The Shadow Roads seemed colder this time, maybe because we were going farther than before. I held Tybalt’s hand, trusting him to see us through the darkness, which was too deep for my eyes to penetrate, but must have been clear to his. I could hear Quentin’s teeth chattering. He hadn’t traveled through the dark this way as many times as I had, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever come this far.
Just as my lungs were beginning to burn, we stepped out of the darkness and into the watery streetlight shining on the corner of 5th and Brannan. There were no people in sight. A few cars moved on the cross streets, but none close enough to have seen our sudden appearance.
“Good aim,” I said, stuffing my freezing hands into the pockets of my jacket. “Quentin? You okay?”
“I really, really miss living where there’s snow,” he said, sounding altogether too chipper for someone who’d just been pulled along the Shadow Roads.
“All right, when this is all over, we’ll go skiing. Now let’s find the Library.” I pulled out my phone, checking Li’s text. Then I blinked. “This isn’t what it said before.”
“What?” Tybalt stepped closer, peering at the screen over my shoulder.
“Before, it said ‘5th and Brannan.’ Now it says to turn left.” I scowled. “April’s been making improvements again. Yippee.”
April O’Leary, Countess of Tamed Lightning, was the reason I had a cell phone. She’s the world’s first cyber-Dryad, and she specializes in making mortal technology compatible with fae magic. Phones that could work in the Summerlands, for example, or survive the freezing temperatures of the Shadow Roads without breaking. And now, apparently, phones that could receive semi-sentient text messages.
We started walking. After we had turned left, the message changed again, now telling us to head three blocks down. We kept walking.
Annoying as this was, it probably served a purpose. Many knowes can’t simply be walked into: they all have their own requirements for entry, tricks and twists that have to be observed if you want to get inside. There was no reason for the Library to be any different, and a lot of reasons for it to be the same. If Li Qin had started by texting me the address, we’d never have found it. That didn’t make the process any less irritating.
The text changed again after we’d been walking for almost fifteen minutes, now reading, “You are here.” I lowered my phone and lifted my head, looking around.
“Okay,” I said, after a moment. “Where the hell are we?”
Li’s directions had led us deep into the sprawling maze that makes up downtown San Francisco, and down a small side alley that was clinging with game tenacity to the title of “street.” I’m sure it had the qualifications, once upon a time. But then these silly little things called “cars” came along, and suddenly being wide enough to allow one fairly slender carriage to pass just wasn’t cutting it.
Tiny shops lined the alley, obviously clinging just as fiercely to keep from sliding into failure. Somehow, I knew they weren’t our destination. That dubious honor was reserved for the two-story building at the end of the alley, sunk back in a vague haze of dust and ancient brick. It was shabby and a little sunken-in, like it was going to collapse at any moment—or maybe last another fifty years. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with San Francisco architecture.
We approached the building, passing the blind eyes of the closed and shuttered shops, until we left the last streetlights behind and found ourselves standing in front of a plain wooden door. A sign in the window identified the shop as “Bookstore.” A few shabby volumes were on display in the window, with a curtain drawn behind them to hide the rest of the shop from view.
I tried the door. It was unlocked. “Here we go,” I said, and pushed it open. I was rewarded with the tinkling of a silver bell and a small shower of pale, translucent dust that fell like rain from the doorjamb, coating us in glitter. I coughed. “Pixies.”
“We’re doubtless in the right place, then,” said Tybalt.
I motioned for the others to follow me inside. It wasn’t much better in than out. The room was small, packed with shelves stacked with battered, mildewed paperbacks and magazines that had been old before I was turned into a fish. Everything glittered with pixie-sweat. The door slammed behind Quentin with an ominous “thud.” I jumped, turning to glare at him. He shrugged apologetically.
I’m not much for signs and portents. If I went looking for them, I’d find them, and my life is already hazardous enough, thanks. Still, the combination of creaking doors, decaying books, and unseen pixies was enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.
Tybalt sniffed, and then sneezed.
Quentin was squinting at the piles of moldy books. “Something’s wrong with the titles,” he said.
I followed his gaze, and realized I couldn’t actually read any of the book covers, not even the ones unblemished enough that they should have been legible. My eyes refused to fix on the letters, sliding instead from vivid decay to vivid decay. I slid my hands through the air, summoning as much of my magic as I could hold, and said solemnly, “You all did love him once, not without cause. What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?”
A faint gleam snapped into view above the books, clinging to every surface like pixie dust, pale gold and tasting of parchment. Someone had thrown an illusion over the entire room, presumably to keep the merely curious from coming any further. It was a clever piece of work, one I wouldn’t even have been able to notice a few years ago.
“I do adore a woman who channels magic via Shakespeare,” said Tybalt.
“Flirt later, business now,” I said. There was a narrow doorway in the left corner of the room, tucked between two dilapidated bookshelves. I kept my hands up to prevent the illusion from slipping back into place, and started for the opening, Quentin and Tybalt close behind me. The golden haze snapped as we passed into the next room, leaving our eyes unclouded. And what we found was . . . more books. Given that we were looking for a library, that probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was.
“Um, Toby?”
“Yeah, Quentin?”
“The door’s gone.”
I turned, and realized he was right. We were standing at a spot where four paths through the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves met. At least I assumed they were floor-to-ceiling; they actually stretched away into the dark above, disappearing toward a point I couldn’t see. There were no obvious exits, just more shelves, stretching out into forever. They were spotlessly clean, loaded down with books until I was pretty sure that they constituted a fire hazard.
Judging by the volumes in view, whoever ran the place had been collecting books for centuries without bothering to actually sort anything. The Colored Fairy books were shelved next to a pile of torrid-looking romances, several broad, flat art books, and a hefty leather-bound volume with a Latin title. It was like we were standing in the world’s largest used bookstore.
And there were no clerks, or Librarians, in sight.
“Hello?” I called, hesitantly. I wasn’t sure what Library etiquette was, and I didn’t want to start out by pissing off the Librarian. Li Qin had called her “a nice enough sort,” but we were talking about Li Qin here. Her definition of “nice” was questionable at best, and at worst included things I didn’t even want to think about. Some of us are more naturally tolerant than others, I suppose.
The dusty silence didn’t change. I exchanged a look with Quentin and Tybalt. “Should we wait here, or go looking?”
“I honestly have no idea,” said Tybalt. He shook his head. “I’ve always been more interested in oral histories than written ones.”