SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Sal raised an eyebrow. “O…kay?”

Opie made a disgusted sound and muttered something under his breath before gesturing to the table. “Just write it down.”

Sal hesitated. “Does the Index read intent?”

“Huh?”

“How literal-minded is it? Can the Index figure out what I mean, or do I need to be careful not to make one of my wishes ‘Genie, make me a sandwich’?”

Opie shrugged. “The more specific your question, the more specific the answer.”

Well, that was helpful. With a sigh, Sal picked up the paper and quill. “This might take a minute.”

The smirk was back. “No hurry. No hurry at all.”

Ten minutes and a lot of blotting later, Sal clutched a folded piece of paper tightly in her clenched fist. Opie opened the box with a brass key that hung around his neck, and held it out for her. “Ready when you are.”

Sal hesitated. The wood looked old, but she wasn’t enough of an expert to tell whether it meant that the box itself was ancient, or that it had been made from repurposed boards. Repurposed from what? Charon’s rowboat? The Ark of the Covenant? Lumber planed from a section of the True Cross? Perry had been into woodworking for a while in Boy Scouts. Maybe he would have been able to tell by looking at the joinery.

Yes, think about Perry. And hope you’re still able to think about him after this is over.

Opie, for all his professed patience as she’d crafted her question, made a small “get on with it” gesture. There was a notch cut into one of the short sides of the box for her wrist. Once Sal put her hand in and Opie locked the lid, she’d be stuck until he decided to let her out. Or until she wrenched the box from him, ripped out the connection that tied it to the packing case, and went running through the Black Market with a magical wooden box permanently grafted to her arm. Sal eyed Opie, sizing him up. She could take him. Even one-handed.

Sal placed her hand in the box.

Opie slammed the lid shut. Sal’s hand felt cold, then hot, then like it was being stuck with a hundred needles. She flinched. Opie locked one hand around her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. “Don’t. Move.”

The pain faded, leaving Sal’s skin cool, but not as intensely cold as before. She felt a soft brush of fur across her knuckles. Then something wet and sticky slid across the base of her palm. Not a tongue. It can’t possibly be a tongue . Was not-a-tongue any better? No, definitely not. Sal shuddered, and suddenly the bones of her hand were on fire. She tried to open her hand, but her muscles weren’t listening to her commands, nerves too busy transmitting a constant stream of Pain! Pain! Pain! to carry any other instructions. Sal gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and concentrated.

Sal was back in her past, in a self-storage facility in New Jersey. Perry, or Perry plus a demon, floated in midair, surrounded by a pile of books, pages flipping madly. But it wasn’t the same. Because the Index was there too. Breathing down the back of her neck, breath hot and moist, like a wolf ready to snap its jaws through her spine. And when it did, it would take this moment from her forever. This was what the Index wanted. And it was hungry.

Trapped in her own memory, Sal reached for the Book of the Hand. Bare fingers inches from the cover. A hair’s-breadth away. She could feel the jaws closing, teeth piercing the skin of her neck, and with every force of her will that remained, Sal wrenched her mind to another memory. One much more recent.

She was in her room at the B&B with Menchú, on the phone with Liam. “They’re hacking the Archive,” he said. “Not the computers. The books. I’m sending a file to your phone. You need to memorize it.”

As the wolf’s teeth sank into her neck, Sal called up the file to her mind. It was a complex mathematical function represented as a single abstract image. Sal hadn’t slept at all, committing every twist and overlap to memory. It was amazing what you could do, if the incentive for success was strong enough.

According to Liam, the Index shouldn’t read the image as a threat. Because to Sal, it was only an image. She didn’t understand the math behind it, or the program behind the math. She was just carrying the candy coating, to trick the Index into swallowing the whole thing down.

Because even if Sal didn’t understand the meaning, it was there. Hidden and coded in every twist and turn and recursive loop. A tiny seed, planted in fertile ground.

Sal could hear shouting. Opie and others. She felt a pain like someone tearing the flesh from her hand, and then a sharper one as something hit her in the head. She inhaled to shout and choked on a lungful of smoke.

Sal coughed for moments, hours, years, until she managed to open her eyes. Apparently the thing that had hit her head was the floor, and she took in the room from her new low and cockeyed angle. Smoke poured from the crate that housed the Index. Her phone, tucked in her pocket, buzzed frantically. Sal crawled to a corner, completely ignored by the frantic techno-cultists who had flooded into the room since she’d closed her eyes.

Sal finally got her hands—hey, she had both hands again—around her buzzing phone. “It worked?”

Liam’s voice sounded more tired than she had ever heard it, but also relieved. “It worked.”

“Good.” Sal hung up. The Guardians were pouring in along with the Maitresse. And there was Mr. Norse, followed by Father Menchú, whose errand in town had been to keep the billionaire distracted until it was too late for him to stop Sal’s plan. A fact that Mr. Norse had realized too late. Sal decided that Menchú could handle him. And the Maitresse. And the Guardians. He was good with people. It was his job.

The Market Arcanum concluded without further incident. When dawn broke over the Alps, Sal watched the men in wolf-cloaks walk out of the castle and right back into the woods. The women in evening gowns pulled on cloaks and veils to hide their tattoos before alighting into their limousines. The techno-cultists had packed their computers into a white panel van and left as soon as it became clear that the Maitresse did not view the destruction of the Index as sufficient cause to evict Menchú and Sal from the Market. Mr. Norse departed rather more gracefully, although his last words were not exactly a comfort.

“Until next time, Bookburners.”

A shadow fell across Sal’s path as she and Menchú carried their bags to the rental car, and Sal looked up to see the Maitresse herself waiting for them. Even in daylight, and without her flanking Guardians, she radiated authority.

“It’s been quite an eventful few days for you.” Her eyes flicked to Sal. “I hope you’re able to get your house back in order after this unfortunate…disruption.”

“Repairs to the Archives are already underway,” said Menchú.

The Maitresse smiled. “That too.”

And without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away, back up the road to the castle. Sal and Menchú stood together in silence, watching her go, until her steps carried her around a bend and out of sight.

Menchú broke their tableau first, heaving his case into the trunk of the car. “Come on, let’s go home.” Sal followed suit and slid into the front passenger seat beside him. For the hundredth time, she slid her hand into her pocket, fingers seeking the reassurance of the folded piece of paper she had put there, the only physical evidence that remained of her encounter with the techno-cultists.

It was the paper where she had written her question for the Index: What is Mr. Norse looking for?