Evil Librarian (19 page)

Of course, then we had to hang out in the car with Annie tied up in the back for several hours, waiting for midnight. That part was harder.

“Ready to do this?” Ryan asks.

“Not really. But I guess it’s now or never, isn’t it?” I look over at him in the dim glow from the distant streetlight. We’re parked on the street closest to the back entrance of the school. The e-mail we sent Mr. Gabriel asked him to leave the door propped open for us, but Ryan’s got the crowbar just in case.

We get out of the car and close the doors on Annie’s renewed struggling. It seemed best to leave her here until after we get Mr. Gabriel immobilized. If something goes wrong and we don’t make it back . . . well, then Annie will have bigger problems to worry about than being tied up in the backseat of a car, anyway.

We stand there a moment more, both apparently equally reluctant to put the next part of this insane plan into motion. Because this next part is where everything either works and we win, or it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

“This is really crazy, you know that?” I ask Ryan.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Hey, I just — you know, in case we’re about to die —”

Oh my God. He’s going to kiss me. He’s going to kiss me in case we’re about to die. Which doesn’t even necessarily mean that he really has
liked
me liked me all this time, since maybe he just wants to kiss
someone
before he dies and I’m the most convenient candidate — 
Shut up,
I tell myself.
Shut up and accept that he really does like you and he wants to kiss you! He’s going to kiss you! Right here and now!

“Yes?” I prompt, a little breathlessly.

He pauses, looking back at me very seriously. And then: “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Cynthia Rothschild.” He sticks out his hand.

I stare down at it.

He wants to
shake hands
in case we’re about to die?

I look back up at him, confused. But only for a second. Then I reach out and take his hand. Because, hey, you can’t leave someone hanging like that. And besides, if that’s the best I’m going to get right now, I’ll take it.

It doesn’t have to be,
my brain points out in a very sane and level voice. This is unusual for my brain, so I pay extra close attention.
This is your moment — the moment you were waiting for. You could pull him toward you right now, grip that hand for all you’re worth and pull him close and plant your mouth right there on his. Because you might be about to die, you know. You really might. So you really should kiss him. It could be your one and only chance.

Yes,
I think. My brain is offering very wise counsel here. I’m going to do it. I’m going to kiss him. I’m going to kiss him right now.

But I don’t.

I return his firm, professional grip and let my nerve endings bask in the warm touch of his skin against mine for several long seconds.
Remember that,
I tell them.
That might be the last good thing that happens to us in this lifetime.

I take a breath. I nod. He nods back. He releases my hand. I reluctantly allow this. My fingers curl in against my palm in remembered ecstasy.

And then we dart across the street and creep over to the service entrance behind the Dumpsters.

The door is propped open like we’d asked, and I start to breathe a sigh of relief, grateful that at least we won’t have to try forcing it open. And then it starts to swing farther inward on its own, and from the darkness behind it a voice says, “Annie? Is everything —”

Oh, no! Oh crap! Oh crap!

Ryan wrenches his backpack from his shoulder and thrusts his arm inside, bringing out the strobe light just as the door opens enough to reveal Mr. Gabriel standing a few feet beyond the entrance. Ryan flicks the light on just as the librarian’s eyes begin to narrow in understanding.

And then he freezes, midglare, staring at the flashing light.

“Now what?” Ryan whispers. “We can’t do it here!”

“I don’t think we’re going to get a second chance!” I whisper back. Aaron never actually said how long the strobe light will keep Mr. Gabriel frozen. “Stay there, and I’ll draw the diagram around him right where he is. I think he’s far enough inside that we’ll be able to close the door once I’m done. It will be fine.”

God, I hope I’m right.

I push the door carefully open the rest of the way until it catches, safely back against the wall. Then I fumble for the chalk and kneel down beside Mr. Gabriel’s frozen form. My skin is crawling from being this close to him, but I try to ignore it and focus on making sure to draw a continuous line with no breaks in it at any point. It takes me longer than I expected. I keep shifting along the floor, checking the line, checking the printout from Aaron, trying to draw while my hand is shaking crazily.

“Good?” Ryan says from behind the flashing light when I finally sit back.

“I think so. Yes. Okay.”

He turns off the strobe light.

I’m blind in the sudden darkness, and I freeze, afraid to move and accidentally break the circle. I hear Ryan’s breathing from somewhere to my left, and closer, a stealthy shifting sound that makes me want to scream.

“Oh, nicely done,” Mr. Gabriel says from the darkness beside me.

I stay perfectly still, willing my eyes to adjust
right now,
so I can see if Mr. G. is safely contained or not. It’s still too dark. The waiting is killing me.

“Did it work?” Ryan asks. Apparently the waiting is killing him, too.

“Oh, it worked,” Mr. Gabriel says in an amused voice.

“How do we know?” Ryan asks, a little defiantly. “You could be lying.”

“If it hadn’t worked,” I tell him, “we’d probably be dead by now.”

“Oh. Good point.”

Mr. Gabriel chuckles, and says nothing.

Slowly, shapes start to become clear around me. There’s just a little light coming in from the streetlights, and other than a few residual ghost images, I seem to have recovered from the strobe’s glare and then sudden extinction. As soon as I can see the edges of the symbol clearly enough, I ease carefully out of my crouch and back away. Mr. Gabriel is standing at what I think might be parade rest in the middle of the chalk symbol. I expected him to be angry, but he seems to be taking it all in stride. It occurs to me that he could be faking.

“Do you think he could be faking?” I ask.

Ryan squints at the librarian. “I don’t know.”

“Only one way to find out,” Mr. Gabriel says, and throws himself forward.

I shriek and leap backward, but he slams to a stop at the chalk line. He could be faking that, too, but I am pretty sure I saw his hand press up against some invisible obstacle right before he stopped moving. Pretty sure. But we need to keep going, because we can’t go back, and so we need to assume that he’s really contained in there.

Ryan finds a light switch, and of course only a fraction of the lights are working, and at least one is flickering annoyingly, but the familiar fluorescent glow of substandard school lighting makes me feel a little better. We’re in a kind of vestibule that connects to the loading dock and the service elevator. Metal shelves hold cleaning supplies against one wall, and there’s an old desk that I guess belongs to the janitor or maybe the security guy who mans the service entrance during the day.

“Okay,” I say. “Step two.”

“Ooh, what’s step two?” Mr. Gabriel asks. He’s standing very still about an inch inside the edge of the symbol. His voice is still amused, but his eyes don’t seem to be laughing, exactly. He has them fixed on me in a very unpleasant way.

“Shut up,” Ryan tells him. To me he says, “Are you sure you’re okay staying here with him while I go get Annie?”

“No need for that,” says a new voice.

We all turn to look.

For one long, uncomfortable beat, no one says anything.

Then, with considerable effort, I find my voice.

“Aaron?”
I ask incredulously.

Aaron,
Books of Darkness
Aaron, is standing just beyond the doorway. With Annie. She’s still gagged and her arms are still bound with the rope, but he’s untied her legs. He’s holding a knife to her throat. His knife is a lot bigger and scarier looking than Ryan’s steak knife. Which is still in the backpack anyway.

“What are you
doing
here?” I say.

He doesn’t look at me. But Annie does. She looks at me, and then at Ryan, and then at the librarian, and then back to me, and her eyes are even slittier and angrier than they were before. She starts trying to yell things through the scarf that I’m really glad I can’t understand, but then Aaron says, “Shut up,” and presses the knife more firmly against her skin and she shuts up. Her eyes continue to radiate hatred, though.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Mr. Gabriel says, holding out his hand as far as the chalk will let him. “I’m John Gabriel. And you are?”

“Aaron Litske,” Aaron says, not moving. Of course, he knows about the significance of the chalk. He’s not going to reach over and break the circle. But what the hell is he doing here at all?

“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Litske?” Mr. Gabriel asks calmly, undeterred by Aaron’s failure to fall for the handshake trick.

“I’m here to make a deal,” Aaron replies just as calmly. “I’ll release you —”

“No!” Ryan and I both shout.

“Shut up!”
Aaron shouts back, and in that second he doesn’t look anything like calm. He looks — I don’t know what to call it. Excited, terrified, nervous, happy, and a little sick, all combined into one huge scary overpowering emotional state that lies somewhere far, far away from the land of normal, sane, comprehensible human feelings. The knife makes a visible dent against Annie’s throat, and I can’t move for fear of him hurting her. And then he swallows and seems to regain control, and his face gets smooth and calm and regular-looking again.

“Take me with you,” he says to Mr. Gabriel. “To the demon world. I’ll release you and give you this girl and all I ask is that you take me with you when you go. I need to go with you.”

Mr. Gabriel looks interested. “Really? That’s a new one, I have to say. Usually people ask for cash or eternal youth or a lifetime of free cable. Are you sure? That’s your price?”

“Oh, yes.” And I think we can all hear the naked desperate
want
in those two short syllables.

Okay,
I acknowledge to just myself, all nice and silent inside my own head.
Aaron is not a kooky yet good-hearted bookstore guy who happens to believe in demons. Aaron is a frickin’ loony bird.
Awesome.

Because really, this situation was not messed up
nearly
enough already.

Mr. Gabriel appears to think this is an acceptable offer. He smiles warmly at Aaron in the uneven illumination. Aaron relaxes visibly. And that is when Annie lurches forward, ignoring the line of blood that appears on her neck as she pushes past the knife, and throws herself into Mr. Gabriel’s arms.

Breaking, of course, the containment line as she does so.

Before Aaron can even fully register what has happened, Mr. Gabriel has closed the space between them. He’s still cradling Annie with one arm as he backhands Aaron across the face with the other, hard enough to knock him senseless. At least, I think he’s only knocked senseless. He’s definitely crumpled and motionless against the wall. I cannot spend too much time pondering his life status, because the demon librarian is clearly one hundred percent free and very, very pissed off.

I expect him to kill us now, but instead he turns to look at Annie. “He hurt you,” he says.

She shakes her head, denying, and the librarian gently pulls the scarf from her mouth and unties her arms and hands. Then he leans down and runs his tongue along the line of blood, licking her skin clean. Annie closes her eyes in what appears to be ecstasy. I close mine in what is nausea.

I open them again when I sense that Mr. Gabriel has returned his attention to me.

He stands facing me, one arm curled casually around Annie’s shoulders. She’s leaning against him, eyes still closed. Smiling.

Mr. Gabriel is not smiling. He shakes his head and makes a sad face.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Cynthia. I thought I had gotten through to you. I thought I made it clear that further interference would bring serious consequences.”

“Are you going to kill me now?” I ask. I’m proud of myself for getting the question out without my voice breaking. (I know. Like
that
matters. But still.)

The librarian rolls his eyes. “Not you,” he says. My eyes flick to Ryan before I can help it. Mr. Gabriel looks exasperated. “Not him, either. Come on, now. I’m not throwing the whole show under the bus just because you can’t follow instructions. But I am going to kill someone. You betcha. Any suggestions?”

I don’t say anything. I can’t even muster up a good glare. We were so close! And now the situation is worse than ever. He knows we haven’t given up. And he’s going to kill someone just to punish me. I remind myself that he’s planning to kill a whole lot of people, that not trying to stop him would be way worse, because then pretty much everyone in the school would end up dying.
But you weren’t supposed to try and fail,
my disheartened brain points out.
You’re not being punished for trying. You’re being punished for screwing it up.

I know this is unfair. How could we possibly have predicted Aaron’s completely random and bizarre intrusion? What the hell was that? But it doesn’t matter. I still feel responsible.

I look at him standing there, his arm still draped around my best friend. She looks so happy. It breaks my heart to look at her. I keep my eyes fixed on the demon librarian instead.

“Why Annie? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

He turns to look at her, and his gaze softens, just like he really is in love with her. She opens her eyes and looks back at him adoringly.

“I knew as soon as I met Annie that she was the one,” he says. “All her good qualities just shine right out from within her. But more than anything else, I couldn’t resist her innocence. She’s pure. Unsullied.”