Bookburners The Complete Season Two

by Max Gladstone

  “Isn’t studying our materials enough?” Angiuli opened the box and removed a thick binder with a cover label in Hebrew.

  “Her only chance at actual contact with magic is to meet it in the field, since we still won’t let her experiment.”

  “Dangerous.” The binder’s contents were printed in braille; Angiuli skimmed a few pages with his fingertips without looking. “She’s so—vital to our operations. Besides, doesn’t her presence in the field confuse things?”

  “She was a great help in Rhodes. And while we’re in the field, she’s agreed to follow orders like the others.”

  “The others follow orders, do they?”

  “Yes,” Menchú said though he allowed himself a slim smile at the bad joke. “It’s important to have a chain of command in a crisis. Asanti knows that. Really, this is just a new case of our arrangement. She keeps the Archives, and works closely with Team Three, but fieldwork is our responsibility. She’s just along for the ride.”

  “She almost lost herself to magic in Rhodes.”

  “She didn’t lose herself, though—and if she had, we would have dealt with it.” And this next bit he had to say, even though he doubted it was true, even though the thought made him wake up sweating on calm nights. “One way or another.”

  Angiuli looked across the desk at him. Menchú stared back into the monsignor’s green eyes, and remembered the man he’d first met three decades before, who’d helped his people and cleared their paths. Somewhere in the intervening years they had both grown old, but Angiuli had aged faster. The world didn’t treat the softness in him kindly. Menchú had less of that, at the beginning, and he’d weathered harder. “I couldn’t do what you do, Arturo.”

  “You could, Monsignor.” He looked for the right words, but had to finish with: “You’re a very kind man.”

  There was more to say, of course—Angiuli was still fighting his way through ossified paperwork strata, trying to capture, or at least describe, the various truths his predecessor had swept under this rug or that throughout the Vatican. Cardinal Varano had filled every closet in Saint Peter’s with skeletons, it seemed. But when Menchú closed the office door behind him at last, Asanti was waiting outside. The archivist’s hands were clasped in her lap, and if Menchú hadn’t known her almost as long as he’d known Angiuli, he wouldn’t have thought she was nervous. “He’s okay with it?”

  “I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call him okay,” Menchú said, when they were far enough from the office that he was relatively certain their voices wouldn’t carry. “But we have enough rope to hang ourselves.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Arturo,” Asanti said, and slapped him heartily on the back. “So positive! Now, come on. We have packing to do.”

  • • •

  Grace maintained her crash bag with care. After a few decades of being trapped in a decades-old curse that kept her alive only so long as a (thankfully large) candle burned, she’d refined packing to a science. As soon as she made it home from a mission, Grace zipped open her bag, threw out the clothes stained with sweat, blood, or ichor—which amounted to most of them—tossed the few she wanted to keep into a hamper for Vatican mooks to dry clean, replaced travel toiletries with new equivalents from the boxes under the sink, packed fresh underclothes, and left the top layers for the day of the mission—no way to prepare for that, since she had no sense when she’d be needed next. Massachusetts in late autumn meant golds and reds; she chose loose cream pants and a burgundy silk top and a camelhair coat to meld them, a dress and tights for non-combat formal wear, and the right shoes, and headed for the armory.

  She didn’t spare a glance for the racked firearms. She had never liked guns—liked them even less since she had first stumbled into work with the Bureau of Official Secrets back in Shanghai in the twenties and found that most demons, ghosts, goblins, and assorted crawlies didn’t tend to notice bullets. Guns were useful for making men and foreigners listen to you, and that was about it. Since the curse, they’d proved even more hindrance than help. She was weapon enough without the aid of something people could see.

  She checked out four crosses and two silver rings from the spindle-boned monk behind the armory desk. He adjusted his glasses, bobbed his head or nodded (she’d never been able to tell the difference with him), and retreated into the back. Grace took her copy of The Collected Works of Keats from her handbag, and read while he was gone. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness—

  “Stateside,” said Thavani Shah behind her. “Sounds like fun.”

  Grace took her time finishing the poem. Then: “Sansone gave you the brief already? They usually wait until we screw up.”

  “New procedures, courtesy of Monsignor Fox. Improved transparency; this way we’re less likely to get caught with our trousers down if you fail.”

  Grace turned.

  “Not that I expect trouble.” Shah was leaning against the rifle rack. Team One’s operational lead looked more than a bit like a rifle herself. Dog owners grew to look like their dogs and vice versa; if Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Of course Thavani Shah looked like a weapon. “But we might as well be ready.”

  “Do you find the waiting worse?” Grace asked. “Or the action?”

  “Neither.”

  Grace waited.

  “It’s the space between that bothers me. When I know we might be called up, I’m alive. When we’re in the field, I go in assuming I’m dead—and when we win, I’m born again. Between, though—I don’t really exist, in that time. I’m stuck in a half-life, wondering what’s out there that your Orb and Team Two’s spies haven’t yet picked up.” She trailed one hand over the shoulder stock of a rifle. “You ever wonder if we’ve lost already? Maybe demons already control the world, and they’re good enough at it that no one’s ever noticed?”

  “How are your knights?”

  “The ones you put in the hospital? Improving. Ms. Soo will be back on the squad soon, though I expect she’ll have to pass on her gear to one of the trainees. You did a very thorough job on her knee.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You did what you had to. Even hiding from us how strong you could be, how fast you could move—it makes sense, Grace. I’m just grateful I had the chance to see you really fight.”

  The armorer returned with a manila envelope that held Grace’s load-out. She signed for the crosses and rings, he countersigned, and she added the envelope to her purse.

  “The lack of clarity bothers you,” Shah said. “I know it does. You’re at your best when you’re fighting. Anything less than open battle and you feel lost. I understand.”

  “You think you do,” Grace said, and walked past her toward the door.

  “Join us. You’d be perfect on Team One—you’d glide through the waiting without the slightest notice, and wake to perfect clarity. No shadows. No wasted time. No muddling.”

  “I like muddling,” Grace said. “Can’t make a proper cocktail without it.”

  She heard fabric shift behind her; sharpness whispered through the air. Grace burned—in a room not so far away, her candle flared, a few minutes of her life melted away, and the world slowed. She reached without looking, and caught the knife Shah had thrown by its handle. Clouds obscured the blade—not striations like on watered steel, but clouds like an afternoon before a storm, limned with sun.

  “A gift,” Shah said. “Team One picked it up in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Cleared quarantine last week. We think the clouds will part as it’s used. What happens then, who knows? We thought you should have it.”

  “What do you want?”

  Shah laughed. “It’s a token of good faith, Grace. We’re on the same side.” She tossed the sheath underhand, and Grace caught that too.

  Then she left.

  • • •

  Back in a sec! read the sticky note on the empty bowl of candy on Mrs. Milligan’s desk. The librarian herself was gone.

  Joseph didn’t have a s
ec. The door opened behind him, slow and heavy.

  He pictured himself pinned to the stone floor here, while the rubber bats circled above.

  Okay, okay, okay. Get it together.

  The fire exit glowed red in the rear corner of the room. They’d see him if he went for that, would catch him out behind the building. But the library was on a hill, and there was a loading dock door one floor down—Mrs. Milligan rarely locked that. He could lose them in the basement, slip out the loading door. Yes.

  Stevie Jenks half-fell into the library, searched, pointed one skeleton finger toward Joseph—“Hey!” (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Joseph’s brain prompted, unhelpful as ever.)

  Joseph sprinted toward the fire door; Ron and Chris ran to block his path, and Joseph cornered hard, skidded on stone, grabbed the railing, and vaulted downstairs through fake cobweb.

  They’d banked the downstairs lights low. No ghosts and goblins lurked down here, just shadows broken by the fire exit light. Joseph ran from that light, turned right and right again, wove through tall shelves toward the loading dock. Footsteps followed, panting, hunting breath, and there were monsters in the basement: two skeletons and Frankenstein’s monster and a ghost. And Joseph. He kept his head down, hiked up his starry robes, and tiptoed through the science section toward the loading dock door.

  He approached, bent low. He had to time it just right, make as little noise as possible when he opened the door.

  It won’t work, kid.

  Joseph froze. His lungs seized up; he squeaked. A hand made of ice clutched him by the throat. The voice had whispered into his right ear. But it wasn’t Stevie Jenks’s voice, or Ron’s, or Chris’s, or Ted’s. And he was kneeling against a bookshelf—who could have spoken?

  Just me.

  3.

  “So it’s another creepy town, is it?” Liam asked as Sal drove them toward Saint Xavier.

  “It doesn’t look creepy to me.”

  Grace frowned out the window. “Creepy town.”

  Trees drooped after a cold November rain; an abandoned tricycle sat on the lawn of an Addams Family house set back from the road. Multicolored sodden streamers dangled from the tricycle’s handles. A single traffic light blinked on and off. They drove past. The place could have been a ghost town; when they’d first turned off the highway, Sal had worried it was. But after three blocks’ drive into the dilapidated red-brick town of blank glass windows, Sal saw an old man shuffling along a broken sidewalk, led by a golden retriever at least as old in dog years. The old man might be an illusion, but she doubted malevolent magic would come up with a golden retriever.

  Uncanny, sure. Disturbing as hell. But also mundane, so far.

  Sal wasn’t sure whether that made it worse. “This is just how towns look in Massachusetts.”

  “Creepy?” Menchú said.

  “Not all American towns are creepy, guys.” Sal’s eyes burned and her body felt like it was about to kill her. One transatlantic trip had been bad enough. Two in a row constituted enemy action. Literally, in this case.

  “Hashtag,” Liam said. Sal punched him in the shoulder, and pulled to the curb. “Hey, I didn’t mean—”

  They’d stopped in front of a vine-and-brick box that a dingy sign named as Mike’s General Store. “Someone around here might know more about our missing school. No sense going in blind. Come along, if you want. Might do you good to meet the locals—once you do, they won’t look so creepy.”

  Liam followed her onto the sidewalk. “Want to bet?”

  Grace rolled down the window and called after them, “We know where the problem is. We should just go straight there.”

  “Intelligence, though.”

  Grace returned her attention to her book. “Get me a soda water.”

  The general store was lit so brightly that it hurt Sal’s eyes after the gray outside. She blinked away sparks, scanned empty aisles. A large man stood behind the register. She walked toward him, raised her hand—the screen door slammed shut behind her. She jumped and turned. Liam stood inside, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I thought it would catch itself.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’ll trouble you not to take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “You spooked me.”

  “Perhaps because this place is … creepy?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why? There’s no one to hear me except you.”

  She pointed to the counter, where no one stood.

  “There was a cashier, just a second ago.” Damn, damn, damn. She saw motion out of the corner of her eye: a stockroom door, closing. She ran toward it. “Sir!” She skidded on the tiles, stumbling into a stack of paper towel boxes that spilled all over the stockroom floor. “God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rush in, but—”

  The room was empty. The exit door was locked.

  Lights flickered and buzzed.

  “He was right behind the counter,” she said. “I saw the door moving. He must have come in here.” She picked herself up off the floor, and shoved the boxes into something vaguely resembling order. “You saw him, right?”

  Liam shook his head.

  “Maybe I was wrong.” She pulled her cross out from under her shirt. The silver looked duller than she remembered, or was that the light? “The magic shouldn’t have seeped out this far from the school this fast.”

  “Not according to Sansone. But that was a guess.”

  “We haven’t seen anyone in the street. Anyone except the old guy.” She shouldered past Liam, and sprinted out into the street just in time to see the old man with the golden retriever round a corner. She ran down the road, turned the corner, shouted, “Sir! Excuse me!”

  Bare road unrolled between blank-faced houses on both sides until it disappeared in thick mist.

  Liam huffed up to the corner beside her. “Gone?”

  Sal didn’t have to nod.

  He grunted.

  “He might have gone indoors. Or turned down another street.”

  “Do you hear any footsteps?”

  She didn’t answer. The town was very silent. Liam breathed, and she heard it.

  Sal said: “I don’t think that mist was there before, either.”

  Liam glanced down the road to the highway, and cursed.

  “Mist there too?”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, it looks—we could still gun for the highway, trust the silver to keep us safe.”

  “But that’s not the job.”

  “No.” Liam shook his head. “That it isn’t.”

  They returned to the car; Sal revved the engine hard, shifted into drive, and peeled away from the curb. “No soda water?” Grace asked.

  They left the town behind, drove through an overgrown field lined with damp telephone poles toward woods the color of red rot. The mist followed. It flowed from the town and crept through the tall grass.

  “In there.” Asanti pointed. “Second left. There’ll be a gate, if we can make it.”

  The car died as they passed into the shadow of the trees. The sky looked flat and close as if it were a solid gray shell just above the branches. Maybe it was. Maybe the mist closed in from above and below as well as behind. Menchú gathered them by the road for equipment review. Crosses, check. Grace, Sal noted, was carrying a sheathed knife. That was new.

  “Faster spread than expected,” Asanti said. “Interesting.”

  “It can be interesting later,” Liam said. “Once we find whatever started this, and stop it. For now, let’s settle for terrifying.” Fingers of mist crept through the forest toward them. Sal didn’t know whether those were lowercase or uppercase mists, and didn’t want to wait around to find out. The fog bank had eaten half the field, and started gnawing on the second half. “Any idea what we’re looking for?”

  Asanti examined the contents of her satchel. “Seems more likely a book than a beast, but until we find more evidence, I don’t care to guess. Definitely within the school, though.” She showed them a flat silver coin, tarnished almost black.
“It’s been darkening faster the closer we get to Saint Xavier.”

  “All right.” Menchú sounded tired. They all were. “Let’s go.”

  Asanti marched to the head of the line, beside Liam. Grace lingered in the center of the group, near Menchú, not speaking. Not touching, either. Sal felt a sudden, sharp pang for Grace and what she’d found and lost. Five ghosts trudging down a damp asphalt strip toward—what exactly? Menchú had spent his entire adult life leading people and losing them. Grace, torn outside of time. Liam—Sal didn’t know much about his life before possession, but whatever it had been, he’d probably liked it just fine, before the magic stole those years from him. Sal herself had lost her brother, gained him back, lost him again. And Asanti—

  Asanti was fine. Asanti was careful. But Asanti hadn’t suffered in quite the same way as the others. Or if she had, she never shared it with Sal.

  Sal fell back, hypnotized by the mush of footsteps through wet leaves. When Liam raised his hand and called out, “We’re here,” from the front of the line, she jogged toward him.

  That was when she noticed the footsteps behind her, coming from the mist.

  They’d matched her tread while she’d fallen behind, their steps nestled inside hers. But when she quickened her pace, theirs lagged a beat behind.

  Sal ran faster.

  • • •

  Liam had never let things go—never once from childhood, as his mother and siblings wasted no opportunity to remind him. Grudges carried from infancy, that was him. Glared till age twenty at the hand that slipped when rocking the cradle. Oh, sure, many would besmirch his pugnacity, call it a fault or handicap, but Liam saw it another way: How was the world served by people who knuckled under when faced with pressure? The world wasn’t a giving-quarter sort of place, in his view or experience, which had been his impression long before magic reared its horned head, thank you very much; he’d known it as early as Da getting laid off at the factory, and nothing he’d ever experienced kneeling in penance on a hard stone church floor gainsaid that conclusion. Besides which, science only really worked if people were arseholes to one another: you had a belief, you fought for it, forced others to prove their position or disprove yours. He was, if you thought about it, doing his opponents a favor by giving them a whetstone against which to sharpen their arguments.