“That would be your great-grandfather’s memorandum on sleep disorders and their treatment, yes. It was a regular money-spinner before modern tranquilizers came along.”
“Got it.” Evie pulled out the roasting pan, turned on the oven, and got the rosemary, sea salt, and olive oil ready. The saucepan full of potatoes was already simmering. She drained them and readied them for roasting as her father scribed a soporific ward on the underside of her mother’s chair.
Finally, with the food in the oven and the good silverware set out (and a bottle of burgundy uncorked to breathe), she followed Dad upstairs to lay out the trappings of the exorcism grid under the bed Mum slept in these days: bell, hand-cast clay vessel, ritually purified stopper, the skull in which the Lares’ flame rode, like a kitsch prop from a sixties horror B-movie—
And then the front door lock unlatched, and nothing more stood between Evie and the end of her childhood.
A burst of automatic gunfire from the lobby at the front of the building rattled Imp’s teeth in his head. “Get down!” shouted Wendy, who ignored her own advice and darted for the spiral staircase up to the mezzanine gangway. Eve crouched, cradling the leatherbound volume in her arms. Glass marbles floated around her head, catching the gaslight like a shattered halo. Game Boy squeaked and dived behind the librarian’s desk at the front of the room.
A moment later there was another burst of gunfire—Imp couldn’t tell who was shooting slower pistol bullets and who was spraying assault rifle rounds, but the two shooters were audibly different. A body fell backwards through the doors at the front of the reading room, then rolled sideways to a seated position and put three rounds through the door at waist height. The shots reverberated, deafening in the confined space. “Get the table!” shouted the new arrival. “Barricade!”
“Do it,” snapped Eve. To the prone gunman: “Are you hit?”
Del tipped the table at the front of the room over on its side, and shoved it towards the doorway. A moment later Game Boy shot out from behind the front desk, grabbed a table leg, and did something odd that somehow levered it up on one edge, so that the table top was vertical right behind the doors.
“Not hit,” the gunman gasped. He wore immaculate formal evening attire and had somehow kept his hat on through the firefight, but his white gloves were stained gray with gun oil and he stank of burned powder. He pulled a magazine from inside his cloak and reloaded his submachine gun. “Sitrep, ma’am?”
“Who’s out—” Boom. Eve winced as the room was shaken by a concussive blast. A thin shower of plaster dust rattled from the front cornice.
“Looks like they brought a grenade launcher, ma’am. Sorry.” The Gammon didn’t look sorry; he looked cold-bloodedly professional as he rolled to his feet and rapidly took stock. “You, you, and you—” he pointed at Game Boy, Imp, and Doc—“if you want to live, start moving furniture fast. We’ve got maybe three minutes, then they’ll force entry through the windows—”
The hiss and thud of an arrow met the crash of breaking glass and a climactic scream, dwindling: “No they won’t,” Wendy called down.
“Who the fuck are they?” Imp asked, finally getting a grip. He glared at the Gammon. “And who the fuck are you?”
“He’s with me.” Eve rested a hand on Imp’s shoulder. “Listen,” she told the Gammon, “we need to make sure whoever’s out there gets this book, then we need to follow them—not too close—and retrieve it when they die.”
The Gammon stared at her, hard. “Why can’t you just swipe it?” he asked. “It’s not as if there’s a librarian on duty. Ma’am.”
Eve smiled tightly. “It’s cursed. If you take it out of the library that would be stealing and you’d die, sweetie. Unauthorized withdrawals are not permitted.”
Suddenly the Gammon’s eyes narrowed. “So it’s a weapon.”
“A weapon?” Game Boy squeaked.
“We need to make an exit,” Imp announced. “Me and Doc, and—Wendy—we have to go first. You and Evie need to make it look like we’re retreating. Del and Game Boy, can you guys hide? Or, I dunno, play dead?”
Del kicked off first: “You have got to be fucking—”
“—Bad guys shoot their way in, find dead bodies and a book while Eve and—”
“—Sergeant Franke—”
“—Retreat under cover. Bad guys take the book and GTFO. Game Boy, you follow them until they drop dead, then you’re merely picking the book up and handing it to Del. Doc and I will make sure nobody looks at you, and we’re outta here. Plausible?”
“I love it when a plan comes together,” Franke quoted, deadpan.
Boom. Another shower of plaster dust. Imp’s ears were ringing, almost loudly enough to drown out the hoarse shrieking from outside.
“How many are there?” Eve demanded as a protracted burst of gunfire rattled what was left of the window glass.
Franke froze, looking thoughtful: “Too many—and that’s not an AK.” He flicked on a flashlight clamped to his gun and lit up the back wall of the library. There was a discreet door beside the spiral staircase at the far end of the catwalk. “Go there. Go now! Go! Go! Go!”
“Do as he says, kids, unless you want to play with our new friends,” Eve announced. She walked towards the middle of the room and carefully positioned the book on the floor, facedown. “I renounce custody,” she declared formally. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it now: it’s armed—metaphorically, at least.”
“Fuck it, this is a very bad plan,” Game Boy complained quietly. He headed towards the back of the library, where a series of bays jutted into the room, and disappeared between two upright bookcases.
There was a crash from beyond the front doors and the table wobbled. Wendy briefly popped her head up to check out a window, then ducked down again; she
