A Familiar Sense of Dead Read online

  Hazel looked at him and shrugged. “Told you she was the person to bring.”

  They hurried to catch up with her.

  “What was that?” hissed Tyler.

  “Maybe the Shelver?” she whispered in reply.

  They found Harper standing at a break in the seemingly endless corridor—an aisle that receded into darkness in both directions.

  “Where to?” asked Hazel.

  “Look,” said Harper, pointing to the ends of the bookshelves. Plaques were fixed on each end, engraved with three strange symbols apiece. “It’s some sort of cataloging system.”

  “This is what Clancy and Cordelia were talking about,” said Hazel. “It’s an ever-changing code, and if we want to find our books, we need to crack it.” Hazel pulled out her notebook and showed them the symbols she had copied from Silas’s ledger.

  “If the system is ever-changing, are these even any good?” asked Harper.

  “I have no idea,” said Hazel. “But it’s all we have to go on. How quickly can one shelver change them?”

  Harper took off down the row, heading deeper into the library, and Tyler and Hazel followed. “Look,” she said. “The first symbol stays the same. That must be indicative of location within the library. Or subject. I can’t tease out which without more sample data to go on.”

  “Let me see the library card,” said Harper. Once Haze had handed the card over, Harper pulled a book from the shelf and waited, tilting her ear to the darkness. When no groan shook the shelves, she smiled with satisfaction and started flipping through the pages. After a moment she slipped it back into place and moved on.

  They burrowed deeper into the library, Hazel and Tyler merely tagging along as Harper took them down rows and through shelving and descended long steep staircases.

  “Yes!” Harper hissed at last. “I’ve figured it out. The first symbol indicates the floor! Look! We’re on the right floor now!” The first symbol on each of the plaques was indeed uniform and matched the first of the three Silas had recorded.

  “The symbols aren’t an alphabet,” said Harper, tracing the symbols with her fingers. “So much as a corresponding system of symbols. Think emojis.”

  “Which one is eggplant?” Tyler asked.

  “Behave!” chided Hazel. She turned her attention back to Harper. “Corresponding to what?”

  “I have hunches, but . . .” She shook her head and then bolted forward excitedly, scanning titles as she went. She stopped so abruptly at the end of the next row that Hazel almost crashed into her.

  “What?” asked Hazel, her heart already rising in her throat, Cordelia’s warning coming back to her. Harper pointed at her ear, which Hazel took as a sign to listen. She held her breath and cupped her hand behind her ears to scoop up any stray sounds. She was about to say she heard nothing when a sound came to her. A light and distant bumping, slowly growing louder and coalescing into a rhythmic beat.

  Thump, draaaaaag. Crunch. Crinkle. Thump, draaaaaag. Crunch. Crinkle.

  Harper looked back at her, eyes wide in horror now, the allure of and fascination with being in this mystical library now forgotten. She mouthed one word as clearly as if she had yelled it: Shelver. Hazel nodded and reached forward and closed her hand around Harper’s light, dousing it, then did the same to Tyler’s and her own. They stood in darkness. It seemed like her breathing was unnaturally loud and tried as she might, she couldn’t silence it.

  The noise crescendoed, a cacophony of paper being waved, crumpled, and torn, of old leather creaking, and of a thousand pens and pencils furiously scratching out messages, until it was almost deafening, as something huge dragged itself down the corridor in front of them. It reeked of spilled ink, and in the darkness, Hazel could feel motes of something drifting through the air and settling on her face and in her hair.

  She pulled Harper close, and her niece seemed grateful for the act and burrowed into Hazel’s side. Then Hazel’s hand found Tyler’s. He laced his fingers through hers and clasped them tightly.

  Hazel ran through the catalog of spells in her head, the measly glamours that were probably better suited for entertainment at a kids’ party than for defending them against whatever this Shelver turned out to be. Using her flame spell seemed ill-advised in a paper warehouse.

  The moment stretched on, but finally the thing had passed and the noise receded, the crumpling fading into the darkness until the silence and the darkness merged and everything was still.

  “I think it’s safe,” she whispered.

  “For the record, I will never feel safe again,” Tyler said. “And I’m returning all my overdues as soon as we get back home.”

  Hazel coaxed a ball of light to life, saw that it was clear, and conjured up two more for Harper and Tyler.

  “Are you okay?” Hazel asked her niece.

  “Yeah,” responded Harper, her whisper harried and hoarse, her face paler than usual, which was saying a lot for a Bennett. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “You can take a second if you want—”

  But Harper was off and moving, crossing the aisle that the Shelver had just traversed.

  Once Harper had recovered, she settled back into a rhythm, but Tyler stayed close to Hazel’s elbow and jumped at the sound of every book Harper pulled from the shelf.

  “Listen,” said Tyler. “I don’t mean to rush this, but maybe we should find a way to speed this up. I could help—”

  But Harper paid him no heed. She was already moving off down the row, oblivious to the fact that she’d left them behind. She pulled down book after book, thumbed through a few pages, only to replace them and repeat the process further down the row. When they came to a break in the shelves, Harper moved up a few rows and repeated the whole process. This went on and on, taking them deeper into the stacks, and further from the stairs.

  “Maybe we should leave a trail of breadcrumbs,” whispered Tyler. It was meant to be a joke, but he had a point. Would they be able to find their way back?

  Harper stopped at the edge of another row and traced the symbols on the plaque there. “We’re getting closer,” she said.

  Hazel watched in wonder as her niece worked. She had known the girl was bright—possibly brilliant. But she had an inkling that, up until this moment, she had only seen the tip of the iceberg. Watching her niece crack the library code was nothing short of watching a genius at work.

  “I think I’m getting it,” Harper whispered. Her eyes flew wide, and she looked up from her book, shelved it, checked the one next to it. She hurried back the way they had come, whispering to herself as she dodged around Hazel and Tyler.

  They followed her to the end of another aisle where she was holding her light up to the plaque and tracing one of the symbols. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes!”

  She took off, nearly running down the aisle, holding her light up to the plaques, and then whispering to herself. “Something about the husbandry of mythical creatures,” she said, looking at the plaque. She dove into the aisle and pulled out a book. Then she let loose a squeal of delight. The library’s reaction was instant: The floor quaked, the shelving groaned, and somewhere in the distance she heard what sounded like paper fluttering in a stiff wind. But it all faded as soon as it had come. Harper rushed to Hazel and pointed at the book. “Dragon feces!” she whispered. “Manure!”

  “If there was ever any doubt you were raised on a farm . . .” Tyler started.

  “Shush,” said Hazel, elbowing him in the ribs again.

  “I bruise like a peach,” he complained.

  “Then you’d better shut your yap.”

  Harper whispered over them, shoving the book practically in her face. “These symbols on the end. I knew that they were about farming, and look at this book. It’s about dragon farming, or more specifically the ins-and-outs of using dragon manure as fertilizer.”

  “And we’re looking to bring dragons to the farm now?” asked Tyler.

  Harper chuckled. “No. But it means that the second symbol
means broad subject categories. We just need to find the right subject section. From there, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the row that corresponds with the third symbol.”

  “You’ve been schooled,” Hazel said.

  Harper hurried back to the shelf, found the gap where the book had rested, and reshelved it. Before Hazel could ask any questions, Harper was off and running again, padding down the center aisle, and stopping at each plaque for a few moments before speeding on again.

  Harper stopped suddenly and tapped one of the plaques. “Here,” she whispered, and then was off speed-walking down the row, stopping periodically to peer at the shelves and read a few spines. Then finally she stopped in one place. “This is it,” she said. “This is the right section! All three symbols line up.” She entered the row and pulled a volume down. “Look a book—” The library groaned in protest and Hazel dropped into a harsh whisper. “—a book on hexes and jinxes! There has to be something nearby!”

  Harper moved down the row, scanning books until at last she wrested one free from the shelf and held it up, triumphant. The title, embossed with gilt lettering, shined clearly enough for Hazel to read, A House Divided: On Clones, Doppelgangers, and Rifting and Rivening Curses.

  “Jackpot!” Hazel whisper-yelled.

  There was a clatter and she looked back to see Tyler standing, books strewn on the floor around him like wounded birds, the fish-out-of-water look on his face as he switched back and forth between staring in horror at the mess he’d created and looking to Hazel for help.

  “Tyler, no!” Hazel shouted, as she sprinted toward him, hand outstretched as if she might be able to undo the mess, if only she could reach him in time. He began stuffing books back on the shelf, but it did nothing to stem the rising quiver of the library floor and the creaking of the shelves. Next came the noise, that steady but quickening thump, drag, followed by the crinkle of paper and the whispering of a thousand working pens.

  “We need to go!” she yelled over the din.

  She grabbed his hand, yanking him back toward Harper. She made the mistake of looking back over her shoulder, and in the dim light at the end of the row, she saw a cloud of dust billowing past the head of the row.

  She reached Harper and simultaneously strangled their lights, plunging them into darkness. She tightened her grip on their hands and yanked them into the nearest aisle. She felt a gush of cold air as something rushed up behind them and slammed into the end of the rows. The shelves shuddered and groaned.

  They pawed their way through the darkness, their hands clasped tightly.

  Up ahead she saw a dim blue glow illuminating a door, a portal of thick wood bound by iron braces. “There!” she shouted. She held her breath, yanked down on the door’s latch, and pushed hard. The door yielded and they tumbled inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Tyler slammed the door shut behind them.

  “There’s no lock!” he shouted. “Why is there no lock?” He threw himself against the door, digging his feet into the cold stone and bracing himself as best he could.

  Hazel rushed to a nearby table, grabbed one of the chairs, and rushed back over, helping Tyler to wedge it against the door, then stood back to see if it held. But the onslaught never came. No Shelver slammed against the door.

  Still uneasy, they turned to see where they had ended up. A massive wooden table dominated the room, surrounded by a number of chairs. There was little else except for a rather uncomfortable-looking couch pushed up against a wall, and a row of wooden lockers pushed up against another.

  “What is this place?” asked Tyler.

  “It must be a reading room,” said Hazel. “Zelda mentioned they were the only places in the library where students could use materials.” She looked back at the door, still silent. “Maybe that’s why the Shelver hasn’t pursued us in here.”

  “So it’s a safe space?”

  “That or we’re finally following the library rules?”

  “Look, a map!” exclaimed Harper.

  On the wall beside the door was fixed a poster map labeled simply THE SILVERWELL STACKS. The rest of the map, however, was undefined, lost in a shadowy haze that faded and shrank, revealed and obscured, as they looked on. What was clear, was the area immediately around a room marked YOU ARE HERE. Inside it was a single dot labeled SILAS MCGREGOR. And then immediately outside the door of their room lurked a dot labeled SHELVER.

  “Maybe we just need to give the employee of the month some time to calm down and get back to work.”

  “Here’s to hoping he has a short attention span,” said Tyler.

  “This was a mistake,” said Hazel, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  “No!” Harper said. “You should have! I needed to get out of the manor, if only for a few hours. Link is driving me crazy. If he’s not playing Fortnite, and he usually is, he’s talking about Fortnite, or practicing Fortnite dances, or shooting me with Nerf darts in the name of Fortnite. This is the greatest gift you’ve ever—that anyone—has ever given me.”

  Hazel looked at her dubiously.

  “This,” said Harper. “This is the place I’ve been dreaming about, longing for, my whole life without knowing it. Even if I were clobbered into the ground by the Shelver before we left here, I would die more content than I’ve ever been.”

  “And I can help,” she added. She laid the book out on the table and produced a Moleskine notebook from her backpack. She furiously dug around in the bag before looking up, her eyes round and the color draining from her face. “Oh my god,” she whispered. Hazel had never seen her niece in such a tizzy. “How do I not have a pen?”

  “Gotcha covered,” said Tyler, fishing into his pocket and pulling out a pen which he valiantly presented. It was Hazel’s turn to look horrified. It was less pen than medieval implement of carpal tunnel induction.

  “Tyler!” Hazel chided.

  “What? It’s a nice pen.”

  “Do you also steal the pen at the drive-up window at the bank?”

  “Only if it’s nice.”

  “Villain”

  “It’s a writer thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Can we assist?” Tyler asked Harper, but Hazel’s niece only shook her head and shooed Tyler away.

  “I guess that gives us a few minutes,” said Tyler. “Want to pray for our lives now?”

  Hazel walked the perimeter of the room, checking for anything that might help them—be it hidden doors, secret weapons, or an obvious escape route. “How the hell do we get out of here?” she asked.

  “What’s this thing?” asked Tyler. Just next to the map was a sliding door that looked something like the door of a dumbwaiter. A sign over it read: “Please place all materials here when finished.” He slid it open, revealing an interior the size of a largeish cupboard. The back wall was another sliding door. “Maybe we can order room service from the Shelver.”

  “Room service for us sounds better than room service for you and Cordelia.” She’d made the comment before she could think better of it, and now that it was out she blushed deeply.

  “Uhh . . . what?”

  “You were awfully friendly with her.”

  For a moment Tyler looked something like a fish out of water, mouth flapping open and shut but no sound coming out. She mimicked him and then threw her hands up in the air. Some part of her was vaguely aware that she had lost control, was possibly throwing a fit, but she was beyond controlling herself now.

  “She’s your friend,” he said. “I thought I was supposed to be . . . friendly.”

  “I’m confused,” he said. “Are we . . .?”

  “No,” Hazel stammered. “Well, it’s just that we’ve been spending a lot of time together and—why, do you think we’re . . .”

  He exhaled dramatically. “Jeez, I dunno. Last time we did this, you broke my heart.”

  “Last time we did this, we were eighteen.”

  “Actually, you were eighteen. I was still seventeen
. I hear you are seven months and ten days older than me.”

  Harper cleared her throat loudly and unnecessarily.

  Hazel looked up suddenly to find her niece smirking at her, an eyebrow raised. “I think I’ve found something—if you’re interested still!

  “I’m interested,” said Hazel. “In the book. Interested in the book.”

  “Just the book?” said Tyler, almost under his breath.

  “Later,” she whispered.

  Mercifully, Harper started reading from the book. “ ‘Khalil the Wise of Dragonderry has reported success in using the essence of a riven individual in undoing the curse of another riven.’ ”

  “Classic case of fighting fire with fire,” said Tyler grimly.

  “How does that make sense?”

  “It’s not an uncommon way of thinking in human civilization,” said Tyler. “The idea that eating another living creature somehow bestows its properties on you. Maybe it’s not dissimilar. But consuming the halves of a whole, one could transfer properties of unity on the consumer.”

  “That’s brilliant,” said Harper.

  Tyler breathed on his fingernails and buffered them on his shirt. “Sometimes I can put two and two together. See what I did there? A little riven humor.”

  “Maybe the werespider was making lesions in order to trap its own food,” said Tyler. “The same way a spider spins its web in a place where insects lurk.”

  Hazel shook her head. “I don’t think the werespider was responsible for the lesions. It was just an opportunist.”

  She thought of her mother’s efforts to keep the manor spider free. Of course it wasn’t her DIY spray that was the problem. There would be no spray good enough to get the job done. They’d have to move either Bennett Manor or the lake to solve the problem.

  “So the riven has been hanging out around the lesions because it’s trying to cure itself?”

  “Well it doesn’t seem to have worked,” she said. “Both halves of Silas were killed and yet the werespider lives on.”

  “There’s more,” said Harper. “ ‘Some success has been achieved in using ground keratin of the re’em to protect against magical malfeasance and disruptions. The material has been used not only to make artifacts to suppress magical ability and alleviate the symptoms of magical maladies, including curses, hexes, jinxes, and rivenings, but in permanently reversing afflictions and effects that otherwise were deemed irreversible.’ ”