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“I’m sure they got their souls sucked out of them by the book demons,” Robert said with a smirk. How did anyone survive past such an annoying age?
“It’s entirely possible,” I agreed, and then continued down the hall, carved stone walls glimmering dimly beneath the orbs that lined the way, only bright enough to see where I was going. Magic was the order inside the Library of Antiquities, while technology was for other libraries, more mundane ones.
We descended the back stair, coming out in the east hall, which was very rarely occupied, the long stretch of deserted marble perfect for gymnastics. Some nights I’d come down here after all the glows had gone down and work my body. I got restless after spending eight hours hunched over ancient Cyrillic and there was nothing better for getting out kinks than cartwheels.
I didn’t immediately start running down the hall. First, I’d have to zip my skirt into pants using a simple spell I’d learned when I was twelve, back when I was always climbing trees in dresses, dresses being the appropriate wear for little girls in Mother Mercy’s order.
Roger headed to the first painting to the right, a stunning Turkish Battle scene with plenty of peculiar monsters around the edges, but Sarah hung back.
“Lady Librarian, how long do we have to stay here?”
The clock tower on the corner had rung the quarter hour a few minutes ago, so the two little dears still had at least two-and-a-half hours left to go. Poor things.
“Do you know any tricks?”
She blinked at me, looking much too fussy to know tricks. “I’m not a clown. We pay others to do tricks.”
I spelled my skirt into pants with the simplest rhyme imaginable, ‘skirt to pants, so I can dance,’ in a particular order of notes that hung in the air, soaking into my skirt and then ripping into two slits and crawling into a pair of loose pants. I’d made this skirt with that spell in mind, so the skirt was technically also a pair of pants. When I hung them in my closet, there were two legs, and a skirt bottom hanging down, but once I put them on, they worked perfectly as one or the other. I owned two sets of skirt-pants, black blouses with white collars, and not much else.
The little girl gasped with big eyes like changing my skirt into pants was the trick.
“Now then,” I said, brushing down my legs and taking three steps away from her, facing the hall. “Let’s get our blood flowing, hm?”
I did a simple handstand, walked three steps, then went over, landing on my toes then pulling myself upright. “Now you try.” I gave her an encouraging smile while she stared at me.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then I will teach you.”
She was part elf, so gracefulness and flexibility were a given. It didn’t take her long to learn the simple walkover, and by then Robert had seen as many paintings as he wanted to see, and came back to tell me how subpar the art was since there wasn’t anything impressionistic or modern. I didn’t remind him that this was a library of antiquities, I just started teaching him a basic cartwheel. He caught on fast enough, and soon they were demanding more difficult tricks.
One hour down, two to go.
Sarah finally laughed when her brother’s cartwheel went into the wall, and I smiled at the sound, but Robert wasn’t amused.
His glare was accusing when he pointed at me. “Stupid tricks. All you know are stupid baby tricks!” Ah, he thought I was laughing at him, along with his sister. Such insecure children.
I straightened up and studied the end of the long hall. I could argue with him or tell him to stop acting like a baby, but arguing wouldn’t be as good as distracting him with a really good routine. I took a deep breath and then ran, bare feet against the marble floor before I launched into the first move, round-off, two back handsprings, an aerial, three front handsprings, and then something unexpected happened. A door that led down a narrow set of stairs into the lower sections of the library where infernal creatures did research and kept a lab that I hadn’t ever cared to visit, opened, and out stepped The Scholar, right in front of me.
His eyes widened the second before I hit him, sending his papers scattering across the hall, and his own strong, firm body sliding back two steps.
For a moment I stared into those eyes, darkest black that began to shift to blue, starting around the pupil and spreading out like rivers in the dark earth, until his eyes were entirely cerulean, striated with the darkest hues.
That moment stretched out as his heart beat against mine, a deep, rich, slow throbbing that echoed in my own chest. Fire spread through me, bringing me painfully to life. His pale skin shouldn’t have been warm, but it was, he was. When was the last time I’d held onto someone like this, gripping his lapels like they were my lifeline, drinking in the feel and scent of him, rich and earthy beneath the slight trace of chemicals?
“Are you all right?” he asked, in a voice like ruffled chocolate.
Ruffled chocolate? Had I completely lost my mind? I pushed away from him, breaking the hold he’d had around my waist. I hadn’t noticed that until I lost the connection.
I shook my head and took two more steps away from him, crossing my arms over my chest. “I beg your pardon. This hall isn’t used very often. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get snacks.”
I didn’t quite run, but it was close. I summoned my shoes as I went, reversed my pants spell, and smoothed my hair when I got to the next empty hall. I’d remembered the last time someone had held me so tight, and it was the thing that gave me my worst nightmares.
In my last career, which I’d retired from six years ago, I’d hunted the evils in the world and destroyed them. That’s what the House of Mercy was all about, having mercy for those who couldn’t help themselves, fighting the darkness and monsters, no matter the personal cost.
It was doubtful that The Scholar was as utterly evil as the last monster that had tried to kill me, but he was a creature of the darkness, and I didn’t consort with darkness of any kind, not when I’d had more than my fill of it since I was fifteen and my talents for finding evil manifested.
Serial killers, rapists, cult leaders, those who preyed on the weak were my prey, but no one is strong forever. Thirty years of killing killers, and I was done. After that last job, I really was almost done, dead, ended, but thanks to Anna and the music master, I’d crawled back from the edge of extinction and built a life that I loved without any ties to the House of Mercy, other than Cross, my old friend even if he was a prissy elf, who made sure I got enough severance pay to keep me in sushi.
