Fes, far worse.
I covered my head with my arms as fist-sized pieces of clay hit them, coating us both with fine white powder. Johnny paused only to tilt the notebook, clearing the page, then began to write again. I half-expected to see the pen nib smoking. Full prodigy mode. Time off the end.
Time. That was all I could buy her. They were coming in over us, so if she wasn’t there, they’d have to find her again. I panicked for a second—why on earth was I, the sidekick, the non-genius, having to come up with a plan? I was terrible at thinking on my feet—and said, “Okay, you’re not going to be able to work in a minute. Can you touch those books?”
“Yep.”
“All right, grab ’em, come on.”
She didn’t move.
I grabbed the notebook away from her, leaving her with the pen, and then seized the laptop when she didn’t move; finally she looked up, dazed, her face red and hectic under the white clay like a china doll. “The light—”
“Fuck the light! Come on!”
Finally she took the cardboard cylinder, the top three books from the pile, and the still faintly yelling one I’d taken from the monster in the black desert, and followed me at a twitchy sprint through the stacks, retreating into the darkness. The thumping and crashing receded behind us—supplemented now, terrifyingly, by an occasional gurgling scream. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. It was like being in the zoo and having the tiger stop and make eye contact with you: a much older part of you than your conscious mind is responding to being prey. How long had They been teaching us how to fear?
“I can’t work here, I can’t see, and I need to break the code, I need—”
I shut my eyes, opened them to a darkness not too different from the inside of my eyelids. Just... yes, the computer in my hands, smash her skull in, keep pounding till it was done, till the deed was done. Circuitry embedded in the greatest brain the human race had ever seen. The brain got by illicit means, by dealing with monsters, pulling them as close to us as if we were waltzing at a party. The brain of...
She was still talking. I snapped back to myself, gasping, looking down at her in the last of the light. Books toppled gently around us, making me dance back to avoid them.
“The spells,” I said. “You saw hundreds of them today. And I know you didn’t try to memorize the ones you didn’t need, but I know you did anyway, because that’s how your memory works. Can any of them get us out of here?”
She stared at me, the whites of her eyes wild. “Yes, but they would take us to—”
“Don’t care. Does it have light? Can you work? Can you get us back?”
“Yes, maybe, if there’s enough magic—”
“Do it. You just need to squeeze what you need out of those books and then you can bring us back. It’s either that or try to fight in here, and you know we can’t win that.”
“It’s dangerous!”
“And this isn’t? Do you know what’s coming through the ceiling onto us?”
“No—”
“Me neither. You need the time. Quick!”
She grabbed the Sharpie, juggling the books awkwardly to her chest, and started drawing on the floor. The initial circles showed up on the clay as strong black marks, but they grew progressively fainter as the clay sucked out the ink. My stomach somersaulted. She was working feverishly, her arm a blur. It glowed faintly blue when she was done, but the last marks couldn’t be seen at all. I hoped she had dug them into the clay or something. I didn’t want to know what an incomplete spell would do.
Behind us, in the darkness, something growled.
“Get in!” she cried, and I stepped onto the circle, colliding with her just as a claw swiped at my back, missed.
And we were surrounded in a wash of light that was not light.
WE LANDED HARD; I tucked and rolled instinctively, protecting the notepad and computer, feeling something slash at my jeans. When I finally stopped and creakily rose, ankles aching, Johnny was a dozen yards away, curled over the books she’d grabbed. I hoped she’d taken the right ones.
My jeans had been cut by a glossy, slaty looking black surface, ridged with sharp edges. Cooled lava, maybe? I’d seen something like it in a textbook. And there was light, cold and pale as a winter