“Agreed,” Annie says. She looks at me, waiting.
“And —”
“I know. Me, too.”
I sit up to face her. “You’re really not going to fight with me about this anymore?”
She looks sad, but resigned. “I’m really not. Despite how incredibly helpful I turned out to be in the prison” — she gives me a sardonic look — “I am aware that, as you said, parading myself around in front of Mr. Gabriel would be . . . well, stupid.”
“I didn’t say stupid.”
“No, but it would be. I kept thinking maybe there could be some way to use me as bait — no, just listen. I thought about it, but I’m sure he would know it was a trap. And he’d never be careless enough to come up here fully, which means we’d have to go down there to kill him completely anyway. And I can’t — I can’t see how me walking right into his lair would be anything but disastrous.”
I reach out to take her hand. “Thank you for understanding.”
She shrugs. “I did struggle with it for a while. Especially with the fact that Ryan still gets to go, despite his just being a regular normal human person like me, and now that the curse is lifted there’s no actual reason for him to be there . . . but I get that you need Peter, and I know Ryan would never be okay with you going off with Peter alone. Plus, your deal protects both of them from Mr. Gabriel.”
I hope. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.”
She shrugs again. “Well, that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? I’m the one thing he won’t let go of.”
“Why do you have to be so damn irresistible?”
“Can’t help it.” She waves her hand along her body and smiles. “There’s just no way to turn this thing off.”
I smile back, but it fades quickly. “I guess that’s it for our list of assets. It’s not very long.”
“Aaron and the demon queen are definitely out of the picture?”
“Yes,” I say, and then pause, considering. “Well, I mean . . . we’ve all been assuming that. Based on what Aaron had said about her injuries. But maybe we should find out for certain.”
“How?”
“Remember Peter’s tiny little demon friend?”
“Oh, yes! Of course! He seemed like he was good at finding things out.”
I whip out my phone and call Peter.
He answers on the first ring. “I’m guessing you still haven’t broken up.”
“Nope. Now shut up and listen, please.” I relate our idea about getting his demon friend to do some reconnaissance for us. Peter agrees that it’s worth a try, and we decide to meet up in Annie’s basement tonight.
By eight o’clock, Annie, Ryan, Peter, Diane, Leticia, LB, and I are all assembled in the basement of Annie’s house. I invited Leticia and Diane partly as a peace offering and partly because . . . well, I guess it’s finally starting to sink in that my friends are smart and have good ideas and maybe I should listen to them once in a while. I keep wanting to protect them from all of this, but as Annie keeps telling me, it’s not up to me to decide what’s okay for everyone else. And anyway, it’s not like having them involved in planning is all that dangerous.
Annie decided not to invite William. She still thinks he’s too freaked out by all the demon stuff and doesn’t want to keep reminding him about it.
Usually this space, too, is filled with many screaming children, but Peter does something to convince them that they all want to be somewhere else. Annie grips his arm and stares up at him in wonder. “Oh, my God, Peter — can you do that for my room, too? Please?”
We settle in as Peter begins to draw his symbol. LB has never experienced a suburban basement before, especially not one that hasn’t been redecorated since the seventies, and he seems to be studying the fake wood paneling with great interest.
Ryan and Peter seem to have, by mutual unspoken agreement, decided to pretend the argument in the hallway before callbacks never happened. I’m glad. They both said some things I wish they hadn’t.
Peter resumes his partial-demon appearance like he had that first time in the library (we’d forewarned L and D about this part), and then does whatever invisible thing he does to summon the demon to the circle.
The same tiny reptilian fluffball from last time appears immediately before us.
“Great One!” it squeaks, cowering and trembling. “I have been eagerly awaiting your call!”
“I have been busy!” Peter intones. “What new information have you gathered for me?”
“The John Gabriel will soon regain his physical form! His supporters are confident and joyful, ready for him to finish slaying the queen and take his place as ruler of all.”
“Is there any chance that the queen will defeat him?”
“Oh, no, Great One! She is still gravely injured. No one will assist her, because no one believes she can win.”
We all exchange disappointed looks. So much for that last hope.
“Have you learned anything new about the amulet?” Peter asks.
“It is a very powerful item, Great One. It adds the strength of the captured souls to the wearer, but also amplifies the wearer’s own strength. Now that the missing piece has been restored, I believe it will make John Gabriel nearly invincible once he regains his physical form and can wear it properly.”
“How soon will he regain his physical form?”
The tiny demon throws itself down upon the orange shag carpet. “I do not know, Great One! I know only that he has not done so yet, and his supporters believe it will happen very soon!”
“You have pleased me once again,” Peter says, although his face, like the rest of ours, looks anything but pleased. “Continue your efforts and you will be rewarded!”
“Yes, Great One! I live only to serve you!”
Peter waves a hand, and the tiny demon blinks out.
“We have to go now,” Ryan says at once. “Now, before it’s too late.”
“And do what?” Peter asks, his demon aspects absorbing once more into his handsome human form. “Politely ask Mr. Crunchy to step aside and let us through to kill his master?”
“LB could totally take Mr. Crunchy!” Ryan says.
LB seems pleased by this assertion, although his fake-human expressions are almost as difficult to decipher as his demonic beetle-face ones.
“Let’s say,” I break in, before they can continue, “we do go down now, and somehow get past Mr. Crunchy. Then what? There’s that other demon, the horrible cart one, and maybe more — Peter’s friend mentioned supporters, plural. I have to believe that there are more than just the two we’ve seen.”
“Then . . . we do whatever we have to, to kill Mr. Gabriel before he gets too strong,” Ryan says.
Peter rolls his eyes. “That’s not exactly a plan, is it?”
“Do you have a better idea, genius?”
“It seems to me,” Leticia says, speaking a little more loudly than necessary and pointedly not looking at the boys, “that the thing you need to focus on is that amulet. Without that, he’s just his regular strength again, right? He won’t be this terrifying, all-powerful figure that the other demons are afraid to stand up to.”
“Well,” says Peter, “his regular strength is still pretty impressive. Plenty of demons were afraid of him before, too. But . . . you’re right. Not all of them. He certainly wasn’t invincible.”
“LB,” I say. “Do you think you could fight your brother’s guardian demons? Distract them so we can try to get that amulet? Kill them, if you can?”
“And then . . . and then we will fight my brother?”
“Yes. Once we get the amulet away from him.”
“Yes,” LB confirms.
I look around at the others. “So that’s . . . sort of a plan, right? The amulet must be in the urn — that’s where the cart-demon put the missing piece, and Mr. Gabriel went in there to do whatever he’s going to with it. It has to be in there with him. If LB can keep the minions occupied, we can get the urn and steal the amu
let.”
“I don’t love it,” Peter says. “But I guess it’s the best we’re going to do on short notice.”
He’s not the only one who doesn’t love it. I doubt there’s any plan I’m going to love that involves going back to the demon world and facing our terrible enemy. But it’s the last time. That’s what I keep focusing on. We just have to really, really kill him (somehow), and then we’ll be done with him forever.
Diane crosses her arms angrily. “And you still don’t think having more help down there would be, I don’t know, helpful?”
“Not human help,” I say. “I told you — just because you’re safe from Mr. Gabriel, it doesn’t mean you’re actually safe. Any of the other hundreds or thousands or however many demons there are could kill you in a heartbeat. We told you what happened to Ryan the first time!”
“Then why does Ryan get to go again?” she demands. “He’s still human, isn’t he? Or did I miss something?”
“Diane,” Annie says, “we talked about this!” She widens her eyes meaningfully in what I can pretty easily interpret as a please don’t make me repeat the Ryan and Peter thing in front of Ryan and Peter look.
Diane sighs in exasperation and leans huffily back against the wall.
I wish she wasn’t making me so aware of how weak our plan is. Although . . . she has also just given me an idea.
“But maybe we haven’t exhausted our sources of nonhuman help,” I say. “Should we try summoning Aaron again? I mean, just in case there’s anything he can do? Maybe he’ll at least have an idea we haven’t thought of, or something.”
“If he’ll even help us,” Ryan says. “He seemed pretty appalled the last time we saw him. He might tell us this is our own problem now.”
“But it’s in his own best interest to stop Mr. Gabriel from getting any stronger. . . . I think it’s worth a try.”
Peter shrugs and closes his eyes.
I half expect Peter not to be able to find him again, but Aaron appears after only a few seconds. His eyes lock on mine before any of us can say a word.
“Cyn, how could you do it? I warned you . . .”
“No, it will be okay, we’re going to stop him!”
“It’s too late. You can’t stop him. Nothing can stop him now.”
“Aaron, please. If there’s anything you know, anything you can tell us —”
He laughs — it’s a cold, bitter sound that seems to suck all of the warmth right out of the room. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I told you before and you didn’t listen, and now it’s too late.”
“No, it’s not too late — he doesn’t have his body back yet. We can still —”
“Give it up, Cyn. It’s over. If you’d only left it alone, we might have had a chance. My mistress might have recovered in time, and then she could have destroyed him. But now the most I can hope for is that we can stay hidden and that she won’t die. You . . . you don’t have anything left to hope for at all. He’s going to get everything he wanted, and it’s your fault.”
And with that, he vanishes, leaving the rest of us in unhappy silence.
“Yeah . . . on second thought, I think it would have been better not to contact Aaron,” Annie says finally.
“He’s wrong,” I say. “It’s not too late.”
It’s not. Because it can’t be.
No giving up.
Peter quickly goes upstairs with Annie to magic her room against tiny intruders (“Just in case we die down there,” he explains) and then we reassemble in the basement. We watch as Peter sketches a new symbol in the carpet. Annie hugs everyone, even LB. “Be careful down there, please,” she tells us. “Kick his ass and come back safe.”
Then she backs away, going to stand beside Leticia and Diane, and we go over the plan, such as it is, one more time. And then Ryan, Peter, LB, and I all hold hands and step through Peter’s gate and into the demon world. My last thought as the gateway envelops us is Holy crap how do I keep forgetting the part about the horrible coldness?
Peter has brought us to the space just outside Mr. Gabriel’s hideout. (He explained earlier that he could do that now, since he’d brought us back from there on the last visit. I explained in return that I have given up on trying to understand demon-world logic.) The cold is replaced once again by the fiery heat and the shifty landscape and all the other unpleasant aspects of the demon world. Except the demons, who seem to be steering clear of this particular stretch of real estate.
LB immediately begins to expand back into his true form. Watching him makes me wonder something. “Peter, why don’t you ever go back to demon form while you’re down here?” I ask. “Wouldn’t it be safer?”
“Not necessarily,” he says. “The demons we’re facing now are all way too strong for me to fight physically; it seems better to be small and able to move more easily.”
“And to run away faster,” Ryan mutters.
“Yes, that, too,” Peter agrees. “You’re welcome to take on all the demons you want, Ryan, if you think they’re so easy to fight.”
“Boys, enough,” I groan. “Can’t you guys ever, ever give it a rest?”
LB has finished transforming, and now faces the entrance to the lair eagerly, eyes alight. “It is time to begin!”
“I suppose it is,” I say with far, far less enthusiasm.
Apparently taking that as my signal to go ahead, LB smushes himself through the hole. The rest of us crawl after him in quick succession.
I stand still, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. LB has no such need to hesitate, however. He strides forward to where Mr. Crunchy is lounging, looking bored. The bored expression vanishes as soon as he sees us, of course. He leaps to his feet as LB launches toward him, pincers spread.
We’d agreed that I would not share my protection with LB at this time. He’s too big; sharing with him is like sharing with the queen, and it doesn’t leave much for me. LB seemed pretty confident he wouldn’t need my help in any case. But LB seems pretty confident about a lot of things sometimes, and so I don’t know how much to trust that.
Mr. Crunchy is much taller than LB, but he doesn’t have LB’s bulk. I want to believe that makes it more of an even match than it seems. Mr. Crunchy’s pointy crab legs look like they can do a lot more damage than LB’s spider limbs or even his pincers. And Mr. Crunchy has so many of them . . .
“Come on,” Ryan whispers, pulling me forward.
Right. We have our own job to do.
Quiet as mice, Ryan, Peter, and I sneak along the wall and back into the deeper shadows where Mr. Gabriel had disappeared the last time we were here, leaving the sound and fury of the demon battle behind us.
For a little while the blackness is almost complete, and then it begins to very slowly brighten. Far up ahead, I can see what looks like a shimmering curtain of light. We move toward it. The noises from the main chamber become more muted the farther back we go, and by the time we draw near the shimmering curtain, we can’t hear them at all.
The curtain is somewhat translucent. There’s a great swirling mass of something behind it, something that seems to keep changing shape just before I’m able to identify what it looks like, but in the center of all of that is something solid and stable and immediately recognizable.
It’s Mr. Gabriel’s golden urn.
And I’m sure now — totally and completely sure — that the amulet must be inside.
Still standing in the shadows, I scan the rest of the room, looking for the cart-demon. Surely he wouldn’t have left his master here alone, defenseless . . . but maybe he’s not defenseless. Maybe that shimmery curtain is all the protection he needs.
Except if it’s made out of demon energy, which I’m betting it is, then it’s not protection against me.
I lean close to Peter, so close that my lips are right against his ear, and then I whisper with the barest possible amount of sound, “That’s demonic energy, isn’t it? Not physical?”
I pull back, and he looks at me unhappily. And the
n he nods.
I turn to Ryan, who also looks unhappy, and I point first at him and then down at the ground where he’s standing. I trust that it’s a very clear message of stay right there. And if it’s not clear enough for him, then I trust that Peter will hold him back if he tries to follow me.
I take a deep breath and step forward out of the shadows. When nothing leaps out to stop me, I take another step. I keep looking around, but there’s nothing but the empty chamber and the shimmery curtain and whatever lies behind it. It doesn’t take many more steps for me to reach it. And then I stretch out my hand and hold it just before the curtain’s shimmery border.
My first impulse is to test it, to extend a finger through it, to make sure it’s not going to hurt or anything else. But then I think that maybe putting any part of myself through that border will make my presence known, to whomever might be around to know it, and I can’t take that chance.
So I just reach through and grab the neck of the urn. And then I turn to run.
And then the cart-demon’s tentacle-wreathed body slams into me from nowhere, sending both of us sprawling down hard against the ground.
I don’t have enough air to scream or cry out or shout the names of my accomplices in warning, so I just swing the urn forward along the ground with all the force I can muster, praying it will reach them and that they will be able to finish what I started.
Ryan and Peter both lunge for it, understanding immediately what the priority is, and I’m so proud of them in that moment. But it’s all for nothing. The cart-demon has too many parts, he’s everywhere, all at once, and he snatches the urn out of reach and thrusts both boys violently back into the shadows without once loosening his hold on me. I struggle to get loose anyway, and in my twisting I see with a sunken heart how the demon reverently and almost gently restores the urn to its original location.
And then he returns his attention to me.
He flips me roughly all the way over so that I’m lying flat on my back now, gazing in silent horror up at him. His tiny eyes are unmistakably full of malicious glee as he holds me there, smiling with all of his too-many teeth. Two of his tongues slide out and taste the exposed skin of my arm.
Curse of the Evil Librarian Page 21