Devil Said Bang

“Got to go.”

I hang up.

Samael knew I needed the armor to survive, so if I lived he knew I’d always have it with me. He was smart enough to hide the thunderbolt so that even if Mason won, he’d never have all of Samael’s power. Not telling me any of this stinks like more of his “figure it out for yourself” Socratic horseshit. Or did he tell me something more? I have a vague impression of talking to him about it and him telling me something else. What was it?

The more immediate question is this: where would I hide if I was a missing piece of armor?

Samael told me to read the Greeks, so that seems like a good place to start, which is exactly why I’m not going to do it. I’ve pawed through every Greek book on the shelves. I liked one book I found, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but then I found out he was Roman and not Greek and that just pissed me off. For a while I thought that might mean something but probably someone just put it on the wrong shelf.

If the thunderbolt is anywhere, it will be anywhere but where Samael told me where to look. Aside from actuarial tables, Hellion tax law, and sports stats, what section would I be the least likely to look in? What other sections are there in libraries? I’m not exactly an expert on book jail, and when I walked around before, I didn’t pay much attention to what books were where or how they were arranged. Time to get rigorous and organized.

I hate this already.

You know how when you drive somewhere new it always seems longer the first time? That’s how it is the first time you walk through an entire library trying to figure out how it’s put together. I could have done this when I first got here but I didn’t give a fuck what was on the other shelves and mostly resented everything beyond my little pied-a- terre for not having more, meaning any, movies. If Samael really wanted me to pay attention, he’d have stuck Herodotus between piles of Howard Hawks and John Huston.

Twenty minutes of looking and my eyes are already glazing over. There are no section markers. No Dewey decimal system or card catalog. (Yes, I know about the Dewey decimal system. I didn’t spend a lot of time in libraries but I’m aware of their existence.) Just rows of books with titles in Hellion script. And I was just in a crash. My neck hurt before. Now it’s aching from holding it sideways to read the titles.

I should have brought a pencil and paper and been drawing a map as I go over the place. I find a general-history-of- the-universe section, including Heaven and Hell. There’s a section on science, which is broken down into categories I’ve never heard of. What the hell is Quantum Melancholia?

There’s politics, which is total bullshit. All Samael needs is one book with LIE AND CHEAT LIKE A SON OF A BITCH in neon on the cover.

There’s also art. Instead of Sodom and Gomorrah clusterfucking and Giger monsters, it looks like Samael has a thing for Rembrandt and mortal portrait painters. Probably looking for the right dead soul to put his mug on a Hellion dollar bill.

Military theory. Ha. I bet he wishes he had these books back in Heaven.

Law and economics. Was he studying for his goddamn SATs? I guess the Devil needs to know things like mortal rules and money. But still. I’m learning Samael’s darkest secrets and they’re really boring.