Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  “No. The silver in the cross is protecting you. You’ll be fine.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you just telling me that so I won’t freak out and try to run?”

  Grace shrugged. “You’re welcome to run if you want. But if you do, you’ll just end up stuck beside the Captain.”

  Katie blanched.

  • • •

  Since looking at the goo didn’t seem to be doing them any good, Father Menchú led a general retreat to the aft deck, where they could at least warn off anyone trying to board the boat.

  Liam found, to his disgust, that his laptop was just as out of commission as the team’s phones and the ship’s radio, and, grumbling, broke out paper, a mechanical stopwatch, and a slide rule. After timing the spread of the goo under the captain, he worked out that they had about an hour before it got deep enough to swamp the boat.

  “And once it hits the water, we’ll all be in it. Literally and figuratively.”

  “Unless the field around the boat keeps it contained,” Sal pointed out.

  “You want to bet the Mediterranean on that?” asked Liam.

  “Okay, so we have somewhat less than an hour to figure out what’s going on and stop it.”

  Sal looked over to where Katie stood by the Captain, holding up a glass of water with a straw so that he could drink. She didn’t seem to be listening, but Sal lowered her voice anyway.

  “Was I lying to her earlier? Is she going to be okay?”

  “Unless Team One gets wind of what’s going on and decides to solve this little problem with a tactical nuke.”

  “They have tactical nukes?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “They do have a whole a lot of napalm though.”

  Father Menchú gestured for their attention. “This is all academic. Phones are out, and we can’t leave this ship. We couldn’t call for Team One even if they were the only option we had left.” He leveled his stare at his team, and Sal felt her spine stiffen reflexively. “But we still have a little time, and I have faith that this group will come up with a better solution.”

  Sal hoped like hell that he was right.

  4.

  Forty minutes later, Father Menchú’s faith in the team’s problem-solving abilities wasn’t looking especially well-placed.

  “As far as I can tell,” Liam explained as he ran a hand through his short red burr in exasperation, “what we’ve got is every part of a demon infestation except the actual demon: hallucinations, psychosis, evil goo, the works. What we don’t have is a demon at the center of it all.”

  “How do we get rid of all of that normally?” asked Sal.

  “It goes away when we banish the demon or close the book.”

  “So, why can’t we close the book now?”

  “It’s already closed. Just leaking.”

  “But what if we opened it, then closed it again? That could act like a kind of reset button, right?”

  Liam looked at Sal like she was the product of a demon-induced hallucination. “Are you implying that this situation would be helped by adding an actual demon to it?”

  “No, but remember Madrid? We didn’t have to shove all the weird crap going on in that apartment back through the book. As soon as we took care of the center of the infestation, the whole accessory pack got sucked back in with it. The problem here is that we’ve got all of the extras, but no main guy to tell them it’s time to go home. If we open the book, it gives the goo something to attach to. Then we close it again, banish the demon to the other side, and the goo goes away along with it. As long as we get it into the shroud immediately, it all stays contained, right?”

  “Doing what with a what now?”

  “More important,” Sal forged ahead, “if we open the book, it might trigger the Orb, and then Asanti will know that we need backup.”

  “Napalm kind of backup?”

  “I’m not saying I want to die a fiery death, but it’s probably better than millions dead of the demonic flu.”

  Liam opened his mouth to object. Then closed it again. Sal guessed it was the best she was going to get.

  “Great. I’m going to do it.”

  She turned on her heel and took off. That spurred Liam into action.

  “Wait! You can’t just—”

  “Not talking about it, just doing it.”

  “But Father Menchú—”

  “Will be able to honestly say he had no idea what I was planning if this all goes horribly wrong.”

  Behind her, Sal could barely hear a muttered, “If this goes horribly wrong, we’re all going to be dead.”

  • • •

  Unfortunately for Sal’s grand plans, Liam also had long legs, and so was only seconds behind her when she arrived on the aft deck. The instant he had Father Menchú in sight, he started yelling about Sal’s “harebrained scheme,” and since her scheme didn’t actually take that long to explain, Father Menchú was fully briefed by the time Sal reached book-snatching distance.

  Menchú gave Sal a look. “Is that what you were planning?”

  “Well, ‘unleash bloody demon hell’ wasn’t actually part of the plan, but I suppose Liam’s right that it’s a possibility.”

  Menchú took this in, then nodded. “All right.”

  “All right?!?” said Liam.

  “It makes sense, I don’t have another suggestion, and we’re rapidly running out of boat.”

  Grace shrugged, as though unconcerned about the prospect of being consumed by evil demon goo.

  Liam was not mollified. “You can’t be serious. Us ending up dead is the best possible end this plan could have.”

  Father Menchú put his hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “Is the bridge still accessible?”

  “Last I checked.”

  “Then let’s see if we can move out of port. Just in case.”

  • • •

  Katie cut the final line securing the ship to the dock. As the last member of the crew aboard who was still standing, she felt like it was her place. She and the priest had finally gotten Skip down to the deck, and she’d managed to give him a little more water, but he had lost consciousness a few minutes a later.

  Katie felt the engine sputter beneath her feet. They were limping, but it was enough. She looked over at the blonde woman, who stood nearby. The silence felt heavy between them. Katie had worked for foreign princes, venture capitalists, and movie stars. She had never before been at a loss for something to say.

  When she’d taken her first training course, her instructor had said that if they were ever at a loss for how to deal with a guest, they should ask if they could help. Most people were hard-pressed to take offense at someone who was trying to assist them. She’d quipped, “If you get taken over by Somali pirates, just ask if they need something. You’re not the captain. You don’t have to be a hero, you just have to survive.”

  Katie felt a puff of laughter escape her lips.

  “What is it?” the woman asked.

  “Just something I learned in training.”

  “You trained for this?”

  Katie shrugged. “I work for billionaires. They taught us to be prepared for anything.” She looked over the deck, one half of which was now covered in a thick lake of goo. “Never covered anything like this, though.”

  The other woman nodded.

  Katie wanted to ask again if they were going to be okay, but held her tongue. She didn’t want to sound like she didn’t trust these strangers. Even though she didn’t. Quite.

  “You’re going to get through this,” the woman said, as if she sensed her doubts. “I know this is scary, but these people are very good at their jobs.”

  “Did you train for this?”

  “I trained to be a cop. That means that anything that tries to take you down has to go through me first.”

  • • •

  Sal told herself there was nothing to worry about. The plan was simple, just like she’d o
utlined it to Liam. Open the book, trigger the Orb, release a demon onto a yacht that was quickly being covered in evil goo. Close the book, get it back into the shroud, and all of their problems would be solved.

  Sal carefully set the book on the floor and unwrapped it using a pair of silver serving tongs Katie had produced from the boat’s kitchen supplies. Not as good as a three-hundred-year-old crucifix, maybe, but better than trying to use her bare hands. Father Menchú had underlined that quite strongly. She’d gotten lucky in Perry’s storage unit, she couldn’t count on escaping direct contact with a demon unscathed again.

  Sal was in the owner’s cabin, which was, for the moment, relatively goo-free. The boat’s silverware—solid silver, not plate, some people really did have more money than sense—was laid out in a circle around her, and a circle of salt poured inside it just for good measure. Katie had brought a box of it from the galley when she’d gone for the silver, and no one had the heart to tell her that salt wasn’t actually a thing for keeping out demons. And what the hell, it couldn’t hurt, right?

  Sal could barely see out the cabin windows—just enough to tell they were in open water. She gripped the fresh silver cross Liam had given her. Her previous one had gone to Katie, and besides, it was already half covered in tarnish. Sal hadn’t even noticed when that happened. How quickly had the supernatural become normal that she didn’t even notice the effects the silver was protecting her from? She appreciated that Liam, in spite of his doubts, was giving her stupid plan the best chance of success that he could.

  Of course, it wasn’t like they had any better options.

  “Drive it or park it.”

  That was Grace. Standing behind her with a long-handled broom. Ready to knock her away from the book and move in herself if Sal failed.

  And if Grace failed too? Or if the demon didn’t clean up his mess after him? In that case . . . Sal put that thought firmly out of her mind. If this didn’t work, whatever happened next would almost certainly be someone else’s problem.

  Sal placed the book on the floor and leaned in to flip open the cover. The plan was sound. Everything would be fine. It wouldn’t come to what she’d described to Katie. And if it did . . . that’s why Katie was with Father Menchú and Liam in a salted silver circle of their own on the foredeck, as far from the goo as they could get. If Katie didn’t live through this, she would at least be the last one to go down.

  Sal wrapped the cross’s silver chain around her hand. This was what she had signed up for. First with the NYPD, and again with the Black Archives. No matter how weird things got, that hadn’t changed.

  Sal opened the book.

  • • •

  There was a rush of light. Sal had always thought demons lived in the dark. But it was light. Everywhere. And a smell of salt and kelp, and the tug of a current against her hands, as though she could feel the rip in the world that the damaged book had created, and all the things that were rushing through it. In both directions. The pull wanted her. To fill the hole or to feed the stream, Sal wasn’t sure. There was just the current, and the burn in her hand where she held the cross, hot against her skin. Too hot to hold. Must hold. Must . . . She was gasping for air, she was . . .

  • • •

  Sal was on the floor. Looking up at Grace, who had dropped the broom and was shoving the shroud-wrapped book into a bag filled with assorted silverware. Just for good measure.

  “Did it work?” Sal asked.

  “If by work you mean: Did a giant river of goo nearly suck you back into the book along with it, then yes, it worked.”

  “Am I okay?”

  Grace squinted at her. “You’re an idiot. But a living idiot.”

  Sal decided that was good enough, and went back to being unconscious.

  5.

  Sal discovered that a side benefit of her stupid plan was that the powers that be let her go straight home instead of debriefing at the Vatican with the rest of the team. Once the monsignor was satisfied Sal wasn’t actually possessed, of course. But determining that was a process Sal remembered only dimly, and since it involved more chanting and incense than needle sticks and intimate scrubbing, she decided it was far more pleasant than doing decon after an anthrax scare.

  When enough of her mind came back, she managed to rouse herself enough to ask Father Menchú a question.

  “The Captain?”

  “Didn’t make it.”

  “Katie? Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s with the rest of the Fair Weather’s crew, at a hotel.”

  Sal thought Father Menchú said something else, something encouraging, before leaving her apartment and closing the door behind him, but she might have already been asleep, and imagined it.

  • • •

  The pleasant haze of sleep was shattered by a phone call.

  Sal groped for her cell, finally locating it in the pocket of her crumpled pants, and brought it to her ear.

  “You need to go back to Ostia. Now.”

  Instantly awake to the tone of the words if not their meaning, Sal sat up. Her feet hit the cold tile floor, sending a shock of adrenaline through her system. Then her mind caught up with the rest of her.

  “What? Who is this?”

  “It’s Aaron.”

  “The tour guide? How did you get this number?”

  “Just come back to the marina. Now.”

  Sal was about to hang up. She knew she should call Father Menchú. She certainly should not be following the instructions of a strange man who had called her in the middle of the night on a phone he never should have been able to reach.

  And then she heard the faint sound of sirens on the other end of the call.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  • • •

  The cab had to drop her nearly five blocks away from the water, due to the firemen and emergency vehicles thwarting even her Roman taxi driver from getting closer. Once she was on foot, Sal used a combination of body language and judicious flashes of her badge to force her way through the cordon to the gatehouse at the edge of the marina. A security guard was shouting at the top of his lungs in Italian, his meaning plain even to a monoglot like Sal. At the end of the dock, orange and green flames leapt over the heads of the gathered firefighters, reaching up to paint sky.

  The Fair Weather was burning like a Viking funeral.

  Twenty feet away, Aaron stood in the shadows. Very calmly, Sal walked over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Who did this? Was this you?”

  He shook his head. “No. This was you.”

  Sal let go of him, pulling her hands back in shock. “What? No. I didn’t— We didn’t—” Understanding dawned. “This was to cover up the death of the Captain.”

  “In part.”

  “What’s the other part?” Sal asked, already dreading his answer.

  “To eliminate any possible vectors of contagion. You and your team they can watch over. But the Society can’t give a job to everyone contaminated by the touch of magic.”

  Sal felt the pit of her stomach drop out. Katie.

  • • •

  Katie hadn’t told the others much, just that the Fair Weather had been secured as a crime scene following the disappearance of its Captain and first mate. She and Sarah had gone to the hotel bar to mourn, speculate, and drink, until the hour and the vodka had finally borne the other woman off to bed.

  Katie stayed at the bar, telling herself that she was waiting for Luc, making sure that he got in all right, even though she knew he was almost certainly finding comfort in the arms of a handsome young Italian man, and would not return until morning.

  Eventually, Katie returned to her room, where she found she was not drunk enough to banish the scenes that played across her mind whenever she closed her eyes. She called room service. Ordered another drink. The priest had said the bill would be covered. He’d told her not to worry. Easy for him to say. He had also said that something from the book had infected Paul and Skip. The same book she
had carried from Rome to Ostia.

  She remembered how the tar-like wave had surged at the end, rising up as though to swamp the boat before suddenly receding into Mr. Norse’s cabin, like blood washing down a drain. She fingered the cross that still hung around her neck. Was she infected too? If she nicked herself in the shower, would her body collapse like Paul’s? Would her black blood fill the pipes, spill out into the streets, until the world was covered in a black tide?

  A knock. Room service. Just as her hand reached the knob, the door burst in, followed by a man in black who reeked of smoke. He pressed a cloth against her face. Katie inhaled to scream, and the smoke smell was replaced by something sweet and rotten.

  Everything went black.

  • • •

  Sal called Liam, then Menchú, who told them where the crew had been put up for the night. The three of them arrived at the hotel just as the coroners were bringing out a draped body on a stretcher. Menchú approached them, and spoke quietly.

  Of course, if Padre would like to say a prayer over the body, the attendants would be happy to wait a moment. The signorina was in no hurry.

  When Menchú lifted the sheet, Katie’s lips were pale blue against her skin and the white cotton.

  “They didn’t give her one to the head?” Sal murmured to Liam.

  “They wouldn’t have wanted her to bleed.”

  Sal felt sick.

  • • •

  Asanti was livid. The team was gathered near her desk, where she was loudly arguing with the monsignor in charge of their little division of the Black Archives.

  “There was no sign that young woman was infected.”

  “There was no sign she wasn’t, and she had more contact with the book than anyone. Our superiors decided they couldn’t take the risk.”

  “Your job is to talk them out of stupid ideas. To remind them that burning the innocent and guilty together and letting God sort it out went out of fashion with the Inquisition.”

  The monsignor took a long breath. When he continued, his voice was very low, and very calm. It made the hairs on the back of Sal’s neck stand up. “You don’t know how close they were to ordering the death of everyone who set foot on that boat. You still have a team. You’re welcome.”