Sal counted for the first time. “Wait, there are only six planets?”
“It took a long time to discover the other three. Two. Or is it three again?” Liam frowned up at his celestial arrangement and turned a wheel. “Did that fix anything?”
The miniature heavens shifted again, until they were perfectly aligned.
Sal surveyed the blackness. “I still don’t see the floodlight.”
Grace loped away to examine the far side of the orrery. “No new steps away from here, either,” she called. “The old ones are also gone.”
Liam flopped onto the floor and sprawled, eyes closed. “We’ll be stuck here forever. We’re going to go mad or starve to death or be devoured by metal spiders. At least the spiders would be quick.”
“We’ll find a way,” Menchú told him gently. “You give up hope so easily, even when there is no need.”
A loose-leaf whirlwind descended from high above, and coalesced into a human-like figure made of paper. It was, as best Sal could figure, a twin to Ink Kong, from the illuminated V upon its forehead all the way down to the fists the size of full ham hocks.
No buckets of water nearby. No way to give it the Wicked Witch treatment. And nothing else she’d tried last time had even scratched the damn thing.
Its rustling voice spoke: “Explicate.”
“Finally,” Grace said. “This place was getting a little boring.” She flexed her hands and settled onto the balls of her feet.
“Wait,” Sal said. She held up a hand. “Wait, maybe we don’t have to fight.”
New Ink Kong looked at each of them in turn, its paper face bringing whole new meaning to the phrase “blank expression.” It settled on Father Menchú. “Christus tecum est,” it said. “Aut es Dominus meus?”
“How’s your Church Latin?” Asanti asked Menchú.
Menchú licked his lips. “Rusty. It asked if I’m with Christ, or its master?” He took a step closer to New Kong and raised his voice. “Domini jam pridem discesserunt. Spero quidem Christum mecum esse.”
Asanti nodded approvingly. “Perfect.”
Kong didn’t nod. But it didn’t attack, either. It whirled apart into pages and reassembled closer to Menchú. It leaned in, inches away from Menchú’s face, and sniffed. “Librorum incensor,” it growled.
Asanti was affronted. “What, even they called us Bookburners?”
“Orb—orbis …” Menchú shook his head. “I don’t remember ‘broken.’ Asanti?”
She faced the creature. “Nobis est orbis fracta,” she said. “Potesne nobis auxilio esse? We need help,” she translated.
Ink Kong rose. It must have been ten feet tall, maybe twelve. “Cur sedem nostram haereticos introducendo contaminavisti?” it demanded of Menchú.
“Why did you bring heretics here,” Asanti pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “This is … not good.”
New Kong raised a hand. Spiders descended from the walls and converged upon them; at least a dozen of the things. Liam put his fists up, and Sal brandished her flashlight like it would be any defense at all.
Menchú bowed to Kong. “Domini ducenti annos aberant—”
“Ducentos,” Asanti corrected. “He said its masters have been gone for two hundred years,” she told the others.
Menchú stumbled through his next piece: “Mutaverunt quamvis plurimum plurima, librorum tamen incensores malum una quidem omnes repugnamus.”
“Did he just tell it we’re Bookburners?” Liam whispered.
“He said a lot has changed and we all fight evil,” Asanti murmured.
Ink Kong was still. The spiders did not begin a murderous poison-injecting rampage. Team Three remained poised for battle for a few endless moments. “Probate,” Kong said at last.
“Prove it?” Asanti sounded affronted.
“Bibliothecam reperite,” Kong said. It settled in place, as if to watch them.
“Find the library.” Menchú rubbed his temples. “Not like we haven’t already been trying.”
“The orrery has to be the key,” Asanti said. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“There must be millions of possible combinations. What else might work?” Sal asked. “Pentagram? Or the six-sided version—hexagram?”
Asanti tapped a finger. “The Grand Trine,” she said. “Let’s try that.”
“Grand Trine?”
“It’s when three planets make up a perfect equilateral triangle.”
“Which three?” Sal squinted up at the false sun. “Or does it matter?”
“Elements. Fire is the sun, Jupiter, and Saturn …” Asanti pursed her lips and worked the panel.
“But the sun isn’t a planet,” Sal said.
“It is in astrology, and that’s what we’re concerned with right now.” Asanti spun a wheel slowly, until the three heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment.
When she stared at the orrery, Sal realized, the squirming stairways in her peripheral vision didn’t bother her quite so much. When it settled, she searched for the floodlights again, but there was still nothing. “Any new stairs?”
“No,” Grace answered.
Sal tried to ignore the growing tightness in her abdomen. No time to be afraid. No time to feel sorry for herself. “Now what?”
Liam squinted at the ersatz sun. “There’s more, right? Water is Venus, the moon, and …”
“Mars,” Asanti finished for him. She made the planets wheel above them into new positions.
Still nothing. “Aren’t there four elements?” Sal frowned at the silver orb for Mercury. “So the Earth and Mercury are earth and air?”
“Not exactly. The planets for the elements earth and water are all the same three,” Asanti said.
“… Wow, that’s dumb.”
Asanti was almost apologetic. “They didn’t have enough planets to work with. They did a lot of shoehorning in those days to try to force the natural world to conform to their theories. There are a lot of doubles.”
Liam scratched at his jaw. “Mercury is air, though.”
“Yes, with Saturn and Jupiter.” Asanti nodded.
“How do we make an equilateral triangle with Jupiter and Saturn in the same places, but with the sun and Mercury both at the third point?”
Liam drooped. “It’s mathematically impossible.”
That knot in Sal’s stomach grew tighter. What’s a better way to go, starving or spiders? Pummeled to death by a living stack of paperwork?
“We keep trying.” Menchú’s voice was firm. “We try and try until something works.”
Ink Kong watched them with infinite patience, not speaking and not moving.
“What if nothing does?” Liam asked.
Nobody answered.
5.
Sal took a deep breath. Situation bleak. No easy outs. Well, fine. She’d never liked the easy way. She circled the orrery, trying to imagine different combinations that someone, somewhere, might have thought were significant. Not just someone, somewhere: a bunch of mystics from the eighteenth century.
She closed her eyes to crowd out the spiders, the orrery, the upsetting stairs zagging overhead. She was no historian, no mystic, but a good cop knew how to get into the mindset of a suspect, to sift details for opportunity, motive, basic psychology.
What did she know about Team Four? They fought magic with magic. They had died a horrible death, or committed a horrible crime, and were dead now. What else, what else?
Apparently they liked spiders. Or had done something terrible to create spiders. Somehow, though, a spider shape didn’t seem right. Books? But she wasn’t sure how to draw a distinct book with six planets.
Team Four predated the Industrial Revolution. They didn’t have electricity or the internet. Given the evidence in the dining hall, they ate surprisingly well for a group of monks.
They were monks. They operated out of the Vatican, just like Team Three.
They weren’t just a bunch of eighteenth-century mystics. They were a bunch of Catholic mystics.
“What if,” Sal said slowly, “we made a cross?”
“A Grand Cross? In astrology that would be a double opposition,” Asanti said. “It’s worth a shot.” She lined up the four fire and air planets in one row, then worked the remaining three into another. She angled Terra into a final spot of honor, directly at the intersection.
The world around them twisted into new, equally impossible angles. This time, when form settled into fixed positions again, an elaborate stairway led down.
Ink Kong stirred. It nodded once in apparent acceptance. Then it split into a tornado of paperwork and vanished. The spiders cleared away, too, as if they’d all remembered important errands that needed doing.
“Well.” Sal sagged a little with relief. “Let’s see where those stairs go.”
• • •
Sal could never quite remember how it happened, later, but those stairs arched out and around and back. In the end they returned toward the orrery—but upside-down this time, so the orrery looked like a mobile suspended from a ceiling over no floor. And rising above it, on the other side of the platform, stood the library.
The orrery’s light was lost to them, so they dug out their flashlights to get a better look. Shelf upon shelf rose until they were lost in the dimness.
As with everywhere else in this place, there was no dust, but the shelves were thickly layered with webbing. Spiders studded the shelves, like gleaming gems sewn into a bridal veil. A spider holding a book walked past them as if they weren’t even there, and climbed up to place it on the shelf. It began spinning thick skeins of webbing to hold the book in place.
Asanti shuddered. “I think this is my least favorite library of all time.”
“Where should we start looking?” Sal asked. “Maybe there’s something in here that will help us get out. And we still want information on the Orb, right?”
Asanti hesitated. “Should we touch the books? The spiders might not care for that.”
“I’ll do it.” Grace walked to the nearest shelf, tore away the webs, and pulled out a book.
Spiders converged on them like a clattering army of particularly vicious wind-up toys.
Ink Kong coalesced before them. “Satis,” it said. Then it raised a hand and the spiders dispersed into the stacks. One returned before long, holding a struggling book. The spider bit into it and injected a tremendous dose of venom before turning it over to Ink Kong.
In turn, Kong placed the still-twitching book into Menchú’s hands. “Hic vestra auxilio erit.”
Asanti gazed at the book with reverence. “That might be instructions for the Orb—a manual, maybe, or at least a schematic.”
Menchú bowed again. “Gratias tibi,” he began. “Asanti—how do you say ‘in your debt’?”
Before she could answer, a set of stairs appeared at the far end of the library, topped by the bright blue-white of the floodlight they’d left as their guide.
The guardian spoke to them one last time. It pointed toward the stairway. “Discedite.”
Even Sal didn’t need a translation for that one. That none of them tripped in their mad rush up and out of the library was nothing less than a complete miracle.
• • •
They stumbled into the Vatican hallway, startling Frances and Theresa from an intense but inscrutable card game.
Frances looked up, surprised, at the team’s hasty exit. “Did you forget something?”
“Forget—?” Asanti blinked at her.
Sal squinted at the stained glass window at the end of the hallway. “How long do you think we’ve been gone?”
The young women looked at each other. “Maybe ten minutes?” Theresa said.
“Less.” Frances slapped a pile of cards and took them into her hand. “We’ve only played two rounds.”
Father Menchú looked nonplussed. “So you haven’t called Team One?”
Theresa swiped her hand across the cards, foxing the game. “Why would we?”
Team Three looked at one another, baffled. Liam was the first to speak. “All’s well that ends well, looks like.”
“Amen,” Grace murmured.
Asanti closed and locked Team Four’s door, then tested it to be sure it was secure. She turned to Father Menchú. “The book?” Asanti asked. She held out a hand.
Menchú handed her the book. It was as motionless as any other book now, though the cover was pierced in a few places by spider bites.
She leafed through a few pages, her smile growing wider by the minute. “These diagrams must be the Orb,” she said. “This is—this is very promising. But the language … hmm. I don’t think I can decode this on my own.” She fell silent for a moment, leafing through page after page.
“What, it’s encrypted?” Liam asked. He edged to look over her shoulder.
“No, it’s more like … imagine a second grader trying to read a chemistry textbook. In Sanskrit. We’re going to need to call in some help to understand what’s in here.” She laid a hand on the cover. “Maybe some of my old colleagues. This could be politically … difficult. But there’s no other way to get the Orb working.”
“I’ll handle it,” Menchú said mildly.
Asanti snapped the book shut. “We’re done here. Let’s all get some rest. I’ll start to examine the book properly in the morning.” Liam gave her a dark look. “With all due precautions,” she added hastily, shoving it into a magic-containing shroud. “Of course.”
Menchú stretched his shoulders. “I should go speak to Monsignor Angiuli right away and tell him how it went.”
“Thank him for me,” Asanti said. “And I suppose he’ll be wanting this back.” She placed the gold-and-iron key into Menchú’s hand and headed toward the Black Archives with a skip in her step befitting a much younger woman. Liam trailed aimlessly after her.
Menchú weighed the key to Team Four’s quarters in his hand. “I don’t know how long this will take,” he said. “But it’s safe to say you shouldn’t wait for me.”
Grace nodded. “Sal can do it.”
Menchú looked between the two of them, uncertain. “Thank you,” he said. That sounded uncertain, too.
Grace drew Sal down the hall and out of earshot of Asanti’s assistants, who were busy removing the remaining signs of their adventure from the hallway. Then she stopped short.
“What is it?” Sal asked her. “Do you want to wait for Father Menchú? I don’t mind.”
Grace glanced down the hall to make sure nobody was listening. “No, it’s not that. I have a favor to ask,” she said. “I was wondering if you could help me paint my nails before I go to sleep.”
“Paint your nails?” Sal looked at her own nails. Her vacation manicure was long ruined, of course, chipped and broken as if she’d had it done months ago. Fighting monsters turned out to be hard on a coat of nail polish.
Grace grimaced. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but with Arturo it never seemed … appropriate. And the paint takes too long to dry to do it in the middle of a mission.”
Sal grinned. “I’ll help you with your nails anytime. But let’s you and me make a quick stop on the way home.”
Sal hadn’t had much call for dressing up in Rome, but she knew where to go when a little extra femme was called for. Their descent upon Rome’s biggest Sephora and its impressive collection of nail lacquers was swift and relentless.
The store’s characteristic scent washed over them, a hundred perfumes warring for domination over the acrid aroma of hair products. Sal steered Grace to the nail section.
Grace gazed at the neat rows of gem-bright little bottles with undisguised amazement. “I still can’t believe how many colors there are. And you promise they really dry in a few minutes?”
“Faster. Didn’t you read about this stuff?”
“I thought that was just false advertising.”
Sal handed her a thin plastic package of French tips. “And they make nail stickers now, too. No drying time at all, you just have to cut ’em so t
hey fit.”
Grace glowed with pleasure. “Look! This one looks like lace. And this one has leopard spots! And … is that writing?!” She picked up a package of nail decals.
Sal plucked it out of her hand. “Come on. My treat.”
• • •
Monsignor Angiuli raised the tiny cup of espresso to his lips. “Welcome, Arturo. Did you find what you were after?” He’d unpacked most of the boxes since Menchú’s last visit, turning his office from a maze to an explosion of paperwork. There were stacks on the desk, on top of the cabinets, even piled knee-high in the corners. Menchú wondered how all of the pictures and papers had ever fit into the smaller office they’d come from.
Menchú moved a pile of three-ring binders off the leather seat across from his superior and sat. “We did. It was slow going for the team, but it looks like we got what we needed. Though we might prefer not to return for anything short of a crisis. I don’t think it would be safe.”
He set the key to Team Four’s headquarters back on Angiuli’s desk. It gleamed in the lamplight.
“So the Orb is working?” Angiuli’s hand shook, ever so slightly; the cup rattled against its tiny saucer.
“Not yet. There’s more work to be done.” Menchú looked away, studiously unobservant.
Angiuli cleared his throat. “Tell me, what … what was it like in there?”
Menchú plucked at the crease in his pants. “Team Four’s magical experiments were more extensive than I expected. There are creatures still in there, their servants. The whole place has been shaped by magic. I haven’t seen anything like it before outside of a demonic infestation.”
Angiuli swirled his coffee, stared into the cup. “Is there a danger?”
“We might consider looping in Team One,” Menchú replied.
Angiuli started and set his cup down with a clatter. “Do you think you’ve … disturbed something?”
Bookburners The Complete Season Two Page 8
