56
JUDE
I’d spentwhat passed for the night studying, flipping pages, drowning in centuries of handwritten notes. I added my own thoughts in the margins: questions, theories, half-formed warnings. The grimoire hummed under my touch, its energy a slow, steady current that soothed the hollow ache of my own fading power. As a distraction, it was a poor one, since I had no urge to actually sleep, and would find myself staring at nothing wishing for Angel.
A half-dozen times, I heard the hellhounds pass by my door. Their growls vibrated through the stone; their claws clicked in the hallway beyond. Searching. Sniffing.
By the time a faint, pearlescent glow, the afterlife’s version of dawn, began to seep through the window, I was wound tight and desperate to do something beyond sitting here in solitude. When the door to my room swung open, I flinched, half-expecting the library sentinels to finally give up on protocol and break the damn thing down.
But it was Nat. He stood in the frame, looking annoyed, a teetering stack of books balanced in his arms. He was muttering to himself, a low, irritated stream of consciousness.
“—tracking mud and sulfur all through the west wing, scaring the imprints half to death—which is a feat, let me tell you?—”
He stopped. His sharp gaze landed on me, then dropped to the glowing journal open in my lap. His eyes narrowed.
“You.”
“Me,” I agreed, trying for casual and landing somewhere nearbusted.
He stepped inside, letting the door swing shut with a soft but final click. “Didn’t I tell you to rest?”
“How exactly does a ghost rest?” I shot back, closing the journal with a softthump. “The energy zaps out of us and we just… sit here in bored non-existence? I was reading, and since it’s not a romance with a good, ass-pounding sex scene, it’s basically the same thing.”
He groaned, a sound of deep, cosmic weariness. “I knew taking your soul was going to bite me in the rear.”
“There are a lot more fun things to do if you like butt play,” I offered, aiming for distraction. “I could set you up. I know a few attractive, available men… if you’re into girls, that might be more of an issue.”
“What I’minto,” he said, voice flat, “is not having the archive’s warning alarms blaring. It leaves every restless half-soul stirred into a frenzy.”
“I just went into the library,” I said, defensive. “Looking for something that wasn’t… theoretical. I didn’t realize it was guarded by fire dogs with a taste for ghost.”
“They don’t eat ghosts,” Nat corrected, an edge in his tone. “They chase out demons.”
Demons? Was I a demon soul now? Was that what this felt like? “Ah, what?”
“And were you playing with the fax machine?”
“Define playing.”
He gave me a glare that might have made a bunny rabbit scared, but since he had his human face, rather than his skeleton one, I wasn’t impressed.
“I was exploring,” I insisted.
“You were trespassing in a classified archive,” he said, his voice dry enough to turn the air to dust. “Those sections are restricted for a reason. Some of those books don’t just contain knowledge, theyareknowledge. And they’re hungry. They could have devoured you. Or worse, followed you out.” He gestured sharply at the journal in my lap. “Andyou took a souvenir.”
I pulled the book closer. Its warmth pulsed against my chest, a silent, stubborn protest. “It’s mine. You gave it to me. In fact, you gave it to me right before I died.” I eyed the glowing cover with new suspicion. “Is this book cursed? Or are you?”
“I gave you a copy,” Nat said, pinching the bridge of his nose as if fighting off a migraine. “A shadow of the original. That,” he stabbed a finger toward the glowing text, “doesn’t leave the archive. It doesn’t get… adopted. It belonged to the last Arbiter.”
Except it was in my hands, warm and humming, and I had absolutely no intention of letting it go. “Finders keepers.”
Nat stared at me. “What are you, twelve?”
“Dead,” I shot back. “Which, last I checked, eclipses library policy. It came to me. It wanted me to have it.”
He let out a long, slow sigh, the sound like pages turning in a forgotten tomb. “It’s more than a book. It’s a record of woven time. It reacts to power, and right now it’s reacting to the chaos you brought with you.” Nat set the stack of books on the table with a solidthump, sending dust motes swirling in the pale light like agitated spirits. “The hellhounds aren’t chasing you for shits and giggles. You stepped through a boundary you shouldn’t have access to. The deepest alcove of the archive is sealed to all but the highest ranks. The last Arbiter’s personal library could wreak havoc on all the universe itself.”
I stared at the book in my hands, its warmth seeping into my palms. I couldn’t have let it go if I’d tried, and that realization was its own kind of chill. It felt like a part of me now, a grafted organ humming in time with my ghostly pulse. Maybe it was filling the holes I’d torn in myself when I unraveled for my family.
