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Dalion has long since learned not to respond to open rhetoric.

“I sent the serpent…THE SERPENT! Do you know what that cost me? And still, I wait! Still, she evades me.” He turns and stares at Dalion, dark eyes fierce beneath bushy brows. “How many prisoners came in this week?”

Dalion can answer this one. “Thirteen, Great Smith.”

“When one tool fails, then it is time to make others.” He gazes at the hammers. “Which to choose…which to choose…” He strides down the row and back a little, before finally pulling a claw hammer from the rack. “First, we break. Then we make. I’m not a cruel man, Dalion, I am expedient. This one will do.” He smacks the steel head in his broad, leathery palm. “This one will do. Ideal for kneecaps.”

Chapter 19

Red

“You saw her, right?” I needed Xavier to have seen Rose. Madness can spread under certain circumstances—just drink the Kool-Aid—but in the great majority of cases, insanity is a lonely island. “The girl? You saw her? She was right here.”

Xavier’s frown told the whole story before he even opened his mouth. “You’re talking about your sister?” A pause, his gaze wandered from the cleared shelves to the knee-high piles of books on the floor. “We should get you to the emergency room, Red, you were knocked down by a car.”

“The girl…she was right here…” I huffed out a long, deep breath, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Rose.”

“There’s only you here, Red.”

“There was a girl,” I muttered absently. “Her name’s Rose.” Shaking my head, I put my hand against the wall where Rose had felt the book. There was something there, it tingled in my fingertips, and I didn’t like it one bit. “Wait! I can feel it too.”

Xavier came forward and took gentle hold of my arm. “Come on. We’ll get you checked out.”

I resisted. “There’s a book. In the wall. We need to get it out.” I met Xavier’s concerned gaze—he had to understand. “Touch the wall! There’s something there. All those books didn’t jump off the shelves for no reason. Try it.”

Xavier pursed his lips. “If it’s in the wall then it’s not going anywhere. Let’s get you checked out and then later we—”

“It has to happen now. Sophie’s out there. He’s got her. The worm man. He—”

“Red! You’ve got concussion, man. We need to get you checked out!” Xavier applied more force, moving me away from the shelves.

I dug my heels in but didn’t want to fight him. I wasn’t sure how that would go—he was bigger than me, but also seemed too refined for any kind of violence, as if resorting to it was already an admission of defeat. Either way, I could hardly hold him off with one hand while applying my nonexistent hammer to the wall with the other.

“Come on!” Xavier put some strength into it.

I’d shoved him away before I knew what I was doing. Living in care furnishes you with a set of instincts that have no place in polite society. The sort of reflexive aggression that will send a mild-mannered bookshop manager reeling away to slam into bookcases, hard enough to topple a few volumes from the highest shelf.

“Oh, Red…” He staggered forward, winded by his collision with the wall, his gaze on his open hands. “You are sick.” When he looked up, his eyes, which had been large and dark to start with, had become pools of night, like horror-show CGI but so much worse when you were face-to-face with it in a small, book-lined cubicle.

When he came for me this time, his hands were level with my throat, his face twisted with a strange mixture of disgust and terror.

“No.”

Grandma Josephine managed to fill the space entirely with a single word, her voice so much bigger than anything I expected such a small old woman to produce. The syllable wrapped itself around us and we both froze. It might have been surprise, but it felt deeper, as if for several heartbeats my muscles paid no attention to me whatsoever.

“Get out, demon!” Grandma Josephine reached up and slapped Xavier’s face with her hard little hand.

“Ouch!” He stumbled out of the paralysis that had gripped us. “Grandma! That hurt.” He rubbed his cheek ruefully.

“That don’t make no never mind.” She rummaged in her handbag. “I taught you better than to go letting strangers in.” The old woman found what she was looking for and produced a boiled sweet. She looked my way. “I don’t mean you, young man, you’re not a stranger. You’re company.”

“What are you doing here, Grandma? Didn’t you just leave? Like ten minutes ago?”

“I did.” She bustled up between us and offered me the sweet. “Candy?”

I took the sweet. It seemed the best policy. “Thank you.”

“I did leave. But I got to thinking, and I got to feeling I should come back. Seemed like you boys might be messing with things you shouldn’t be messing with.” She reached out and took my hand as I lifted it to my mouth, her grip surprisingly strong. “Especially this yoot here. Got a girl on his hands…”