Still

by Camilla Monk

  I stiffened. “How long, exactly?”

  His mouth twisted in hesitation. “A couple centuries.”

  Oh God . . . I hated to be reminded that he’d been around longer than any of the books in there.

  Louison flicked a switch to light up a bulb hanging from the ceiling. The sudden glare revealed bare walls, a single table on which sat an ancient chained iron chest, and, oddly, a pair of black latex gloves. What the hell was he keeping in that box? Louison slipped on the gloves and singled out a smaller key to open the lock and release the chains. When his hands moved to raise the lid and shook a little, I braced myself, ready to make a break for the door if anything sprang out of that chest.

  Faust’s hand reached for mine, giving a light squeeze. “I’m sure you’ll actually find it interesting.”

  Not a chance. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stare my eyeballs out when a shiny surface came in sight, like melted silver. I blinked at the liquid filling the chest. I looked up at Faust. “I thought there was a book? It’s just some kind of melted metal in there . . .”

  “It’s mercury—among other things,” he replied, while Louison plunged his gloved hands into the glimmering fluid and retrieved a thick grimoire with chipped, yellowed pages.

  I watched silvery droplets run along its cracked leather cover without clinging to it. My jaw hit the floor. “You gotta be shitting me . . .”

  Faust grinned. “I told you it’d be fun.”

  Louison dropped the Libro Creaturae on the table and stepped back. “I’ll wait outside. I’m locking you in until you’re done.”

  Hang on a second. My gaze flitted between him and the book. “Why do you need to do that?”

  Faust cleared his throat. “There are a few things I need to explain to you before we start. It is fairly easy to open the Libro.” He winced. “Perhaps too much so. Due to the nature of its content, however, closing it is a different matter. There’ve been a few . . . accidents in the past.”

  I felt myself blanch. Had the room been so cold a second before? Or was it my own blood turning to ice like that? “Accidents?”

  There was no reassurance to be found in Faust’s embarrassed smile—and even less in his answer. “People get lost so easily in a good book.”

  “You will find no spells in there,” Louison warned. “Only nightmares.” With this, he slammed the door, and the only sound left in the room was the rattle of the key in the lock. Lovely.

  Faust felt for the table to rest his cane against it and grappled at the grimoire, before casually shoving it aside. “Let’s get rid of the props first.”

  I took a tentative step closer. “What do you mean? I thought it was the Libro . . .”

  “Oh no, that’s just to give idiots a run for their money.” He turned his unfocused gaze at me. “You see, Louison actually guards only a small portion of the Libro. Back in the days, it used to fill a pool so big you could have swam in it. But most of it has been stolen or just spilled and lost to the earth over time.”

  I darted a confused look at the silvery liquid in the chest. “You lost me at the swimming part.”

  Faust motioned to the liquid inside the chest, voicing my concerns out loud. “This is the Libro.”

  I peeked again, just in case I’d missed something. Nope. It was still silvery jizz, all right. The tension in my limbs eased a fraction as confusion took over anxiety. “So, it’s not an actual book?”

  “What is a book?” Faust countered.

  I frowned. “That thing you just called a prop.”

  “No. That’s just sheets of parchment bound together.”

  Okay, maybe I was starting to see where he was going with this. “A book is . . . the knowledge it contains?” A Fausty smile rewarded my efforts—yeah, I had an adjective for that impish and blissful grin now. “Okay, so what’s inside? What does it contain?”

  “Memories of those who sought its knowledge.”

  I turned his answer around in my head, trying to make sense of it. Did that mean that those people had used the Libro to look up a piece of knowledge from the memories of someone else who’d searched for the same thing? And in doing so, they’d become part of the Libro’s memories too? Jesus, those were the times I wished I’d learned to solve a Rubik’s Cube as a kid, instead of peeling off and rearranging the stickers on Lily’s. I mentally rummaged through the staggering pile of intel I’d absorbed over the past couple of days. “That guy you talked about last night, the one who tried to use the Spear of Shadows, did he use the Libro for that?”

  “Oh, yes, he did.” There was a flicker of admiration in Faust’s eyes as he said, “It takes a special kind of mind to not only enter the Libro but also understand its nature.” His lips thinned. “And his was quite unique. Let us hope Lady Montecito is but a pale imitation of her predecessor.”

  My brow slowly rose as I caught on at last. “You want to know if she used his memories.” I eyed the small pool of mercury in mild—okay, huge—disbelief. “The Libro could tell you that?”

  Faust shrugged one shoulder. “Only if it wants to. So, without further ado . . .” He camped himself firmly in front of the chest, rubbing his hands. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll take us in, and as long as we’re reading, you must not touch me or the Libro.” His tone hardened a notch as he added, “Do you understand, Emma?”

  Not at all. What did he mean by “going in?” Going where? When Faust’s eyebrow drew together slightly, expecting an answer, I blurted, “Okay . . . I-I don’t touch you, and I don’t touch that stuff.”

  “Exactly.”

  Was it too late to get off that ride? I had to contract the muscles in my legs to stop them from shaking when he reached into the chest to graze the surface of the mercury. Wasn’t that shit supposed to be toxic, by the way? “Faust,” I gasped. “What happens if I touch you?”

  His hand paused. He was no longer smiling, and that scared me more than everything else. “I believe it would have the same effect we’ve already observed.”

  “You mean the Libro would . . . stop working?”

  “Yes.”

  Just like the table. If I touched Faust while he read the Libro Creaturae, whatever mysterious force Louison feared so badly inside that chest would shrivel and die . . . I glanced down at my clammy palms as if the lines there might hold the answer, reveal the nature of the hidden disease inside me, the poison messing with Faust’s power. I drew a shivering breath, cramming that particular fear back into the deepest recesses of my brain. Now wasn’t the best time to freak out about the possibility that I’d somehow caught magical Ebola.

  Mercury lapped at the iron walls with soft sloshing sounds as Faust plunged his fingers into the liquid. I was so focused on the silvery ripples that I didn’t immediately notice something was happening to Faust’s tattoo. Around his wrist, the characters started to glow a dim red and sizzled like skin was burning. I took slow breaths, and I balled my fists to keep it together when the mercury stirred, clinging to Faust’s hand as if to swallow it. Faust’s lips moved, wording a silent request, and he murmured, “The Libro will guide us. It knows what we want better than we do.”

  I didn’t hear the light being switched off over the pounding of my heart, yet in the span of a heartbeat, we were plunged into absolute darkness.

  Faust had disappeared in the pitch black. My hands reached for him blindly, but I remembered his warning and snatched them back. “Faust, where are you?”

  “Right here.” Hardly helpful when panic squeezed my throat, and I was seconds away from a stroke, but I could pick up the faint tang of pot and outdoors clinging to his old coat, and his voice sounded close, tinged with its usual warmth.

  I wrestled my frantic panting under control long enough to form words. “What’s going on? Where are we?”

  “Inside the Libro. You could say we’re reading it as much as it is reading us.”

  “What the . . .” Light flickered at the edge of my vision, and my head snapped to its source, a b
right orb growing in the dark, blazing fast toward us. Within seconds, it was close enough to halo Faust’s silhouette with a faint coppery hue. I took an instinctive step back. “Shit. Faust,” I warned him. “There’s something—”

  “I know. Be ready, Emma.”

  I was given no time to ask, “for what?” The glow became a blinding tide engulfing us, and I tumbled into the light with Faust. No—into the fire. I didn’t feel the landing, but I now sat on my ass on a rough, hard surface. Golden sequins danced before my eyes at first, which progressively became flames engulfing an immense room, slithering up wooden beams, spreading to tapestries hanging from the walls. My brain felt the heat, told me my body was burning. Panic exploded under my ribs in response. I scrambled to my feet with a scream.

  “Calm down, Emma.” Faust’s powerful voice gonged through my trance, anchoring me. The flames licking at my clothes were a cold dream; the smoke rising to the vaulted ceiling carried no scent, no heat.

  “We’re but guests in the Libro’s memories,” Faust said, more softly. “He can’t see you, and I can’t either.”

  He? I blinked dazed eyes at the burning hell we were trapped in, and I saw them. Two dark shapes faced each other in the blaze. They can’t see us. They can’t see us. I chanted the words in my head over and over, breathing my fear out, and I watched, taking it all in at once. One of the two men stood at the center of several rings of symbols painted on the room’s dark marble floor—as if he’d tried to reproduce the dizzying pattern of Chronos’s Table. Greasy curls fell over his ruffled shirt and dark vest. He yelled something I couldn’t understand at a motionless cloaked figure—a string of jumbled syllables that were either French, Latin, or both.

  Like the beat of a pendulum, I felt my heart swing once, twice, and stop. The other man’s face remained invisible, concealed under the hood of his long, ragged cloak. A ghost in a beggar’s attire, whose hands rested on the hilt of a gnarled wood cane as he listened to his counterpart’s roaring tirade. The long-haired man eventually shook his head, an expression of despair on his youthful features.

  Faust’s double spoke, and it was the same soft, weary hum I knew. The same voice, 350 years apart. I couldn’t understand him either, but the words rolling off his tongue sounded like a warning. My lungs struggled for oxygen that probably didn’t exist inside the Libro. “It’s you, back when . . .”

  “It happened a very long time ago,” Faust murmured, his voice mingling with his double’s in a dissonant choir.

  Before us, the long-haired man extended trembling arms. Anger twisted his mouth as he recited words in a different language now, like nothing I’d ever heard. Bits of the conversation I’d had with Dante flashed in my mind. More letters. More sounds. An archaic language we’ve never encountered before. A long-forgotten rhythm I’d never heard, yet whose beat my heart synced to, like an old habit—the language of Chronos’s Table, of Faust’s tattoo.

  The man’s voice rose to the burning ceiling, loud and compelling, and around him, the characters painted on the floor started to glow red and sizzle just like Faust’s tattoo had when he had taken us into the Libro. My calves tensed with the urge to run the hell away, but I stood still. I watched in a trance as the letters burned to ashes that stirred and whirled around their master, forming a black trail. The Spear of Shadows, a voice deep inside me whispered. He’s calling the Spear. Calling Him, begging Him. Do you feel His presence?

  I did. I felt . . . something else taking shape in the room, a stifling presence. Faust’s doppelganger reacted; he lifted his cane and hit the marble once, even as the flames threatened to spread to his cloak. A familiar shockwave washed over me, stilling everything—the fire and the nascent shadows enveloping the long-haired man. The cloaked Faust drifted around him, unhurried, the clatter of his cane the only sound in the silence. He walked through the frozen blaze unscathed and felt for one of the crossed halberds hanging on a wall. He seized it, and with the same calm determination, returned to position himself right behind the long-haired man.

  The cane hit the marble again, a split second before his left hand thrusted the halberd. My entire body shook in response. The man gasped, staring down in incomprehension at the bloody blade jutting out from his chest. When he collapsed, the shadows became ashes again, a cloud that swirled to the ceiling and dissipated in the fire.

  Faust couldn’t see me, but he guessed—felt my horror creep under his own skin, maybe. He lowered his head, regret weighing on his features. “He tried to summon a force he did not understand. I couldn’t let him do that.”

  My fingers trembled closer to his, aching to take his hand, to find even the slightest measure of comfort in the hell of the Libro’s memories. “Please,” I gritted out. “I want out.”

  Faust’s right hand moved to raise his cane. Around his wrists, his tattoo was still smoldering slowly, shimmering crimson. “It’s almost over, Emma,” he said. “I need you to be strong a little longer. I just want to know who else . . .” His voice faded into the same silent mumble he’d opened the Libro with. This time I didn’t need to hear the words to know. I felt the mysterious language hum in the air around me. It resonated with every cell of my body as the light swallowed us away again.

  My eyes fluttered open to absolute peace. Gone were the flames, the rage, and the shadows. I sucked in a tentative breath and looked at Faust. “Where did you take us?”

  “Don’t you recognize this place?” he asked.

  A stream of bleak light filtered through the curtains of a silent apartment, while a light breeze blowing through an open window made the gauzy fabric billow gently. Stacks of books and papers covered a leather-top desk, but also the brocade chairs and sofa in the room. My gaze trailed along cream paneled walls, all the way up to a painted ceiling where naked gods embraced nymphs. My pulse picked up again. “It’s the Residenza,” I said.

  “As expected,” Faust replied, his lips thinning in his beard. “What do you see?”

  “It’s an office,” I whispered—even though no one else but him would hear. I crept away from him to explore the quiet room. Most of the books looked like the kind of old grimoires Louison kept under lock in his cellar. “There are magic books, tons of them, kind of scattered like someone was working with them, and—” I checked the desk. “There’s also a laptop.” Meaning this new memory the Libro had taken us into had to be recent . . . I tiptoed closer to check the screen—an ancient drawing of Chronos’s Table. Next to it sat a digital picture frame. My eyes grew wide. On the glass screen, a young Lily smiled in Richard’s arms. “Faust, I think we’re in Professor McKeanney’s old apartment!”

  His brow creased. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed, my heart beating in my throat. “Why did the Libro take us here?”

  Faust shook his head as if something didn’t compute. “I’m not certain . . .”

  My gaze swept around the room again frantically, looking for something—what, I had no idea, until I spotted a black shape leaning against a stack of moving boxes in the corner of the room. Lily’s black Dior tote, and on the boxes, “Granpa/Residenza” sharpied in neat, curly cursive. “I think . . . I think it was after he died,” I heard myself say out loud, as I stood shaking from head to toes in this dream I could make no sense of.

  As Faust’s lips parted to reply, a whimper silenced him, escaping from a set of closed doors across the room. My pulse revved to a panicked beat. Lily. Another whimper, then a loud, frightened sob. I raced to the doors. “Lily!”

  Faust’s bellow jolted me to a stop. “Emma! This isn’t real.”

  Or was it? Lily wouldn’t stop crying; her desperate wails seemed to tear through me from all directions, as if she were everywhere in the room at once, directly inside my head. I staggered back, screaming hysterically, “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

  “Hold on tight, Emma; I’m taking us out,” Faust shouted.

  His tattoo caught fire around his wrist. I squeezed my eyes shut, waited. Nothing happened. M
y eyelids fluttered open, and I saw Faust’s features, taut with shock as a ray of silvery light filtered from under the doors. Mercury. The Libro’s essence, spilling into the room, spreading like a stain across the carpet. My breathing became a series of short, erratic pants, and my voice sounded unbelievably shrill even to my own ears. “Faust! There’s something wrong! I see the Libro; it’s coming from under the doors!”

  Faust’s cane hit the floor hard enough to make it shake. A familiar shockwave washed over me as he attempted to still time inside the book. To no avail.

  Oh shit.

  Gone was the carefree hobo I had met the day before. Faust’s eyes were steely slits, and his knuckles were white around the grip of his cane as the liquid kept stretching hungrily to surround us, and still, somewhere in the depths of this nightmare, Lily cried—howled.

  “Emma, don’t touch the Libro!” he roared. “Step back and take my hand!”

  He reached for me then, his fingers clawing at thin air. I extended my hand to catch his, but I felt . . . a hot breeze on my sweat-soaked skin, a whisper from above. And I looked. I shouldn’t have. The ceiling was no more. In its stead were shadows, swirling, hissing in a thick, tar-black mass. They stretched the walls, bloomed on the walls like dark flowers, and my body was paralyzed. I wanted out, but even my lungs wouldn’t cooperate.

  I was drowning in the dark immensity of the Libro.

  Somewhere very close and very far, Faust shouted and strained to take my hand as the room moved and came apart around us. “Emma!” Pain registered in my arm as he clasped it tightly. My last conscious thought as darkness became light was that I could breathe again.

  “Louison, I am terribly sorry for this.”

  “You’re never setting foot again in my shop!”

  Louison’s breathless outrage and Faust’s apologies were a painful buzz in my skull as I tried to recover. I was still on my knees, and Faust’s hand lingered on my nape, holding my hair while I spit the last of my breakfast on the dusty floorboards of Louison’s cellar. I stared down at the yellowish splatter of half-digested Rice Krispies.