“I think you do,” Rami said, letting all his faith and certainty warm into the words. “I know you do.”
A small knit appeared between Hero’s brows and a ghost of confusion, a mere slice of the shock and the shifting of self-identity that Rami knew would come later, came into and went from his eyes. He followed Rami down off the ledge and slowed to match Rami’s heavier pace with an uncharacteristic sedateness. He would have a lot to think about, Rami supposed.
“One thing . . .” Hero muttered as they reached the bottom. Rami braced himself for existential questions he could not answer. “It happened, didn’t it? I kissed you?”
Surprise was another thing an old immortal was not used to. Laughter bubbled up in his throat, riding on a wave of his remaining fear and relief. He didn’t laugh, but he turned to hide the softness of his smile. Hide the way his cheeks warmed. Thank goodness Hero couldn’t see in the dark.
“Yes,” Rami said with as much dignity as he could muster. “I believe that did happen. Right before I kissed you.”
Hero joined him on the ground, landing with more agility than any near-death survivor had a right to. He was smiling when he looked up, searching Rami’s face before nodding once. “Claire. Brevity.”
Rami nodded. “Let’s go get them.”
32
CLAIRE
The secret isn’t about books at all. It’s about people.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1942 CE
CLAIRE’S WORLD HAD NARROWED to pale claws and void-like needles of teeth. The creature snarled and spit in her face as its claws passed narrowly over her skin. The glove covering her inked hand was slippery, and it was difficult to keep her grip. Claire stumbled backward, and her foot shifted unsteadily against the slide of books. To keep her mind from panicking she tried to understand what she’d seen. Brevity, Probity, and two pale creatures on leashes. The monsters appeared vaguely humanlike but devoid of color. As if someone had reached down and merely sketched in a black-and-white negative of a person in their place.
They had been mutilating—no, eating—the books. The horror of that was all that Claire’s mind had been able to take in before Probity had unleashed her pets. Claire had only the foggiest speculation of what they were, but from the way they’d swallowed pages whole, she suspected nothing good would come of the monster discovering the ink beneath her glove.
The creature had nearly succeeded in catching the hem of her glove with a razor finger when it was ripped away. She heard an inarticulate howl of rage wherever it had landed; then Brevity was there, pulling her to her feet. Horror, or regret, had paled her features almost as much as the other creatures’.
The similarities occurred to Claire all at once. “Those are muses?”
“What’s left after the ink,” Brevity said in clipped tones, as if already bracing herself for the worst. Claire hadn’t been the only one driven to experimentation, and she had neither the time nor the inclination to judge. The beastly muse had gained his footing again before he lunged, clawing at Claire’s hand.
The back of Claire’s glove had torn, exposing the ink-stained skin to the air, and the muse zeroed in on it as if he could smell it. Claire backed up to put space between her and the creature, and he leapt an inhuman height through the air. Paper fronds of the dead books snagged and curled around his limbs like seaweed, but the muse had no interest in lesser snacks now that he’d found a prime source.
“I knew it,” Probity said more to herself than anyone.
Brevity was somewhere to Claire’s right. “Knew what?! Probity, we have to stop this!”
“Stop it? Sis, don’t you see? This is an opportunity! We have something better than an unwritten book or the dead things of the Dust Wing. This is justice.”
Claire couldn’t spare the attention to see what she was doing. It was just enough distraction that she was too slow when the ink-bleached muse moved again. Claws snagged the fabric of her skirts and pulled Claire to the ground. Claire had a moment of enough awareness to shield her ink-stained hand against her chest before the feral muse was on her.
Torn and moldered books slid underneath her. A torn chain of paper caught on her throat, and Claire had to writhe it off so she could breathe. At the very least, the creature seemed to have no interest in mauling the rest of Claire—just her hand. He grappled with her, trying to flip her onto her back, and screeched his frustration in her ear. His breath was fouled with an acrid mix of pulped paper and the sour sweetness of rotted fruit.
There was arguing going on above, and a fretting sound she assumed was Brevity struggling to reach her, but the creature was a weight that ground Claire’s cheek into the rubbish of books beneath her. The leather of an ancient and moisture-ruined cover stuck to her skin and delaminated away from its book like a bloated corpse. The most Claire could do was keep her hand curled, tucked beneath her breast as the muse’s claws pierced their way through the skin and muscle of her back.
“Claire!” A familiar voice cut through the haze of pain and replaced it with the cold shock of alarm. Hero’s voice and the clatter of footsteps confirmed Rami was with him. But Hero was a character with an unwritten book in tow. It’d be like introducing blood into shark-filled waters. Claire writhed but couldn’t twist enough to see more than the muse’s claws.
“Stay back!” Her voice sounded hoarse and small, smothered into the floor. She felt choked on dust. “It eats books!”
“Claire—” Hero’s voice sounded closer. She felt the weight shift
