Ex Libris

by Paula Guran

  Dinner consisted of sandwiches and soup. Wilcox was restless, fidgeting even as he ate, getting up periodically to stride over to the windows and stare out at the darkness. Finally, I said, “Is something the matter?”

  “I’m having those damn trees down tomorrow!”

  “Oh,” I said, not usefully.

  “I’m sorry. They get on my nerves, and it seems like every time I turn around, there’s Flood telling me how much Uncle Loosh loved the hollies. All the more reason they should go.”

  “There was, er . . . there was something about them on that paper I found.”

  He raised his eyebrows in a disagreeable sneer, but did not comment.

  “It looks like . . . however he thought he was going to, er, cheat death, it looks like the hollies . . . ”

  Wilcox stared at me, his brows drawing down in an ugly, brooding expression. Then, all at once, he burst out laughing. “My God, Booth, don’t tell me you believe in that nonsense!”

  I felt my face flood red; I could not answer him.

  “I bet you do!” Wilcox hooted with laughter. “You’re as crazy as Uncle Loosh!”

  I stood up, said, “Good night, Wilcox,” with what vestiges of dignity I could, and walked out of the room. I would have liked to return to work in the library, but I was afraid Wilcox would find me there. I went up to my bedroom and locked the door. I could leave tomorrow afternoon—maybe even tomorrow morning. I could ask Flood about trains before breakfast.

  I did not expect to sleep at all, but I changed into my pajamas and climbed into bed. If nothing else, I could read comfortably. About half an hour later, I heard Wilcox come upstairs. His footsteps stopped outside my door, but he did not knock or speak. I was just as glad.

  I read long enough to quiet my nerves. When I looked at the clock, it was five minutes past midnight, and the house was perfectly still. No one would notice or care if I went back down to the library for a couple of hours. I would feel better about leaving—less like I was running away—if I had at least completed the task Wilcox had asked me here to perform.

  I got up, put my book carefully back in my valise, and put on my dressing gown, already rehearsing my story should I run into Flood or Wilcox. I needed something to read—what better reason to be found creeping downstairs to the library in the middle of the night?

  But the house might as well have been deserted, for all the signs of life it showed. I made it to the library without incident and shut the doors carefully behind me before I turned on the light. In that single moment of darkness, I suffered the horrible conviction that there was someone sitting behind the desk, but when I turned on the light, no one was there.

  I worked peacefully for almost five hours, slowly restoring order to the chaos of Mr. Preston Wilcox’s library. The darkness beyond the windows was softening to gray, the sun’s first rays reaching up above the brooding hollies, when I pulled a book out of the lowest shelf of the bookcase behind the desk and with it fell a second book, which flipped itself open to its title page.

  I stared at that second book for a long time, perfectly still, just as I would have stared at a tarantula that might or might not have been dead. The book was not listed in Mr. Preston Wilcox’s catalogue. I had only ever seen a copy once before. But now I knew why those notes referring to “the Guide” and “the Vessel” had looked familiar. It was The Book of Whispers—not the nineteenth-century fake, but the genuine edition from 1605. I could not bring myself to touch it.

  And while I was standing there, staring at that small, fragile volume, I heard Wilcox coming down the stairs. I clutched my dressing gown closed at the neck. I could not let him see me like this: in my pajamas with my hair uncombed and my face stubbled. He would never believe me then, and the matter had suddenly become much larger than our enmity, preserved like an ant in amber, and my wounded pride.

  Then I thought, He’ll go in to breakfast. I can get upstairs and get decent without him seeing me.

  At the same moment at which I remembered it was only a quarter after five, far too early for breakfast, I heard the front door slam. I knew then, and the knowledge made me cold. He intended to have those hollies down today; he was going out to look at them, to plan his attack.

  I had seen The Book of Whispers; I knew what was waiting for him among the holly trees.

  “Wilcox!” I shouted uselessly and plunged for the door.

  The door would not open. I tugged and rattled, but the latch stayed jammed. The first part of my dream from Friday night came back; I remembered the old man saying, “Stay in the library.”

  But whether I liked Wilcox or not, I could not leave him to his fate, to the terrible thing Lucius Preston Wilcox intended.

  “Flood!” I shouted and then caught myself; Flood had his own role to play among the holly trees. I shouted for the housekeeper instead, Mrs. Grant, and pounded on the door in between my frantic assaults on the doorknob. I could feel the old man’s black eyes watching me from behind the desk. I did not turn around, afraid that I would find the feeling to be more than just nerves.

  The library was not far from the kitchen, and Mrs. Grant got up at dawn to bake the day’s bread. Although it felt like hours, it was no more than ten minutes—maybe only five—before I heard her on the other side of the door, saying, “What on Earth—?”

  “The door’s stuck!”

  “Stuck? It’s never been stuck before.”

  For her, the door swung smoothly open. I wasted no time in explanations, apologies, or curses, but bolted past her. The front door did not resist me; I threw it open just in time to see Wilcox disappear into the close-serried ranks of holly.

  “Wilcox!” I shouted and started running.

  I lost both my carpet slippers within ten feet, but ran on regardless. Stones and sticks and shed holly leaves hurt my feet, but there was still a chance. If I could get to the hollies, get Wilcox out of the hollies . . .

  I reached the trees, ducked between them as Wilcox had, and came face to face with Flood.

  “Where’s Mr. Wilcox?”

  “Mr. Wilcox has met with an accident,” he said smoothly, well-rehearsed, “but I think—”

  “Let it go, Flood.”

  Those smooth, perfect pebbles stared at me.

  “Let him go.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Booth.”

  “You’re the Guide, aren’t you? And poor Wilcox is the Vessel. I found the book.”

  His face twisted; I remembered how he had stood in the doorway of the library, refusing to come in. And I remembered the carvings on the library doors; that thing I had taken for a box could just as easily be a book. I wondered, distractedly, my hackles rising, just what Flood had been before Mr. Preston Wilcox had used the book to command him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Booth,” he said. “I think you misunderstood me. Mr. Wilcox—”

  “What on Earth are you doing out here, Booth?”

  I whipped around, my heart hammering in my throat. Wilcox was approaching through the trees.

  “Wilcox?” I said weakly.

  “Good God, man, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s the matter?”

  “N-nothing.” I could not stop staring at him, his ruddy face and aggressively square body, his rumpled hair and— “What happened to your hand?”

  Flood said, “I was trying to tell you, Mr. Booth. Mr. Wilcox met with an accident.”

  “Bumping around like a bull in a china shop,” Wilcox said cheerfully. “Fell over and bashed my hand on some damn rock. I was just going back to the house for some Mercurochrome. Come on, and we’ll get Mrs. Grant to make you some tea.”

  “All right,” I said, numb and bewildered, and we started back toward Hollyhill. I could feel embarrassment rising, washing over me like a tide. “I’m done in the library, and I, er . . . that is, is there a morning train?”

  “Ten o’clock,” Wilcox said. “Capital work, old man. I’ll have Flood drive you. Oh, and Flood!”

  As he glanced over h
is shoulder at Flood, I saw his eyes plainly in the clarifying dawn light. They were Wilcox’s little, sandy-lashed eyes, but surely Wilcox’s eyes had been hazel, not that obsidian-hard black.

  “Tell the men not to bother about the hollies,” Wilcox said. “They’re starting to grow on me.”

  I left by the ten o’clock train. Flood and I said nothing to each other. What could we say? We both knew what had happened; we both knew that no one would believe me if I tried to tell them the truth, and even if I were believed, there was nothing that anyone could do. After he let me out at the station, I saw him hiss at me like a cat through the windshield before the car pulled away.

  I have not heard from Wilcox since.

  The Midbury Lake Incident

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Mary Beth Wilkins had the most perfect library, until one day, in the middle of June, the library burned down.

  She arrived at the two-hundred-year-old structure to find the roof collapsed, the walls blackened, and the books . . . well, let’s just say the books were gone, floating away in the clouds of smoke that darkened the early morning sky.

  No one had called her, even though she had always thought of the Midbury Lake Public Library as her library. She was the only librarian, and even though she didn’t own the building—the Town of Midbury Lake did—she treated it like her own, defended it like a precious child, and managed to find funding, even in the dark years of dwindling government support.

  She sat in her ancient Subaru, too shocked to move, not just because the firefighters were still poking out of the smoking building as if they were posing for the cover of next year’s Fire Fighters Calendar, but because of all of the emotions that rose within her.

  Grief wasn’t one of them. Grief would come, she knew. Grief always came, whether you wanted it or not. She had learned that in her previous life—a much more adventurous life, a life lived, her mother would say (and why, why was she thinking of her mother? Mary Beth had banned thoughts of her mother for nearly ten years). No one could avoid grief, but grief came in its own sweet time.

  No, the dominant emotion she was feeling was fury. Fury that no one had called her. Fury that the library—her sanctuary—was gone. Fury that her day—her life—had been utterly destroyed.

  She gripped the leather cover she had placed on the Subaru’s steering wheel, so that her hands would never touch metal or hard plastic, and she made herself take a deep breath.

  Her routines were shattered. Every morning she arrived before six, made coffee, put out the fresh-baked donuts whose tantalizing aroma was, even now, wafting out of the back seat.

  Her assistant, Lynda Sue, would arrive shortly, and then Mary Beth would have to comfort her, since Lynda Sue was prone to dramatics—she had been a theatah majah once, you knoow, deah—and then it would become all about Lynda Sue and the Patrons and the Library and the Funding, and oh, dear, Mary Beth would find herself in the middle of a mainstream maelstrom.

  Too many emotions, including her own.

  She had made a serious mistake, because her morning routine hadn’t been in her control. That meditative hour, before anyone arrived, would happen at the library, in what everyone called the Great Room, which was—had been—a wall of windows overlooking Midbury Lake and the hills beyond.

  Midbury Lake changed with the seasons and sometimes, Mary Beth thought, with her moods. This morning, the lake itself seemed to be ablaze, the reds and oranges reflecting on the rippling water.

  Then she realized that the colors were coming from the sunrise, not from the fire at the library, and she bowed her head.

  When she opened the car door, a new phase of her life would begin, and she would have to make choices.

  It had been so nice not to make choices any more.

  It had been wonderful to be Mary Beth Wilkins, small town librarian.

  She would miss Mary Beth.

  She could never rebuild Mary Beth.

  She would have to become someone new, and becoming someone new always took way too much work.

  She drove back to her apartment, and parked near the secluded wooded area near the two-story block-long building. She often parked there—at least she had kept up that old habit—and knew all the ways to the building’s back entrance that couldn’t be seen from the street.

  Then she glanced over the back seat of the car. The donuts. That little incompetent clerk at the local donut shop probably wouldn’t remember her, and as usual, Mary Beth had paid cash. She hoped if anyone saw her, they would think they’d seen her earlier than they had or maybe they would confuse the days.

  She hoped. Because she had stopped thinking defensively three years ago. Somehow, she had thought Midbury Lake was too remote, too obscure, too off-the-beaten path for anyone to find her.

  Better yet, she had thought no one remembered her. She had done everything she could to scour herself from the records, and she hadn’t used magic in what seemed like forever, so she wouldn’t leave a trail.

  The donut aroma was too much for her, or maybe she had just become one of those middle-aged women who ate whenever they were stressed. She didn’t care. She reached into the back seat, nudged up the top of the donut box, and took a donut, covering her fingers with granules of sugar.

  She couldn’t fix the library, not without someone noticing.

  She bit into the donut, savoring the mix of sugar and grease and soft, perfect cake. She would miss these donuts. They were special.

  At least she had already picked a new name. She needed to adopt it. Not Mary Beth Wilkins any longer. Now, Victoria Dowspot. Her identification for the new identity was in the apartment. She should have been carrying it. Yet another mistake.

  She also should have been practicing the name in her own mind. She hadn’t done that either. Victoria. Victoria Marie Dowspot.

  Another librarian. The kind of single middle-aged woman no one noticed, even, apparently, when her library burned.

  She swallowed the fury. That was Mary Beth’s fury, not Victoria’s. She needed to keep that in mind.

  Victoria finished the donut, wiped the sugar off her mouth, then sighed. The donuts, comfortable in their box, were just one symbol of all she had to do, how lax she had become.

  She stepped out of the Subaru, then pulled out the donut box, and put it in the trunk. No one would accidentally see them there. And there was nothing else in the car that would directly tie it to her, at least from the perspective of someone who didn’t know her.

  She had learned, three identities ago, to be as cautious about strange little details as possible. Too bad she had gotten so relaxed here in Midbury Lake. She had already made half a dozen mistakes.

  She hoped they weren’t fatal.

  She snuck up the back stairs, stepping around the creaks and groans, and quietly turned the key in her apartment door’s deadbolt. She pushed the door open and slipped inside. Magoo greeted her, concern on his feline face. He was a big orange male, battered when she found him, or, rather, when he found her.

  He had lived through two different identity changes, the only consistent part of her life. She always thanked the universe that librarians and cats went together like hands and gloves. No one thought anything of a librarian who had cat.

  Victoria was just glad she hadn’t brought him to the library of late. That had actually been his idea. He hadn’t liked one of the new patrons, a middle-aged man with an overloaded face—big forehead, small piggy eyes, heavy cheekbones.

  She hadn’t like him either, but unlike Magoo, she couldn’t bail on her job.

  Until today, that is. And she would bail because they would think her dead in that fire.

  She just had to do a few things first.

  She had a go-bag in the van she kept in the apartment’s parking area. She paid for the extra space, telling the management the van belonged to her cousin, whom she’d pretended to be more than once. She would use that disguise again today, after she grabbed some food and water for Magoo. Everything else wo
uld stay here.

  She wouldn’t mind leaving this apartment. It was dark, especially in the winter, but it was heavily soundproofed and, unlike the library, made of stone.

  Magoo looked at her, his tail drooping. He knew. He hated what was going to come next, but at least he didn’t run away from her.

  She scooped him under one arm and put him in the special cat carrier she had made. It was solid on the inside, but on the outside, it looked like a canvas carryall. And she had spelled it so no one could see a cat inside.

  Magoo made one soft sound of protest, but he went in willingly enough. She put one bag of his dry food in her real carryall, along with two extra cans of his wet food. Then she grabbed two of his toys, the ones he played with the most, and packed them as well.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at the remaining cat toys, scattered on the hard wood floor. The toys were battered and well-loved, and she had to leave them behind.

  Funny, how the emotion rose over Magoo’s things, and not her own. She had worked on staying unattached for so long that she didn’t mind leaving her possessions behind. She minded leaving his.

  She stood. She had hoped she could stay in Midbury Lake. After so many years, she had thought she could. But she should have known that disaster would follow her.

  It always did.

  She made herself take a deep breath, then ran a hand over her forehead. She went into the bedroom, smoothed the coverlet on the bed because she didn’t want anyone to think she was a slob, not that it mattered. It wasn’t her after all; it was Mary Beth.

  Then she peered out the bedroom window, with its view of the parking lot. She couldn’t see the Subaru, but the van looked just fine.

  No one else stood in the lot either. So, it was now or never.

  She clenched a fist and focused her ears on the Subaru. Then she slid her right fingernails along her thumb, mimicking the slow opening of a trunk lid. She heard it unlock, and squeal open.

  For the first time, she was happy she had never used rust remover. Sometimes it was the little things that allowed success.