The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,120

sending a spike of terror through Hero’s chest. “No! No, no, no. That ink messes up everyone it touches.”

Rami shook his head, gently taking Hero’s hand off his shoulder and holding it in his. “Not me. I figured it out. Didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Souls,” Rami said, a gentle smile breaking over his features before he let go of Hero’s hand and ran toward Claire and Brevity. He swept something up off the ground, something that glimmered thin and blue. Only after he slapped it on Brevity’s arm did Hero recognize it as the inspiration gilt that had protected Claire. It was a thin thread, but Rami returned it to Brevity’s forearm like a talisman.

Then Rami dropped to his knees in front of the two women, pressed his hands to each of their cheeks, and appeared to begin to pray.

35

BREVITY

Myrrh. Myrrh. MYRRH, sod it! Souls. That’s what they didn’t want me to know. Librarian Poppaea rebelled in order to acknowledge and free the fragmented souls of books. It didn’t work, obviously. Perhaps Old Scratch thought we librarians would be more compliant if we thought it was just books and magic. The devil obviously has never met a bibliophile. Rebellion is in a reader’s blood.

Stories are slivers of us, all of us. What makes a story real is the soul of the author. We’re humanity, splintered into the stories we tell ourselves. I doubt the old demon would be pleased to know I’ve rediscovered this. I’ll need to feign ignorance; perhaps we all will. But future librarians need to know.

The logbook keeps a librarian’s secrets, until they’re needed. Well then, old book. It appears we have work to do.

Librarian Fleur Michel, 1782 CE

THE BRUSH OF RAMI’S palm on her cheek had been the end. Or perhaps it had been the words, echoing long after her sight faded. Guttural, heart-piercing prayers, colliding like wayward meteors in the dark. Maybe the end had been long before that. All the paths led to here and now.

When she could see again, the Dust Wing was gone. Everything was gone, replaced with . . . color. Not the rainbows-and-unicorns kind of color. No, the miasma that swam around Brevity and clogged her throat was the spectrum of light off the surface of something dark and deep. There was no breaking the surface here. This was oil slicks and crystalized lava. It was like breathing bismuth, with its rainbows of geometry shaped by very old, old things.

Brevity floated in a world of specters and in a sea of ink.

A darker blot loomed, growing larger like a whirlpool that the world turned around. Brevity let the current pull her, for lack of another destination. The shadows grew, and eventually she could make out a solid thing, a sliver darker than ink at the core of it. The piece at the axis was fragmented and melting. It was a kernel of an idea, an unfinished shape that lost edges, gained edges, until it was nearly impossible to discern what was underneath the roiling black.

Nearly.

The air felt punched from Brevity’s lungs. “Claire.” A familiar jut of stubborn chin gave way to long braids that dripped and melted like candle wax. Brevity tried to swim forward through the air, but it was harder now. As if the colors were swirling through her, not around her. A furious dog paddle drifted her in the right direction. The effort sent little eddies that ate away at and disseminated what was left of a shoulder. “Oh, boss.”

The kernel of Claireness rotated like a tumbling asteroid in the void. Her face was carved out of obsidian, cold nothing instead of warm, beautiful brown. Only the shifting ridge of eyelashes told Brevity that her eyes were opening.

Brevity let herself drift, afraid even the slightest current would carry more of Claire’s core away. Never mind the way her limbs felt increasingly light and gauzy, as if she herself was being erased. “What have they done to you?”

“A gentle colonization.” Brevity flinched and just barely stopped herself from twisting at the voice. Rami stood as if on solid ground. If solid ground were at right angles with any sense of up and down that Brevity’s brain had. The ink swirled around him, ruffling his feathers like a breeze, but didn’t appear to sink in. He studied her for a long moment, face growing graver. He held out a hand. “They’re being less careful with you.”

Brevity reached out and trembled with the certainty that her fingertips were not going to stop