A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

Then snapped.

The book shuddered. The hero’s hand flinched off the pages as it snapped itself shut. His brows knit together as he looked up, incredulous. “They… The gall! They pretended they didn’t know me! Me! Oversized inkblots just—”

“The story didn’t recognize you.” The sliver of anticipation Claire had held dissipated. She’d suspected as much would happen, but she’d hoped to be surprised. She exchanged a glance with Brevity. “That makes sense.”

“No, that makes nonsense .” The hero’s voice was acidic, a barbed accent surfacing with his distress. “I’m the bloody—” He snapped his mouth shut abruptly. “Without me, there wouldn’t be a story.”

“It appears your book disagrees,” Claire said, and the hero glowered up at her. “By all means, make another attempt.”

The hero shifted uneasily. “All the better to allow you to put me back on a shelf?”

“Is that fear I hear?”

He shot her a stormy look and stepped up to the book again. He paused to spare a glance and a nod at Brevity. “Thank you for the tea, muse.” He winked at Leto before turning a cold look to Claire. “It’s been an unmitigated displeasure.”

Claire’s smile was just as icy. “Always glad to meet a fan.”

The hero’s lip curled and with a flourish he slapped his hand down on the cover. When nothing happened, the little remaining color drained from his face.

Claire cleared her throat. “Brev, you might want to guide our hero to a seat again.”

Brevity helped him stumble back to the couch. The hero’s green eyes had taken on a glossy look. “What does this mean?”

“Your damage disconnected you from your own story. Congratulations—that’s a feat. That means, at least until your book decides to accept you again, you’re a free agent.” Claire paused, then amended, “Well, not free. You’re still Special Collections, and you’re going to be answering to me.”

The hero’s face froze. His gaze fished around the room before coming to the book again.

“Whoa, our own hero. The damsels are gonna freak.” Brevity clapped, only a little awed. “We can’t keep calling him that. Hero. Can we?”

Claire shrugged. “Fine. He can rename himself when he comes out of shock. I thought ‘Janitor’ had a nice ring.”

The hero shook his head, subdued. “This isn’t happening….”

Claire let that go. It was probably best to let the man work it out for himself. He quite possibly had eternity to do so. “Brev, if you can hold the fort here, I’ve got an errand I need to run. Leto, I’d like you to come along.” The teenager jumped up from where he had been lingering at the edge of the group, twisting his hands together. “You proved so useful before.”

Brevity’s brow knitted. “You just got back. What now?”

“The Watcher’s scrap did not belong to the hero’s book. I need to run it past the Arcanist to be certain before I explain more than that.” Claire cast a glance toward the restorations room. “But there might be more than one book missing.”

A SOUND, MORE GRAVEL than snore, grated from the sleeping gargoyle as they passed the bookcase. Leto gave it a wide berth as he struggled to keep up with the librarian’s long strides. Hell’s hallways passed in a blur, and Leto had long ago given up keeping track of the path they were taking. He decided to stick to the basics. “Where are we going?”

“The Arcane Wing. The Arcanist, Andras, is a colleague and old friend.” The bag holding the page scrap crinkled between Claire’s pinched fingers, as if she was afraid it would escape. She accelerated down a wide flight of stairs and forced Leto to speed up again.

“Arcanist. He’s some kinda wizard?” Leto asked.

“Not quite. He curates the Arcane Wing. It’s part of the Library. The Unwritten Wing is larger and stores the unwritten works, and the Arcane Wing contains… curiosities.”

“Like a museum?”

Claire shook her head. “Libraries traditionally housed a cabinet of curiosities; I suppose that is why the Arcane Wing exists here as well. It houses arcane artifacts—prophecies, spell books, monkey claws, and soul gems. That kind of nonsense. Things that gain power on Earth become… slippery. Slippery and dangerous. They tend to fall through the cracks of reality and end up here, where we can contain them. It’s the Arcanist’s job to do that, and fetch the dangerous stuff. Messy job, one I’m glad I don’t have. Books are much more straightforward.”

“So he’s your boss?”

Claire’s chuckle was not entirely warm. “I’m sure he’d like to think so, since he’s been here forever, but no. The Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing are allied.”

“Allied?” Leto frowned. “Against what?”

The question made Claire slow. Leto had to careen into a pillar to avoid running into her. Claire seemed to consider before giving him a serious answer. “Against everything. As long as there have been places like libraries—places attempting to preserve and curate—there have been forces attempting to acquire. The Library makes for a very juicy target for the demons of Hell, even though they’re supposedly our hosts.”

That made no sense. “But they’re just books,” he blurted before he could worry about insulting the librarian.

Claire didn’t seem prone to taking offense. She just chuckled. It was a dry, crackling laugh that made her sound older than she looked. “They may be just books to you, Leto, but these are unwritten books. Pure potential. They’re the stuff of something demons don’t have: imagination. That’s the stuff of humans. The power to create. Down here, that’s a decisive power. There are factions here in Hell that would love nothing more than to eat the books whole, for a momentary burst of power. If the Arcane Wing and the Library didn’t work together to present a united front, the books would have been burned long ago.”

Yet another thing Leto might have known, should have known, had he been the demon he was supposed to be. Instead, he was a stupid human asking stupid questions. He could even fail at damnation , and now he was in Hell, surrounded by shadows containing dangers he didn’t even know existed. His arms felt chilled. He wrapped them around his middle. He couldn’t remember the source of self-loathing that welled up in his throat, but the bitter taste coated his tongue.

They wound their way across a dark foyer. The wide amber floor was dusty and bare and seemed to swallow up the light. Claire halted them before a set of thick bronze doors. The grillwork was cast with figures so encrusted with age and grime that Leto couldn’t make them out. Claire’s hand hesitated above the handle. “Andras is a friend—he won’t harm you—but just one rule: don’t touch anything.”

“O-okay?”

“Andras won’t harm us. But the Arcane Wing…” If the smile Claire gave him was meant to be reassuring, she sucked at it. “The Arcane Wing is… different.”