Page 88 of The Librarian Did Me Dewey

Strange wetness spread across my pants and down. “Oh, fuck…”

I bent forward, body shaking as the sharp pain continued and the wetness spread.

Whatever instinct had snapped Zeke away from me, drew him back in an instant as he registered the same thing I did. But he said it first. “The baby…”

He grabbed the man by his ankle and snatched my hand, drawing us out of the book in a whirl that sent me stumbling and eventually tripping into his arms.

Panicked shouts rang out, vibrating the curling smoke, the light fog of carbon dioxide from dry ice on the ground that pooled around us.

“We’re in here!” Zeke’s panicked shout drew footsteps and clattering as Mesmer swore and a crash of what sounded like a book cart preceded his appearance, wild-eyed and panicked.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Mesmer rushed in to grab me, hoisting me away from Zeke as I wheezed through burning lungs to explain the fire, the dry ice factory, and the man I’d kicked in the dick. Twice.

Bitty was there in an instant, hands held aloft as the gemstone of a ring she wore lit brightly. “Clear the air!”

Smoke parted like the Red Sea, making a path for us as I stood on shaking legs and walked with their guidance.

Mesmer reached a hand over, cupping under my belly and to the waistband of my pants. “I think his water’s broke. Shit.”

“Ashes to Ashes! From whence you came! Like a phoenix from the ashes!” Bitty shouted every word with conviction and got us to the doorway as Mesmer brought me to my car.

The tense pain in my belly ebbed, the surface of my stomach taut as I pulled the floor mat from my car out, shook it, and put it in the seat before flopping down with a heaving breath.

Mesmer felt over my belly once and glanced back at the building as if unsure what to do.

“Hold tight. I’ll be right back.” He pulled a pen from his pocket, clicked it once, and held it out as the same glow that’d been in Bitty’s ring took over.

Instead of a spell coming forth, Mesmer’s pen took shape, the thing stretching and filling out in his hand and like some shit-forsaken magical girl transformation; he stretched his hands apart as the weirdest, fattest instrument I’d ever seen billowed out between them.

I wasn’t sure how old Mesmer was, but his accent yo-yoed all over the place at times, and his lame-ass haircut suddenly made sense as he turned a strange crank at the end of the instrument and droning music sprang to life.

And a voice like an angel flowed free of lips in a rich tenor. And what I could hear held something in it that drew me into humming along with his music, my very voice carrying something essential from within me to the air itself, aiding his song.

Holy nymphen maidens six, I call

Atima- fairest of them all

Dyamie- the fae of northern blooms