt of her knife.

  Immediately, the prickling buzzing sensation washed up her arm. Oh, no. “Crap,” she breathed, and pulled the knife free, leaving the sheath in the bag.

  Blue light sprang loose as soon as the blade left the bag, and Charlie actually gasped. “What the . . . oh. Oh, man. Wow.”

  “Shhh!” Chess hissed fiercely. “Let’s get you inside the apartment. If there’s a demon I’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Chess, what if the demon’s inside your apartment?” It was a good question. Charlie’s green eyes were wide, and the color had drained from her face. She stared at the knife as if it was a snake; the blue glow struck the walls and cast their shadows behind them.

  “I warded my window, and if a demon came in through the door it would be all smashed. They’re not the type to pick locks.” She transferred the knife to her left hand and dug for her keys, approached her door cautiously. “Watch that end of the hall. If the door opens, yell.”

  “I feel like I’m in a bad movie. This is exactly the point where I’d be screaming ‘don’t go in there!’ at the screen.” Charlie lifted her chin, her eyes glittering.

  They approached Chess’s door. She stuck her key in the top deadbolt. It was undone, and she frowned. She always left both deadbolts locked.