idiot. And to prove it, I’m not going to kill you.”
“You can’t kill me,” Dead Boy said craftily. “The clue’s in the name.”
“All right then, I won’t damage or destroy your body, or shove it in the furnace and dance around singing Hallelujah.”
Dead Boy considered this for a while, looking up at me thoughtfully. “You could find a way to get rid of me, couldn’t you? Typical John bloody Taylor. All right, let’s talk. If we must. I got a call to go to the Hospice. Anonymous, but you get used to those, in the Nightside. It told me Julien Advent was dead. I didn’t want to believe it, so of course I had to go. When I got there, he was lying there, stretched out on the floor. I didn’t see any blood, so for a moment I hoped, but . . . Some doctor was weeping over him. Nurses and patients, too. I knelt and looked Julien over, but he was definitely gone. The dead know death when they see it. The doctor said you’d killed him, for no reason. I always knew you’d go rogue someday.”
“I find my friends’ lack of faith in me disturbing,” I said.
“Go on! Kill me, if you can! Find a way to destroy my body! But you’d better make a really good job of it; because it’s the only way you’ll stop me from avenging Julien Advent!”
“Why is everyone so keen to avenge him?” I said. “None of you ever had much time for him when he was alive.”
“I couldn’t help him, then,” said Dead Boy. “What could someone like me do for someone like him? But I can do this!”
“I’m not going to kill, destroy, or disassemble you,” I said patiently.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“All right,” said Dead Boy, slowly. “One of us has definitely mellowed; and it sure as hell isn’t me. Something is very wrong here. You never killed anyone that you weren’t prepared to boast about afterwards; and you never showed mercy to anyone who threatened your life. Are you sure you didn’t kill Julien Advent? Because . . . as much as I want to believe you, something is yelling in my head that you did it.”
“I only ever killed people who needed killing,” I said.
“Good point,” said Dead Boy. “I’ll think about it. But you’d better run, John, while you can. Because once I get out from under this car, if I’ve thought about it and made up my mind that you are guilty . . . I will come after you. Because I can’t let Julien Advent’s murderer get away with it.”
“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
I walked away. Behind me I could hear the futuristic car reversing very slowly off Dead Boy, while he yelled
I found a short cut that took me straight to the H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Library, only to find it wasn’t there. It was only then that I remembered hearing that the Library had recently vanished and been replaced by a doppelganger from some alternate dimension. The Linda Lovecraft Library of Spiritual Erotica. Takes all sorts . . . A large crowd of extremely interested observers had gathered before the front doors, at what they hoped was a safe distance, watching while men in heavy-duty protective clothing checked the place out first. Because some kinds of forbidden knowledge are more dangerous than others. Everyone there was so interested in what might be going on inside that no-one even noticed my arrival.
I stood as deep in the shadows of a side alley as I could get and frowned thoughtfully. The Linda Lovecraft Library was no use to me. I had one particular book in mind, and for that I needed the original building back again. So I raised my gift, reached out with my mind in a direction I could sense but not point at, grabbed hold of the missing Library, and brought it back again. It took up its old position quite comfortably, nudging the intruder back to its own world. No explosions, no earthquakes, not even any bright lights. It helped that I was only reversing an existing transfer; someone had taken our Library and replaced it with theirs. And later on, if I was still alive, I would have to find out why.
Loud cries of shock, outrage, and deep disappointment came from the watching crowd. They’d really been looking forward to discovering exactly what kind of informative books the new Library might contain. The men in protective clothing came stumbling out of the front door, shaking their heads. One of them was heard to state, quite loudly, that he wished
I couldn’t move. I was so tired I had to lean against the alley wall and wait for my strength to come back to me. I was using my gift too much, again. Not that I had any choice. But I’d been through a lot in a short time, and even werewolf blood and Alex’s pick-me-up could only do so much. They could heal my body, but abusing my gift was doing serious damage to my mind and my soul.
Someday, I’d go too far, and not come back.
After a while, the pain in my head began to subside, and I wiped my nose on the back of my hand. I stared at the long streak of blood I left there, then took out a handkerchief and wiped it away. I moved to the entrance of the alley and looked across at the front entrance to the Library. Most of the crowd was gone. The H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Library was strictly for those interested and discerning minds concerned with ancient knowledge and secrets preserved in forbidden books . . . the kind of thing that could only be dug out through hard work and harder research. Strictly for only the most hardened scholars. And who had time for that, in the Nightside, when so many other more immediate pleasures were to be had, on every side? Only the most dedicated students of the strange and unnatural came to this Library, men who had no time for anything else. Each to their own . . . The scholarly boys would be heading back the moment they heard the old place had returned, so I had to get in and out quickly if I didn’t want to be noticed. Fortunately, I knew of a very secret side entrance to the Library, shown to me by the last Head Librarian but one, who owed me a favour for finding a rather important book that had gone walkabout. (Apparently it was mostly bored. The Head Librarian made arrangements for it to be read continuously, in shifts, and that took care of that.) I drifted carefully and very inconspicuously down the side of the Library and used the key that I’d taken in part payment for my work. (Not only for finding the book but for keeping quiet about what it was about.)
Inside, the Library was still and quiet. I moved quickly through the deserted stacks, in pursuit of the one book I was increasingly sure I needed to take a good look at. No-one else had got in yet, not even the very dedicated and more than a little unhinged scholars of the weird and appalling who normally have to be beaten off with big sticks or hosed down with Ritalin and thrown out bodily, when they got too attached to a particular volume and wouldn’t give it up to anyone else. Hell, some of them would sleep in the stacks if they were allowed. But the Library’s security would keep the scholars at bay until they’d had a chance to do a full sweep of the building and make sure everything was where it should be. And that the stacks hadn’t picked up any dangerous hitch-hikers from where it had recently been. I kept a careful eye out but didn’t see anything unusual. Or at least, no more unusual than usual.
I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren’t even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn’t have much time for people, he loved books.) I was forced to acknowledge his presence or walk right through him.
“John Taylor,” said the Ghost Librarian, in a voice of spiritual accusation. “I might have known.”
“Don’t get snotty,” I said. “I brought this place back from wherever it’s been. Where did you go, anyway?”
“I don’t like to think about it,” said the Ghost Librarian, sounding distinctly embarrassed. “Some alternate worlds are more alternate than others. A very . . . uninhibited culture, indeed. Thank you for bringing us back. Would it have killed you to wait a few days? Anyway, what are you doing here? You don’t have access to the Really Restricted Section.”
I pulled a card out of thin air and showed it to him. “Oh yes I do. See? I have special clearance. Courtesy of Ebeneezer Scrivener, the last Head Librarian but one. And, no, you don’t get to ask why. But I have full clearance, for everything, cannot be refused or revoked.”
The Ghost Librarian sniffed dustily. “They’ll let anyone in these days. Oh, very well. If you must. But treat the
