The crowd gave him an appreciative chuckle. He continued.
“I would like to talk about the stories of places that have disappeared,” he said. “We have many in the folklore of the world, which we all know well: Mu. Atlantis. Sodom and Gomorrah. Ys. Brigadoon.” He counted them on his fingers, got a laugh from the last one, which he seemed to like. “And that is to say nothing of the dozens of actual cities archeologists have found across the globe—cities that seem thriving, if not advanced, for their time, abandoned for reasons we still cannot fathom. I am not suggesting that the cities in the jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula were abandoned due to magic. Earthly factors are likely enough to explain it. What I am suggesting, however, is that these stories have some allure, and pull their power from the tales at the fringes of our understanding of history that may well be due to magic, and that is indeed why they are at the fringes of our understanding. You have all heard of the Celtic otherworld, yes? The place where magical creatures live and issue from? The place where the physical and social rules of this world are bent and examined? I would argue that not only is that place real—though it may be beyond our mental powers to comprehend it—but that a few people, in the course of history, have managed to use magic to create such places. Some by accident. Some on purpose.”
Asanti leaned forward in her seat. She sensed, however, that she was the only one who’d been pulled in. Even this audience was beginning to think that maybe this presenter was taking things a little far. But Asanti didn’t think so. To her, this cranky old professor was speaking her language. She knew enough herself to tell that he was drawing from a depth of knowledge few people she’d met so far at the conference had. Some of the younger academics here seemed to be playing around a little. Izquierdo wasn’t. He looked out over the handful of people seated before him, and changed the direction of his talk. Asanti was disappointed. This is one of my two new people, she thought.
She waited until the talk was over and the room was emptying out to approach him.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Izquierdo said. “Pleased to meet you.” He said this with a great deal of formality, Asanti noticed.
“I have a question about something you said early in your talk,” she said, “about people being able to create the otherworlds we see in mythology.”
“Yes?” he said.
“Do you have any evidence that this may have happened?”
“Evidence of magic, as you know, is very hard to come by.”
“What about evidence that someone was planning to carry it out? Something someone may have written down?”
The professor fidgeted. “I must ask,” he said. “Is this an inquiry or an interrogation?”
“I’m just asking a question,” Asanti said.
“No one from the Vatican just asks questions,” Izquierdo said. “Forgive me, but I’m not comfortable talking about my work with you.”
“We signed confidentiality agreements, just like you did.”
“I wish I had more faith that you would consider yourself bound by that.”
“What can I do to convince you to trust me?” Asanti asked.
“Tell me what you’re planning on using the information for,” the professor said, “and I’ll decide then whether to tell you what I know.”
Asanti hesitated.
“There,” the professor said. “It’s just as I thought.”
“I’m not trying to hide anything from you. It’s that I don’t know enough yet to give you a good answer.”
“Then tell me this,” the professor said. “This conference has been held for decades and the Societas Librorum Occultorum has never attended, much to the collective relief of participants. In the early years we waited for you to show up and take us away.”
“That’s not what we do,” Asanti said.
“In effect, it is very much what you do. Where the Society appears, magic ceases, and the people involved do not tend to reappear. Would you dispute that?”
“I … can’t, no,” Asanti said.
“So you understand just how nervous we all became when we learned you and your colleagues were coming at last. We noticed that you’re not presenting anything. And you haven’t rounded us all up yet. So tell me: Why are you here? Are you on a scouting mission? Determining the level of threat before you send in your hit squad?”
“I’m here to learn,” Asanti said.
“What could we teach you that you don’t already know? You are sitting on the largest repository of magical items in the world.”
Asanti looked away. Izquierdo narrowed his eyes.
“Ah,” he said. “I see. You don’t know how to use them. All that power and no idea what to do with it. I never imagined I’d say something like this, but I almost feel sorry for you.”
“Then help me,” Asanti said. “All I have for you are a few questions.”
“Sorry,” Izquierdo said. “Even if I have the answers, I’m not giving them to you. Not just like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the Society you represent. You should know that.” He started to gather up his papers. “Best of luck finding someone more willing to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry to be leaving this conversation on such bad terms,” Asanti said.
“If you really mean that,” Izquierdo said, “then you should think twice about who you’re working for.”
Asanti thought about that. “Maybe you’re right,” she said.
She extended her hand and the professor shook it.
• • •
A quarter of the way through a presentation that had seemed promising—it was about rogue wizards—Frances couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d ended up nowhere useful. She sighed. Could she leave without being rude? To the right, she’d disturb three people. To the left, four. There was no way out. She focused her attention back on the screen. The presenter, a man in a gray suit and seemingly gray skin with thinning hair, was clutching at straws. Frances got the sense that the withered human was once a much greater scholar, and still had a brilliant mind, but his time had passed decades ago and he knew it. To attend this conference and spend the travel money he’d been given, the professor had cobbled together a halfhearted paper linking a few folktales in dubious ways. He asked someone in the back of the small room he’d been given to kill the lights, opened a laptop with a buzzing internal fan, and connected it to a projector. As he began to talk in a half-murmur, he projected the image of a manuscript onto the screen in front of him. He talked a little more, changed the image to a woodcut of a character: hunched over with long nails, approaching a concerned woman with a baby.
The image began to move. The lecturer’s head was down; he was looking at his notes. As the professor kept talking, the creature with the long nails took a slow step toward the woman with the baby. Her mouth opened wider, heading into a silent scream. She was trying to break into a run, but the creature was too close. One long-nailed hand rose, slashed downward, and divided woman and child into neat sections, as though they were an apple pushed through a slicer. The slices dropped to the ground, and the creature bent over to eat them.
“Was that really necessary?” someone in the audience said.
“Was what really necessary?” the lecturer asked. He looked up at the screen.
“My God,” he said.
Now the creature turned toward the people sitting in the dark and began to walk toward them with purpose, getting bigger and bigger. A few people murmured, shifted in their seats.
“This isn’t funny,” said the same first voice.
By now the presenter was frantic, mashing buttons on his laptop. The creature kept coming. Its face filled the screen, and when there was nothing left but the eye, the entire image seemed to bubble and melt. The screen itself started to smolder. With a pop, the bulb on the projector blew out, and the room was dark. Everyone started talking at once. Someone fumbled for the lights and they came on. Ther
e was the professor, still in the middle of the room. A faint, curling wisp of smoke rose from the projector.
Someone else must have called Kapos Helmi, because he arrived thirty seconds later. He told everyone the presentation was over and that everyone there could calmly leave. Most did. Frances lingered near the door. Kapos and the professor were talking in low voices, but she got the gist of what they were saying from the professor’s gesticulations, and Kapos’s relative serenity.
“What happened?” the professor said at last, in a louder voice.
Frances watched as Kapos shook his head, as though he’d been through this before. Frances looked toward the door, where a thin man the color of ash was slipping out.
• • •
Dinner was in a space that seemed more like an airplane hangar than a dining room. The sheer number of tables only drove home the fact that the resort had once been much busier. Frances found herself imagining hundreds of Communist Party elite and their families milling around the floor, joking and scheming before they went horseback riding the next day. In her mind, all the men were nearly identical, subtle variations on Leonid Brezhnev. The participants at the conference were much more diverse, but there weren’t nearly as many of them. They took up maybe a third of the vast space. The other end of the room was a fleet of empty tables and chairs, sitting in the dark; the organizers hadn’t even bothered to turn on all the lights.
Frances told Asanti and Liam what she’d seen at the presentation. It all came out of her in a breathless rush. She was a little surprised at how calmly Asanti and Liam received the information.
“Interesting,” Asanti said.
“Yeah,” Liam said.
“So you’ve seen this kind of thing before?” Frances said.
“Well, not exactly this,” Liam said. “No magic thing is exactly like another.”
“But something like it, yes,” Asanti said. “It’s good you told us.”
“Hopefully that will be as strange as it gets,” Liam said.
After dinner Frances, Asanti, and Liam walked through a glassed-in causeway connecting one part of the resort to another. Liam looked out the windows, across the rolling land leading to the road and the forest beyond. He was pretty, she thought. Physically. Shame he wasn’t more interesting otherwise. Two hours of conversation on dash cam videos, honestly.
“Jesus,” Liam said.
“What?” Asanti said.
“This place is really isolated, isn’t it?” Liam said.
“Maybe it’ll be better when it gets darker,” Frances said. “Then you can pretend you’re somewhere else.”
“The dark will make it worse,” Liam said. He had a point, Frances thought.
The other conference-goers were fanning out from the dining hall, too, saying good night, heading back to their rooms. Some heading to the bar.
“Care for a drink, either of you?” Liam said.
“It’s been a long day,” Asanti said.
“Frances?” Liam said.
“I’m with Asanti.” She yawned. “I could use some sleep.”
Liam nodded, patting his belly. “Probably best anyway.”
Asanti gave her a congenial hug. Liam gave her a salute. They went their separate ways. Somehow they’d been booked in rooms far from one another, even though Frances had reserved their accommodations at the same time. She wondered if the conference organizers had done that on purpose. Maybe it was just another example of how the people here didn’t trust them. She turned the corner to the hallway to her room and was reaching into her pocket for her key when she heard a small snort. She stopped and looked down the hall; didn’t see anything. Then she heard something else, a sharp intake of breath. She looked again, toward the ceiling at the far end of the hall, and then she saw it.
It was light gray, maybe the size of a dog, but with longer limbs and a smooth head with no eyes or nose, just a wide, thin mouth and large ears. It crouched in the upper corner of the hallway, two limbs against the wall, two limbs against the ceiling, like a spider spread out in its web. It seemed to be resting. Frances couldn’t figure out how it was staying up there. She also wasn’t sure if the creature had noticed her. Since it didn’t have eyes, it was hard to tell. She gauged how far she had to go to reach the door of her room. It seemed that whatever was up there on the ceiling was closer to it than she was, and she’d need time to unlock it, in any case. And she was betting that, whatever it was, it was pretty fast.
Frances took a step backward. Another step. The thing lifted one long-fingered hand off the ceiling and rubbed its shiny scalp. She’d gone four steps when its head jerked forward. It started to unfold its limbs. It opened its mouth and a thin white vapor trailed toward the ceiling, as if it was drooling.
She’d been noticed. Frances turned and started to run toward Asanti’s room, which she knew was closer than Liam’s. She turned the corner, ran down the hall, and let herself look back. The thing chasing her had broken into a rollicking gallop, indifferent to which flat surface it was using. Sometimes it ran along the walls, sometimes on the ceiling, sometimes down to the floor, so that it followed an almost corkscrew pattern down the hall. Because Frances was not someone who tended to panic, a part of her brain stopped to consider that this was a pretty inefficient way for an animal to run; if it just picked a surface and ran straight, it would be much faster. Thank God it isn’t, she thought to herself.
She was within sight of Asanti’s room.
“Asanti, open the door!” she yelled.
The door didn’t move.
“Open it! Open it now, Asanti!”
The door opened and Asanti’s questioning face appeared. Then she saw what was happening and flung it wide, reaching out to Frances with her other hand. Frances reached back. The gray thing running behind her made a flying leap and caught Frances around the legs. They both hit the floor. The creature lunged and snapped at Frances’s face. With some new strength Frances didn’t know she had, she grabbed the creature, held off its mouth from making contact with her skin. She could keep it there for a couple seconds, not much more than that. She didn’t need to. With a hiss, Asanti rushed out of the doorway and gave the thing a swift kick in the head that knocked it off Frances, off its feet. It did a couple quick rolls in the hallway and righted itself.
Asanti took Frances’s hand and Frances pulled herself up; Asanti all but threw Frances into her room, then ran after her, slamming the door. Frances tumbled to the floor. Asanti braced herself against the door. The thing smashed into it, smashed again. A few pounds with a hand, a few scratches. Then a low whimper, of hunger and disappointment. Neither of them moved for a full minute. There was no more sound. Frances got up.
“What was that?” Asanti said.
“You tell me,” Frances said.
“Well, did you get a good look at it?”
“No,” Frances said.
Asanti glared for a moment in frustration. Then her face softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Dr. Asanti,” Frances said. “Thanks.”
“I mean up here, too,” Asanti said, tapping her temple. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Asanti said. “You’re strong.”
“Do you think Liam would know what it was?”
“I don’t know.”
Frances took a deep breath. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said.
“Well,” Asanti said. “Now you have a very small sense of what we’re up against. You’re staying here with me tonight.” She picked up the cell phone sitting on her nightstand.
“Who are you calling?” Frances asked.
“Liam. Then the rest of the team,” she said. “Whatever that was in the hallway, I have a feeling it was not alone.”
3.
Asanti and Frances woke to a knock on the door. Light, bright but gray, was streaming through the curtains of the room.
“Just a minute,” Asanti said.
It
was Liam, in a tracksuit, beads of sweat on his brow, holding a sheet of paper. He entered the room, then bent down and picked up another sheet of paper from off the floor.
“I see you got one of these, too,” he said, waving the paper. “It’s a note from the conference organizers. They’re saying an attendee suffered an accident of some sort last night, and they are kindly asking that we now move about in groups of three or more after dark.”
“Huh,” Frances said. “Must have been the same accident that chased me down the hall last night.”
Liam nodded in approval. “I see you’re already developing a sense of humor about these things. Good move. It’s the only way to cope.” He turned to Asanti. “When is the rest of the gang supposed to arrive?”
“This evening,” Asanti said.
“Just in time,” Liam said.
“Though that gets me wondering,” Asanti said. “Why did the conference organizers tell people only to be more careful at night? How do they know we’re safe during the day?”
“You want to talk to them or should I?” Liam said.
Asanti thought about it. “You should,” she said. “I have someone else I need to corner.”
• • •
Asanti found Izquierdo in the café near the lobby, alone, drinking a cup of coffee.
“Can I join you?” she asked.
He hesitated, then gestured toward the chair across the table.
“I can’t recommend the coffee,” he said. “But if you must.”
She ordered a cup of tea.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me yesterday,” she said.
“What part?” he said.
“About you being wary of talking to me. You’re right. All of you here are right about us at the Vatican. You have reason to be wary.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“But I came here with questions,” Asanti said, “and I think you have at least some of the answers.”
Izquierdo said nothing and looked across the café. Asanti’s tea arrived. She took a sip.
“Is it good?” he asked.
She made a face. He gave a soft chuckle. She put her cup down.
Bookburners The Complete Season Two Page 10
