“Why’s that?”
“Because Sebastian didn’t want Gertrude alive for her sake. He wanted her alive for his sake. It wasn’t that he wanted Gertrude to feel the summer air on her skin one more time. It was that he wanted a wife. He wanted company.”
“True.”
“I love Heather. Loved. I loved Heather. But not more than I love myself. If we survive this, I’m going to wind up alone, now. At least for a while. That’s just the way it is. You’ll leave, and maybe Isola will stay, but I have a feeling we’ll both be alone for a while, a long while, even with the other around.”
He laughed, all of a sudden. “That’s the best-case scenario.”
“How do we get to that scenario?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I know one thing, though. We’ve got to kill Sebastian. There’s no coming back from what he’s done.”
“I don’t know if there’s such a thing as ‘beyond redemption’ in my book,” I said. “I try not to believe in vengeance, only solving problems. If that means we’ve got to kill him, I won’t cry. But there’s always coming back from what we’ve done. The path back into the light is always there, even if most people won’t take it and sometimes you need to kill them if they won’t, in order to keep yourself or your community or even strangers safe.”
Vasilis shook his head. “Any other situation, I’d probably agree with you.”
I didn’t want to argue nitpicky shit about creating societies with radically transformed ideas of crime and punishment. I also didn’t want to get up off the couch to get away from him. Surprisingly, I didn’t want him to get up either. Talking doesn’t always help with panic, but it was helping just then.
“What’s with the spade?” I asked, nodding toward his tattoo, to change the subject.
“I was a different man, when I was younger. Gambling man. Lost a bet. I’ll tell you one thing that a drunken face tattoo is good for—it’s good for teaching you not to regret.”
“You ever think about getting it removed?” I asked.
“Hell no. I love this thing. How many librarians do you know with face tattoos who run a library that they technically stole from the state?”
“You’re the only one,” I said.
“Damn straight.”
“There’s nothing in here,” Doomsday said, standing up at last, setting the book atop Heather’s body like she was a table. “Nothing that’s gonna help us.”
“What we need is a distraction,” Gertrude said. She was handling the whole thing rather well. I suppose she had nothing left to fear.
“Like what?” I asked. I peered out the narrow crack between the wooden shutter and the window. Most of the crowd was still there, leaning on cars, smoking cigarettes, looking bored. Sebastian Miller stood sentinel in the middle of the street, staring intently at the front door. It had been what? Eight hours? Our magic feds were nowhere in sight, which was not reassuring.
“I bet they’ll let me go. Me and Isola. We’re not with you. We know those people. I bet they’ll let us go, and we’ll figure out something.”
“You’re the two that Sebastian was trying to kill,” I said.
“He won’t, not with everyone else watching. Sebastian always cared a lot about what people think of him.”
It was a dangerous plan, but it wasn’t “get to the roof and start shooting” dangerous, and it was better than anything else we’d come up with.
I followed her downstairs to the front door. Isola was easy to convince.
Gertrude opened the door a crack. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “It’s me! Ms. Miller! I’m coming out!”
She slipped out, Isola close behind, and I slammed the bar back in place behind them. I was trapped inside again.
Fuck, I wish I’d been able to join them.
* * *
“I wonder what they’ll do.”
I was back upstairs, back on the panic couch. It didn’t hit me so bad this time, maybe because whether or not it was me doing something, I knew that someone was doing something. I knew that the current situation would not continue indefinitely. Even without physically moving, every passing minute got me closer to not-in-the-library as surely as if I was walking toward the exit.
“Fuck off and leave us here,” Vasilis said. “That’s my guess.”
Thursday and Doomsday sat on the love seat, quietly whispering. Vulture was asleep in Isola’s bed. Brynn paced, her boots a rhythmic clomph clomph on the floor. Every time her circuit took her past the window, she peered out for a second.
“Hey,” she said, on one of her rounds. She motioned us over. “Check this out.”
In the distance, from the west edge of town, a thin trickle of smoke turned into a billowing cloud erupting up toward heaven.
Isola’s house was on fire.
EIGHT
“They’re leaving,” Brynn said.
“All of them?” Thursday asked.
“Yeah. Wait. No. Almost everyone. Mr. Miller’s still there, plus some other guy.”
Vasilis went to the window and looked out. “Arthur Dawson,” he said. “Runs Dawson’s. Probably Miller’s best friend in town.”
“He armed?” I asked.
“Oh yeah.”
“What now?” I asked.
“Take to the roof?” Thursday suggested.
“Wait, what the fuck is that?” Brynn asked. The rest of us stacked up by the window to peer through the crack to see what she was talking about.
Sebastian stood on the street, his face shaded by a baseball cap. In front of him, a tall, thin man in blue jeans held a pistol in his hand and had another holstered at his hip. Sebastian’s rifle, though, was leaning against a parked car, and Sebastian had some stubby black device in his hand.
Sebastian stepped up to his friend and jabbed him in the side while simultaneously muffling him with an elbow around the face. Arthur went down, thrashing.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Brynn asked.
“Taser,” Vulture said.
“Whatever it is,” I said, heading for the stairs, “we’re going to stop him.”
Informal decision making is great: when there’s time, you bicker about what to do; when there isn’t, you just go for it. My friends were right behind me.
The ground floor of the library was empty, had been empty for days. It already looked abandoned—rats gathered on the checkout counter. Sunlight cut thin swaths across the floor, from where it broke through the edges of the barricade shutters.
I reached the front door and carelessly threw the bar to the side. My motives here weren’t entirely altruistic: I wanted out. The door swung outward and the day poured in, blinding me for a second.
As my eyes adjusted, a rat ran out the door. Well, it tried to run out the door. No sooner had it crossed the threshold than green fire burst from its body and it collapsed, lifeless, on the stoop outside.
Everyone saw, I think, because I threw out my arm to block the way but no one tried to leave.
“The window,” Brynn said.
I tossed back the shutter from the nearest window and opened the pane. I couldn’t see anything, but that meant nothing. I edged my soulless hand out the window, and sure enough it tingled and glowed pale green.
On the street outside, Mr. Dawson lay motionless on the street. Sebastian knelt over him with a hunting knife in an ice-pick grip, stabbing the corpse of his friend over and over. It must take a massive amount of pain to raise the barrier.
Sebastian saw me looking and raised his head to meet my eyes. “I can’t believe you killed him!” he shouted in a sarcastic tone. Then he switched to menacing. “You’ll wait in there until everyone comes back from whatever chaos you tricked my wife into causing. I’ll let down the barrier and you’ll see how the town of Pendleton, Montana, deals with a bunch of freak murderers like you.”
Crack.
I jumped at the sound of gunfire. I’d never been a particularly jumpy person before all of this.
Adrenaline
kicked in.
“Turns out bullets don’t have souls!” Thursday shouted from the door. More gunfire. He and Doomsday were both shooting.
Sebastian reeled, maybe hit. He spun a little and dashed behind the hood of the nearest car. Bullets wouldn’t get through the engine block, sadly, or the Days might have still had a chance. If they brought him down, the barrier would drop with him.
They stopped firing.
“What now?” Thursday asked.
“Told you we need a drone,” Vulture said.
“Not helping, Vulture,” Doomsday said.
“I’ll check all the windows,” I said. I was the only one who could do it safely.
I thought doing the rounds would give the adrenaline a chance to clear my system, but I was just too jacked up and nervous for my body to consider calming down. Each time I put my hand through the barrier at a different window, I inched closer and closer to overwhelming nausea. It needed doing, though.
The last window, the fifteenth one, was in the living room upstairs. I put my hand through, felt that green fire, and dry-retched. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate something.
There was no way out.
The townspeople would come back and see Arthur Dawson stabbed to death on the asphalt. Sebastian would drop the barrier, and dozens of angry, armed, innocent townspeople would storm this place. And what? Citizen’s arrest us? Lynch us?
I could only come up with two sources of hope: the Days might kill Sebastian—maybe he was already bleeding out, or maybe he’d stick his head up at just the wrong second—or maybe Isola or Gertrude would find their way back and . . . and I guess kill him themselves.
Slim hope, either way.
Maybe one of us could rush the barrier. The witch’s fire took a while to kill Heather. Maybe one of us could rush the barrier and kill Sebastian and the rest of us could make a break for it.
I sat down on that same fucking chair I’d spent way too much of the past couple days sitting on, and dropped my head into my hands as my brain and stomach raced.
It should be Vasilis. I mean, mostly because he was the odd man out and I’d rather lose him than anyone else. It should be Vasilis because he was the one who didn’t do anything for months when he knew there was something evil going on. He was the one who didn’t step up. Hell, he was the one who was too afraid to let Heather heal on her own time and rushed the ritual and got her killed.
Cold logic became a sort of hate as it coursed through my brain. Vasilis deserved to die, and noble sacrifice was about the best he could do. I could talk him into rushing Sebastian.
No, the fuck I couldn’t.
That snapped me out of it. There’s only so far our thoughts can wander outside our ethics before something kicks in and brings us back.
If Vasilis deserved anything, it was to run a library and drink tea and study magic and maybe fall in love again one day. To get over Heather.
Shit. Heather.
I looked over. She was still on the table where she’d died. Atop her, The Book of Barrow sat where Doomsday had set it down.
She could get through the barrier.
“Hey!” I shouted down the stairs. “Hey, guys!”
* * *
“I would like the record to state my objection to this plan,” Thursday said, “so that when it goes horribly wrong I won’t even have to say I told you so.”
“I would like the record to state I think this is metal as fuck,” Vulture said, “so that no matter how this goes I’ll be right.”
“Boys!” Doomsday said.
“If this works,” Vasilis said, “she will be alive so long as Doomsday and I hold the ritual space. Our own life energy will hold open the gate. Unless we condemn another soul to death and send it to Barrow in her place, she will die again as soon as we drop the ritual. We might be able to hold it an hour, without risking our own lives. Once it’s over, once Heather has passed through the gate that second time, there’s no bringing her back. Not even temporarily. Barrow, uh, won’t be happy with any of us when he doesn’t get his due. He probably won’t seek revenge, but he probably won’t heed our call ever again either.”
We nodded, solemn.
I was beyond fear, firmly into the realm of awe. We called them endless spirits, or sometimes demons, but as I thought about what we were going to do, I realized what they were: gods. We were about to risk pissing off a non-abstract, non - bearded - dude - in - the - sky god. I wasn’t in awe of Barrow. I was in awe of Doomsday, of Vasilis, for that level of courage.
Fortunately, none of the rest of us had to participate in the actual spellcasting. We stood in a semicircle several steps away, outside the line of salt that encircled the table.
Vasilis spoke in Greek, then put his hands on one of Heather’s shoulders.
Doomsday said her part: “We ask you, Barrow, to animate this vessel.” She put her hands on Heather’s other shoulder.
“We open this space as ritual space,” Vasilis said, in English this time, “and hold it so, until such time as we close it.”
Silent, green fire erupted from the salt and encircled our friends.
When I was younger, I used to spread that conventional wisdom that magic, real magic, was subtle, not something you could see. Nope. Turns out that magic, real magic, ain’t subtle for shit.
“We ask you, Barrow, to animate this vessel!” Doomsday’s voice filled every corner of the room, then faded to nothing.
Vasilis released his hands from Heather’s shoulder, then Doomsday did the same.
Then Heather screamed. Then she sat up.
Doomsday and Vasilis stood statue-still. They had no energy to spare on speaking or moving. By their expressions, they were in pain.
Brynn’s turn. “Heather,” she said, as loudly as she could while still trying to calm someone down. “It’s okay, Heather.”
Heather’s scream subsided, and she jumped off the table to her feet. She stumbled for a moment, then caught her balance. She was still inside the circle of flames.
“Is it safe?” she asked.
“You can pass through, yes,” Brynn said.
Heather came through. The ouroboros tattoo still looked fresh on her arm. It still looked like it was healing.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You died,” Brynn said.
“I remember that.”
“Listen,” Brynn said, taking in a deep breath. This was hard on her. “You’re not back for good.”
“How long do I have?”
“Maybe an hour,” Brynn said. She choked up, was barely able to get the words out. “As long as they can withstand the pain, basically.”
“Okay,” Heather said. It clearly wasn’t okay, and tears were forming in Heather’s eyes.
“Sebastian Miller did this. He did all of it. He killed Damien and Loki and Isola, and now Arthur Dawson, and who knows who else. And we’re trapped inside right now, until he drops a barrier of witch’s fire. By choice or by lack of consciousness. And that barrier? Only the dead can pass.”
Vulture stepped forward and gave her a ratty black hoodie. She pulled it over her naked body, and it was long enough to serve as a dress.
Thursday stepped forward and gave her a gun. She took it in her hand, carefully, then dropped the magazine to count bullets before seating it back in.
Brynn had given her knowledge. Doomsday and Vasilis had given her this brief respite from death. Thursday and Vulture had both offered her gifts.
I had nothing. That felt wrong somehow. The whole scene was so goddammed biblical that I felt like I probably should have had something to give to her.
“I’ve got nothing to give you,” I said, feeling a bit silly as I did.
“I’m dead, and nothing’s going to stop that, so basically anything I say right now, I can’t really be held responsible for?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Brynn has a big ole fat crush on you,” she said, then laughed. “She’s falling in love with you. She tol
d me herself.”
“Heather!” Brynn said. It turns out, Brynn is capable of blushing.
“Okay, I’m gonna go kill this fucking guy for you losers.”
* * *
She ran out the front door, gun blazing. I mean, I couldn’t see actual muzzle blasts or whatever in the daylight but she just ran straight for that sedan with the pistol firing, over and over. She wasn’t saving ammo. That wasn’t good.
It flushed him out, though. He must have seen her coming and he ran. Thursday took a shot from the door and hit him in the leg. He dropped like he was a bike with a stick in his spokes and face-planted.
Heather had a wild smile on her face as she dropped the gun and leapt onto his chest. She’d never meant to shoot him.
Her hands went over his throat, choking off his screams.
I put my hand into the barrier over the door, watching the green light flicker over the gray mottled wound, and I tried my hardest to disassociate from the nausea that rose again in the pit of my stomach.
After a short moment, the green light disappeared. I reached farther, cautiously, letting my wrist pass through the threshold. Nothing. My whole arm; nothing.
“Go!” I said, and we ran out the door.
The plan was to get Heather inside for a final good-bye while we packed up the bookmobile for as quick an exit as we could manage. As soon as I got near Heather, she stood up.
Sebastian rolled over and threw up.
He wasn’t dead. He’d just been unconscious.
“Why isn’t he dead?” I asked.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Heather said.
“What’s that?”
“We make him fucking confess to the whole goddammed town. Bring everyone back to his place, let them see his basement.”
“Then he doesn’t die,” I said, surprising myself. I didn’t realize just how deeply invested in the death of that man I’d become. “He’ll just go to jail.”
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