Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  He turned to leave. Asanti called after him, “What about the bookshop? Did Team One take that down too?”

  The monsignor paused. “Of course not,” he said. “We didn’t know the book had been damaged then. There was no need to purify the bookshop until later.”

  • • •

  Sal sat by Perry’s bedside. I promise, she told him silently. I will get you out of here. I will keep you safe. Somehow.

  A footstep behind her. Liam. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “It’s okay, you know. They’re not going to hurt Perry.”

  “How can you be sure? He was possessed. Contaminated. How do I know that someday some cardinal won’t—”

  “Because I’m still alive.”

  Sal had forgotten that Liam had once been possessed himself.

  “Every case is different, and whatever went south on this one, he was nowhere near it.”

  Sal nodded, but didn’t move. And then Liam’s hand was on her elbow, gently guiding her to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you home.”

  They walked through the Old Gallery of the Late Crusades on their way out. Sal caught a whiff of acrid smoke, the kind that came from burning treated lumber, lingering in the air as they passed.

  • • •

  Once out of the Vatican complex and onto the streets of Rome, Sal took her arm back. Liam was content to walk side-by-side.

  “Every time I think I have this job figured out, what’s going on, what’s expected of me, something like this comes and slaps me in the face. I mean, I knew the work was dangerous. I’m okay with dangerous. I’m not okay with my superiors not having my back.”

  “We have your back.”

  “The team does. But Menchú and Asanti don’t have the codes to the nukes.”

  “I told you. There aren’t any nukes.”

  She didn’t laugh.

  They walked in silence.

  “The worst thing is, I catch myself wondering if they were right. One life for four million is pretty easy math, and if we have a demonic possession detector, no one’s told me about it. What if she wasn’t clean? What if we aren’t clean?”

  Liam sighed. “I worry about that every day. All we can do is the best we can.”

  “It doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “On the bad days, I worry about that too.”

  Sal searched Liam’s face. “This was a bad day, right? Tell me this isn’t fair to average. I need this day to be one of the bad ones.”

  “It was pretty bad,” Liam said. “Could have been worse, though.”

  They were almost at her building. Sal noticed that her hand had fallen back against Liam’s arm without her noticing. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Well, what of it? Wanting companionship after a close call with death was a psychologically proven phenomenon. Or at least a baby-boom-nine-months-after-9/11 proven phenomenon.

  Then she remembered something else Liam had told her. She hastily took her hand back. Liam looked at her, confused.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Aren’t you a monk?”

  Liam shook his head. “No, I just live with monks.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not just saying that to get into my pants?”

  Liam blinked. “Is that . . . ? I hadn’t thought you wanted . . .” He pulled himself together. “I swear to you. I am not a monk.”

  Sal took a moment to think about that.

  “So, no vows?”

  A slow grin spread across Liam’s face. “Not that kind.”

  Sal couldn’t help her own smile in return. When his lips met hers, they were just as hungry. She kissed him as she fumbled for her keys to the building. He kissed her back as they went inside, and they kissed each other as they stumbled up the stairs and into her apartment. Finally, she forced a break. “Wait.”

  “What is it?”

  Sal felt her face heating. She couldn’t believe she was about to say this. “Do men who live with monks carry condoms?”

  Liam threw his head back and laughed until Sal had no choice but to force him to shut up with more kissing.

  The answer, as it turned out, was yes.

  • • •

  It took some doing, but after a week of walking the streets and asking questions in her rapidly-improving Italian, Sal found Aaron the tour guide. She was almost sorry when she did; the search had been such a comfortingly familiar activity. But in the end, she didn’t need comfort. She needed answers.

  Aaron didn’t seem surprised to see Sal walking up to the terrace of the small sidewalk café where he was installed with a newspaper and an espresso. He rose as she neared and gestured for her to sit down. Almost as soon as she did, a waiter was at her elbow, depositing an espresso and two small paper tubes of sugar. Sal wondered if Aaron had been expecting her. If she had only found him because he allowed her to.

  Sal was waiting for the waiter to get safely out of earshot before speaking, but Aaron beat her to it.

  “No backup?”

  Sal shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you helped me. And you seem like a nice guy who doesn’t deserve to be set on fire. Then again, you also tracked down my phone number, which I never gave you; you seem to know who I work for, which is more than I’ve told my own family; and, frankly, you have been entirely too convenient throughout this entire goddamned mess. My turn.”

  “Haven’t I helped you enough?”

  Sal ignored this. “Who are you with? INTERPOL? One of the local agencies?”

  “I’m not with the police.”

  “Then who are you with? And why are you allowed to know about what’s going on—which you clearly do—and live while poor Katie ends up chloroformed?”

  Aaron sighed. “Information is like a contagion. It spreads. Your employers do an admirable job controlling that, but they aren’t the only players in the game. As much as they might want to eliminate the knowledge and use of magic completely, not every vector can be silenced as quietly as a young stewardess. The world is vast, Sally Brooks, and not even the Vatican can see the entire picture.”

  Leaving a few euros on the table, Aaron got up, tucking his umbrella and newspaper under one arm. Sal caught his elbow. “I’m going to tell my team about this conversation.”

  “Of course you will,” he said. “You already promised the priest you would. Don’t worry about me. As it happens, my superiors and yours are on very close terms.”

  Sal could have let it go at that, but she had one last question.

  “The collapsed bookshop. Was that you?”

  Aaron smiled.

  And then Sal wasn’t holding his elbow anymore. His eyes grew in her field of vision until all Sal could see was white. A white so bright it burned. She felt a rush of air, and the brush of feathers against her skin.

  By the time she managed to blink past the afterimages left on her retinas, Aaron was gone.

  Episode 4: A Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  by Mur Lafferty

  1.

  Browsing Asanti’s library by herself was Sal’s new favorite hobby. She had never seen a place like this, though it reminded her most of a moldy old library relatives had shown her in Savannah, Georgia, with humidity-damaged first editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Gone With the Wind and A Christmas Carol.

  Her team kept suggesting she should relax between missions. She really didn’t need to be at headquarters sitting around, they said, why didn’t she enjoy Rome when she had the chance? But in a city where she didn’t speak the language and had few—all right, the number was closer to zero—friends, Sal had nothing to do. There was only so long she could read, listen to music, and lie over Skype to friends in America about her life in Rome. At least here in the library she could learn something, or maybe run into a team member and have a real conversation.

  Sal used to think stakeouts were bad. Lots of sitting in cars that reeked of cigarettes, lots of shitty coffee, lots of fatte
ning foods. Five minutes of action. Then more sitting.

  This job thankfully didn’t involve sitting around in cars, but waiting for demon attacks made stakeouts feel like bird-watching—which, to be fair, Sal also hated.

  And the waiting. The waiting made her as tense as a guitar string—Sal would definitely be an E string—her spine taut and tingly, ready to spring into action. But when there was no action, the tension became exhausting.

  Griping about boredom did, however, allow her to pointedly not think about Liam.

  Her stormy emotions after their night together had nearly been overwhelming. Liam left quietly in the night, much to Sal’s relief. The sex had been phenomenal, no doubt about that. Both times. But had she been with him just because he was the only person on the team she could relate to? And had he been drawn to her for the same reason? He clearly had some issues with Grace, the only other member of the team close to his age that he could maybe have something in common with.

  Then there was the question of his faith. Liam was no priest, and they’d never talked much about faith beyond his jokes and the job’s requirements, but in the dark bedroom she’d seen his body covered with ecclesiastical tattoos, saints and knots and thorns and blood. What did that mean? Could the man who’d marked himself like that walk away from casual sex with healthy feelings? Sal did not look forward to that conversation. Or any conversation, really. Perhaps if she pretended nothing had happened, he would too.

  Sal browsed Asanti’s books, careful to keep to the open area of the library and not edge into the locked rooms where the seriously dangerous books were kept. She couldn’t help but think it would be fascinating to go into the forbidden rooms, but she had enough to keep her busy in the allowed section.

  She thought of them as Asanti’s books, which seemed odd. They definitely didn’t belong to the archivist; if anything they were closer to her prisoners than her children. But Asanti seemed to have a different view of the books than the others. As far as Sal was concerned, there was only one way to look at these horror movie props that had complicated, ruined, and taken so many lives.

  Wandering the library, Sal tried to determine what ancient language the books were written in. Then she would try to figure out Asanti’s cataloging system. Sometimes books with the same languages were shelved together. One section consisted entirely of green books of the same shape, like an ancient encyclopedia set. Another had one shelf holding books, and then the shelf underneath was empty, and then the third shelf had books again, and the next shelf was empty.

  Not all the books were shelved, either. Stacks of books, some of them eight feet high, created labyrinthine walkways, making Sal feel very young as she lost herself among the strange books. She wished Asanti would give her some hints as to what these books were, but as much as the team encouraged her to relax in the off hours, they each seemed pretty busy with their own things, all the time.

  Asanti seemed to be in the library whenever Sal was in there. Despite telling anecdotes of her large family, she didn’t appear to see them much. Surely she had her own place, but Sal had never heard about it. Menchú was always bustling about looking very busy on his way to or from something. Grace was simply Not There; Sal only saw her when they had a mission or a meeting. Liam constantly seemed to be searching for one thing or another online. Busy people. And then there was Sal.

  As if she heard Sal’s lonely thinking, Asanti entered the library, swearing loudly in French. Sal assumed it was swearing, based on the vehemence and the stomping. She began to rummage through her desk drawers, fishing out a dull pencil and making notes on a scrap of paper.

  “I can’t understand French, but I have the feeling I should be offended,” Sal said mildly as she emerged from the stacks. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine, it’s always fine, we chase the demons, we get the books, we shelve the books, we save the day. Every day is sunny here,” Asanti snapped. She finished writing and stared at what she had written, her dark face going ashen.

  “I may be making a jump here, but you seem very not fine,” Sal said. “What’s going on? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Non,” Asanti said, tossing the paper to her desk. “I’m going away for a few days. Menchú has the care of the library.”

  “Where are you going?” Sal asked, edging closer as if Asanti were a bomb that Sal had to defuse. She had never seen the archivist this agitated. She reached her hand out to pull a tissue from Asanti’s desk.

  Asanti looked up, her cheeks glistening with tears. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  Sal nodded unapologetically. “It’s my job. Hard to turn off.” She waited.

  Asanti sighed. “An old friend has died. I’m going to his funeral.”

  Sal handed Asanti the tissue without speaking, and the archivist took it with a word of thanks. When she wiped her eyes, Sal glanced at what she had been scribbling. They looked like the coordinates that Asanti received from the Orb when it alerted her to demonic activity.

  “How long will you be gone?” Sal asked.

  Asanti sniffled, then folded the tissue into a square and stuck it into a pocket in her black pants. “A few days at most. Travel, the funeral, and I have to help his niece get his affairs in order.” Asanti was looking down at her desk. Then she sighed and looked Sal in the eyes. “You may as well know, the old friend is my mentor, the man who recruited me to this job so many years ago. He retired to Glasgow. His name is—was—Father Seamus Hunter. We’ve remained close after he left.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sal said. “Can I do anything while you’re gone?”

  “I’m sure you can,” Asanti said absently as she tidied her desk, sliding a magazine over the scrap of paper with the coordinates. “Thank you for listening. I must go pack now.”

  She turned, the corner of her purple tunic catching some papers on her desk, spilling them to the floor.

  “I got it, don’t worry about it,” Sal said, putting her hands on Asanti’s shoulder to keep her from bending down to clean up the mess.

  Asanti gave her a grateful smile and swept from the library.

  Sal bent and began gathering the papers. Most of them were in Italian or French, but the coordinates were in numbers, and those Sal could read. Chewing on her lip, she thought for a moment, then folded the paper and stuck it in her back pocket.

  • • •

  Grateful that Liam wasn’t in his computer lab, Sal booted up the laptop and logged on as RIVAL DOG.

  Liam had set up the guest partition on his computer when the others complained that they needed to use his machine sometimes. The Order had computers, but they were quite old. Liam’s personal laptop was portable and he was always tinkering with it to improve it. The guest login had limited abilities, but at least Sal could get online. The username convention had been Grace’s idea, Sal had learned, in poking fun at Liam’s desire to mark and guard his territory.

  Sal searched for the coordinates and Glasgow came up, not surprising her at all, though apparently the Orb hadn’t been feeling cooperative enough to provide a street address. Time to play Liam. A search on Glasgow produced millions of links, with the top hit being a Yelp review of a restaurant: Thistle on the Moor. She tapped a pen on the table, trying to figure out why Asanti got incoming information from the Orb but felt the need to lie to her—and, presumably, the team. A lie of omission, but still. Asanti had been with the organization longer than anyone; she would be the last person Sal would think would betray them. Sure, she had her differences with Menchú, but so did they all.

  Menchú had not been pleased when Sal had finally gotten him aside long enough to explain about the mysterious Aaron. Sal did not have a lot of room to point fingers at Asanti for withholding information, she realized, but she was still burning with curiosity.

  She’d made it this far trusting her gut. And her gut was telling her to find out what Asanti was hiding.

  And anyway, she didn’t know for sure that Asanti hadn’t told the r
est of the team the truth. Sal could easily have been left in the dark simply because she was the newest. It could be a matter of Asanti not trusting Sal, not of the rest of the team not being able to trust Asanti.

  Sal left the browser open and the paper with the coordinates stuck underneath the laptop. She took a deep breath and stood. She needed to talk to her teammates, and she needed to deal with the most uncomfortable first.

  Sal sent a text to Liam, asking to meet him at a coffee bar near her apartment.

  Sure thing. Gimme 45, came the immediate response.

  Forty-five minutes was enough time to see Menchú in the interim.

  • • •

  “Come in,” Menchú called from his room after Sal knocked.

  Sal had seen his door when she’d been given the tour, but had never been inside. Menchú lived in spartan quarters that seemed to better fit poverty-focused Franciscans instead of the wealth on display at the Vatican. He had a simple single bed against the far wall, a bedside table with a lamp and a notepad, a dresser, and a desk. At the foot of the bed was a wooden trunk with a large lock. Beside the desk was a bookcase, packed tightly with both dusty old books and a few newer tomes on religion and mythology. Lying atop the bookshelf, as if it didn’t belong, was a current mystery novel by an author whose name Sal recognized.

  “One moment,” Menchú said, hunched over a book. He gestured to the room vaguely. “Make yourself at home.”

  On the dresser were many pictures of the team through the years. Younger Menchú and Asanti with some older people Sal didn’t recognize. Newer pictures of Liam and Grace, looking as if they—well, at least Liam—had just come from a workout or a rough assignment, Liam with a swelling bruise on his jaw and his hair mussed, and Grace pristine as ever. One photo caught Sal’s eye, near the edge of the photographs, of Asanti, Grace, and Menchú. They stood in front of a pyramid in what looked like South America, the sun rising over their shoulders. Asanti and Menchú looked much younger, but Grace looked the same.

  “Where was this taken?” she asked, picking up the frame.