Then, just as the three of them were about to reach the doors, a tall, thin, black-hooded figure stalked out from behind one of the library shelves, directly crossing their path. Liam jumped at the skeletal shape and its Grim Reaper-like cloak that hung in ragged shreds from their slanted shoulders; they stood at an angle as if the curve of their spine were uneven, or their limbs significantly different lengths.
As Liam watched, frozen, their head slowly turned until they had to be staring right at him, even though he could barely make out the face hidden in the hood’s deep shadow. The most he could see was a sharp lower jaw with sunken cheeks and cracked, grey lips, and a line of stitches running across them. His head swam and his heart began to pound.
Very slowly, one long, bony finger came up to the dry lips, barely touching the stitches. Liam’s own mouth hung open, as the strange specter’s twisted up in what he swore was a smile. “Shhhhhhhh.”
With that, the tall, hooded figure turned, stalked off down the long hallway, and turned a corner. Before Liam could wrap his brain around their presence, they were gone.
I…is…was…” Liam whispered, half-paralyzed with cold terror.
“Yeah, that’d be the Ghost!” Ash laughed, and Liam was suddenly very aware of the muscular arm still firmly around his shoulders. He gave Liam a 'let's go' pat and guiding prod toward the doors again. “What’d I say? Haunted!”
“That was—”
“Yep! Books, dogs, and a ghost. That’s what you’ll find in this place. But no goats. Unless you look ‘em up, under ‘G!’ Show you where next time, maybe set you up with your own card or something! Libraries, man, they just open up a whole world of wonder!”
Ash used his free hand to open one of the double doors, then maneuvered Liam through it first before he could protest. Several shaggy dogs followed, and Liam couldn’t help wondering how many of them had suffered exactly this indignity. At least he had a better pedigree.
“Wait—wait!” Liam sputtered. “I can come back?”
“Sure, man, free country. Wait, I was gonna check on that, wasn’t I? But yeah, sure.”
The girl in the black helmet shoved past Liam and followed the dogs down the steps without waiting. But first she cast Liam a very long stare—he guessed, it was hard to tell behind the reflective visor, that alone was off-putting. He gave his best imposing stare back, but it couldn’t have come out right, because she shook her head as she turned away. Before she disappeared around the street corner, he caught a glimpse of the back of her leather jacket. It read: DARKENED CLOTHES, NONVIOLENT POSE.
“Teenagers scare the living shit out of you, don’t they?”
Liam turned to see Ash grinning down at him, and couldn’t answer. His mouth opened and closed, and he kicked himself inwardly; he had to look like a particularly foolish fish out of water. The truth was, most things in this city scared him, and for good reason: they were lethal, there were far too many ways to die in Parole and have nobody ever question your disappearance or claim your remains. But there was fear of death and then there was…
“It’s okay, bro, you don’t have to answer that. She’s a good kid, though. Gonna give me a freakin’ heart attack in about five minutes, but she’s a good kid.” He smirked. “Sharpest eye for bullshit I’ve ever seen. Very good… judgement.”
Liam said nothing. He made no attempt to go back inside but he didn’t walk away either. After a moment, Ash continued. “Yeah, you can come back. Look around all you want in the book stacks. Pet all the dogs. This place is a haven for anybody who needs it—even guys who come from the big house up on the hill, where the really scary stuff happens. Figure you might need it more than most.” He leaned a bit closer and lowered his voice so Liam had to concentrate to hear him over the pounding of his own heart. When he spoke, his voice was the softest it had been so far—and the sharpest. “But you’re not getting any further inside. So don’t even try.”
“I… I won’t.” Liam was surprised to hear the meek words coming out of his own mouth. He was even more surprised to find that he meant them.
“Good. You don’t seem like a bad guy, Liam. You just come from one of the most messed-up places on the planet—or at least Parole, which is already one of the most messed-up places on the planet, so that’s saying something. And this is a safe place. Hard to come by in Parole. Full of good people, good kids. Good dogs.” He nodded up at the library. “And between the safe place and the really messed-up place is… me.”
“Yes—Ash, is it?”
“Ash Price.” His crooked smile was lazy and easily given as his name. “There, you see? You did learn something new today.”
“And I—I suppose I don’t want to have to go through you, ah, do I?” Liam almost let out a nervous laugh, but he couldn’t quite get enough air into his lungs for that. The smile on his face made his cheeks ache; maybe he wasn’t quite practiced enough at it. He cleared his throat and choked a bit, took a more effective breath; it had to be the smoky Parole air. He wondered if he should dig in his pocket for his cloth mask, or if that would make him look even more awkward and ineffective. “It, ah, would be too high of a price to pay, is that it?”
“That it would.” Ash gave a slow nod, and Liam only realized his usual, easy smile had faded when it returned. Without it, his face looked ten years older and ten times harder, sharper, more intense, more dangerous. As soon as it was back, Liam found it ten times easier to breathe. “And, uh, I gotta jet now—god-daughter bonding time—but I really wouldn’t recommend trying anything while I’m not around.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream—wouldn’t even think of—perish the—the thought of—”
“Good. The ‘ghost’ mans the front desk sometimes.” The laugh Ash let out was almost enough to make Liam wonder if he was serious or not. Almost. “And they’re not as friendly as I am about people trying to sneak in.”
“I was not sneak…” he stopped at the sidelong glance and shut his mouth; even smiling, Ash’s eyes could glint a very hard, bright blue indeed. “I’ll remember this. Thank you.”
“Any time, bro. See you when I see you. Oh!” He flung out his arms as he stepped backwards away from Liam, almost shouting to be heard over the sudden engine roar that floated up from the street. “Isn’t that just the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard in your whole life? Beautiful! The hills, they are alive!”
“Ah… yes,” Liam nodded, resisting the urge to plug his ears. The motor was offensive to his senses from all the way up on the top of the steps and the vehicle to which it belonged hadn’t even—
The motorcycle that rounded the corner seemed big as a steel bear. Its enormous tires—three of them, one in front, two in the back—were nearly as tall as the petite girl behind the handlebars, and its numerous compartments, two sidecars and—and Liam didn’t actually know what he was looking at. But the whole towering thing conjured up ideas of raucous monster truck rallies (what regretful bit he knew of them) and rocketing across burning pavement while loud music played and adrenaline pounded through veins and… for just a moment he wasn’t sure he recognized himself, because he didn’t entirely hate the concept. A moment later, he came to his senses and hated the concept as much as he should, and the world regained its healthy equilibrium.
Down on the street, Ash got a running start and caught Annie’s gloved hand, climbing up behind her. Together they seemed more like small humans on the back of a dragon rather than anything that might be called a bike. She reached down into one side compartment and pulled out another helmet, which Ash put on his own head, giving her a thumbs-up once it was secure. She nodded back, then hit a button on the dashboard.
The engine did not roar again. Instead, the entire vehicle silently lifted up from the ground and began to hover gently around three feet above the street’s cracked and brittle surface.
Liam felt his jaw drop one more time. As he watched, Ash raised one hand and waved. After one dumbfounded moment (and after making sure he was the only one standing on the top st
ep), he slowly raised one hand and waved back. Annie shook her head and gunned the throttle. As she did, Liam caught another glimpse of the back of her jacket. Curiously, it read something different than it had before. The part he could read, half of what looked like a question:
-R PRICE FOR FLIGHT?
For the first time in his life, he considered at least half the answer.
The motorbike and its two riders soared off down the street, cutting a clean path through Parole’s smoky air, leaving Liam and the library far behind. He didn’t chase after them, but several dogs did.
☾
After he’d been alone for some time, Liam stomped down the library steps, staring at his feet the entire way. He jammed his hands into his pockets and only reached up to grab at his hat when a hot gust of Parole wind nearly blew it entirely off his head. The overpowering choking smoke it carried made him cough and dig around in an inner pocket for a cloth mask, but he didn’t stop walking, as if far too eager to put this building and everything in it far behind him to waste a single step.
“Mind telling me what the hell that was?” A boy’s deceptively casual voice rang through his head, though he appeared alone on the street.
“I do, in fact, mind!” Liam answered in a low voice as soon as his nose and mouth were securely behind the filtered mask, and hidden from prying eyes. “I mind all of this! I never wanted to come here in the first place, Hans! This was your idea—your bad idea!”
“Didn’t seem like such a bad idea until you decided to flirt your way in.”
“I—what?” Liam almost tripped over his own feet.
“Well, we did at least learn some very valuable information here. You have a type and it’s hot biker librarians. Who’d’a thunk it?”
“I—I did not—I am not—no!”
“Liam Turret, defrosting ice king of smokin’ hot Parole, laid low by a sexy pair of boots and some puppy-dog—”
Liam whirled around, batting at the air as if dissipating a cloud of mosquitos. Hans’ cackling laughter echoed through his brain. And now there he was, the image of a white-haired sixteen-year-old, floating a few inches above the pavement. Liam’s hands passed directly through his sharp smile, until their aggravated attempted slaps finally stopped. Letting out a disgusted, sputtering snort, Liam turned and stalked back down the street the way he’d come.
“Excuse me?” Hans called. “We still have a job to do! We didn’t find out anything useful!”
“Find it yourself!” Liam shot back at full voice, beyond caring who heard. “I’m going home.”
“Walking? Don’t want a taxi or anything?” The smile began to slip off Hans’ face when he didn’t get an answer. “Seriously, Liam, you’re just going to have to come back until we find a way in!”
Liam kept walking.
“We’re not done here!” Hans yelled. But apparently Liam was, because he stopped decisively at the first corner he reached and started to turn. Hans shook his head and gave a pitying sigh. “You dramatic dork, that’s not even the right way!”
“It is to the Emerald Bar!”
“Drowning your sorrows? You really that crushed?”
“I have a pressing prior social engagement!” Liam shouted at his invisible and inaudible conversation partner down the street, pulling his hat down as if this would stave off the glances he was attracting.
“A social engagement?” Hans snickered. “You didn’t tell me you had a date or anything. Didn’t tell hot librarian guy either. I’m a little impressed, kind of.”
“I don’t clear my calendar with you, Hans!”
“What, do you have to go call on the count and countess at the stroke of midnight for some nice champagne glasses of blood and—”
“I have to deliver—my—regards!”
“Okay, fine, give my regards to… whoever. I’ll just stay here and keep doing what we actually came for. You’re still going the wrong way!”
“No, I'm going the right way, for once!” Liam shot back. “This was a terrible idea from the beginning and I should have known better than to listen to you for one--"
"Yeah, you really don't wanna piss me off too bad," Hans floated lazily after him, making a show of inspecting his non-corporeal fingernails. “How are you ever gonna discover the hidden treasures just waiting for you in the mysterious library?”
“We'll find another way. One that doesn't involve--"
"Actually talking? Flirting? Because you can't do it. That’s what I’m—”
“I’m leaving.”
“You get a load of that chain around HLB’s--that's Hot Librarian Guy's—neck?”
“What about it?” Liam rapidly went from annoyed to apprehensive as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He quickly shut it, and turned away. “I barely noticed.”
“Yeah, you weren’t looking at his neck. Did you see what was on it?”
“I wasn’t staring, unlike some people, apparen—”
“Take that as a no.” Hans grinned, momentarily fading from view to reappear directly in front of Liam’s face. “Well, I did. Ghosts see all kinds of things.”
“That’s incredibly disturbing.”
“No, that’s further than you ever got, or will ever get. You talked to him for ten minutes, and I already know more about him than you do. You sure you wanna walk away?”
“I don’t…” Liam didn’t look up, but he didn’t keep walking either. After a few seconds, he let out a deep sigh and let his head and shoulders drop, murmuring something nearly unintelligible.
“What was that? You gotta speak up.”
“I said, you’re telepathic, Hans.” Liam looked up with a deadly glare. “I don’t have to say anything out loud, you just like embarrassing me. And you didn’t have to actually look at—at Mr. Price that closely to see he was wearing a…?”
“Shark tooth.” Hans gave a very wide, toothy grin of his own. “Knew you’d bite. I dunno where he got one in Parole, but he’s wearing a super big, nasty-looking one on a chain around his—hey! Where are you going?”
Liam turned and rushed off without another word. He was heading in the same direction as before: the wrong one.
Abandoning Liam to the inevitability of a long night of getting lost and wandering Parole’s unpredictable streets (unless he simply swallowed his bitter pride and turned around), Hans looked up at the towering library building, and realized he’d been making everything much harder than it had to be. Then he remembered that they’d been able to see clear up to the rafters inside—if there was anything hidden in there, it wasn’t upstairs.
“They want a library ghost?” he murmured as he began to sink, descending through the ash-covered pavement and deeper underground. “I’ll show them a ghost…”
☾
The library’s secured area—which Liam had never managed to access but Hans wouldn’t find nearly as difficult—was behind several locked doors and metal gates. No one was getting to this level unless they had a key. Or a great deal of determination, a chainsaw, blowtorch, or in Parole, some equally useful ability. Any of these were bound to be very loud, and more effort than sneaking into a library was worth.
Unless you were essentially a ghost, who could just slip right through the metal gates. Hans did so, then looked around, wondering why he’d never thought of this before.
He found himself in a long hallway—an entirely boring hallway, he reflected as he headed down its length. Doors stood open on either side, leading into rooms with cots. People asleep on the cots. First aid stations. Kitchen areas. So it was true what the rumors said, this really was a safe house. A boring safe house. If all people did here was sleep…
A tall, thin figure in a ragged black hood shambled past the next T-intersection. After a moment’s surprised hesitation—apparently even ghosts could get startled by other just-as-ghoulish apparitions—Hans followed.
The strange person had an uneven gait, as if their legs were different lengths, and they held one arm in their opposite hand, as if it were
injured. They’d seemed perfectly at ease upstairs in the library, but now that they were here in the secure corridor, and (supposedly) alone, their shoulders hunched forward, and they shambled toward an elevator at the end of the hall, half-collapsing against it as they pushed the button, as if they barely had energy to keep themself upright.
When the doors opened and Hans followed his shambling new friend inside, he noticed that the elevator was much larger than any you might find in an ordinary office or apartment building. Or library.
Hans waited patiently until they reached the bottom—though, he reflected that he could have simply floated down the elevator shaft like sinking into the deep end of a pool. This way he had more time to get to know his new friend.
“So, come here often?”
Hans didn’t get a reply. He came to the conclusion that they were boring.
The elevator opened directly into a small room, which seemed like the most secured yet. Maybe the first one that could actually be called restricted. It was the last thing anyone would expect to find deep under a library. Maybe beneath a hospital or science building—but not one you’d find anywhere but Parole. Instead of books, the metal shelves here held rows on rows of cylinders of bright green fluid. Everyone knew that telltale green. Chrysedrine. Nobody would be foolish enough to try to make their own but they sure had a good supply here. The entire far wall was metal and set with large drawers. Part Chrysedrine storage lab, part morgue. Hans was learning all kinds of fascinating things tonight.
And it was about to get more interesting, because something moved behind one of the shelves. Hans floated to one side to get a better angle—and caught his first sight of who actually ran the library. The fact that it wasn’t the man who’d been behind the front desk was not a surprise.
The horns were.
“Zilch!” Instead of turning and running (as would have been the expected reaction from anyone seeing the towering, undead-looking figure suddenly emerge from the shadows) the small person with the huge, spiraling black horns on either side of their curly-haired head hurried closer with the distinctive sound of hooves on concrete. They took one of Zilch’s large grey hands in theirs—the left one they weren’t obviously favoring—and guided them to the metal table in the center of the room. “I wasn’t expecting you home tonight. Did you run into trouble?”
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