Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

  “I have a question,” said Liam. “Do any of the million Irish pubs I’ve seen within a three-mile radius actually pull a decent pint of Guinness?”

  Aisha chuckled. “I don’t drink, but keeping your expectations low is probably a sound strategy.”

  Sal looked at Aisha curiously. “Do you not drink for—I mean, are you—”

  Aisha’s smile tightened somewhat. “Not wearing hijab but observant Muslim, yes.”

  “Right. Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume—”

  “It’s fine,” said Aisha, in a way that made it clear it wasn’t but that she had no time to waste on the matter.

  “So hey,” said Liam, stepping in, “which Prime Minister had the reincarnating dog and the séances and stuff?”

  Aisha smiled, and told them.

  • • •

  “So,” said Jeanne, beaming, “did Aisha give you a good tour?”

  “Great,” said Sal. “Told us a lot about the fire. And ghosts. And that you’re not known for having a particularly haunted Parliament.”

  Jeanne chuckled. “True. This would be an odd sort of first.” She gestured to the cameras. “I’m sure you’re accustomed to the absence of footage surrounding strange happenings, but in this case it’s the motion detectors that are troubling. They have been set off every night for the last week—but nothing is on the cameras. There’s been no evidence of bats or mice, the security system’s been regularly inspected—”

  Sal saw Liam make a face that plainly broadcast his opinion of regular inspections and the people who carried them out.

  “—but nothing’s been taken, nothing seems even to have been moved. And there’s been no sign of a break-in. It’s as if someone is just … appearing here, setting off the alarms, and leaving before security can arrive. The staff are whispering about ghosts, but no one’s especially worried except me.”

  Sal frowned. “Why? What do you think it is?”

  Jeanne removed her glasses, wiped them on her shirt. “I think it must have something to do with the anniversary of the fire. What, though—I’m not sure. Ghosts seem a stretch, something of a local affectation. No one actually died in this room—in fact it was the only place anyone was safe. But the fire’s origins are mysterious enough to give me pause.” She looked at Asanti. “It began in the reading room. It could well have been a matter of someone opening a book they shouldn’t have.”

  Asanti looked thoughtful. “It is odd. But either such a book would have burned in the blaze, or it would have survived and wreaked further havoc. A hundred-year delay is more the stuff of fairy tales.”

  “Maybe we should rule out mundane possibilities first,” offered Liam. “Is there anything here that’s particularly valuable? Could someone be looking for something?”

  “Everything’s valuable,” said Jeanne, “but everything is also catalogued. We don’t have secret rooms or hidden depths. This isn’t the Library of Congress or the Black Archives. This is—well, Canada. More to the point, it’s Ottawa. Anything remotely interesting gets shipped to the Vatican. Or Toronto, I suppose.”

  “Who else has access to the building after hours?” asked Asanti.

  “Security, of course,” said Jeanne, “and my higher-ups—but one’s on holiday in Orlando and one’s been at a conference in Vancouver for the last several days. And they have access to everything anyway—I can’t imagine why they’d need to sneak around.”

  “Your passes are electronic,” said Sal. “How easy are they to copy?”

  “Very,” said Liam, folding his arms, “but it doesn’t make sense. It’d be child’s play to disable the motion detectors if someone were really planning a heist.”

  There was a moment’s quiet.

  “Well,” said Sal, stretching, “sounds like what we need is a stakeout. Jeanne, what’s Parliamentary policy on sleepovers?”

  Jeanne smiled. “Permissive.”

  • • •

  Grace flew.

  Her shadow outpaced her; with her back to the setting sun, she made a game of failing to catch it, skating smoothly forward and then launching herself into the air to pounce on it from above. Sometimes she skated backward to make it chase her; sometimes she turned and skated into the red light sinking below the skyline as if she could catch it instead.

  The sun set, the stars came out, and they were nothing like candles.

  There was hardly anyone else on the Rideau Canal. She’d watched groups form and thin out: families with small children; teens with their friends; adults skating at the pace of a slow stroll, others brisk with Lycra-clad purpose. People laughed, fell, cursed, cried, picked themselves up again, as if they lived in a world without monsters.

  “Hey,” shouted Liam. “Grace! Wait up!”

  She narrowed her eyes, and didn’t. But she did let him catch up.

  “You planning on staying out much longer?”

  She shrugged. “I told you to text.”

  “I did. Twice. An hour ago.”

  She blinked. “Oh. I guess I—” The words lost track of time were so alien she was startled into slowing down. “Sorry. Winter gear must’ve muffled it. What’s up?”

  “We’re spending the night in the library, ghost-hunting. Thought you might want to be there.”

  “Sure. Later.”

  “Do you mind if I skate with you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you—want to talk about—”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  They skated together in silence for a while, but Grace’s peace was broken. She exhaled, and turned to look at Liam.

  “You have a good stride. Where’d you learn to skate?”

  “I used to be into hockey as a kid.”

  Grace squinted. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t really survive my discovering video games, but it’s like riding a bike. You?”

  “My brother taught me.”

  She braced herself for irritating questions, but they didn’t come; Liam nodded, looking straight ahead as they glided over the ice. Somewhere out of her gratitude for that, she managed, “I think—part of me still figured there’d be pieces left to pick up. In China. Someone who knew me, or knew of me. To make that time real. To make me—real.” She shook her head. “But there isn’t. And I have to get used to it.”

  “I try to imagine what it’s like for you,” said Liam, quietly. “Sometimes. Usually when I’m feeling sorry for myself,” he said, quirking a crooked piece of a smile, there and gone. “Because it’s so opposite. I can’t remember two years of my life—but I lived them. Other people remember what I don’t. But the things they remember—that’s what makes me feel less me. They knew a different person, someone I don’t know at all. But is he part of me, that guy? Is he in here somewhere?” He shrugged, lengthened his stride a bit to slow down, glide longer from the same push. She matched him. “You’ve never seemed that way to me. Like, no matter what—you’re sure. Of who you are. More than any of us.”

  That hung in the air for a while.

  “I’m sorry I teased you before,” he added. “About wanting to come here. It was shitty of me. This is nice.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Still Baltic, though.”

  “Well. Arctic, maybe.”

  “And it’s pretty dumb to heal a broken arm by going skating.”

  She laughed, then, and after shoving into him with her shoulder, said, “Race you back to the hotel.”

  • • •

  Jeanne had arranged for blankets, pillows, and a special dispensation from security, but recused herself from spending the night. “She’s a single parent to a small child,” Asanti explained, as she and Sal arranged makeshift bedding for everyone. “Part of why she’s refused anything more than loose affiliation with us.”

  “So, when you said she’s an old friend,” said Sal, unfolding a blanket, “did you mean …”

  Asanti looked amused. “Sally Brooks. Has anyone ever told you that you missed your c
alling as a gossip columnist?”

  “Someone did actually say that to me once, yeah.”

  “It bears repeating.” Asanti smiled softly to herself. “Jeanne is very dear to me. When our paths cross, we try to make the most of it. But”—she met Sal’s eyes—“we don’t make excuses to cross them. I hope you haven’t been thinking I dragged the team across the ocean on a lark.”

  “No, of course not,” said Sal, “it was just surprising to see you so … intimate. I mean, I know you have a big family and there’s this kind of sense of libertinism around you, but mostly I only see you lusting after books.”

  “The work does always come first,” Asanti said, with only a little sadness. “But I love a great many people in a great many ways in a great many places.”

  “And your husband’s okay with that?”

  Asanti raised an eyebrow. “And my husband’s okay with that. Are you okay with my husband being okay with that?”

  “Yes! I mean—sorry, this really isn’t my business. I’m just … glad,” said Sal. “I sort of thought … I mean, Menchú’s obviously celibate, and Grace is Grace, but I’m glad to know that members of Team Three can have romances that aren’t …”

  “In-house?” said Asanti, innocently. “Disastrous? Outright dangerous?”

  “Ouch.”

  Asanti chuckled. “I’ve had my share of messy breakups, Sal. I’m glad you and Liam have sorted things out.”

  Sal exhaled. “Yeah. Me too.”

  They finished arranging blankets just as Liam and Grace came in, layers of outerwear bundled in their arms. Grace looked around, and Sal could see her taking in every entrance and exit with a single sweeping glance before shutting the heavy door behind her.

  “Hey,” said Sal, smiling, “how was the skating?”

  “Great,” said Grace. “Can’t wait to get back to it. So there was a fire a hundred years ago and now we’re waiting for a ghost to turn up?”

  “Basically,” said Sal.

  “Do we have a plan if it does?”

  “Beyond asking ‘What art thou that usurp’st this time of night’?” added Liam, and Sal was stunned to see Grace smile.

  “Observation, first of all,” said Asanti. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. It could be something like what we saw in Turkey—it could be something else—it could also be nothing. But beyond the fact that it’s corporeal enough to set off motion detectors, it doesn’t seem to be disturbing anything about its surroundings, so we should be fine.”

  “A benign supernatural phenomenon?” said Sal, raising an eyebrow. “Sort of beggars belief at this point, doesn’t it?”

  That was when the lights went out.

  “Um,” said Sal.

  “This is a joke, right?” said Liam, fishing his phone out of a pocket and swiping his screen into a dim glow. “This is Jeanne’s idea of a—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, the darkness fractured around a column of fire twenty feet away from them, floating above the statue of Queen Victoria, radiating light and heat. Though it was hard to tell in the surrounding dark, Sal reckoned it as about eight feet tall—before it began to take shape, and definition, unfolding an enormous horned head from between broad, muscled shoulders. Its eyes were white flames, its head and torso sculptured fire, sprouting broad, talon-tipped bat wings from its back. It hung in the air, burning, breathing.

  Looking at them.

  “That’s—not a ghost,” said Liam, feeling his way backward.

  “I told you it’d be a fire demon,” muttered Grace.

  “This makes no sense,” said Asanti, staring. “Where is the book? How could—”

  The demon roared, and fire poured out of its mouth and caught on desks, chairs, loose paper.

  “Liam, fix the lights!” Sal yelled. “Asanti, find the book! We need—sprinklers, a fire extinguisher—Grace, can you—”

  “On it,” said Grace. Sal could dimly make out the blur of her sprinting the distance between them and the room’s center, leaping onto the desk nearest the statue and launching herself from it at the demon. She hooked the elbow of her good arm around the pillar of its neck, and her clothing smoldered as she tightened her grip and the demon choked and bucked beneath her weight.

  “Little help,” she shouted, as the demon tried to flap its wings around her legs.

  Sal looked around, eyes stinging. Enough things were burning now that in spite of the smoke she could see more clearly by their light: Asanti crouching, coughing, looking for any sign of an open book; Liam closing his hands around a fire extinguisher near the entrance, pulling it away from the wall. “Over here,” she shouted, and Liam tossed it to her; Sal caught it, ran toward the middle of the room, pulled the pin, aimed the nozzle at the demon’s torso, and pulled the trigger.

  The demon crossed its arms against the jet of foam and bellowed; Sal gritted her teeth and stood her ground, waving the nozzle from side to side. Through the smoke and heat she couldn’t tell if the chemicals were having an effect—something kept shimmering at her vision’s edge, just beyond the ring of the fire demon’s glow, and she worried she was seeing stars—but no, it was a flash of colors, like a faceted jewel, or a hummingbird—

  Her extinguisher sputtered, ran out. The demon burned on, but the flames in its eyes seemed smaller, thinner, less white, more orange. As Sal watched, the demon bowed its head, retracted its wings, and drew in a great, sucking breath that pulled all the room’s smoke and fire into its body before its features melted back into a single column, and winked out.

  Grace, clutching at nothing, fell, and landed in a crouch. The lights were on again. Sal ran to her.

  “Are you—”

  “Fine,” said Grace, dusting herself off. “Thanks.”

  Sal blinked. “You’re not burned.”

  Grace shrugged. “The heat never bothered me anyway.”

  “No, I mean—your clothes. They’re not burned. I saw them burning.”

  “The furniture’s not even singed,” said Asanti, running her hand along a desk. “I was choking on smoke. Now I can’t smell it. I should be able to taste it, but it’s as if it was never there.”

  “I have news for you,” said Liam, stepping closer to them. “I don’t think the lights ever went out. I think the darkness was part of the magic.” He gestured to the wall with the panels on it. “I didn’t get a chance to touch them.”

  “I didn’t find a book,” said Asanti. “Is it possible that Sal managed to stop it with nitrogen alone?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sal, slowly. “The extinguisher ran out before it vanished.”

  “It begs the question, too,” said Asanti, “of what has been stopping it these last several nights. If indeed this is what has been setting off the motion detectors while leaving nothing disturbed.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “There was a hummingbird,” said Grace.

  Sal stared. “You saw it too? I thought the smoke was getting to me.”

  “It was right at the level of my eyes, and it was …” Grace frowned. “Watching, and making noises.”

  Asanti let out a long breath. “We need to talk to Jeanne.”

  3.

  “A what?” said Jeanne the next morning, staring at Asanti while Sal and Liam blearily folded up the last of the blankets. Grace had left much earlier, muttering something about ice sculptures.

  “A fire demon. We don’t know what sort yet—”

  “But that’s impossible, that’s—are you all right?” Jeanne took Asanti by the shoulders as if to reassure herself of Asanti’s existence. Asanti smiled, and hoped she looked more comforting than exhausted.

  “We’re all fine. It’s a strange situation—any damage we saw reversed itself as soon as the demon vanished. We’re still trying to figure out precisely what happened—Menchú is doing some research for us back in Rome. ”

  “Is there—” Asanti saw Jeanne hesitate, then commit to the situation with a bravery that made her wa
nt to kiss her. “What can I do to help?”

  Asanti drew her into a hug. “We’ll take care of it. You can help us most by making sure everything proceeds as usual here. There’s no need to alarm anyone—”

  They both looked toward the door as the sound of sensible heels echoed down the Hall of Honour toward them.

  Jeanne exhaled. “Aisha’s coming in. I’ll need to send her home—”

  “No,” said Asanti, quickly, “it’s probably for the best that we not make our presence here any more disruptive than it already is. Also, if she’s been researching the fire, perhaps she can direct us toward resources that will be helpful.”

  “But I can do that—”

  “You,” said Asanti, gently, “have more important work to do. This is what interns are for, as I’ve recently had the pleasure to discover.” She grinned a little. “Embrace the power of delegation, Jeanne.”

  She chuckled. Aisha came in a moment later, blinking at the activity, and the blankets that Sal and Liam had tried to pile as unobtrusively as possible under a desk.

  “I can take those,” she said to Sal, gesturing to the blankets, nonchalant as a host offering to do the laundry. “I know where they go.”

  “Oh, thanks,” said Sal, smiling. “But Jeanne said to leave them. We may need them again tonight.”

  Aisha raised an eyebrow. “I hope my stories about the Château Laurier didn’t scare you off.”

  Sal smiled. “We just have a lot of midnight oil to burn.”

  “Aisha,” Jeanne called, “could you pull up the material you’ve been working with for our friends? They’d like to learn more about the origins of the fire.”

  Aisha frowned a little, but nodded. “Sure. Anything in particular? Testimony, monographs, unsubstantiated rumors?”

  “Everything,” said Asanti.

  • • •

  By the time Jeanne and Aisha clocked out, Sal, Liam, and Asanti had learned a great deal about the original Parliament’s architecture and layout, absorbed the rivalry between funding for farms and fisheries, and squinted at the fact that there really had been German plots to do damage to Canadian factories and government buildings during the Great War—but were no closer to figuring out how the ghost of a fire demon was haunting the library.