Evil Librarian (17 page)

“He’s not Hades, Annie. He’s not some Disney version of the lord of the underworld, all misunderstood and maligned yet secretly good-hearted and just in need of someone to love. He’s a
demon.
He
kills
people. He
likes
killing people. He sucks out their souls and kills them, and he’s going to do that to the whole entire school. How can you just shrug that part off? Don’t you care? Don’t you care that he’s going to kill all your friends? Including, I might add, me?”

She keeps her eyes on mine. “That’s not true. I know you believe that, but it’s not true. He may be a demon, if you want to use that word, but he’s not evil. He’s not a killer. He’s not a monster. He’s just different from us.”

“Sure. He’s different from us in the same way that serial killers are different from kindergarten teachers. The way that rabid bears are different from gerbils. He is a monster, Annie. I think you know that he is.”

She sighs, looks down. “I know you’re trying to make me mad, but it’s not going to work. It’s not your fault that you don’t understand. If you could hear the way he talks to me, the things he says . . .” Her sad resignation vanishes suddenly and she smiles dreamily at a spot somewhere above my head. “He writes me love poems, Cyn. He e-mails them to me at night so I can read them and feel close to him when we have to be apart. They’re so beautiful. No one who was truly evil could write the things he does.” After another moment in which I continue to stare at her in silent horrified and somewhat nauseated disbelief (
love poems?
), she meets my eyes again, but there’s no connection there. “I just want you to know that I forgive you, Cyn. Whatever happens, okay? You’re still my best friend.”

She’s killing me. She’s
right there,
and I should be able to reach her, to make her see what’s happening.

“What about your family?” I ask, grasping at straws now. “You’re just going to leave them? You’re just going to leave everything and everyone who cares about you?”

“Yes!” She says this with such unexpected vehemence that I actually jerk backward against the wall. “Who am I here, Cyn? Nice little Annie, who gets good grades and takes care of all the little kids who show up at her house and smiles at everyone and does what she’s told and doesn’t make any trouble but who never actually has a life of her own. Where’s
my
adventure, Cyn? Where’s my secret crush, my rule-breaking, my fiery passion, my hope for a future that holds some sort of
something,
that doesn’t just lead back to the same life I’ve always had, where nothing ever changes and I’m never allowed to . . .” She breaks off, nearly in tears, then starts again. “Am I supposed to become my mother, with a house full of kids and a boring husband and endless loads of laundry and cooking and PTA meetings forever? Or am I supposed to go to college and grad school and get some all-consuming job that sucks my life away before it’s even started? I have a chance for . . . for
everything.
To be alive in a way I will never get to be here. To be loved and wanted for who I really am, inside, the person no one ever sees behind the nice good girl I’ve had to be all the time,
always
. . .”

I’m so taken aback by this outpouring of secret pain that I can’t even speak at first. “Annie,” I manage finally, “you can be whoever you want to be. You don’t need Mr. Gabriel for that.”

She shakes her head again, dropping her eyes. “What if what I want is to leave here forever, to get to live the kind of fairy-tale adventure I’d never otherwise have a chance to have? I
love
him, and he loves me, and I don’t care if that means I have to leave.”

And you don’t care if he kills everyone you care about,
I think but don’t say. It’s pointless; she won’t hear that part. I can’t reach her. I can’t talk her out of what she’s feeling, or thinks she’s feeling, or whatever. The only thing I can do is find a way to destroy the librarian. And hope that Annie will come back to herself when he’s gone.

“I love you, Cyn,” she says. “But I don’t think I can be around you when I know you can’t support me in this. I just — I just wanted to let you know that I wasn’t mad anymore. But please stay away from me from now on, okay? I won’t be coming to classes anymore, so that will help. Mr. Gabriel has arranged for me to do independent study in the library for the rest of the semester. And very soon, of course, it won’t matter anyway.”

Because you’ll be gone and we’ll all be dead.

“Because I’ll be gone. And I hope you can find a way to be happy for me, Cyn. In the end.”

“Annie —”

“Good-bye, Cyn.” She looks me once more in the eyes, and then she walks away.

I could run after her. But what would be the point? I’d just ruin her nice exit, and it wouldn’t change anything.

The only way to change anything is to kill Mr. Gabriel.

So that is what I will do.

Somehow.

After school, Ryan and I head to his place to do a little Internet research.

I lean my head against the car window, staring blindly at the blur of passing roadway. I am still replaying my conversation with Annie in my head, trying to figure out what else I could have said or done to get through to her.

“You okay over there?” Ryan asks, glancing at me from the driver’s seat.

“No,” I say.

“Still thinking about Annie?” I’d filled him in earlier about seeing her.

“Yeah.” I sit up, sighing. “I can’t stand seeing her so . . . smitten. With him. I mean, I know it’s not real, he’s cast some kind of spell on her, but . . . still.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Well, that’s why we’re doing this, right? Trying to stop him? We’ll figure something out, and before you know it he’ll be gone and she’ll be back to her old self.”

“Right,” I say back, trying to be heartened. And I am, at least a little. “No giving up.”

“Right on.” He turns the corner onto his street.

We head right upstairs to his bedroom. Ryan grabs his laptop from the desk and then flops stomach-first onto the bed. He flips the computer open in front of him.

He has left plenty of room beside him. It seems very clear that I am supposed to lie there.

Next to him.

On his bed.

“So what are we looking for exactly?” he asks, fingers poised above the keyboard.

“Um . . .” I drop my bag on the floor and sit sideways on the bed, kicking off my shoes.
LIE DOWN LIE DOWN LIE DOWN!
My brain is shrieking at me.
BEFORE HE MOVES BEFORE HE DECIDES TO SIT UP LIE DOWN LIE DOWN NOW!

I lower myself down next to him.

“We could just start searching demons and stuff,” I say, trying to focus, “but I already tried some of that, and there’s so much crap and nonsense out there . . . I was thinking maybe we should look for a good
source
of information, instead of looking for the information itself, you know? Like an occult bookstore or something. There must be something like that around here somewhere.”

Ryan starts typing. I try to catch a glimpse of what comes up in the auto-complete window of the search engine, but he’s too fast. Thwarted, my brain shifts its attention back to the fact that his left hip is gently pressing against my right. I can feel all of my nerve endings straining toward him.
More,
they are chanting in creepy unison.
More more more.

Quiet,
I think at them.
Now is not the time.

They fall silent, sulking. But they continue to strain. I feel them trying to force me to lean into him. My brain, unhelpfully, supplies a full-blown predictive scenario of what might happen if I do lean into him, and he leans back, and then we look at each other and all at once he thrusts the laptop off the bed and grabs me with those strong, rugged hands and pulls me close and closer until his mouth is soft-yet-firm on mine and the rest of him is not-at-all-soft against the rest of me . . .

Is it wrong to be feeling this warm and tingly and suffused with
want
when all these terrible, serious things are happening?

Yes. Pull it together, Cyn, goddammit.

I pull it together.

My nerve endings weep quietly, but I ignore them.

“Huh,” Ryan says. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s anything right here in town, but there’s one on the other side of the lake. ‘Books of Darkness: Your One-Stop Shop for Magic, Mystery, Hidden Secrets of the Universe.’” He glances over and smiles crookedly at me. “They also have Dungeons & Dragons tournaments and gaming supplies.”

I grin back at him. “Sounds like just the place we need. You up for heading over there now?”

“The sooner the better, right?”

“All righty, then,” I say, resisting the urge to shout to drown out my wailing nerve endings, who realize I am about to break what little physical contact they have been able to enjoy. “Let’s go.”

I stifle a sad sigh of my own as our hips break contact. But we have work to do.

Thirty minutes later Ryan executes a flawless parallel park down the block from the address we got from the website. We exit the car and walk along the sidewalk. Laundromat, mini-mart, nail salon, pet shop, Books of Darkness.

The front windows are painted entirely black. The door is black, too, with a red doorknob and splotches that I think are supposed to be blobs of blood dripping down beneath it. I am not entirely certain that this is a place I want to enter.

Ryan, however, doesn’t hesitate. He grips the bloodred doorknob and turns it and pulls the door open. A black curtain hangs before us, and Ryan pushes through to the inner space beyond. With one last backward glance at the still-sunlit street, I follow him in. We have to try, I guess. Plus, all of my nerve endings are still straining after him with all their might, so it’s not really very hard to step up behind him and emerge on the other side of the black curtain.

I stop in stunned surprise. Ryan is frozen next to me, similarly taken aback.

Warm recessed lighting illuminates a long wooden coffee bar and a café area serving cookies and smoothies and little organic sandwiches. A college-age girl with magenta hair and multiple piercings looks up from behind the counter and smiles brightly. Across from the bar, there’s a large seating area with chairs and tables and a sign that says,
D&D TOURNAMENTS RIGHT HERE, EVERY THURS. NITE!
On the far side of the room, stairs heading down are visible through an archway. Above the archway, hand-painted lettering announces, This way to the books!

“Hey, welcome,” says the barista. “Can I help you guys with something?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ryan says after a moment. He gives me a little nudge.

Apparently it’s my job to do the explaining. I don’t really mind, especially since the counter girl is kind of cute and I’d rather he didn’t speak to her directly anyway.

“We’re looking for some books. For research. About —”

The girl holds up her hands to stop me. “Books are Aaron’s department,” she says apologetically. “I only know the coffee and snacks and the D&D stuff. Go on down and find him, and he’ll get you what you need. If he’s not at the desk, he’s wandering around the shelves. Or, you know, in the bathroom.”

“Oh. Um, okay. Thanks.”

Ryan and I exchange puzzled looks as we start down the stairs.

The book room is less colorful than the café, but it’s still not at all what you’d expect from the blacked-out windows at the entrance. The lighting is still really good. Rows of shelves are packed tightly with books, labeled with little signs that say things like
WICCA AND SPELL BOOKS, MAGIC HISTORY,
and
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION
. There’s a desk in the back corner, cluttered with piles of paperbacks and legal pads and a few big, thick referency-looking books. There’s also a laptop hooked up to a large flat-screen monitor. The walls are a creamy off-white punctuated with pieces of artwork that appear to have been supplied by some local artist, with little cards by each one listing the title and the asking price. It seems to be a series on angels, from what I can tell at a glance. Pretty, and a little sad, somehow. Before I can examine them further, Ryan calls out beside me, “Uh, hello? Aaron?”

“One sec!” a voice responds from somewhere among the shelves. In the promised second, a guy appears from around a corner. He’s maybe forty-something, with short, spiky brownish hair that I would say he appears to spend a little too much time on for someone his age. He is wearing a They Might Be Giants T-shirt. He sets down a stack of books on a side table and comes over to shake our hands.

“Aaron Litske, proprietor. What can I do for you?”

“We, uh, need some books,” I say.

He grins at me. “That part I guessed. Any particular topics?”

I glance at Ryan and he nods encouragingly.

“Demons, I guess. And maybe their powers and how to stop them.” I add nervously, “It’s for school. You know, a project.”

He doesn’t seem to care about this last part. As soon as I say demons he takes off toward one of the rows of shelves. “Demon possession, demon summoning, or demon in assumed human form?” he calls back over his shoulder.

Ryan and I look at each other again. “I guess the third one,” I say, and Ryan concurs.

Aaron reappears with another stack of books, which he takes back to his desk. He sits and indicates a pair of folding chairs against the wall. “Why don’t you tell me as much as you know, and we’ll try to go from there?”

We sit and I try to think of how to begin. After a moment, I ask, “Is there a kind of demon who can look human, but then sometimes he’s, uh, clearly not human?”

“Animal form? Or still mostly humanoid but with wings and fangs and such?”

“Wings and fangs,” Ryan says.

“Hmm. Okay.” Aaron starts typing. “What else? Powers? Behavior patterns?”

“He kind of turns people into zombies,” I say. “Not real zombies. I mean, they’re not dead, just sort of dazed and wandering around aimlessly and stuff. Temporarily. Mostly. We think he’s sucking out bits of their souls.”

“Or life force or whatever,” Ryan adds. “He touches them and then they get all slow and weird and low-energy.”