by H. Duke
April’s cheeks flushed crimson. She didn’t miss Becky’s pointed stare, either. “I guess I missed a memo.”
“Well, now’s your chance to weigh in. What do you think?”
“It’s caught me by surprise, but I think it’s a great idea. Randall’s been a huge asset to the library. I only wish I’d thought of it myself.”
Becky smiled, relief softening her features.
Barb thumbed through the testimonials. “Has anyone discussed this possibility with Mr. Washington?”
Becky and Janet shook their heads. “We don’t want him to get his hopes up if it’s not going to happen. We weren’t sure it was possible, considering the number of times he’s been written up.” She leaned in, holding her breath.
Barb paused before speaking, as though choosing her words carefully. “It’s a little unorthodox, but it could work.”
“Yes!” Becky said happily, and Janet grinned widely.
“I said could work,” Barb said. “There’s a lot of things that need to be looked into. I need to contact HR, and we need to see if he has a criminal record. Until then, don’t tell him. We don’t want another public relations snafu on our hands.”
Everyone nodded, but their smiles remained intact. How had April not noticed how much everyone had come to rely on Randall? He was always going downstairs, they were always asking for him. It had been obvious. She was just too wrapped up in her own problems to notice.
“Who knows,” Barb said, “if everything goes to plan, we could have something to write about in the spring newsletter! Homeless-veteran-turned-security guard! The public loves that kind of thing.”
Becky approached April after the meeting ended.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry to drop that bomb on you. I sent you emails, but you never responded.”
April felt her cheeks go pink again. “I guess they must have ended up in my spam folder.” She’d really have to start paying attention to her library email. Just because she wasn’t as involved in library events as the others didn’t mean they didn’t concern her.
Becky bit her lip. “I really wanted to make sure you were on board. I know he frightened you when he found out that Mae died… I wasn’t sure you’d be into it.”
April didn’t really know what to say. None of the library staff knew how close she and Randall were. They tried to keep it a secret so no one would ask questions.
“I think it’s a great idea,” April said. “Randall’s always been a big help to me upstairs.” That was an understatement. “I guess I just never saw how much he helped the rest of you. He deserves it.”
“I’m so glad you think so. Thanks for supporting it with Barb. She seemed on the fence until you spoke up. So today’s your last day before your big European vacation, huh? When are you flying out?”
“Tomorrow night at nine-thirty,” April said. “I took tomorrow off so we could pack.”
“Well, have a great time. Janet’ll keep the Werner Room in running order, I’m sure.”
April said goodbye to Becky and walked upstairs. Randall was sitting in his usual chair near the reference desk, Rex at an attention by his side. She imagined him in the monogrammed white polo that city security guards wore. It would suit him.
She thought about telling him about the meeting, but Barb was right. It was best not to tell him in case HR decided against hiring him.
Then she saw who was sitting next to him. Thaddeus. Ugh.
She walked up, not bothering to hide her distaste. “What’s he doing here?”
Randall frowned. “When I went home, he’d written nonsense all over the walls in permanent marker and had started pulling up the floor boards with a crow bar. He still won’t tell me why. We’re never getting our deposit back.”
Thaddeus, who appeared normal, scowled like a pouting child. “It’s my money, anyway. What do you care?”
“I care because people live in the apartment below us. What if you had gone right through the floor? What were you even doing?”
Thaddeus scowled. He crossed his arms and turned his head away.
Randall sighed and looked up at April. “I can’t leave him by himself. What if he did something worse? What if he starts a fire or something?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Thaddeus muttered, but he didn’t meet either of their gazes. Rex came over and rested his head on Thaddeus’ thigh. Thaddeus patted him absentmindedly.
“Just keep him quiet,” April said. “We can’t afford a scene.” She was thinking mostly about Randall’s chances at the guard job. If he was involved in an incident, even one where he wasn’t the culprit…
Randall nodded. “I will.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Thaddeus said, but there wasn’t much venom in the words. He sounded exhausted more than anything else. The dark circles under his eyes stood out in stark contrast against his waxy skin. Had he always been so pale? His cheeks sagged.
He’s hurt so many people, she told herself. He’s your enemy. Don’t let him get your guard down.
April felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked to see Barb standing there. “Ms. Walker, may I speak with you for a moment?”
Crap. Barb probably thought she’d been telling Randall about the guard position. She smiled at him and Thaddeus as though ending a polite conversation.
“It’s been a pleasure chatting with you,” she said. “But if you’ll excuse me…” she followed Barb to a secluded spot near the book shelves.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she said. “He was just asking me a question.”
Barb fixed her with a hard stare. “I would hope that you would have that much discretion. I wanted to talk to you about something else—the state of the Werner Collection.”
“What about it?”
Barb folded her arms. “Have you even looked at the books lately?”
April was about to protest—she spent most of her time looking at the Werner books—but a quick glance at the shelves stopped her. She gasped.
Almost every book was covered in ink rot.
She stared at it in disbelief. It hadn’t been there when she’d left the previous night.
Barb crossed her arms. “Explain yourself.”
April nodded, thinking fast. “Oh, that. This is a condition that Mae wrote about in her notes. It’s something that’s almost invisible to the eye until it’s built up enough. Completely reversible. It’s one of the duties I’m undertaking after hours. It’s called ink…”—she couldn’t use the word rot, that would sound too drastic— “degradation. Ink degradation.”
“Ink degradation? Never heard of it.” Barbara sounded skeptical. “And you’re sure that it’s not permanent?”
“Yes,” April squeaked. It was true, after all, not that she’d ever seen this much at one time before.
“Good. I’ll be glad to see your progress next week when I return to discuss the future of the guard position.” She said that with an indicative look towards Randall. “Is that understood?”
“Yes,” April said, then, “No!”
“No?” Barbara asked.
“I’m on vacation starting this weekend,” she said. “I’ll be out of town for the next week.”
“Well that leaves you two days to get started,” Barbara said. “I may not have the ability to terminate your employment here, but you don’t want to be on my bad side. The Werner Collection is one of this library’s distinguishing features. We can’t allow it to molder.”
“Yes, ma’am,” April said. She watched Barb leave, hardly able to wait for her to make her way out of the Werner Room before running over to Randall and Thaddeus.
Chapter 2
“What does it mean?” Thaddeus asked the moment they heard Becky’s key turning in the lock downstairs.
April shook her head. She’d been unable to keep still all evening, constantly getting up and walking over to the book shelves. She knew one thing, though. There was no way she could go on the trip with Gram. Not when the collection was this bad.
They’d need Dorian to tell them how bad it really was, though. He was more familiar with ink rot than anyone.
Fifteen minutes later, the gate opened and he walked through with a worried expression on his face.
“You won’t guess what showed up in my—” he said, then stopped when he saw the stacks of blackening books Randall had started on the table closest to the gate. “Oh, no. I see it’s happening here, too.”
April shook her head. “We were hoping you could tell us. We came in today and it was like this. Has this happened before?”
Dorian pursed his lips. “There have been periods where the spread of the ink rot has accelerated, but not this much. All of this appeared overnight.”
“Why? Why would it suddenly speed up like that?” April asked.
“I don’t know. In the past, it’s happened after something has gone wrong with the gate for one reason or another. But, as I said, it’s never been this extensive.”
“Something gone wrong with the gate,” Thaddeus mused, his hand on Rex’s head absentmindedly. “What about the fact that it was put into a human host?”
“What is he doing here?” Dorian said, a look of disgust forming on his face.
“He was a danger to himself and others,” Randall said. “I couldn’t leave him alone.”
“I am not a danger to others,” Thaddeus said through clenched teeth. “So I wrote on the walls a little bit—”
“You destroyed those walls,” Randall said. “We’ll never get our deposit back.”
“I’ll remind you again that it’s my money paying for it all.”
Randall shook his head, then turned back towards April and Dorian. “Do you think he could be right? That being consumed by Thaddeus that caused this?”
“Most likely,” Dorian said reluctantly, obviously loathe to agree with Thaddeus. “I can’t think of a bigger shock to the system then that.”
“But that was over two weeks ago,” April said. “Shouldn’t it have appeared sooner?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Dorian said. “It’s possible that the effects of an event won’t immediately show up. Remember, we still don’t know much about the way the library gate works.”
Randall nodded down to the stack of books. “I grabbed the ones that looked the worst.”
Dorian stepped over to the table, the look of worry on his face growing. He picked up the books one by one, his expression growing darker with each.
Dorian looked up at April gravely, but said nothing.
“Well?” she asked.
“I need time to assess them,” he said. The expression on his face worried her.
“What is it?” she asked. “Don’t hold back. I need to make informed decisions.”
Dorian paused for a moment, then nodded. He put three of the books aside. “These ones are already blackened,” he said.
April stared down at the pile in shock. “There’s nothing we can do to save them? Even if we go in right now?”
Dorian shook his head. “They’re lost.”
April felt frozen in time. In the last fifty years, only six books had gone black. She struggled to speak. “You’re telling me that we just increased the number of black books by half? Overnight?”
Dorian nodded, his lips pressed together in a thin line. She looked down at the three dark tomes. He was right. The rot was so advanced that she couldn’t even read their titles.
One in particular, thicker and larger than the other two, caught her eye. Did she recognize those dimensions?
The others watched her, bewildered, as she hurried back to the shelves, searching the spines for that familiar title…
Her heart beat quickened, but then she saw it: One Thousand and One Nights. She pulled it out. A smattering of ink rot was clustered near the binding, but compared to many of the other books it was hardly affected. She breathed out, clutching the book to her chest.
“April?”
She turned. Dorian stood at the end of the aisle. Without a word he stepped forward and eased the book out of her grasp. Her arms tingled where his fingertips brushed against them and she crossed her arms. He turned it over, his brow furrowing at the spots where the ink grew more concentrated.
“It’s not very extensive,” he said. “It has months, I’d say, before the condition becomes critical. He’s safe.” He handed the book back to her.
April felt like she’d been caught at something. “I was just worried about him,” she tried to explain. “I mean, not like that. I haven’t even gone into this book since before Mason. There hasn’t been time.”
Dorian nodded. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
She wanted to say something else but couldn’t find the right words. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say, really. She replaced One Thousand and One Nights on the shelf, and they walked wordlessly back to the others.
“Is everything all right?” Randall asked.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, wanting to change the subject. “We need to start erasing the ink rot tonight. How fast is it spreading?”
Dorian picked up a few of the books and leafed through them. “It doesn’t appear to be progressing faster than normal,” he said. “And I’d hazard a guess that it will continue at a normal rate.”
“How do you figure?”
“In the past when we’ve had a mass outbreak like this, there was only one initial wave.”
“That’s good, right?” April asked.
“It’s better than the alternative.”
“What do we do now?” Randall asked.
“We have to start erasing it,” April said. She turned back to Dorian. “Which book is the worst? We’ll start there.”
Dorian raised his eyebrows. “It’s hard to say, but…” he picked up one of the books off the table. “This is as good a place to start as any.”
April took the book. The cover was partially obscured, but she was able to make out the title: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s get started.”
Dorian nodded. “You go on ahead. I’ll stay here and assess the damage, go through the rest of the collection and start making a plan of action.”
April nodded. “Randall and I will go.”
Randall looked doubtful. “But what about him?” He hooked his thumb in Thaddeus’ direction.
April bit her lip, wishing Randall hadn’t chosen today to bring Thaddeus into the library with him. “He can stay with Dorian.”
“No!” Dorian and Thaddeus said in unison. They exchanged a sheepish glance.
Dorian’s eyes returned to April. “We can’t trust him.”
“I helped you restore the wards this building and placed new ones on your homes.” Thaddeus said. “Isn’t that enough to gain your trust?”
“Only because you know that the Collectors are coming after you the same that they’ll be coming after us.” Dorian turned to April. “I have to focus on the task at hand. I can’t babysit him. If he decides to attack me, or close the book while you’re inside…”
“Why would I do that?” Thaddeus asked, annoyed. “Not that I want to stay alone with you, anyway. You’re the one who can’t be trusted, character.” He said the last word as though it were an insult.
Dorian ignored the jab. “I don’t know why you do any of the things you do,” His tone was clipped. “I do know that trusting you is what got us in this mess in the first place. Who knows, maybe you think you can overpower us and deliver us to your former employers to get back in their good graces.”
April waited for Thaddeus to deny this, but he looked down at the floor.
Dorian was right; they couldn’t risk leaving him unattended. Even if he didn’t try to sabotage them outright, he might have an episode. She’d never seen one in person, but from Randall’s description they weren’t pretty.
“Okay,” she said. “Randall stays, too.”
Randall shook his head. “You can’t go in by yourself.�
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“I’ll be fine.”
“You might encounter UNCs,” Randall said. “Or something else. You need backup.”
Thaddeus’ eyes grew wide. “UNCs? What the hell are those?”
“Unnamed characters. They get really antsy when the plot is threatened.” April turned back to Randall. “I’ll go by myself. It’s the only way.”
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
“He’s right,” Dorian interjected. “You’ve seen how ink rot makes characters act. This world is almost black. Just think of how they’ll be.”
“Fine,” April said. “Then there’s only one other option. Thaddeus goes with us.”
“What?” Thaddeus said, and for a moment the snide smugness that chronically tinged his voice was gone. “I’m not going in there. That thing’s what’s caused—” he stopped talking abruptly.
Randall approached Thaddeus. “Oh, you’re going, all right.”
“You can’t make me,” Thaddeus said. He plopped down in one of the chairs and crossed his arms. “I’d like to see you try.”
Randall looked down at Thaddeus. When he spoke, his voice was that of the hardened soldier. “I’m not going to drag you through that portal. You’re going to come of your own free will.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I swear to god that I’ll stop taking care of you. I won’t do any more shopping, I won’t pay the bills. It may be your money, but you need me to manage it for you, don’t you? Remember when you went to the grocery store by yourself last week?”
Thaddeus’ eyes widened. He looked genuinely frightened.
April couldn’t stop herself from asking. “What happened?”
“He went there to buy something. Easy, right? I got a call from the grocery store an hour later. He was in one of the aisles, talking to the cereal boxes. They took his phone right out of his pocket and he didn’t even notice. He’s lucky that they called me and not the police.” His eyes hardened as he looked at Thaddeus. “How long do you think it would take the Collectors to find you if you ended up in jail? Or if you registered at a shelter? You couldn’t survive on the streets, that’s for sure.”
