Chimes at Midnight od-7 Page 8

  “No!” I said, more loudly than I intended. Tybalt and Quentin both took a step forward. I waved them back and repeated, more quietly, “No. No luck. Please.” Li Qin was a Shyi Shuai. Her race specialized in manipulating luck. The trouble was, for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. The last time I’d allowed her to play around with my luck, I’d wound up getting disemboweled. Twice. Not an experience I was in a hurry to have again.

  “I understand,” said Li Qin. “Let me know if you change your mind?”

  “I will. Look, this Library pass, is it only good for me? Because I’m not sure I want to be running around without some sort of backup just now.” More, I wasn’t sure my backup would let me get away with it if I tried.

  “I made sure you could bring an escort.” Li Qin’s concern melted into amusement. “I couldn’t picture you going out alone. The Librarian is nice enough, and she understood why you might not want to come without friends. Her name is Magdaleana. Play nicely with her.”

  Not that long ago, I considered myself a loner. It was a little odd to realize that I’d moved so far past those days that people I’d met since then didn’t even consider it an option. “I really appreciate this, Li,” I said, skirting dangerously close to thanking her.

  “I’m gearing up to ask you for a favor to be named later. I’m just adding to my leverage here.” Her tone was light, but there was an element of seriousness there.

  That was something to worry about later. “I still appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Please do. Now get yourself un-banished before time runs out. This Kingdom would be awfully dull without you.” Li Qin hung up.

  “She got me the pass,” I said, lowering my phone. “And yes, you can come with me, since she didn’t think I’d want to go alone.”

  “Both of us?” asked Quentin hopefully.

  Tybalt didn’t ask. He just raised an eyebrow.

  Li Qin said “friends” when I asked her about bringing an escort . . . “Yes,” I said firmly. My phone buzzed again as Li texted me. I checked the display. “Lucky us: we’re staying in the city. The place is just a few miles from here.”

  “I don’t think you should change your clothes,” said May.

  I turned, blinking, to see her standing in the kitchen doorway with Jazz. “What?”

  “Keep the dress. Most Librarians don’t get out much. Whoever runs the local branch is probably a little bit behind the times. They’ll find formality appropriate and respectful.” May shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”

  Sometimes it was easy to forget that my silly, flamboyant Fetch had started her existence as one of the night-haunts. They met all the Librarians, eventually. “Okay,” I said. “As long as I can keep my jacket. But I don’t think we can all go.”

  “I know,” said May. “Jazz and I will stay here and deal with anyone who shows up to tell you how sorry they are. You go and make this exile go away. Find out whose throne that really is, and depose the bitch.”

  “No pressure,” added Jazz, with a sweet, if worried, smile.

  “No pressure,” I echoed. I tucked my phone back into my pocket. “Come on, boys. Let’s go to the Library.”

  “If I may,” said Tybalt. “Were I the Queen, I would almost certainly set someone to watching this house, to see if you went anywhere after you finally came home from racing about the city, looking for aid. Were I the Queen, I would also be quite likely arrogant enough to disregard the fact that you are being courted by a man who can take you anywhere you wish without needing to move the car or, indeed, step outside the threshold.”

  “Were you the Queen, I wouldn’t be dating you, but point taken,” I said. “Can you carry me and Quentin over to 5th and Brannan? I’m not leaving him here just so the Queen doesn’t follow me.”

  “Your loyalty will be the death of us all one day, but yes, I can take you both,” said Tybalt. “It may not be pleasant. I can still manage it.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said, and offered him my hand.

  “As you like.” This time, Tybalt took Quentin’s hand directly, rather than letting him hold onto me. “Both of you, take a deep breath, and hold fast. I would not want to lose you.” On that dire note, he stepped into the shadows formed by the meeting of the cabinet and the wall, and pulled us with him, into darkness.

  The Shadow Roads seemed colder this time, maybe because we were going farther than before. I held Tybalt’s hand, trusting him to see us through the darkness, which was too deep for my eyes to penetrate, but must have been clear to his. I could hear Quentin’s teeth chattering. He hadn’t traveled through the dark this way as many times as I had, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever come this far.

  Just as my lungs were beginning to burn, we stepped out of the darkness and into the watery streetlight shining on the corner of 5th and Brannan. There were no people in sight. A few cars moved on the cross streets, but none close enough to have seen our sudden appearance.

  “Good aim,” I said, stuffing my freezing hands into the pockets of my jacket. “Quentin? You okay?”

  “I really, really miss living where there’s snow,” he said, sounding altogether too chipper for someone who’d just been pulled along the Shadow Roads.

  “All right, when this is all over, we’ll go skiing. Now let’s find the Library.” I pulled out my phone, checking Li’s text. Then I blinked. “This isn’t what it said before.”

  “What?” Tybalt stepped closer, peering at the screen over my shoulder.

  “Before, it said ‘5th and Brannan.’ Now it says to turn left.” I scowled. “April’s been making improvements again. Yippee.”

  April O’Leary, Countess of Tamed Lightning, was the reason I had a cell phone. She’s the world’s first cyber-Dryad, and she specializes in making mortal technology compatible with fae magic. Phones that could work in the Summerlands, for example, or survive the freezing temperatures of the Shadow Roads without breaking. And now, apparently, phones that could receive semi-sentient text messages.

  We started walking. After we had turned left, the message changed again, now telling us to head three blocks down. We kept walking.

  Annoying as this was, it probably served a purpose. Many knowes can’t simply be walked into: they all have their own requirements for entry, tricks and twists that have to be observed if you want to get inside. There was no reason for the Library to be any different, and a lot of reasons for it to be the same. If Li Qin had started by texting me the address, we’d never have found it. That didn’t make the process any less irritating.

  The text changed again after we’d been walking for almost fifteen minutes, now reading, “You are here.” I lowered my phone and lifted my head, looking around.

  “Okay,” I said, after a moment. “Where the hell are we?”

  Li’s directions had led us deep into the sprawling maze that makes up downtown San Francisco, and down a small side alley that was clinging with game tenacity to the title of “street.” I’m sure it had the qualifications, once upon a time. But then these silly little things called “cars” came along, and suddenly being wide enough to allow one fairly slender carriage to pass just wasn’t cutting it.

  Tiny shops lined the alley, obviously clinging just as fiercely to keep from sliding into failure. Somehow, I knew they weren’t our destination. That dubious honor was reserved for the two-story building at the end of the alley, sunk back in a vague haze of dust and ancient brick. It was shabby and a little sunken-in, like it was going to collapse at any moment—or maybe last another fifty years. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with San Francisco architecture.

  We approached the building, passing the blind eyes of the closed and shuttered shops, until we left the last streetlights behind and found ourselves standing in front of a plain wooden door. A sign in the window identified the shop as “Bookstore.” A few shabby volumes were on display in the window, with a curtain drawn behind them to hide the rest of the shop from view.

  I tried the door. It w
as unlocked. “Here we go,” I said, and pushed it open. I was rewarded with the tinkling of a silver bell and a small shower of pale, translucent dust that fell like rain from the doorjamb, coating us in glitter. I coughed. “Pixies.”

  “We’re doubtless in the right place, then,” said Tybalt.

  I motioned for the others to follow me inside. It wasn’t much better in than out. The room was small, packed with shelves stacked with battered, mildewed paperbacks and magazines that had been old before I was turned into a fish. Everything glittered with pixie-sweat. The door slammed behind Quentin with an ominous “thud.” I jumped, turning to glare at him. He shrugged apologetically.

  I’m not much for signs and portents. If I went looking for them, I’d find them, and my life is already hazardous enough, thanks. Still, the combination of creaking doors, decaying books, and unseen pixies was enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.

  Tybalt sniffed, and then sneezed.

  Quentin was squinting at the piles of moldy books. “Something’s wrong with the titles,” he said.

  I followed his gaze, and realized I couldn’t actually read any of the book covers, not even the ones unblemished enough that they should have been legible. My eyes refused to fix on the letters, sliding instead from vivid decay to vivid decay. I slid my hands through the air, summoning as much of my magic as I could hold, and said solemnly, “You all did love him once, not without cause. What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?”

  A faint gleam snapped into view above the books, clinging to every surface like pixie dust, pale gold and tasting of parchment. Someone had thrown an illusion over the entire room, presumably to keep the merely curious from coming any further. It was a clever piece of work, one I wouldn’t even have been able to notice a few years ago.

  “I do adore a woman who channels magic via Shakespeare,” said Tybalt.

  “Flirt later, business now,” I said. There was a narrow doorway in the left corner of the room, tucked between two dilapidated bookshelves. I kept my hands up to prevent the illusion from slipping back into place, and started for the opening, Quentin and Tybalt close behind me. The golden haze snapped as we passed into the next room, leaving our eyes unclouded. And what we found was . . . more books. Given that we were looking for a library, that probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was.

  “Um, Toby?”

  “Yeah, Quentin?”

  “The door’s gone.”

  I turned, and realized he was right. We were standing at a spot where four paths through the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves met. At least I assumed they were floor-to-ceiling; they actually stretched away into the dark above, disappearing toward a point I couldn’t see. There were no obvious exits, just more shelves, stretching out into forever. They were spotlessly clean, loaded down with books until I was pretty sure that they constituted a fire hazard.

  Judging by the volumes in view, whoever ran the place had been collecting books for centuries without bothering to actually sort anything. The Colored Fairy books were shelved next to a pile of torrid-looking romances, several broad, flat art books, and a hefty leather-bound volume with a Latin title. It was like we were standing in the world’s largest used bookstore.

  And there were no clerks, or Librarians, in sight.

  “Hello?” I called, hesitantly. I wasn’t sure what Library etiquette was, and I didn’t want to start out by pissing off the Librarian. Li Qin had called her “a nice enough sort,” but we were talking about Li Qin here. Her definition of “nice” was questionable at best, and at worst included things I didn’t even want to think about. Some of us are more naturally tolerant than others, I suppose.

  The dusty silence didn’t change. I exchanged a look with Quentin and Tybalt. “Should we wait here, or go looking?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” said Tybalt. He shook his head. “I’ve always been more interested in oral histories than written ones.”

  “Waiting, maybe?” said Quentin. “Seems polite.”

  “Okay.” I turned to study a bookshelf. Quentin and Tybalt did the same. Several minutes slipped by, until finally I turned and called again, more loudly, “Hello?”

  “Coming!” shouted a cheerful, British-accented voice from somewhere in the maze of shelves. “Hold on a moment, shall you? I’m coming as fast as I can!”

  “We’ll be right here,” I called back. After several more minutes, a small figure slipped out from behind one of the shelves, her arms full of books. Her clothes were dowdy, suited to rummaging through dusty old tomes and cobwebbed shelves: an ankle-length black skirt, sensible shoes, and a tweed sweater over a white blouse. She looked about fifteen years old. There was an odd bulge on her back, like she was wearing some kind of brace.

  “Hullo!” she said. “I hope you weren’t waiting too long. Time can be a mite squirrelly in here.” She dropped her armload of books on the nearest available surface—another pile of books. Near as I could tell, the Library was a paper avalanche waiting to happen. “Welcome to the Library of Stars.”

  She was short, maybe five-two, with a slim, almost frail build. Her hair was the bright copper color of new pennies, and cut short in a bob that framed a heart-shaped face dominated by enormous dark blue eyes. Something was wrong with the way they focused. I squinted, trying to figure out what about those eyes was bothering me, and then dismissed it with a slight shake of my head. I was jumpy. Being exiled does that to me.

  “I’m October Daye; Li Qin Zhou called about me,” I said, offering my hand. “These are my friends, Tybalt and Quentin. Are you the Librarian, or do you know where to find her?” She looked like a teenager, but in Faerie, that didn’t have to mean anything.

  The girl smiled, taking my hand and shaking it. “If you want the last Librarian, best of luck with that. I’m Magdaleana Brooke, and I’m currently in charge here, inasmuch as anyone is. Call me Mags—it’s easier to shout if something’s about to fall on you.”

  “Really?” asked Quentin. “But . . .” Then he caught himself, reddening.

  Mags turned her smile on him. “Appearances can be deceiving. I’d tell you to ask my mother how old I am, but I’ve not seen her in about three hundred years, and I don’t know where she is. Off harassing some poor musician, I’ve no doubt. That was always her favorite game.”

  “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Tybalt gravely.

  “And yours,” she said. “I’ve never met a King of Cats before.”

  There was something off about her. I breathed in, trying to catch her heritage, and stopped, blinking. “Wait. What are . . . I mean . . .”

  “You mean to ask what I am, and don’t want to give offense by saying I don’t come across as fae to your blood magic.” She reached around to rub the lump on her back, wincing slightly. “I’m a Puca. You’ve caught me in my street clothes—I was out and about when Li called, and I’ve not had time to change.”

  “Oh!” I said, realization dawning. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need.” She smiled again. “Just come and have some tea while I get changed, and then tell me what you are, and we’ll call it even.”

  “Sure, but we’re also here looking for some information.”

  “Isn’t everyone? Come on.” She waved for us to follow her as she turned and headed into the stacks. Not wanting to get lost again, we hurried after her.

  She led us through the maze, taking turn after turn until we emerged into a space the size of a normal living room, if normal living rooms had walls made of bookshelves. A table, two couches, and several chairs were set up in the center of the space, carefully arranged on a faded rug. “I’ll be right back; make yourselves comfortable, there’s tea and such in the kitchen.” Before we could say anything else she was gone, vanishing between two bookshelves.

  “On the plus side, I don’t think she was offended by my dress,” I said.

  Tybalt snorted.

  Puca are shapeshifters. They have no skill at illusions, but they don’t need
it: instead of making themselves look human, they turn into humans, hiding their strangeness under veils of too-solid flesh. Of course, they’re not perfect. There’s always one thing they can’t change, one fae feature that refuses to be hidden. It got a lot of Puca killed, back when humanity still believed in us, and eventually, they faded as a race, nearly becoming extinct.

  “I’ve never met a Puca before,” said Quentin.

  “Great. This night is already educational.” I looked around the little square of furnishings, all of which seemed to be at least fifty years old. “When she gets back, we’ll ask for the books on Kingdom history, and we’ll get started.”

  “Kingdom history, is it?” Mags appeared from between a pair of shelves—not, I noted, the ones she’d disappeared between before. “That’s an interesting topic. The Mists is a young Kingdom, but it’s had its share of troubles.”

  “Yeah, it has,” I said, fighting back the urge to stare.

  She was still wearing the long black skirt, but the tweed sweater was gone, as was the lump. Instead, she had pliant-looking dragonfly wings, two on each side, which trailed down to her knees in a wash of translucent rainbow color. They twitched as she walked, making minute corrections in her balance and leaving a thin haze of red and copper glitter in the air. She didn’t have a pixie problem. She just had herself.

  Mags chuckled as she caught me staring at her wings. “Unlike some of my luckier cousins, who only had to contend with goat’s feet or webbed hands, I was born with a full set of wings. It makes travel by public transportation ever so entertaining.”

  I winced, but it was Quentin who spoke, saying, “Binding your wings like that must hurt.”

  “You get used to it.” She glanced aside, expression briefly grim. “You get used to a lot of things, really.” The grimness was gone when she looked back, replaced by her earlier amiability. “Li Qin doesn’t ask for passes often, and certainly not for such interesting groups of people. You said you were looking for the history of the Kingdom? What part?”

  “We should start with the reign of King Gilad,” I said. “If there’s anything from the later years, that would probably be best.”