Was this behind the shop? Attached? Or did it all look different now that I was dead? Maybe this was Nat’s stockroom, or hidden stash of books too dangerous to be accessible by the public.
The ceiling rose high into the shadows, so high I couldn’t see the top. Each shelf was crammed with books of every size and color, some leather, some gilded, others slim paperbacks mixed with scrolls tied in silk ribbons or stamped in wax.
A maze of shelves stretched below; freestanding tables, narrow bookcases, and unsorted stacks of books created a treacherous path through precarious, tilting towers. I drifted down a narrow aisle, trailing my fingers through the spines of books I couldn’t touch. The mismatched array on the shelves varied from romance novels to science journals and everything in between.
Silence stretched thick. Lights dim. Not another lost soul, or Reaper in sight.
Then I heard a low, rumbling growl that vibrated through the floorboards and I froze. That wasn’t someone’s stomach grumbling.
From the shadowy mouth of a cross-aisle, two shapes emerged, massive, built of shifting shadow and ember, with eyes like banked coals and jaws that dripped phantom flame. Hellhounds. The same kind Angel had tried to use to protect me back when I was still breathing and breakable. They’d been shadow-and-fire beasts then, barely perceivable in the darkness of the warehouse we’d been training in. But here, they looked more real. Flesh leathery like bats rather than dogs, and drool dripping in sizzling droplets of lava.
They paced forward, heads low, gaze on me, their growls threading the air like smoke.
Right. Guards. Of course, the creepy purgatory library had guard dogs.
I stayed still, hoping my current state of see-through insignificance would make me uninteresting. “Hey, fellas,” I murmured. “Just browsing. Don’t mind me. Think of me as Jude, the friendly library ghost.”
One of them snarled, a flash of fire lighting its throat, and they both stared directly at me. Okay, so they minded.
“I’m already dead,” I said, as if explaining myself to a pair of supernatural attack dogs was a normal Tuesday. “You can’t bite a ghost. That’s, like, rule number one of the afterlife.” I waved my hand through a pile of books. “See.”
The hounds lunged. The displaced air hit me with a heated, meat-scented gust that screameduh-ohin a language older than words. And I turned and ran, floundering in a skidding slide around a pile of books. The beasts snapping and snarling as their claws dug into the hardwood.
“Seriously?” I yelled over my shoulder, ducking as a tower of giant tomes wobbled dangerously. “I’m dead! What more do you want from me?”
I slipped through a bookshelf, passing straight through the wood in a dizzying burst of cold disorientation. I emerged on the other side, but so did they, phasing through solid matter like it was mist. Of course. Ghost dogs for a ghost library. Why would anything be easy?
“Oh, come on!”
I took a hard left, then a right, weaving through a labyrinth of leaning shelves and precariously stacked tomes. I passed through doors, walls, and entire bookcases, each transition leaving me colder, fainter, less certain of my own edges. The hounds flowed through barriers like ink through water, silent and relentless. At least nothing was burning from where they touched the paper. I’d have hated to catch the library on fire. But I was also annoyed that all the noise hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention.
Like Nat, the bastard. Where was he?
My spectral heart pounded. I could feel myself unraveling at the edges; the effort of staying coherent while running for my afterlife was taking its toll.
I spotted a closed arched door at the end of a particularly dark aisle, older than the others, the wood blackened and carved with runes that seemed to drink the light. No time to be picky. I shot toward it and passed through.
The air thickened instantly, an icy chill sliding through my senses like a blade. It stole my breath, and I stumbled, half-frozen, into the room beyond. My knees hit the floor hard, the impact shuddering through my ghostly form. For a moment, the cold was so deep I thought I might dissolve into it, some sort of supernatural unconsciousness pulling me under. I rolled up intoa ball, trying to keep myself from bursting into a thousand mini-Jude particles.
On the other side of the door, the hellhounds snarled, claws scraping wood, but they didn’t follow. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t. The barrier held.
Gasping, I rolled onto my back in the near-dark. A few sickly, floating orbs cast just enough light to outline a tiny room of shelves and pedestals, huddled together as if shoved in a closet somewhere to hide them from the world. And it all felt just as eerie.
Leather covers that seemed to breathe, bindings that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light like captured heartbeats. Some were even chained shut. The air thrummed with a low, living energy, and nearly every volume had strands attached, lifelines.
I pushed myself up, stiff and disoriented. Behind the heavy door, the hellhounds' snarls faded to a muted, swallowed echo.
My eyes adjusted to the gloom, gaze drawn to a simple, dark wood stand in the center of the room and the familiar journal on top of it. The same plain, leather-bound volume Nat had given me when I was alive.
A steady silver light emanated from its edges, illuminating the dust motes that drifted around it like slow constellations. How had it gotten here? Had Nat simply given me a shadow of this true volume?
I hovered my hand over the cover, watching the silver glow seep through my translucent fingers. The magic within it sang a quiet, steady hum of recognition. The same gentle breeze of welcome I’d felt that day in Nat’s shop curled around my wrist, warm and familiar. Happy, even. Like it had been waiting.
My fingertips brushed the tooled leather symbol on the front, the same swirling knot of threads. This time, I didn’t pass through.
The cover was real in a way nothing else in this ghost place was. Energy tingled up my arm, a piece of myself returning, as if this wraith wasn’t who I was meant to be.
Carefully, I opened it.
