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Mr. Clovsky spread his hands. “Whatever you want. You decide your own benefits as well as everyone else who will be in your employ.”
Was this real? It couldn’t possibly be real. I didn’t say anything, just stood there staring stupidly at the man, waiting to wake up.
He cleared his throat. “We’re also going to pay you retroactively for the time you spent working unofficially as the Librarian before now, as well as compensation for the discomfort you endured from your rending.”
“Discomfort?” Cross said with a sharp smile that made me shiver. Clovsky didn’t know him well enough to know how dangerous that smile was.
Suddenly, the lights went out and a shroud of deep darkness enveloping the room and each person in it. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe as blue runes flickered on the walls. The runes flared up along with the scent of blood and then black cloaked and hooded figures were pouring into the room, surrounding the assembly, who were as frozen as I was.
The lights came back on, but there wasn’t a lot of time to do more than catch Cross’s eye before one of the cloaked figures grabbed Mrs. Pineapple and ripped her throat out, shoving her at my feet so blood sprayed artistically then pooled on the floor while the poor woman gurgled, eyes large with horror.
“Stop!” Jessica vaulted over the back row from behind the chairs where I hadn’t noticed her standing. “She’s my aunt. Don’t kill her. Take someone else!”
The hooded man said, “You’d like to offer your life in her place? Everything takes sacrifice, young one.”
She clenched her fists, but she didn’t come forward and save her aunt. Wait, why could she move when the rest of us were paralyzed, and who had written those runes in blood on those walls waiting to be ignited and turned into portals? And where were the bodies of the people who had been lost in the stacks once their blood was used up? Who was the inside person who had set up Horace?
I stared at Jessica, horrified and confused. But Jessica was too incompetent to betray Horace without him figuring it out immediately. Not that he hadn’t been dead. I’d been working on getting out of the complex paralysis spell, but it had only been a few short seconds since the lights went out, and it was a very complicated spell. Even Cross hadn’t worked through his, and he was much better at them than I was. Still, this had to end before Mrs. Pineapple bled out, however much she deserved it for rending me and giving Jessica a place on the board when so many other people were much more experienced and certified and not related to her.
The hooded man knelt in her blood and then started singing a song of opening. One of the cloaked people moved behind me, sniffing at me inappropriately.
“This one’s a virgin,” she hissed to the kneeling man. “We should use her as the blood sacrifice.” She should spin her cape around and point a dramatic finger at me while she was at it.
He ignored her, weaving a complex melody and rune with his hands, pulling from the energy and strength of the rune. For such a complex rune, he performed it crazy fast.
The next thing I knew, a rippling portal opened between us, and then the woman who could smell virginity shoved me through.
I stumbled but didn’t fall down, because once I was through the portal, I was no longer paralyzed. I whirled around to go back through, but with a shimmer, I saw a flash of Jessica’s surprised face and then nothing but a dismal landscape that my book had been trying to recreate this morning.
Aw, hell.
“Welcome.” His voice was probably as appealing as the Scholar’s, but my heart was already taken.
I turned to face the demon who was sitting on a big chunk of rock, flat at the top and lined in elaborate, tiny runes. Was he trapped on the rock? That would be great. Give me some time to figure out how to get home before he bled me for his own purposes. Transportation to another dimension? No problem. Forget that I’d never done it before. Wait, wasn’t there something in that weird moment with the multiple singular books that could help me? Maybe.
“Thank you for coming. I get so few visitors.” His voice was so silky and delicious, and his face as handsome as an angel’s, with a hint of mischief that would have thrown off any other buttoned-up librarian. He was probably spooling lustful desire around me, but lucky virgins didn’t have experience to trigger their instincts.
“I can’t imagine why,” I said, looking around for something to see, but the only thing was dismal red land punctuated by the odd volcano. Five, and they were all active. If they exploded, they would probably all overflow down here and swamp this area, leaving the demon under the molten magma. And me.
“Come to me,” he called, his voice and will curling around me like real ropes, pulling me back around to face him. His eyes glimmered with red as he smiled, such a devastatingly wicked smile. Was he an incubus? How boring.
A thunder of beating wings came the moment before a demon dropped from the sky, landing in a cloud of dust that made me cough. When the dust cleared, I was looking at a man, or a demon who could look like an ordinary human when he felt like it. He felt like it, which meant that he wanted me to put down my guard. Ah, because all humans were complete idiots who could be fooled into walking right into the mouth of the dragon. Well, not me, no matter how many oranges were in my bed. How could I miss the Scholar when I’d only just seen him? Also, this was not the time to be distracted by my personal misery.
“My child, you are lost,” the new demon said, walking slowly towards me, his face filled with the deepest concern and empathy it was possible for a human to feel. He’d start weeping for me any time now. Then he’d eat me.
I shrugged. “Not exactly. I’ve never been to this realm before. Who are the great demons in the area that I should know to fear?”
He blinked twice, then smiled slightly. “Are you interested in swearing fealty to one of them? Do you wish to trade your soul for immortality or great riches? Perhaps fame?”
“Almost. I’m here to kill the demon who killed my father.”
His brows rose. “A demon killer? You?” He looked me up and down, and maybe my librarian outfit didn’t scream, ‘demon killer,’ but I was here, and so I might as well do what I could to find the demon I’d been looking for my whole life since I had no idea how to get home.
“Not currently, but I’m aspiring to the career. Do you have any tips?”
“Don’t underestimate them,” he murmured and then attacked.
My file was waiting for him, and once I had a drop of his blood, the runes I’d been working on since I stumbled into the infernal realm came to life around me, sending him rolling back, and then keeping him pinned on the ground like the runes from the library had pinned me.
