“Take me with you,” he says to Mr. Gabriel. “To the demon world. I’ll release you and give you this girl and all I ask is that you take me with you when you go. I need to go with you.”
Mr. Gabriel looks interested. “Really? That’s a new one, I have to say. Usually people ask for cash or eternal youth or a lifetime of free cable. Are you sure? That’s your price?”
“Oh, yes.” And I think we can all hear the naked desperate want in those two short syllables.
Okay, I acknowledge to just myself, all nice and silent inside my own head. Aaron is not a kooky yet good-hearted bookstore guy who happens to believe in demons. Aaron is a frickin’ loony bird. Awesome.
Because really, this situation was not messed up nearly enough already.
Mr. Gabriel appears to think this is an acceptable offer. He smiles warmly at Aaron in the uneven illumination. Aaron relaxes visibly. And that is when Annie lurches forward, ignoring the line of blood that appears on her neck as she pushes past the knife, and throws herself into Mr. Gabriel’s arms.
Breaking, of course, the containment line as she does so.
Before Aaron can even fully register what has happened, Mr. Gabriel has closed the space between them. He’s still cradling Annie with one arm as he backhands Aaron across the face with the other, hard enough to knock him senseless. At least, I think he’s only knocked senseless. He’s definitely crumpled and motionless against the wall. I cannot spend too much time pondering his life status, because the demon librarian is clearly one hundred percent free and very, very pissed off.
I expect him to kill us now, but instead he turns to look at Annie. “He hurt you,” he says.
She shakes her head, denying, and the librarian gently pulls the scarf from her mouth and unties her arms and hands. Then he leans down and runs his tongue along the line of blood, licking her skin clean. Annie closes her eyes in what appears to be ecstasy. I close mine in what is nausea.
I open them again when I sense that Mr. Gabriel has returned his attention to me.
He stands facing me, one arm curled casually around Annie’s shoulders. She’s leaning against him, eyes still closed. Smiling.
Mr. Gabriel is not smiling. He shakes his head and makes a sad face.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Cynthia. I thought I had gotten through to you. I thought I made it clear that further interference would bring serious consequences.”
“Are you going to kill me now?” I ask. I’m proud of myself for getting the question out without my voice breaking. (I know. Like that matters. But still.)
The librarian rolls his eyes. “Not you,” he says. My eyes flick to Ryan before I can help it. Mr. Gabriel looks exasperated. “Not him, either. Come on, now. I’m not throwing the whole show under the bus just because you can’t follow instructions. But I am going to kill someone. You betcha. Any suggestions?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t even muster up a good glare. We were so close! And now the situation is worse than ever. He knows we haven’t given up. And he’s going to kill someone just to punish me. I remind myself that he’s planning to kill a whole lot of people, that not trying to stop him would be way worse, because then pretty much everyone in the school would end up dying. But you weren’t supposed to try and fail, my disheartened brain points out. You’re not being punished for trying. You’re being punished for screwing it up.
I know this is unfair. How could we possibly have predicted Aaron’s completely random and bizarre intrusion? What the hell was that? But it doesn’t matter. I still feel responsible.
I look at him standing there, his arm still draped around my best friend. She looks so happy. It breaks my heart to look at her. I keep my eyes fixed on the demon librarian instead.
“Why Annie? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”
He turns to look at her, and his gaze softens, just like he really is in love with her. She opens her eyes and looks back at him adoringly.
“I knew as soon as I met Annie that she was the one,” he says. “All her good qualities just shine right out from within her. But more than anything else, I couldn’t resist her innocence. She’s pure. Unsullied.”
I find myself feeling a little confused. “But — she can’t be the only — I mean, for example, I certainly don’t want you to pick me, but I’m not, uh, sullied either. . . .” Not that it’s any of his business, but I would hate for Ryan to think . . . I mean, not that it’s currently any of his business, really, either, what my sexual history is, but since I don’t actually have a sexual history, it doesn’t seem fair for him to get entirely the wrong idea or anything.
Mr. Gabriel laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
“I don’t mean virginal, although that’s a nice bonus, of course. I mean that her heart is unsullied. She’s never been in love, never had her heart broken. She’s been waiting for me.”
Annie doesn’t contradict this. I don’t think she’s even fully present right now. She’s just standing there transfixed, staring up at him, soaking in the sight and sound of him. Mr. Gabriel might not have sucked out her life force, but he’s turned her into a zombie all the same. Just a different kind.
But I’m going to get you back, Annie. Even if you hate me forever.
Mr. Gabriel is still talking. “I’m going to show her what real love is all about. Fire, and passion, and pain and devotion beyond anything you can ever imagine.” He looks away from her with obvious effort, turning his gaze first on Ryan and then on me, his face hardening with contempt. “Human love is ridiculous. Stupid and empty and fleeting. Humans don’t know what love is. And teenagers!” He laughs again, even harder than before. “Teenagers are the worst! You think you’re in love with this one here, but you don’t even know him. You can’t see who he is, can’t read his soul, can’t feel what’s inside him. You think he looks hot in his gym shorts, and that must mean you love him. That’s not love you’re feeling in your loins there, my dear.”
I’m not sure how my face hasn’t burst into flames from the fires of mortification this little speech has set there. It takes me a second to make my voice work. “That’s not — I mean, I don’t —” I can’t even attempt to think of what a suitable response would be here. I can feel Ryan’s eyes on me, but I can’t bear the thought of meeting them with my own just now.
Mr. Gabriel’s all revved up at this point, though, and so a suitable response isn’t actually called for, apparently.
“Annie is coming home with me, to be my queen. Well,” he allows, “my queen as soon as I win the fight for the demon throne, which, among other considerations, requires me to have a human consort ready.” He rolls his eyes again, waving his hand dismissively in the air. “It’s a thing.”
He turns back to Annie, and I see that he’s a little transfixed himself, staring back at her. He takes her hands and kisses them gently, first one and then the other. “I will take such pleasure in showing her what real love means. Slowly, for thousands and thousands of years. You’ll all be long gone, but Annie and I will just be beginning. And I will take that sweet, trusting, innocent heart of hers and slowly twist it into something else, something knowing and damaged and evil and corrupt.”
He looks up suddenly and flashes one of his dazzling smiles. “Like me!”
Now I can meet Ryan’s eyes, because, seriously, the demon’s confessional lecture here is way worse than anything he can expose about my loins. Ryan looks as horrified and nauseous as I feel. This is more than just evil, soul-sucking, people-killing, demon-villain type stuff. This is sick, messed-up, serial-killer, borderline-pedophile, criminal insanity of the most disgusting and appalling kind. And it’s all being channeled right at Annie, who can’t really be hearing this and giving it the ol’ thumbs-up. I’m even more sure now that she’s not really here in this moment with us. She’s firmly inside her own head, lost in romantic daydreams starring the version of herself she wants to be and the version of Mr. Gabriel that she’s convinced herself is real. I know fr
om daydreams, and I know exactly how many light-years away they can be from reality sometimes.
“You know she doesn’t really want that, right?” I ask as if he could somehow not know this. “She’s not in love with you. She’s in love with some made-up idea of you that doesn’t come anything close to what you really are.”
“She wants it,” he says, and reaches out to caress her face while he does. “She may not understand yet, but she will. And she will have plenty of time to come around. So much time. With me. You do want that sweetheart, don’t you?”
Annie leans blissfully into his touch, like his hand is made of silk or velvet or some of those really high-thread-count sheets.
I can’t stand it.
“Get away from her!” I scream at him, lurching forward, grabbing her arm, trying to pull her away, to make her stop looking at him like that. She swats at me, suddenly aware of my presence again and clearly not happy about it, and Ryan is shouting something and I’m not listening to either of them because I’m suddenly remembering that I have this super-roach thing going on, right? And so I don’t have to stand it. I don’t have to let him stand there and touch her and tell us all about how he’s going to mess her up until every last remnant of who she is is gone. I can stand up to him, instead.
Mr. Gabriel grabs my upper arm hard enough to make me gasp. Everyone else is still shouting, but they’re muted in the background and I can hear him very clearly over everything. “You may be resistant to my considerable charms,” he is saying, “but I can certainly still hurt you.”
With abrupt and violent speed he strikes out, and the pain is astounding as I go flying backward and crash into the wall. For a second there’s just blur and blackness, but as I slide down toward the floor I realize I actually see stars. Huh. I always thought that was just something people said.
“Cyn? Oh, God, Cyn, are you okay?” Ryan’s voice, from somewhere nearby. In fact, he seems to be right next to me. That’s good. I like when he’s next to me.
I blink about a hundred times, trying to restart my brain and make the room come back into focus. It does, finally, and I see that Ryan is sort of propping me up with his body, which is very nice. But I also see that Mr. Gabriel is standing there looking down at us with his arm around Annie again, which is not very nice at all.
The librarian is all business now. “This is the last time I’m going to tell you. If you do anything else to annoy me, if you try to tell anyone, if you try to explain to one more person what is happening, raise even the tiniest bit of suspicion, I will kill both of your families, all of your teachers, all of your friends, and a few other random people for good measure.” He smiles just a little, apparently at the thought of all that killing. He thinks a moment and then adds, “And also some puppies. And babies.” The smile disappears. “Are we clear? For reals this time?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He makes a gesture and he and Annie vanish. In the last split second before she’s gone, Annie gives me the finger.
And then it’s just me and Ryan in the dirty service vestibule. Shocked and hurting and horrified and alone.
Well, not quite alone.
There is a muffled groan from across the room, and suddenly we both remember Aaron.
“Huh,” Ryan says. “I thought he was dead.”
“He’s going to wish he was dead,” I say. Then I say: “Ow.” Because everything hurts.
“Can you sit up?”
“I think so.”
Everything still hurts, but sitting doesn’t seem to make it any worse. Ryan shifts over to sit beside me.
Aaron groans again. We look over at his crumpled form.
“What do you think we should do about him?” Ryan asks.
“Kill him?” I say hopefully. Okay, I am kidding. Or at least half kidding.
“He did seriously screw things up,” Ryan agrees. “But . . .”
I sigh. “I know. We’re not going to kill him. I might hurt him a little, though.”
“I won’t stop you.”
More groans. Aaron’s body shifts scratchily against the floor.
“I guess we should get that knife,” I say. I can see it. It’s lying on the floor a few feet from where Aaron is groaning and shifting.
“I’ve got the steak knife, too,” Ryan reminds me.
“Good. Then we can each have one.” I know I should get up, but it’s so nice to just sit here. Sit here and not move and feel Ryan’s comforting presence directly beside me, even if he didn’t actually want to kiss me before he died.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“I am thinking that our good friend Aaron owes us a little something. And I can’t think of anyone more likely to have some suggestions for what the hell we are supposed to do now.”
“We can’t trust him,” Ryan says.
“I know. That’s why the knives.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He sighs. “No.”
“And no giving up, right? Still?”
The slightest pause, and then: “Right.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and then start the slow process of getting painfully to my feet. Ryan hovers nearby, apparently ready to catch me if I can’t handle the whole standing thing. I think I’m okay, though. A little dazed, but all my parts seem to be working.
I step carefully forward and then pick up Aaron’s knife from the floor. I think it’s a hunting knife. It’s huge, with a long, polished hilt. Ryan finds his backpack and digs through it until he finds the steak knife, which we’d wrapped in a towel. He takes it out and looks at it, then looks at Aaron’s knife.
“Trade?” he asks hopefully.
“Ha. No way.”
He nods and steps around to the other side of Aaron. We stand there looking down at him for a moment.
Then I kick him in the ribs.
He groans louder, but still seems mostly unconscious. I pull my foot back to kick him again, but Ryan puts out a hand to stop me. “Cyn. We don’t want to have to take him to the hospital or something.” He crouches down beside Aaron, who is facedown, and ungently rolls him over.
Aaron groans again and moves one arm to shield his eyes.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey, asshole. Wake up.”
His groans are becoming more word-like, but I’m still not hearing actual words. I am also not feeling an abundance of patience. I kneel across from Ryan and take my giant knife and place the tip against Aaron’s throat. He stops groaning. He shifts his arm down very slowly and opens his eyes.
“Welcome back,” I say, smiling pleasantly. “Did you have a nice nap?”
Aaron looks back and forth between Ryan and me. “Dammit,” he says softly.
“Yeah,” I agree. “That didn’t go so well, huh? You didn’t get what you wanted and you made two people very, very angry with you. Two people who kind of need a good reason why they shouldn’t stab you to death with their big knives right about now.”
“I’m sorry,” Aaron says hoarsely. “I thought it was my only chance.”
“Nope,” I say. “This is your only chance. Right now. We need a new plan for getting rid of the demon and getting my friend out from under his influence, since our last plan got kind of messed up when you totally screwed us. Tell us what else we can try, and we will let you live.”
“If it works,” Ryan puts in.
“Good point. If it works, we will let you live.” I give him a little tap with the knife. “Start talking.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I don’t think there is anything else you can try.”
I tap him again, a little harder. He flinches.
“Wrong answer,” I say. “Try again.”
“Please,” he says. “I swear. I know it’s my fault, but he’ll be ready for you now. I don’t think you’ll get another chance.”
“Dude,” Ryan says, leaning in. “I seriously would not piss her off any more than you already have. She really wants to kill you.”
“But —” Aaron is beginning to look a little panicky.
Ryan puts a hand on his shoulder. “Just take a minute and think, okay? We’ll wait. You know a whole lot about demons. And you seem like a pretty smart guy. I’m sure you can come up with something.”
We fall silent. Aaron closes his eyes, either to help him focus or just to avoid looking at me watching him. I’m sure I don’t look very friendly.
Ryan and I look at each other from our positions on either side of Aaron. We don’t smile or speak, but I think we can both feel the other person’s thereness in what is a very good, solid, reassuring kind of way. I know I can, anyway. Feel it. It makes me acknowledge once again how very, very glad I am that he is here with me in all of this. And I don’t care what Mr. Gabriel thinks. I am in love with Ryan, and not because of my loins. My loins are in love with him, too, sure, but that’s beside the point. Maybe before it was just a lusty teenage crush, because of his beautifulness and his good vocabulary and his knee-buckling ability to render silliness and surliness and need and want and pain and loss and joyful insanity as Sweeney onstage. And that sweet twisty smile he gives to girls who tackle him in the hallway.
But it’s more than that now. He’s brave and good and he’s making himself face this terrible, unbelievable thing that’s happening, and he’s trying to help me save Annie and the school and everything else. He’s smart and quick and resourceful and plays an excellent good cop to my bad cop, and he still remembers his Boy Scout knot-tying skills, which is both adorable and highly useful (as evidenced when he helped me overpower and then tie up Annie in a not-too-uncomfortable-while-still-entirely-stable way).
And yeah, I know it’s almost certainly unrequited; the pre-death handshake pretty much made that clear. And I can’t bear to think too much about Ryan hearing those things that Mr. Gabriel said about how I feel. But none of that changes anything. I’m in love with him anyway, dammit.
“Okay,” Aaron says suddenly. He opens his eyes. “Okay. I think — I think I might have an idea.”
Evil Librarian Page 15
