Evil Librarian

by Michelle Knudsen

  “What’s up with all the subs?” he asks.

  I close my eyes. Stupid, Cyn. He does not like you that way.

  “I think they’re demons,” I say.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Not all of them, maybe. I think there was one we saw earlier who was just a regular human woman. But some of them are definitely not, you know, normal. I mean even for subs.”

  “Huh,” Ryan says. “That doesn’t seem good.”

  “Nope.”

  Silence. Then: “Why are your eyes closed?”

  “I don’t know.” So I don’t have to see how close you are and still so incredibly far away. I open them. He’s looking at me oddly. “What?”

  “You’re a strange one sometimes, you know that?” He’s sort of half smiling as he says this, I guess to communicate the fact that he doesn’t mean it to sound entirely like an insult. But it’s clearly not entirely a compliment either.

  “Um. Thanks?”

  Before he can say whatever he might have said next, a pair of burly unfamiliar security guards wanders down the hall toward us. They both turn to stare at me as they go by. Their faces are long and blank; their eyes look dead and empty. Ryan and I stare up at them silently until they finally have to look away or start walking backward. And then one of them actually does start walking backward, so he can keep looking at me, until the other one notices and gives him a smack on the shoulder and makes him turn back around.

  “Okay, those guys were hardly even trying to pass for human,” Ryan says. “That’s just sloppy workmanship.”

  There are ten more minutes until homeroom. I want to close my eyes again. I don’t want to see how many more demons there are at school today.

  I keep my eyes open anyway, though.

  We sit there on the floor, watching too many students with listless expressions, watching not enough others looking concerned and suspicious. I sit, and I enjoy the fact that Ryan is sitting next to me (he is also capable of a good companionable silence, it seems), and I try not to think too much about what I have decided to do later this morning.

  After Italian, during which I try to act just like someone who does not have a troubling and secret plan up her sleeve, I ditch second period and force myself to go to the library. I stand outside for several minutes before I can successfully make myself go in.

  Mr. Gabriel is seated with a laptop at one of the tables, working on a PowerPoint presentation about the Dewey decimal system.

  “Really?” I can’t help it; it just slips out.

  He clicks Save and turns to face me, ignoring my question. “Can I help you with something, Cynthia?” he asks.

  Okay. Okay, go.

  “Yes,” I make myself say. Then I make myself sit down at the table across from him.

  He looks at me, eyebrows raised expectantly.

  Deep breath. Then: “I might be willing to make a deal, after all.”

  His eyebrows climb even farther up toward his hairline.

  “But not the one you offered that day at rehearsal. Something else.”

  He tilts his head slightly toward the library doors, and I hear the lock slide into place.

  “I’m listening,” he says.

  “So, okay. I could not help but notice that you are no longer the only demon invader in the school,” I begin. “I mean, obviously Principal Kingston is another one, but I know there are more. I saw several of them this morning. And I get the sense that they might not be the last.”

  Mr. Gabriel says nothing. He just watches me, waiting.

  “And I heard what Principal Kingston said, about the wards or whatever, and how they got weak because you were, uh, distracted. With other things.”

  “Indeed.” His eyes are getting that look like they want to start twining and flaming at me.

  “So, I get that that’s maybe a little bit my fault. That you got distracted,” I go on quickly. “And while I still, you know, hate you and everything, I am not exactly excited about having all these extra demons here, sucking out souls and stuff. And so I’m wondering if there’s anything that I can do, to help you strengthen the ward-things again and stop more demons from showing up. I know that this roach thing I’ve got going on gives me some resistance . . . I thought, maybe, I could help you somehow, using it.”

  Mr. Gabriel leans back in his chair, still looking at me.

  I wait.

  “What are you up to?” he asks finally. “I know you’re not just giving up on trying to stop me. You can’t stop me, but I know you won’t really accept that. I can’t figure out your angle here.”

  “There is no angle. I mean, yes, you’re right, I haven’t given up on trying to save Annie,” I say. “But I haven’t yet figured out how to do that, and in the meantime, I can’t just sit here and let more people die and get their souls siphoned away until there’s nothing left. Not if there’s a chance that I could help stop it. Having you here is bad enough; having you and a whole bunch of other demons sucks even worse.”

  He squints at me, then shakes his head. “I don’t get you, Cynthia. I offered you a free pass, for you and your hopeless love interest, and you turned it down.”

  “Because for that deal I had to give up on Annie. And I won’t give up on Annie. This time I’m the one making the offer, and so I get to set the terms.” I pause, then add, “And my love interest is not hopeless. There’s been significant progress!” That’s not exactly true, of course, but Mr. Gabriel doesn’t need to know that.

  “Kudos,” he says. “What are your terms, then?”

  “I help you close your gates or whatever to stop more demons from coming through. In return . . . can you stop the demons who are already here from killing and draining everyone?”

  He’s still squinting at me. “You realize I’m still planning to kill and drain pretty much everyone myself at the end, right?”

  “I know you’re planning to try. I told you, I haven’t given up on trying to find a way to stop you. This gives me more time. And if nothing else it gives everyone a stay of execution, right?”

  “Hmm.”

  I can see he doesn’t think this is a good enough deal for me. I can’t let him get suspicious. “And you promise that no matter what, you won’t hurt Ryan. You won’t hurt him or kill him or suck out any of his soul or let Principal Kingston or any other demons hurt him either. Not just until the show, but forever.”

  I should have thought of asking for that before, anyway. My deal with the demoness only really obligates her to try not to let him die. Not quite as much of a guarantee as I would like.

  “Ah,” he says. “Now, that makes more sense.”

  “I want to save everyone,” I say. “But if I can’t — then I at least want to save him.”

  This is absolutely true. And I think Mr. Gabriel can hear it in my voice.

  He stops squinting and leans forward, hands clasped on the table, all business. “The only way to reinforce my wards at this point is through a significant ritual sacrifice,” he says. “I thought about arranging some mass poisoning in the cafeteria or something, but the consequences of killing a sufficient number of people would be too much for me to easily damp out. Police would come, the school might be closed down . . . I can’t risk it. Not now.

  “If you are indeed willing to help me, however, there is another possibility. I could kill the other demons who have come through instead. That would actually be a far more powerful sacrifice, and of course no one would miss them.”

  Now it is my turn to be squinty. “Why haven’t you done that already, then?”

  “I can’t do it myself. I need to kill them all at once for the sacrifice to work, which would require luring them to some single location, and there’s no way I could do that without raising suspicion. But you . . . there is a way that you could help me get them all in one place. It’s actually something that you are uniquely qualified to do.”

  He goes on to explain that all I would need to do is “tag” them for him. Which turns o
ut to basically just mean touching them after dipping my hands in some special substance that Mr. Gabriel will provide. That’s it. The tagging will allow Mr. Gabriel to draw them all to one place, probably without them even realizing they’re being drawn, and then he and Principal Kingston will kill them and fix the wards.

  “But — Kingston —?”

  “I can’t hurt Kingston until the actual battle, because of our truce. Which means he’ll have to be in on this plan. And it will work better with the two of us anyway. And that part isn’t your problem. All you need to do is tag the others. I don’t think it will be very difficult for you. They’ve all heard there’s a super-roach here, and they will be interested in you, which will let you get close. But your resistance means they won’t be able to charm or glamour you or otherwise get inside your head or turn you from your objective, even if they have minor protection spells going. And they’ll never suspect you’re working with me. If I tried to compel anyone else to do this, they’d be able to detect my influence. But you’ll be clean, acting of your own free will, and they will never know what’s coming.”

  I have to admit that I am not exactly excited about helping to kill a whole bunch of demons. I don’t think I could be excited about killing anyone, demons or not, present company excluded. But if I don’t, more human people are going to die. So, easy decision. Save Ryan, save at least some of the other students and teachers in the school, and cut down on the amount of life-energy sucking that will be going on between now and the show.

  Yeah, it’s not perfect, I know. But I think it’s the best I can do.

  I extend my hand toward the librarian, and we shake on it.

  “Deal,” I say.

  “Deal.”

  I am pretty much ready to start right in here, get with the tagging, let’s do this thing, etc. But of course there are preparations and Mr. Gabriel needs to confab with Principal Kingston and so I am sent off to class with instructions to come back later.

  So now it is later, and back I come. I ignore my twinges of guilt at keeping all of this a secret from Ryan. It would be wrong to tell him. Selfish. He would only be mad, and it’s too late for him to try to talk me out of it anyway. I just need to get through this on my own. And it’s not even that big a thing. It’s not like I have to kill the demons myself. All I have to do is touch them. Easy peasy.

  Principal Kingston is sitting at one of the long tables, flipping through a copy of Sports Illustrated. He looks up as the doors close behind me.

  “Our little roach girl! Come in, come in. Mr. Gabriel’s finishing up in the back. Have a seat!” He indicates the chair across from him.

  I sit and look at him warily.

  “I have to say, I was surprised when Mr. Gabriel told me about your offer,” he says, leaning forward over his magazine. “But I think it’s fantastic that you’re able to see the big picture here. Thinking outside the box and all that. And even if your reasons are a little misguided, I am happy to be doing business with you. People so rarely consider alliances with their enemies to reach the greater goal these days. It’s a shame, really.” He shakes his head, apparently at the shame of it all. “So! How are your classes going?”

  I am saved from ridiculous small talk with the demon principal by the demon librarian’s emergence from the office behind the circulation desk. He’s carrying a large blue ceramic bowl with both hands, which he places on the table in front of me.

  “All right,” he says. “Ready to begin?”

  “How is this going to work, exactly?” I ask. All kinds of misgivings are starting to flutter around deep in my belly region. I ignore them as best I can.

  “All you need to do is place your fingers in this liquid. It will make you able to tag the other demons with just a touch, and I’ll be able to draw them to where we want them. You let me know when you’ve got them all, and then Principal Kingston and I will take it from there.”

  I look at the liquid dubiously. It looks like dish soap.

  “What is it?”

  “Palmolive. The base substance doesn’t really matter, although thicker liquids tend to hold the magic a little better.”

  “And this stuff smells a lot better than, say, tar or congealed gravy,” Kingston adds.

  They are both looking at me expectantly.

  I push back my sleeves and take my rings off, then gingerly lower my fingers into the bowl. It is so almost exactly like soaking your cuticles pre-manicure that I am half expecting Principal Kingston to whip out a nail file. Instead he glances at Mr. Gabriel and then reaches out and clamps his hands over mine, holding them in place.

  “Hey! What —”

  “This next part might hurt a little,” Mr. Gabriel says from behind me. “But it’s important that you don’t take your fingers out until I’m finished. Principal Kingston is just helping to make sure that happens.”

  My misgivings have exploded forth from the little corner I had stuffed them into and are flinging themselves around inside me like mad, damaged birds. I had instantly tried to jerk my hands away when Kingston grabbed them, but it’s like being encased in concrete. They didn’t move a millimeter.

  “This wasn’t part of the deal.” I direct my words over my shoulder to Mr. Gabriel.

  “We never discussed the details. You should have asked more questions. And anyway, it won’t be that bad. It only hurts for a few seconds. Now be quiet and let’s get this over with.”

  I don’t really have much choice. I sit and glare at the principal, who smiles pleasantly back at me.

  Mr. Gabriel starts saying some of those jagged-edged words and suddenly my fingers feel like they have burst into flames. The world goes red and after a second I realize I am screaming. The Palmolive has clearly become acid or liquid fire or something equally horrible and Mr. Gabriel’s voice gets louder and Principal Kingston is nodding at me encouragingly across the table. I throw myself backward, or try to, but Kingston’s hands still have mine fast and all I succeed in doing is twisting my arms painfully and nearly falling out of my chair.

  “Stop it! Please, stop it, oh, my God my hands —” My initial shocked screams have mutated into crying, pleading whimpers. The pain is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I can barely process that I’m actually feeling this. It doesn’t seem possible.

  Mr. Gabriel growls a few final syllables and there’s kind of a silent whoosh and it feels like something is being sucked in through my fingertips and then the fire goes out and there’s just a throbbing memory of awfulness. Principal Kingston releases me and I yank my hands back, terrified of what I will see, expecting the flesh to have melted clean away to bone, or worse. But there’s nothing. I hold them up, twisting them around. There’s no evidence of what they have just suffered through. They don’t even have a soapy residue.

  “Oh, you’re fine,” Mr. Gabriel says dismissively. “Teenagers are such babies.”

  “You asshole,” I say, standing up to, I don’t know, maybe punch him in the face or something, but he steps neatly back and just points to the chair.

  “Sit down so we can go over what you need to do. A deal’s a deal, Cynthia.”

  I stand there a moment longer, my poor hands curled into furious fists at my side. Then I sit back down. Because he’s right, and I still have a job to do. And the quicker we get on with things, the quicker I can get the hell out of here.

  They think there are about twenty other demons in the school at this point. They know about the security guards, and most of the rest are probably subs. All I have to do is touch them, skin to skin. Hands are probably easiest, but I am welcome to use my imagination. Once I get them all, to the best of my knowledge, I am to let either Gabriel or Kingston know. And then I’m done.

  There’s one more thing.

  “You need to be able to tell who the demons are, of course,” Mr. Gabriel says, which sounds reasonable, except there is something about the way he says it that makes my nerve endings shudder, and not in that good Ryan kind of way. Also, I am st
ill extra-hating him for the acid-dish-soap thing.

  He takes a step toward me. I get up out of the chair so I can back away more easily.

  “Okay,” I say. “How will I do that?”

  “You need to let me touch your eyes.”

  I back away some more. “No way.”

  “It won’t hurt.”

  “That is not the point. There’s got to be another option.”

  Mr. G. shakes his head. “There’s not. Don’t be difficult.” He comes toward me again, and I run around to the other side of the table.

  Principal Kingston gets casually up out of his chair and grabs my arms, yanking them up behind my back.

  “Ow! What are you, his hired thug? Get off me!”

  “Now, Cynthia. Don’t make such a fuss. Mr. Gabriel is just making it possible for you to carry out your side of the bargain. An unfulfilled bargain satisfies no one.” He makes it sound like something you’d have embroidered on a pillow. He pulls my arms up another painful couple of inches. “Stop whining and do what needs doing, young lady. I don’t want to have to send you to detention, but I will if you make me.”

  Mr. Gabriel has by this point circled around the table. He reaches out and takes hold of my face with one hand, his fingers resting just under my jawbone and his thumb pressing into the skin below my eye.

  “Now, just hold still,” he says softly, and the thumb and forefinger of his other hand come slowly at my face, in pretty much the way they would if he were about to gouge my eyes out. I clamp my eyes tightly shut. I expect him to try to force them open, but he just makes an exasperated sound, and his fingertips come to rest on my eyelids instead. There is a flare of power that makes me gasp, but it’s not quite pain I’m feeling, and so I guess he’s not exactly a liar. About this part. After a second they both release me.

  I open my eyes.

  Mr. Gabriel and Principal Kingston stand a few feet away, watching me. I stare despite myself. They both have a kind of red glowing halo above their heads.