Evil Librarian (18 page)

“Sometimes he kills people,” I put in quietly. I don’t want to think about Signor De Luca right now. “At least one looked like a ritual sacrifice kind of thing. There was a lot of blood.”

Aaron nods, typing away. “Uh-huh, okay. Human aspect, siphons life force, requires at least occasional human sacrifice, probably in order to maintain his human manifestation. Is his ability to revert to demon form limited?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say.

“Can he do it anywhere, anytime? Or only sometimes, or only in certain places?”

“I think — I think only sometimes. I’m not sure about places. There was a symbol on the floor, though. When we saw him with the wings and fangs. The rest of the time he’s a librarian.”

We seem to have given up all pretense of school-project research. But I don’t think Aaron really cares why we’re asking. He’s all business.

“Oh, good,” Aaron says. “Always a good sign.”

“That he’s a librarian?” Ryan asks, sounding confused.

“That there was a containment circle — that symbol you saw on the floor. Usually that means the demon can only assume partial demon form by accessing his home dimension. If there was a drawing on the floor, he probably created a portal that existed only within the symbol. Meaning he couldn’t just step out and be a demon all over the place.”

We were right. That’s why he hadn’t chased us that day. But —

“But how does he get back out, then? I mean, when he wants to be human again? If he can’t leave the symbol . . .?”

“Human accomplice, most likely,” Aaron says. “Someone he can trust to draw the right diagram and then to let him out again when he’s finished.”

“Someone — someone he’s got under his influence?” He totally lied to me, that jerk. Annie must have still been there. Unless he arranged to have her come back later, I guess.

“Probably,” Aaron agrees. “Or someone who just gets off on helping demons, maybe in exchange for money or power. Demons can promise all kinds of things, of course. They don’t always deliver, but by then it’s usually too late anyway.”

“Too late?”

Aaron nods, still typing and clicking away at the computer. “Demons aren’t particularly trustworthy. Or loyal. Once they’ve got what they want, they often just kill their accomplices, unless there’s still more they’re going to need from them in the future.”

Oh, Annie.

It’s okay,
my brain reminds me.
He’s not going to kill her. He’s going to make her his demon bride and take her away forever.

Right. Thanks.
So
much better.

Ryan and I share another glance.

“So, how can we stop one of these demons?” I ask. “We can stop him, right? I mean, it’s possible?”

“Well, let’s see.” Aaron starts scrolling through whatever information his typing and searching has retrieved. I try not to bounce impatiently in my seat.

“Okeydokey,” Aaron says finally, looking up at us. “I think what you’ve got is a middle-grade demon; serious but not one of the big evil superstars or anything. It should be possible to destroy him. That’s what you want, right? To kill him?”

“Yes.” We say it together.

“Okay.” Aaron resumes his clicking and typing. “Give me just a second here . . .”

We sit, striving for patience and calm. After a moment Ryan asks, “Will all the spaced-out people come back to themselves? I mean, once he’s dead? Will they come back to normal?”

That’s a good question. De Luca had thought so, but . . . he was wrong about at least some things, obviously.

Aaron holds up a finger in a
just a moment
gesture without looking up. From somewhere under the desk we hear the soft whirring sound of a printer coming out of sleep mode. Aaron clicks and types for another few seconds, studies the screen again, then grabs one of the books from his stack and flips through the pages.

“Okay. So the dazed thing is a side effect of having your life force siphoned away.”

“Is it their souls?” I ask. “Is that what he’s taking?”

“Eh.” Aaron makes a seesaw gesture with his hand. “I don’t know if I’d say
souls,
exactly. Maybe, but I think ‘life force’ is better.” He perks up. “You kids play video games? You know how some of them have that life-indicator thing for each player? A red bar or something, showing how much life you’ve got left, or how many hit points, or whatever it’s called in that particular game. And you can lose some of it and then gain more later and be okay, but if it ever gets down to zero, you’re toast. That’s more like what this is like, I think.”

“So as long as he’s only taken a little bit from each person, they can be okay after a while?” asks Ryan.

“Yes, I think so. I mean, hey, no guarantees, this is all just theoretical, right?” He laughs a little, and we laugh a little, too — ha-ha, of course, we’re not actually
serious
here. “Anyway,” he goes on, “I think anyone who’s just lost a bit of life force to him should be fine eventually. But if he’s got anyone directly connected to him, that’s a different story.”

I lean forward. “What do you mean,
connected
?”

“Some demons like to make themselves little, uh, helpers. Kind of like deputies with very limited demonic powers. People to help do their bidding, since sometimes the demons themselves are limited as to what they can do while they’re pretending to be human.”

“So would one of these deputies, for example, maybe be able to help him take people’s life forces?”

Aaron thinks for a second. “Could be. Don’t really know what all the variations are, but that certainly sounds possible. Anyway, anyone he’s turned into a deputy will need to be severed from his control before he’s destroyed, or they’ll be destroyed right along with him.”

“Oh,” I say, sitting back in dismay. Ryan gives me a sympathetic look. “How — how do we break that connection?”

“I’d say you’re looking at a three-step process. Step one is to bind the demon so that you can do the rest of it without him getting away. Or, you know, killing you. For this, you will need . . .”

He lays a book open before us on the table.

“. . . this diagram,” he continues. “You’ve got to either draw it first and then summon him into it, or draw it around him while he’s standing still.”

Ryan and I look at each other, then back at Aaron.

“How are we supposed to do that?” Ryan asks. “He’s not an idiot. He’s not just going to stand there.”

“What about the first part?” I ask. “Summoning him into it?”

“Either of you ever do magic before?”

“Uh, no.”

“No.”

“Then I wouldn’t recommend the summoning option. Way too much could go wrong.” He pauses for a moment, thinking. “Here, I know.”

Aaron scoots back in his chair and pulls open a drawer in the bottom right side of the desk. After a few seconds of rummaging around, he sits back with a pleased expression. “Try this,” he says, holding out what looks for all the world like a small strobe light.

“A strobe light?” Ryan says dubiously.

“Little-known demon weakness. Catch ’em by surprise with one of these, and they freeze just like a deer in the headlights. You’ve really got to sneak up on him, though. If he sees it coming, it will never work.”

Ryan takes the strobe light, still looking highly doubtful. I don’t blame him.

“Step two,” Aaron goes on, “is to sever the connection with whomever he’s deputized. You’ll need that person to be there for this, too. Now, there are two ways this could happen. You could convince him to release the person voluntarily, but that’s probably unlikely. The other way involves a little magic ritual.”

“Didn’t you just tell us not to try doing magic?” Ryan asks. He’s clearly starting to get irritated.

“This isn’t as dangerous as the summoning spell. Or nearly as complicated. You’ll just need to mix together a few things, and then it’s simply a matter of performing the symbolic ritual.” He jots down a quick list on a piece of paper and hands it over to me. “I’ve got the hard-to-find ones here in the shop. The rest you should be able to find at any grocery store.”

“And step three?” I ask warily.

“Step three is where you get to kill him. Well, that or banish him back to his own dimension. It depends how powerful he is. But it should get him out of your hair, either way. For that part, you just need to trace the diagram with something flammable — lighter fluid works nicely — and set it on fire. The combination of the flames and the containment circle will either drive him off this plane, or destroy him.”

He stands up. “Just be sure to get all other flammable things out of the way, of course. And bring a fire extinguisher. You don’t want to burn down the whole building.”

We stand up, too. Aaron grabs the papers from the printer, which include instructions for drawing the diagram he showed us, along with a coupon for 20% off our first purchase in the store, and then slips into the back room to get some of the more unusual items on the ritual list. He comes back bearing an assortment of little plastic bags containing various substances. “Erica can ring these up for you upstairs.”

“Thanks,” I say, shaking his hand firmly. Ryan does the same, and then I can’t help asking, “Hey, so, why do you make the front of your store look all scary and uninviting? It’s really nice in here. You probably scare a lot of people off with the black windows and bloody doorknob.”

Aaron smiles. “That’s pretty much the point. We serve a select clientele here. Just folks who already know about us, or find out through friends . . . or who come here because of some particular need, like you two. We don’t want every college kid in town hanging out in here with their laptops and cell phones, ruining it for the rest of us.”

“Oh,” I say. “I guess I can understand that.”

“Try to keep it under your hat, okay?” Aaron calls after us as we head upstairs.

No worries there. I’m certainly not going to go blabbing to anyone about our demon-research errand. I doubt Ryan will, either.

The magenta-haired girl rings us up at the counter and puts everything except the strobe light in a recycled Whole Foods paper bag for us. I take the bag and Ryan tucks the light under his arm, and we go back through the black curtain and into the outside world.

“So,” Ryan says as we walk toward the car. “That was interesting.”

“Yeah. You think he really believes in all this stuff?”

“I think he really does.” Ryan hesitates, then adds, “I sure hope so, anyway. If he’s just messing with us, we’re likely to have a really unpleasant experience back at the library.”

“Yikes. Good point.”

Ryan unlocks the passenger door for me, then goes around to the driver’s side and we both get in. The sun’s going down, and the lighting is getting decidedly romantic to my eye. Okay, naked fluorescent bulbs are romantic to my eye when they’re shining down on Ryan Halsey, but still. This is
objectively
romantic, I think.

“So what else is on that list?” he asks.

I take out the paper Aaron gave me. All the more esoteric items that he’s already given us have little check marks beside them. The remaining items are all pretty standard. “Salt, baking powder, garlic, rosemary, white glue, and um . . .” I look up at him. “Paprika.”

“Heh. Not what I would have guessed, but I suppose that’s why we consulted the experts.”

“I suppose so.”

We sit there looking at each other for a moment in the darkening car, and
oh my God
I want there to be kissing, but I guess now is really not the time.
It could be the time,
my nerve endings whisper slyly at me.
Just lean forward and kiss him. DO IT! DO IT NOW!

I can’t.

I want to. I really, really want to. But I can’t. What if he doesn’t want to kiss me? What if he
pulls away
? I’d never recover. And we have work to do.

I busy myself folding the list, and Ryan clears his throat and starts the car, and off we go.

Maybe later,
I promise myself silently. Maybe right before we actually go through with this crazy plan. Because then we might be just about to die, and so I might not have quite so much to lose.

It is Sunday night. I’ve got a Tupperware container filled with the mixture of ingredients from Aaron’s list and a box of chalk (assorted colors) for drawing the diagram. Ryan has a steak knife for the severing ritual and the lighter fluid for the end part. The strobe light is in his backpack, along with extra batteries, matches, a lighter (in case something happens to the matches), a crowbar, a mini fire extinguisher, and a box of chewy chocolate chip granola bars, in case of sudden low blood sugar.

Annie is tied up and gagged in the backseat, wriggling furiously and trying to yell through the scarf we stuffed in her mouth.

I turn around to look at her again. “I’m so sorry, Annie. Please, just try to relax, okay? I swear, you will understand and forgive me eventually.”

Her eyes narrow to angry slits and I hastily turn back around.

It had been pretty easy to kidnap her, really. She hadn’t told her parents she didn’t want to see me, and so I just walked inside her house without ringing the bell, like I have ever since we were little, and her mom, who was knee-deep in laundry and half watching TV, waved me around to the back of the house where Annie’s room is. Annie was sitting at her computer with headphones on, and I was able to jump her almost before she even realized I was in the room. With the usual thumping, running, and screaming sounds of too many little kids in the basement / rec room downstairs and the turned-up volume of the television in the living room at the front of the house, there was no danger of anyone hearing the struggle. I let Ryan in through the window, and while he finished tying her up, I e-mailed a quick vague-but-worried note to Mr. Gabriel in what I hoped was a good imitation of Annie’s style, saying she needed to talk to him and that if he saw this, he should meet her in the library at midnight. It took all my self-control to resist looking for some of those “love poems” she’d mentioned while I was in her e-mail, but I knew I couldn’t risk the distracting and time-consuming throwing up they would probably induce. I left a note on the bed in a decent approximation of Annie’s handwriting, saying that she was going over to my place to help me study for a test. After that, we bundled her quickly out the window and into Ryan’s car. The whole thing took less than ten minutes.