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The man pushed a handful of messy curls out of his eyes as he continued running a finger over the pages. “Uh-huh,” he muttered distractedly. “All good.”
His finger was swiping rapidly across every line, in a way that I’d only seen with people who were speed reading. Scratch that, I’d never seen a speed reader go quite this fast before. He turned the page with a nimble flick of the wrist, still oblivious to the fact that I was studying him. I planted a hand against a bookshelf and leaned against it, fascinated.
“You’re a really fast reader,” I said. Hey, it’s not like we were making progress in the hunt for the Tome, and I was technically on a break. I figured a little conversation with a human text scanner couldn’t hurt.
His hand stopped moving, his finger keeping place on his last word, and he looked up at me with a grin. “Been doing it for years. Helps that I’m a quick study.”
His eyes were blue, I noticed, an alarmingly similar color to the ink of the odd patterns and shapes that were tattooed from the backs of his hands up to his shoulders. Actually, he was wearing a tank top – the tattoos went all the way up past his clavicles, the patterns spilling down his chest and disappearing under the neckline of his shirt.
I looked back into his eyes, hoping that I hadn’t been caught staring. “Yeah, I’m not a huge reader myself. I mean I like books well enough, but I’m more of a hands-on kind of guy.”
He grinned again, the brightness of his smile seeming to fill the aisle. “There’s a lot to learn from books. Here, especially. I’m glad they’re so well-stocked.” He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. “I have a really, um, voracious habit. I’d be out on the street if it weren’t for libraries.”
“Yeah. I noticed.” I gestured at the books stacked around him, like little towers, and he was the tattooed Gulliver sitting among them. I reached out a hand. “I’m Dustin, by the way.”
“Sam. Nice to meet you.” He shook my hand, smiling. “So what brings you to this corner of the library? You did say you weren’t much of a reader.” He set his book down. “No offense, but the books here don’t exactly constitute light reading.”
“Oh. Nah, it’s nothing. I’m doing some research for work, and I was looking for a particular book, but can’t seem to find it. Might be someone checked it out.”
Sam cocked his head. “And which book is that? Maybe I can help.” He grinned. “You could say I’m a bit of a hobbyist.”
Hmm. Was I really going to ask the library hipster about the Tome of Annihilation? Tattoos aside, the guy looked totally normal. He’d probably just laugh it off. I mean, the name of the book alone, right?
“Seriously, it’s a rough find. And I’m pretty sure it’s been put in a weird category, too. Someone probably dumped it in the wrong section or something.”
“And you’ve already checked with the librarians? They can track these things.”
“No dice. Told you. It’s kind of a, um, a special case.”
“Sounds like a challenge.” Sam crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Come on. Name the book and I’ll find it. Humor me.”
What could it hurt? The guy was just a harmless book nerd. I shrugged. “Oh, what the hell. Been looking all day anyway. And the kicker? I have no idea what it looks like. It’s called the Tome of Annihilation.”
I could tell Sam was doing his best not to react. His smile was frozen, his muscles tense, but the littlest twitch in the corner of his eye gave him away.
“Never heard of it,” he said, his smile somehow even brighter than before.
“Go figure,” I said, shrugging again. “But hey, no harm asking, right?”
“Right,” he said, picking his book back up again. “Well, best of luck finding your book, eh? I’ll see you around.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. And thanks.”
I wasn’t expecting to be dismissed so summarily. Huh. Something fishy was going on. I ambled further down the aisle, risking another glance at Sam when I was a few feet away. From where I stood, he had his back turned to me – and yeah, running down his triceps, and down the top of his shoulders and back were the same unusual blue tattoos as the ones he had on his chest and arms.
Hmm. There was something about them. They weren’t just random designs or patterns. They looked like symbols, almost, or glyphs. Like runes. Or letters.
Well, shit. It was extremely unlikely, but it had happened before, hadn’t it? A client had once sent me out to fetch an artifact, but instead of it being a magical object, it turned out to be something completely different. Surely that couldn’t be the case again.
I walked even further down the aisle, taking care to be out of earshot, then dialed Herald on my phone. Yes, I kne
w perfectly well that I was committing library crime, but come on – I had a lead. I was totally prepared to do time in library jail.
“The hell are you doing?” Herald hissed into my ear. “I forgot to put my phone on silent and – ”
“Igarashi, shut up for a second.”
Once upon a time, the Boneyard was told to find the Genesis Codex, a powerful artifact that could manipulate life and death. And once upon a time, we discovered that the Genesis Codex was actually a human boy, the necromancer-turned-roommate named Asher Mayhew. I had to know.
