Evil Librarian (35 page)

Mr. Gabriel’s scream of pain and horror and fury and surprise hits me from behind with actual physical force and knocks me over at the same time as it drowns out all the other sound in the arena.

For a second everything stops; the other demons freeze midfight, the audience goes quiet, and they all seem to be searching around for the source of the disturbance. I scramble to turn around, but I’m still on the ground when Mr. Gabriel stops screaming and whips his head around toward where he’d left his bride-to-be.

And he sees me, and he knows what I have done.

His terrible red eyes flash blindingly and he roars his horrible roar again. And then he comes for me. The rest of the demons — there are only a few still alive among the combatants — burst back into motion and sound, continuing their own efforts, but I can’t spare them much attention. My eyes are locked on the evil librarian’s. I can’t seem to look away; he’s got me pinned there like the bug that I am. Vaguely, I feel Annie pulling at me and screaming, and I see that the demoness is drawing her stingers from Principal Kingston’s carcass and turning to throw herself after Mr. G.

He only has eyes for me, though. He’s coming hard and fast, insane with rage and absolutely terrifying.

I can’t move. I can only sit there and watch as he raises his impossible claw-hand, preparing for the strike he is already visualizing in his mind, even though he is still relatively far away, and I think of my biology textbook / shield, still looped around my shoulder, and wonder whose astoundingly stupid idea it was to make it only work once. Was I supposed to negotiate that point during the deal-making process? Did the demoness expect me to talk her up to a three-strikes kind of scenario? Three is a much more reasonable number.

I do still have the ulu-protractor, but using it as a weapon against him would be like pricking King Kong in the toe with the point of a safety pin. He’d barely feel it, and in the meantime he’d be ripping through me with his claw-hands and tearing my insides out like spaghetti.

Well, you’ve got to do something,
my brain says reasonably,
and he’s getting close now, so make a choice and carry it out. It’s not like you’ve got all that many options to choose from.

This is very true. In fact, I think I’ve only got about two: get my textbook / shield up in time to catch his blow, or die horribly.

I like when choices are easy like that.

Annie is still screaming and trying to pull me away; she’s behind me on the ground, pulling me backward, and this is good, that’s a good place for her, because I don’t want her to get in the way.

I’m still half sitting, half lying on the ground, my legs splayed out before me, but I don’t feel pinned anymore. I feel patient and calm. I am just waiting for my cue. I make sure my shield is positioned appropriately on my upper arm, biology-side out. Timing is everything, and I have to get this exactly right.

The librarian staggers suddenly; this is because the demoness has thrown herself forward and is clinging to his back, crushing one of his wings and flaying him with her stingers. As I watch, she opens her mouth and bites deeply into his shoulder with her eel-teeth.

Mr. Gabriel keeps coming. Without Annie he’s lost everything, and I don’t know if he still thinks he can win and have his dreamed-of future of eternal demonic romance, or if he just wants to get to kill me before he dies, but either way he’s not stopping to deal with Ms. Královna. He’s growling and roaring, and I think there are some words mixed in there with the animal sounds, and I think some of them are
mine
and
no
and
kill
and
bitch.

He’s coming, coming closer, and I’m waiting, and everything else just falls away. I’m listening for the call in my headset, waiting for the conductor’s baton to drop, and I’m ready. And then the moment comes. With a final scream of rage and pain and loss, he swings his claw-hand down to rip me open, but it is all happening as I have rehearsed it in my mind and I turn and raise up my shield and at the moment of contact there is a blinding flash of light and I have to turn my head from the brightness and the power of it. I can’t see, but somehow I can still tell that Mr. Gabriel is thrown violently backward. And as my sight comes slowly back, I see the demoness atop him, driving her stingers into him again and again and again.

There is that
Highlander
moment again, but this time it is Ms. Královna who absorbs her victim’s energy. She screams her own scream of triumph, and then the klaxon sounds again, and the battle is over.

Aaron is jumping around at the end of his tether like an overexcited dog, visibly beside himself with happiness. He’s gazing lovingly at his bloody, exhausted, exhilarated fish-featured demoness with the same naked
want
as when she was in human form. Perhaps more. She spares him a tolerant, fond smile, which is particularly disturbing with her long eel’s mouth, and I swear he almost loses consciousness from bliss.

I finally turn around to look at Annie. She’s sitting behind me, still crying, but at least the screaming has stopped.

And honestly, I think she’s allowed to cry a bit after everything she’s been through. I think she’s allowed to cry a lot.

I scootch back to sit beside her, and put my arms around her, and she collapses against me into helpless sobs.

“It’s okay,” I tell her, smoothing my hand over her hair in that way that you do when someone is sobbing into your chest. “It’s over now.”

And I know that I’m right, and I also know that
over
has a lot of meanings for her right now, and that part of her is still probably mourning the loss of her sexy librarian fiancé.

And that’s all okay, too. Because she will still be fine in the end, because all heartbreaks heal in time, and life goes on, and we still have another year of high school to survive. And I’ll help her get through it, because that’s what best friends do. And I can do that, because I’m still here, and not dead.

Somehow, I have managed to make it through this relatively intact.

And more than anything else I’m feeling right now — residual terror and pain and relief and exhaustion and revulsion and mild yet somewhat amused contempt for Aaron and anxiety about the rest of what I promised the demoness and uncertainty about how I’m going to make things right with Ryan and everything, everything else — mostly, I’m just so happy to have my best friend back at last.

After a while, Annie whispers against my now very tear-dampened shirt, “Can we go home now?”

That’s a good question. I would like the answer to be yes.

The demoness is doing what I’m guessing are some kind of official demony things over by the judge’s bench / head table / satanic temple. There is probably some serious paperwork or something when a new demon ruler takes over, I would imagine.

I’m definitely antsy to get out of here. Both because, you know, it’s a demon world and we do not belong here and there are dead demon remains everywhere, but also because I’m starting to worry about all of the audience demons, who are no longer distracted by the fighting now that the fighting is over. They have left us alone so far, but I keep hearing the demoness saying meat and prey in my head. After all of this, I do not want to be eaten by some random demon who just wanted a postshow snack.

I am trying to figure out how to get Ms. Královna’s attention, planning to give her a little
check, please
gesture and hope that she takes my meaning, when she turns away from the official whatevers and starts walking over to us.
Walking
is a loose term; she’s sort of half swimming, half balancing on her tentacles, but it’s the same general idea. Aaron is glued to her side, still radiating ecstasy like a space heater of joy.

“I have something that belongs to you,” she says without preamble, and all at once I feel that part of me she’d pulled into her come snapping back to where it belongs. Instantly I feel tons better.

“Thanks,” I say. “Glad to have all of me together in one place again.” And I am. Very glad. I might not have been aware of my whole roach thing before Mr. Gabriel came along, but it’s clear that not having it makes a big difference. It’s a part of me, like it or not. And actually I realize that I do like it. Because, hey, without it, I would almost certainly be dead right now, and Annie would be Mr. Gabriel’s tormented demon bride.

“I suppose you may take that other one back with you as well,” Ms. Královna says, and for a second I have no idea what she is talking about. She gestures impatiently to a section of the wall, and I see Danielle lying there, apparently unconscious. I had completely forgotten about her.

“Is that Danielle Hornick?” Annie says in a voice that suggests she doesn’t see how it can be but that clearly anything is possible at this point.

“Yeah,” I tell her, and then to the demoness, “Um, yes. Thank you.” A thought occurs to me, and I glance around, trying to see what happened to the other human consorts. At least some of them are probably still alive, like Danielle is, unless they were linked in the same special demon-deputy way that Annie was. “What about —?”

She seems to know what I am thinking. “Those others are not your concern.”

“But — can’t they come back with us, too? I can’t just leave them . . .”

“That was never part of the deal. I’m giving you this other one from your school. As a gift. Be satisfied with that.”

“But —”

“Do you want me to say that you can’t have her either?”

“No,” I say at once. I remember how she took the first deal off the table during our initial negotiations. I hate this, but I know there’s nothing I can do. I have to save who I can. “Can you send the three of us back now, then? Please?”

She is all business again. “Yes. My schedule is already completely booked, and I still have things to . . . do, here.” She glances aside at Aaron when she says this, with a frighteningly predatory expression. He beams back at her.

“I, uh, hope you guys are very happy together,” I manage.

“Oh, yes,” she says, smiling widely. “We will be.”

She caresses the side of his jaw with one of her tentacle tips, leaving a faint trail of slime, and he closes his eyes in apparent rapture.

There is an awkward pause for the rest of us, which I break by saying, “So how does this work, then? Do we have to do that vortex thing again?”

“Not exactly,” she says. “The gateway to the library still exists, and I can send you that way. It won’t be as bad.”

“Thank God,” Annie mutters. I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.

And it turns out to be true. It’s not fun, but it’s nothing like the knives and agony of the vortex. We all hold hands — or rather, Annie and I each hold one of Danielle’s hands, since she is still unconscious, and then join our free hands together to close the circle — and then the demoness makes a hole in the air and pushes us into it. As it closes up behind us, I hear her voice faintly but very clearly inside my head.

“See you again soon, Cynthia.”

And then there is a very disorienting space of nothingness until we all slam heavily down onto the floor of the high-school library’s back office.

“Ow,” says Danielle, coming groggily awake. She mutters something else that sounds like it wants to be “What the hell?”

“You’re okay,” I tell her. “It’s a long story but you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Mmnnnnnhh?”

I sigh and make Annie help me drag Danielle to her feet. “Come on,” I say, “we’ll help you get home.”

I have no idea how much time has passed.

It’s still dark out when we reach the main entrance of the school, but that could mean it’s later the same night or six nights from when we left or maybe six years, for all I know. I decide not to worry too much about that right now. I’ve apparently become really good at compartmentalizing my problems over the past few weeks.

My cell phone is still in my backpack, which I last saw under the prop table, and Annie’s is God-knows-where at this point, but Danielle has hers (I make a mental note to be appalled later that she was carrying her cell phone in her pocket
during the show
) and I use it to call us a cab. I wake her back up enough to get her address. It takes both me and Annie to help her to the house, and I have no idea what to tell her parents, but that turns out not to matter. They fling the door open and yank her inside as soon as they see who it is. I hear snatches of phrases like
so worried
and
after the incident at the school
and
thank God you’re safe
and then they slam the door.

Annie is barely conscious herself at this point, and as much as I want to talk about what Danielle’s parents may have been referring to, I realize that now is not the time. Back in the cab, I let her doze with her head on my shoulder until we get to her house. Her parents have a similar reaction, although they, at least, actually acknowledge my presence.

“Thank God you girls are okay,” Mrs. Gibson says. “We heard about what happened, and they said they couldn’t account for everyone and we didn’t know . . .” She trails off, holding Annie tight against her. “Well, you’re here now. That’s all that matters.”