the house. From the inside it seems big enough that there shouldn’t be room for anything else. No bedrooms, no parlors, no dining room. It’s weird. Maybe it’s an optical illusion or something.'
Ceridwen smiled. 'Something like that.'
Danny had begun to run his fingers along a line of books, reading the titles silently to himself, but at her response he paused and regarded her.
'No. Uh uh. Don’t do that. I know that tone of voice. Okay, so there’s stuff I don’t know. I’m a moron. Well, un-idiot me. Fill me in. What’s the secret of this place?'
She lost her smile. 'You’re right, of course. You are young, but you’ve earned the right not to be treated as a child. My apologies.'
Danny grinned. 'Well, you don’t have to be so fucking serious about it.'
The mischief in the boy’s eyes was contagious. Ceridwen found herself laughing softly along with him. As they spoke their voices echoed in the vast chamber. She gestured upward.
'You are correct. It is much too large to fit inside Arthur’s house. The truth is that it isn’t inside the house at all. It’s… elsewhere. And the door is just a door that leads to that elsewhere. If you were to go up through that skylight, it wouldn’t be Boston unfolding around you.'
'Where are we, then?' Danny asked, sounding more than a little concerned.
Ceridwen considered a moment before replying. 'I don’t know. I also don’t know how the library is summoned. Sometimes it is here, and sometimes it isn’t. The doors appear wherever they like in the house. The library is only available when it is needed, even if your need is only for pleasant distraction, for there are storybooks in here as well.'
As she spoke, the two of them strolled along the second floor balcony. Ceridwen held her staff in one hand and ran her fingers over the smooth mahogany of the balustrade with the other. She could not help admiring the simple luxury of the great library. Danny kept moving along the shelves. They momentarily came to another, far larger alcove, set into the wall. There was an identical alcove on each floor of the library. The books here had a certain scent to them… a kind of wild, musty odor. Some of them were bound in leather as ancient as Eve herself, others in materials that could only be found in Faerie, or in other worlds.
Danny slid one of the books from the shelf, a heavy, dusty tome with a weathered cover and a lock that fell away at his touch. He began to lift the cover.
'Stop!' Ceridwen shouted, lunging for him and swatting the book from his hands with a swing of her staff. She watched breathlessly for a moment as it tumbled to the floor and slammed closed upon impact.
'What the hell?' Danny demanded.
'This section,' she said, gesturing with her staff toward that wide alcove, fingers of blue fire shooting from the ice sphere atop it to touch the rest of this particular collection on the first, third, and fourth floors. 'This is the bestiary. And it is off-limits to you.'
'Why?' The boy was clearly angry. He crossed his arms. 'Is the old man afraid I’ll do something stupid? Or something evil?'
Ceridwen flinched. So that was what the boy thought? That Arthur believed he would cleave eventually unto his father’s demonic nature. Well, and perhaps it was so, but only time would tell.
'Neither, Daniel,' she said. 'Do you know what those books contain?'
He rolled his eyes. 'Hello? You wouldn’t let me open one to find out. But from the titles, I’m guessing Monster 101. Bestiary, right? So pictures of giants, vampires, goblins, trolls, all that kind of stuff. Big deal. Why are they off limits?'?Ceridwen frowned. 'They are indeed full of monsters.'
'They’re pictures!'
'Yes,' she agreed. 'But sometimes they get loose.'
The boy stared at her with wide eyes. Ceridwen only nodded in confirmation and took him by the arm to lead him down the stairs to the first floor. As she escorted him out into the hallway and then toward the front of the house, she lowered her voice.
'We must move along, now. Arthur will be expecting us. Off to Greece, he said?'
'Yeah,' Danny agreed. 'Some island of lesbians.'
Ceridwen arched one thin eyebrow. 'I believe it is called Lesbos.'
'Okay. That’s not nearly as much fun, but okay.'
They started up the main staircase toward the roof. She let her senses become attuned to the air, moved it around, felt for the presence of others, just in case Gull’s associates were lingering nearby. Though there was no sign they were not alone, still she lowered her voice.
'From the moment we set off on our journey with Mr. Gull, you will have an assignment of your own.'
Danny paused on the stairs and gave her a secretive glance. 'Yeah?' he asked in a whisper.
'You must do something for Arthur and me. You must keep watch over the girl, Jezebel, to see if there is any sign of duplicity among Gull and his companions.'
'Jezebel?'
'It shouldn’t be difficult, Daniel. You can barely keep your eyes off of her,' Ceridwen said, smiling sweetly.
He grinned. 'It’ll be pretty painless. But why Jezebel and not that Hawkins guy? She’s pretty wacko, but he seems way more slimy.'
Ceridwen nodded. 'Eve will be looking after Mr. Hawkins for precisely that reason. He is too dangerous for you to make an enemy of him. Should he take a dislike to you, Hawkins could kill you out of sheer boredom.'
She started up the stairs once more, but Danny did not move. Ceridwen looked back down at him. 'What is it?'
He shrugged. 'Just trying to decide if I’m insulted by that or not.' After a moment he seemed to determine that he was not, for he started up after her.
They made their way to the roof with no further incident. There was a small stairwell that went up from the east end of the fourth floor corridor, and at the top was a door. It stood open, and a cool breeze swept in from outside. Sunshine splashed onto the threshold, and when Ceridwen and Danny stepped out onto the roof, they found a glorious blue-sky day. Jezebel’s weather manipulation had been only the beginning, creating a chain reaction that altered the weather pattern for the entire city.
'Her magick is sort of like a minor league version of yours, huh?' Danny muttered to her as they joined the others.
Ceridwen shot him a hard look. Jezebel was nothing like her. The girl bent the weather to her will, instead of cajoling it, nurturing and loving it. And Ceridwen was bonded to the elements, not the weather. Yet the comparison grated on her.
'I was beginning to worry about you,' Conan Doyle called as he started toward them. He was neatly attired and his clothing was extremely old fashioned, but he did not look as proper as he often did.
Gull was with him, and beyond the misshapen man were Hawkins and Jezebel, watching like carrion birds awaiting the demise of their feast. But the show really belonged to Gull and Conan Doyle. Each of the two men held an object in his hand, a heavy stone carved into the shape of a pyramid and engraved with strange sigils unfamiliar to Ceridwen.
'All right,' Eve said, 'how does this thing work, exactly?'
Ceridwen stared at her in surprise. She was sitting on the far edge of the roof with her skin-tight natural denim-clad legs over the side, propped back on her arms with her face upturned toward the sun.
The mother of all vampires, basking in the light of day.
'Eve?' Ceridwen said. 'What are you… how?'
The wind swept Eve’s hair across her eyes and the vampire tossed her head like some Hollywood starlet and gave them all a Cheshire cat grin. She stretched backward, obviously relishing the sunlight. The dark green sweater she wore rode up, exposing the smooth flesh of her midsection.
'How, what how?' she asked coyly.
'How come you’re not crispy fried?' Danny put in.
Conan Doyle cleared his throat, and when Ceridwen looked at him he gave her a meaningful glance. 'Mr. Gull has come to us armed with one of the things Eve most desired. A spell that cloaks her in hidden shadows all day long. The sunlight never reaches her skin.'
Ceridwen frowned and left Danny to watch the mages at work, while she walked over to join Eve. She did not
