A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

“ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO—”

“Yes, yes, hope abandoned, Walter,” Claire cut in. “We need transport.”

The creature’s face fell, serrated teeth disappearing behind a quivering lip. He straightened his tie and blinked bottomless-pit eyes at the librarian. “Aww, miss! C’mon, let me do it proper-like. Ever since the Reformation, I never get mortals in here no more.”

“If you must, but do please be brief. And quieter.”

“Bully, ma’am. Thank you.” The giant straightened, and his shoulders nearly hit the rafters. He cleared his throat, opened his razor-filled mouth again, and launched into his speech.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! Beyond me lies the city of woe. Before me waits the sleep which ye earn. None shall pass unless the soul be light; none shall pass out of the dark. I am that which stands; I am that which waits and shall not falter; I am that which keeps the fates. Weigh now your soul or turn back to thine sleep.”

It struck Leto as a little flowery, but echoed in a howling baritone, it did the job. The jars trembled on their shelves, so that a hundred glass voices seemed to echo the words. The vibration reached in to jostle Leto’s organs unpleasantly.

Claire did not appear impressed. She propped her elbows on the counter, her back straight even in the middle of a bored recline. She tugged at one of her many braids, fussing with a stray bangle.

Brevity twisted her hands and risked a shy smile at the beast behind the counter. “I think that was awful terrifying, Mr. Walter. That trembly bit on the end is a nice touch.”

“Thank you, Miss Brevity. It took ages to get the acoustics just right.” The beast appeared to shrink and glow under the praise. He caught sight of Leto and leaned over with a dagger-filled grin that was something out of even a demon’s nightmares. “Hey, I don’t suppose you’re—”

Claire cleared her throat. “We’re here on business, Walter.”

The creature turned his sightless gaze back on the librarian. “Sorry, ma’am. How can I help you, Miss Claire?”

“We’re on an errand up top. I need one pass for Brevity here and two summoning candles for me and the boy.”

Leto bristled, forgetting his original protest about the trip. “I’m not a boy. I’m a demonic messenger of—”

“Yes, yes, two summoning candles for me and this most esteemed and powerful messenger of our fearless leader.” She raised her brows to Walter. “White should do. Don’t you think?”

Again, Walter leaned over the counter, peering above the librarian’s head to scrutinize Leto. Leto squirmed his toes and forced himself not to fidget and definitely not to meet the gaze of those bottomless black holes that threatened to swallow him up.

After a pause that did not seem at all short, Walter nodded. “White summoning should do ’bout right, Miss Claire. Coming right up. Miss Brevity, you’ve used summat like this before, yes?”

“Yep, I know the routine. Hauling the chief’s butt out of Hell is why she keeps me around.”

Claire cast her assistant a sour look as Walter thundered back into the halls behind the counter. “I do not get ‘hauled’ anywhere. You are merely fulfilling your duties, Brev.”

“You maybe want to summon yourself, then, boss?”

Leto glanced between the two women, a fresh layer of confusion coating his already stewing anxiety. “I don’t understand. Why does anyone need summoning? I thought you were going to Seattle.”

Claire turned as if suddenly remembering his presence. “You really are new, aren’t you? It’s because I’m human.”

At Leto’s blink, she gave a weak chuckle. “You assumed a mere demon could make sense of the tangled, unfinished dreams of humanity? Not likely. Too messy. Last demon assistant I had ran screaming after one full inventory. No, librarians are nearly always mortals, and nearly always unwritten authors themselves. Brev here being an exception worked out by the Muses Corps.”

“When they kicked me out,” Brevity muttered.

Leto nodded uncertainly. He had heard the rumors, of course. The whispers about the unwritten works by Hell’s librarian. Claire hadn’t held the position that long—thirty years was a blink in Hell’s terms—but she’d become a whispered name in demonic courts for the stories she’d left uncreated, filling the shelves, worlds unmade. The rumor said there was a whole annex of the Unwritten Wing that housed her works, under lock and key, never visited. Buried under the fog of some old and quite horrible scandal.

Of course, Leto thought, any good rumor always had a scandal.

“Right,” he said, attempting to recover, rubbing the back of his neck, and looking anywhere but at the stern woman. “I just… Well, shouldn’t you be doing your time to get out of here? Isn’t that the only reason mortals are here, to, y’know, work through their… their…”

“We all get the afterlife our soul requires. I’ve heard the sales pitch,” Claire supplied with an impatient cluck of her tongue. “This is mine. Lucky me. The trick they don’t tell you is that the longer you’re here, the harder it is to remember anywhere else.” She paused as Walter lumbered slowly back out of the gloom. “It’s quite inconvenient. As are these questions.”

“S’why boss needs a summons,” Brevity said. “Spirits and demons can come and go on business. But mortals can’t leave Hell if their souls haven’t freed them yet. But with a bit of ritual magic, library folk get a day pass.”

“A day, no more,” Claire said. “Not everyone gets access to a ghostlight, but since it’s part of the Library’s duties, King Crankypants has to make an exception.”

Leto couldn’t help but twitch every time she did that: refer to Lucifer with a horrific pet name. It was disrespectful. Undignified. Not done . He’d begun to suspect that was why she did it.

Walter reached the counter and paused to pat delicately at his suit pocket. He whipped out a pocket square the size of a bath towel and wiped the counter before carefully placing two waxy candles on it. He then heaved one of the large glass jars filled with colored fog and set it next to them on the counter. “Modern-day Seattle area, aye? Where you want t’ be set down, Miss Brevity?”

Claire answered instead. “City center is fine. Space Needle, if you need a landmark.”

“The base of the Space Needle, this time,” Brevity added with a scrunched-up face.

“Oh yeah, sorry ’bout that…” Walter furrowed his brow and twisted the jar sharply, once, twice, three times. Each time, the swirling mist inside changed color slightly, darkening from sky blue to navy, brightening from forest green to spring. The colors settled into a slate blue and lime swirl, and the eyeless creature seemed satisfied. “That should do it.”

Brevity stood on her tiptoes to reach over the counter and inspect each white candle before sticking them in one of the many pockets of her cargo pants.

Leto eyed the swirling jar and edged another step toward Claire. “Pardon me, Miss Librarian, but I don’t think I’m authorized to travel. I was just supposed to—”

“Deliver the assignment and assist with completion. This is assisting.”

“I don’t think I’ll be much help—”

“It’s just a summons, Leto.” It was the first time the librarian had bothered to use his name, and the demon felt irrational heat in his cheeks. She offered him a trace of a smile. “A summons to a relatively boring time and place on a relatively boring errand. If you’re new, it’ll do you good to learn how these things work. I imagine that’s what High Grump had in mind. Unless you want to return to him to check?”

“No! No. I mean, if… you’re sure, ma’am.”