“No, they can’t,” I agreed.
“So?”
I don’t know what to tell this old librarian, I thought. It’s not like I have all the answers. Besides, what he’s asking doesn’t have an answer. Not yet. The Others will have to wait and see what happens and—
“I disagree,” he said, eyeing me curiously. “And I don’t appreciate being called ‘this old librarian.’ ”
Crap, I’d been talking out loud again.
“Then again—I am old, and a librarian …”
“Ahh, I’m sorry. I meant to think that, not say it.”
“Doesn’t make me less old.”
I chuckled at this, glad he wasn’t taking what I’d said too seriously. “Granted. But I don’t know your name, and the ‘old’ thing … well, I tend to think out loud. A lot, and not on purpose. Sorry about that. It’s a bad habit that I’m working on—”
“Please don’t,” he said, his eyes serious. “Those thoughts you accidently share are always the honest ones. This world needs more people saying what they think and thinking what they say. And as for my name: Old Librarian will do … for now.” He put out his hand.
I never thought about it that way before, but he was right. Over my three hundred years, I spent a lot of time without any living person in sight. Talking to myself was always a way to combat the loneliness. But what came out tended to upset me and I’d have long, bitter arguments—my voice unwaveringly honest, versus my rationalizing, compromising inner thoughts.
I looked at his hand for a long moment before taking it in mine. “Nice to meet you, Old Librarian.”
“And nice to meet you, Peculiar Girl. Now that those pleasantries are out of the way, I wish to disagree with your earlier point. ‘Wait and see’ is not all they can do. Far from it.”
“I don’t see what else they can do. Not without causing a lot of harm to themselves.”
“True, change is hard. Still, there are ways to minimize the ire they will inevitably draw on themselves as they work for a brighter future. Organized protest and passive resistance, to name a few.”
“Like the Suffragettes and Civil Rights movements. Like Gandhi. Mandela.”
“Yes, but those are grand examples. Back when I ran my congregation, I saw many brave men and women who fought for equal rights in small but very meaningful ways. There were plenty of Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus that never made it to the news. Plenty of brave souls who stood up to bullying without ever being recognized for their bravery. And no single one of them invoked change. But the sum of their deeds … that is another story altogether.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I nodded anyway. I’d mull over his words later. Turning back to the book, I said, “If you’re right and he is Mergen’s avatar, we still don’t know what he eats. All it says is that he’s Turkish and that he’s the deity of Wisdom and Abundance.”
“That’s a start, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” I pulled my purse over my shoulder. I supposed figuring out what that poor Other ate would take some time. “Thank you,” I said, and started for the door. I stopped with one more burning question I had to ask. “You referred to your congregation. So you were a priest before, you know, you became the Old Librarian?” I said, smiling.
He stared at me over the rims of his glasses. “Who said I am no longer a priest?”
“You did. You referred to your congregation in the past tense.”
“Indeed—but only because the flock has thinned after God’s GrandExodus. But His absence doesn’t mean that I don’t have faith anymore. Quite the opposite, in fact. I now have proof that the god I devoted my life to is real.”
“And gone,” I said, regretting my words instantly. I was being rude.
He nodded at this, giving me a patient smile. “And gone—you are quite correct. But my faith was not contingent on His presence before He left. That has not changed just because I know He is gone.”
“So why have it? Faith? Sounds like an unnecessary burden.”
“Perhaps—but then again, our past defines our future, no matter how hard we try to bury it.”
I looked over at my father’s tartan. “Maybe. But some of that stuff is best left in the past.”
“Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. You have a keen mind. Tell me, do you have a campus job, Miss …?”
“I thought we weren’t doing names, Old Librarian.”
“I promise to call you Peculiar Girl, no matter what your name is. I ask for different reasons.” He paused, waiting expectantly.
I obliged. “Darling. Katrina Darling.”
“What a pretty real name you have, Peculiar Girl,” he smirked, not unkindly. “You have a keen mind, and your banter is something I think I would enjoy. Do you have a job? Or rather, would you like one?”
“A job?”
“I need someone to help me catalog and organize this place. The pay is abysmal and the job can take you into the wee hours of the night—but you will have unfettered access to all this.” He gestured around him to the shelves of books bursting with knowledge and the display cases packed with history. “And perhaps we will have time to debate the past and contemplate the future while enjoying the present.”
That would be nice, I thought. “I like working nights,” I finally said. “I’m kind of an insomniac.”
“Very well then. I shall put your name down as the new assistant librarian. Officially it is ten hours a week, which means I will only pay you for a fraction of the time you’ll be working.”
“Great,” I said, wondering if great was the right response when basically agreeing to be an indentured slave.
“Great, indeed. Address?”
“Gardner Hall. Room zero-zero-one.”
He wrote that down on a little notepad he’d pulled from his breast pocket and said, “You start tomorrow.”
He stuck out his hand. I shook it, then headed to the door. At the threshold, I stopped. I wanted to turn around and tell him how he made this scared freshman feel welcome and how much I appreciated having not only a job but a bit of a purpose in my new life. But instead, all I mustered was an awkward “Ahh … thanks,” before leaving.
If I had known that would be the last time I’d see Old Librarian alive, I would have maybe tried to say something a little bit more meaningful.
And I would have asked him for his real name.
* * *
End of Part 1
Part II
Prologue
He stands perfectly still in the moonlit night, near the statue of the university founder. He is under the canopy of the large oak tree and is facing west because although it is near midnight, the moon has yet to fully rise. That will happen in the coming hour. For now, he stands and waits.
He waits for the moon.
And for it to call to him.
In the old days, he would have assumed the form of a hyena with his fellow pack members. They would have all faced west, just as he is now, together waiting for the moon to reach its apex. They would have then sung out to her in pitch-perfect unison, thanking her for her lunar light under which they would hunt.
They would praise her beauty and love her for being the mother of night.
Then the pack would let the frenzy of the hunt take over.
But that was years ago, before the gods left. Now that the gods are gone, his pack has disbanded. Some embraced their humanity. Some left the old lands to seek new opportunities in this new GoneGod world. Some refused to accept the change and still go out nightly to praise the moon goddess. And some could not handle the change, choosing forever-lasting death over this new life.
But Egya—Egya is different. A hybrid among his fellow hyenas. He chose to both embrace his humanity and honor his past. The gods may be gone—but the moon goddess still hangs above him. Of that much he is sure.
The moon is nearing her apex—in moments she will have fully risen. Egya is preparing his howl, summoning the low guttural hum within.
It is good that he is alone in this field. His roar is mighty and it would scare any human unfortunate to happen by.
But just as he is about to unleash his howl, he sniffs someone approaching.
He does not need to see her to know who she is: the Other pretending to be a human. The one who lost her magic, just like him. Moving with the silence of an experienced predator, he stalks around the tree, out of her sight. Then he stands perfectly still, tracking her movements not with sight and only partially with hearing.
He mostly tracks her with smell. The gods may have taken his hyena form from him, but they did not take his superior sense of smell—not all of it, at least.
She stops by the statue, some trace of her former instinct telling her someone is near. But she embraces her human side far too much, and she suppresses her instincts, choosing to ignore them and move on rather than stay and explore possible dangers.
Egya lets out a low disapproving growl. Her past—her Otherness—it is a gift. A gift she denies.
And this angers the former were-hyena.
This angers him greatly.
Part III
Chapter 5
Roommates Ruminate
I got back to the dorms at dusk and saw with alarm that my dorm room door was open, which could only mean one of two things: I was being robbed, or my roommate had finally chosen to show up.
Reassuring myself that the old days of constantly being under attack were over, I walked to the threshold and looked in. When signing up for the dorms, I had two choices to make:
Would I accept a Co-Ed floor? Check.
And would I be happy having an Other roommate? Check.
The dorm admissions board put me on an all-girls floor (although the floors above were full of rowdy boys), but as for my second check, looking inside, I could clearly see they had taken me at my word. The person unpacking wasn’t human.
Not by a long shot.
She was a bit taller than me with pointy ears and an impossibly perfect body. Athletes could work out all day and night and still not come close to the frame and muscle tone of this creature. I knew this right away because she was standing naked in my room. Other than that, she looked human enough, although no one would ever mistake her for one, unless they assumed she was a human twelve pies short of a baker’s dozen. Her … ahh … quirks immediately disqualified her as a member of humanity.
I groaned as I watched her unpack her peculiar possessions. Of all the Others I could have been paired with, they had to put me in a room with a member of the fae—specifically, a changeling. A changeling currently severely messing up the feng shui vibes of my room.
She was stapling Astroturf to our walls.
Fae were obsessed with the outdoors; they drew their strength from the natural world. And changelings were of the warrior variety, which meant their homes needed to be of the earth and soil and loam, so they could easily heal themselves after a battle, or some hippie crap like that.
Not that that mattered anymore. For one thing, their gods—just like everyone else’s gods—were gone. So no more glorious battles to heal from, and no more magical natural medicine. Besides, her roommate—me—wasn’t fae. I was a human girl. OK—granted an ex-vampire human girl, but a human girl, nonetheless. I definitely wouldn’t appreciate finding worms and fungus on the walls.
There was a wheel barrel in the center of my room with one of those large rolls of Astroturf used on football pitches. The changeling was using her unnaturally powerful body to unroll the bales and stick them to the walls. Mud was everywhere and the grass—which, I was tempted to remind her, was meant to be on the ground, horizontal—was falling onto the floor faster than she could put it up. Clearly, this frustrated the process, but she was damn persistent; she just sprayed the walls with water from a misting bottle, trying to get the soil to clump. Drops of dirty water were streaming down the walls and—
No way … was that my brand new Hermes beige leather jacket on the floor?!
I darted in, picking it up, shaking it to get the dirt off.
She turned and gave me the biggest smile like she hadn’t just destroyed our room with dirt and grass and staples. “Oh, hello!” she said. “I was wondering when you would make your entrance.”
Not sure what my face looked like when she said that, but I’m sure it was a healthy mix of incredulous and enraged.
She didn’t seem to notice, because she stuck out her hand and said with a lilting Irish accent, “I’m Deirdre.”
I looked at her hand, not taking it. Honestly, I was more likely to bite it than shake it. After a long awkward moment, she retracted it, peering at her hand as if it had broken down. “The Being Human handbook said that humans greet one another with handshakes, but we did not. Did I do it wrong? Was I meant to wait for you to offer your hand because you were the new one to arrive? Or perhaps—”
“You didn’t do it wrong,” I said. Fae—sticklers for protocols. And this one was trying to learn human like an etiquette. “It’s just that …” I gestured helplessly around me.
“Oh, yes. I got these rolls of grass from something called a hardware store. Strange name, given the softness of the grass.” She picked up a handful and took a deep breath in. “Perhaps you could aid me—I’m having trouble getting it to stick to the walls. You wouldn’t happen to have the appropriate adhesive?”
When I shook my head, she handed me the staple gun.
I swear to the GoneGods I thought about shooting her with it.
But instead, like a good little ex-vampire, I put it on my desk, counted to three and asked, “And why do you want it to stick to the walls?”
“Decoration,” she said. Her hands pointed at the walls, and I couldn’t help but noticing her laboratory-perfect nipples pointed at me.
I looked back up at her face. GoneGodDammit, I wasn’t going to have one of those cliché “college experiences” just because my roommate was a frigging supermodel—a supermodel that didn’t seem to own a scrap of clothing.
“I’m pretty sure we’re not allowed to staple the wall with grass,” I said.
“We’re not?” she said with genuine confusion.
“For one thing, we’re not allowed to put holes in the walls—so that’s a no to the staple gun.” I had to hand it to myself. I was remarkably calm, given how angry I was. “For another, we’re meant to keep our rooms clean. Which means no mud … and definitely nothing that can grow mold.”
“But mold isn’t dirty—it’s natural, and the right kinds have many healing properties. Of course, there is poisonous mold. I used them to line my weapons and—”
“That’s a third thing we’re not allowed. Weapons.”
“Not even broadswords?” She turned away and bent over, giving me a perfect view of her … well, let’s just say I’ve now seen the “dark side of the moon,” and it actually isn’t all that bad. Reaching under her bed, she pulled out this huge broadsword that would have made Braveheart’s rapier seem like a toothpick in comparison. “It’s more ceremonial than used in actual battle. That said, I did wield this when facing off against a horde of golems. Funny story—”
“No broadswords. No grass on the wall.”
“You mean no decorations at all? Even my poster?” She pointed her broadsword at the wall behind me—barely giving me time to duck out of the way—where a poster of Ryan Reynolds hung, stapled to the wall.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, yes,” she swooned, putting a hand on her breast—or her heart, I suppose. “He’s so handsome he is almost elf-like. One day I will be Mrs. Reynolds …”
I rolled my eyes. Fae. Of their many-faceted quirks, falling in love with an image was probably their strangest. And the love was real. At least for them. I looked up at the poster in true sympathy. Ryan Reynolds would most likely be filing a restraining order against this changeling at some point in the future.
Then I looked at her perfect naked body and thought, Then again, maybe not.
Either wa
y, that wasn’t my problem right now. My problem was that this changeling was tracking dirt everywhere. “I’m sorry to keep interrupting you,” I said, “but …” I pointed at the ground around me.
She gave me a confused look.
“You’re going to have to clean all this up?” I clarified.
“Really?” she said, her voice full of despair.
“I don’t mind, but humans have rules and—”
“I broke them. First day here and I’m already screwing this up.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Being mortal is hard,” she said, plopping herself onto her bed and sending up a fresh shower of loose soil.
I felt for her. Really, I did, despite the ruined jacket still in my hand. I was finding mortality hard, too, and I was human … well, I was born human, at least. That gave me a lot more experience at it than her. I sat next to her and put a hand on her shoulder, still acutely aware of her nudity. Damn, even her skin felt like it was manufactured in a lab. “Mortality does bite, Deirdre—but I’m here to help. If you have any mortality questions, just ask me. I’ll steer you right.”
“You will?”
“Cross my heart.” I dropped my jacket back to the floor and made an X on my heart.
She looked at me curiously. Before she could ask, I said, “It’s a human expression. Means ‘I promise.’ A slightly old expression. Probably had its heyday thirty years ago, but—”
The changeling wrapped her arms around me and hugged me so tight I struggled to breathe. Damn, she was strong, too. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I’d never been hugged by a naked fae before. It was nicer than I’d expected.
After a long second, she pulled away and put her hand over her heart—a common fae salute. “Thank you, human girl. In return for your generous offer, I give you my sword arm. This is my pledge to you. This is my …” She loosened her fist and made an X over her left boob—erm, I mean her heart. “This is my heart-cross to you.”
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