“Demis,” Leon said, pushing him flat. “Remember? Look at everything I’m learning.” Something settled under Daniel’s head—a wad of the unused fabric, Daniel realized. The warmth of Leon’s leg pressed up against his scalp, reassuringly steady.
He tried one last time, even when faced with the inevitable. “B-But, I...I should-”
Leon waved The Basics back through his sight. “I’ll keep reading this,” Daniel heard him say. “Maybe I’ll figure something else out. And you, make the most of the downtime. Okay?”
“Ass,” Daniel mumbled. His eyelids drooped lower still, heavy and irresistible. It was Alex’s doing, he knew. She’d decided he’d pushed too hard, and that was where his own input ended. Fighting it would be useless. He’d learned that before.
This time, though...He smiled faintly, turning just enough to pull his leg to a more comfortable position. Leon’s chuckle filled his hearing. They had all the time here they could need.
So why should he bother fighting?
“Just for a bit,” he whispered. Even he could hear the words come out a muddled, nonsensical mess.
He was gone before he could try again.
- Chapter Twenty-One -
The mounds of books stacked around them wobbled, teetering ominously.
Daniel leaned back, taking his eyes off the pages before him for a minute. His fingers squeezed against the bridge of his nose, trying and failing to ease the ache in his skull. When he woke up, he’d found that Alexandria had stuck a table into the corner of the room—which they’d immediately claimed, heaping it full of all their findings. It’d seemed so easy, then. It’d seemed like just a matter of time until they’d have their answers.
It was proving to be anything but.
“You finding anything else?” he said.
“What?” the books said.
He leaned forward far enough to see Leon, still completely absorbed by The Basics.
That was all. He waited, staring—until after another moment, Leon blinked. “Oh. I mean- What?”
Daniel chuckled. “Just wondering how it’s going.”
“Oh.” Leon wrinkled his nose. The book sank a few inches towards his lap. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “It’s a lot of information, but...at the same time…”
“Not enough?” Daniel’s heart sank.
Leon nodded, his eyes still downcast. “It’s all good, but...It’s not what I need, y’know?”
“Yeah.” There had to be some way to straight all this out. Some way to help. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Leon mumbled, and then sighed. “I’d just like to know what I can do to help. I figured, if there’s magic out there, someone’s got to have a clue what kinds of things you can do with it.”
Leaning back, Daniel fished for one of the books he’d set aside—the one marked with a too-familiar pipe on its cover. “I was looking,” he said. “About your pipe, and- Well, about what the other people who owned it could do. Their magic sort of works along similar lines, right? And, well, it says the past owner could do temperature regulation, so maybe…”
He trailed off, watching Leon’s face go stormy. There’d been more, of course. It’d told him the past owner’s name had been Marv. He’d been born in Texas. He’d had a brother, and he’d only gotten the pipe a year and a half ago. None of that information would help Leon, and so he damn sure wasn’t going to burden him with it, but...he couldn’t quite get the words out of his mind.
“It’s...not that simple,” Leon said. One of his hands traveled to his side, squeezing at something beneath his coat. The pipe, Daniel knew. What would it feel like, to have a magical connection like that to an object so ordinary? “There’s…” He sighed again, leaning forward to scrub at his face.
“Sorry,” Daniel whispered. “I don’t mean to-”
“This book,” Leon said, and hoisted The Basics higher. “It keeps going on about what my wish was. I keep looking for a way to figure out what powers I’m going to get, any way, and...it just keeps going straight back to that.”
“Your wish?” Daniel said. He sat up a little straight. “What’s that mean?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Leon muttered. “Apparently the things read what you want from them when you first pick ‘em up. Wish I’d known that before.”
Daniel’s spine prickled, shivering with flickers of electricity. “Then-”
“We were getting shot at,” Leon said, again making a face. “How the hell am I supposed to remember what I wanted right then? I wanted them to stop shooting at us. I wanted them to go away.” The corners of his lips twitched, and he smiled faintly. “I just wanted it to stop. You know?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said. For a moment, his friend’s eyes flicked over, locking onto his own. “That’s totally normal. I was scared too. It’s...It’s only natural.”
Leon nodded, his gaze dropping again. “Yeah. So...That’s all I’ve got. It’s not worth a damn.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Daniel said. “We’ll...We’ll see. When we get back out there. I promise.”
He was the Librarian. He’d been using magic since he was a preteen. He’d be able to help. Somehow.
Leon didn’t look convinced, but the look in his eyes softened a fraction. “Yeah.” And then he cleared his throat. “S-So. How about you? Are you getting anywhere?”
Oh, Daniel could recognize the subject change being thrown at him. He nodded, though, reaching out to pat the stack of books beside him. “Yeah. I’ve...I’ve got them, I think.”
Alexandria hadn’t been happy at all at the notion of him unchaining the books. She’d thrown a fit in her own way, rocking the ground beneath his feet and rattling the chandeliers hard enough droplets of wax splashed down across his arms. But he’d insisted—with one leg ruined, he wasn’t in any shape to stand in front of each shelf reading the hours away.
With that temper tantrum behind them, he had what he’d come for: the books belonging to each of the ‘demis’ attacking them, and a few more biographies besides.
“Merv,” he said softly, raising the pipe-owner’s book one more time. And then his hand drifted
