Bookburners: Book 2

By Max Gladstone and Margaret Dunlap

Magic is real, and hungry--trapped in ancient texts and artifacts. Only a few who discover it survive to fight back.

Join Detective Sal Brooks, newest recruit to a black-ops magic hunting team backed by the Vatican, as she travels the world to keep the supernatural in check. Just remember: watch your back and don't touch anything.

Fans of Supernatural, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Da Vinci Code will love this epic urban fantasy. Bookburners Season 2 is written by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Brian Francis Slattery, Andrea Phillips, Mur Lafferty, and Amal El-Mohtar and presented by Serial Box Publishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Realm
• Release date: May 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781682101254

Max Gladstone

Max Gladstone is a fencer, a fiddler, and a two-time finalist for the John W. Campbell Award. He is fluent in Mandarin and has taught English in China. He is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Craft Sequence of novels, a game developer, and the showrunner for the fiction serial Bookburners. A graduate of Yale, he lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Book preview

Bookburners

Season Two

Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, Brian Francis Slattery, Andrea Phillips & Amal El-Mohtar

 Bookburners Season Two: Copyright © 2023 Realm of Possibility, Inc.

 All materials, including, without limitation, the characters, names, titles, and settings, are the exclusive property of Realm of Possibility, Inc. All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part, in any audio, electronic, mechanical, physical, or recording format. Originally published in the United States of America: 2015. 

For additional information and permission requests, write to the publisher at Realm of Possibility, Inc. 115 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10006.

 ISBN: 978-1-68210-125-4

This literary work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, incidents, and events are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Written by: Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, Brian Francis Slattery, Andrea Phillips, and Amal El-Mohtar

Cover Illustration by: Jeffrey Veregge

Art Director: Charles Orr

Lead Writer: Max Gladstone

Editor: Marco Palmieri

Producer: Julian Yap

Bookburners original concept by Max Gladstone and Julian Yap

Table of Contents

Bookburners Season Two

1. Creepy Town

2. Webs

3. Mistakes Were Made

4. Ghosts

5. Debtor’s Prison

6. Incognita

7. Fire and Ice

8. Present Infinity

9. The Village

10. One with the World

11. Shock and Awe

12. Coming Home

13. The End of the Day

1. Creepy Town

Max Gladstone

Sal Brooks couldn’t stop running.

Shaggy beasts chased her across the campus lawn. Paws hammered into the mud beneath sodden leaves. Claws ripped up the soil, and hot wet breath seared her neck. She could not look, could not bear to see how close they were. She drew her weapon, shot blindly behind her, but the beasts did not slow. Something, someone, laughed in her ear. A thorn or a finger slid along the line of her jaw and vanished.

People, Perry once said, hunted with endurance at the dawn of time. Our ancestors chased prey, the prey sprinted off—and humans jogged after. They caught up, sooner or later. And when they did, the prey sprinted off again, and the humans kept jogging. Most animals can outrun a human being over a short stretch, but none can outpace us for a hundred miles.

Sal didn’t have a hundred miles. She didn’t have one. Already her legs were flagging, her limbs felt heavy, already she strained to breathe. And Perry’s model only helped if you were the predator.

Stop, then. Fight—before they run the fight out of you.

She knew how that would end: teeth in her arm, claws in her stomach, the wet tear of viscera. Her guts seized and her sweat ran cold; she ran faster. Thick mist seeped from holes in the earth, and spiraled up with the wind of her passing.

A grim monument loomed through the mist, vacant black glass windows staring. Double doors gaped wide. No shelter there, only danger of a different kind—a carpet lolled down the stone front steps, wet as a tongue.

Where was Grace? Where was Father Menchú? Where was Asanti? Where, for fuck’s sake, was Liam?

Why was she alone? Why was she so fucking scared?

Don’t stop. Don’t think.

Just take it one step at a time.

1.

Earlier

There was a door—and a man with a rifle outside the door—in the Vatican, and Sal needed to get through both.

I work here, she said, hands on her hips.

"There’s no here here, miss," he replied.

Through that door. Right behind you. That’s where I work. Down there.

The Swiss Guard glanced over his shoulder, and registered slight surprise. That door does not go anywhere. Mid-European accent, ambiguously German. Hell, maybe he was even Swiss—did they still have to be, these days? The guard was just doing his job, but she didn’t have to like the job, or him, for that matter. She had too many bad memories of men like this pointing rifles like that in her direction.

If that door doesn’t go anywhere, why are you guarding it?

He shrugged. The commandant tells me where to stand. I don’t ask questions.

He told you to keep people from going through that door.

Yes.

And he didn’t tell you why.

The guard’s eyebrows approached his hairline. I don’t think that is any of your business, miss. If you take a left and go straight past the mural, you will return to the public areas.

The problem with working for a secret organization inside the Vatican, Sal reflected—and then laughed bitterly to herself at the notion there might be only one problem with working for a secret organization inside the Vatican—was that you couldn’t exactly go around pulling rank. Back when she’d been the shield-and-sidearm kind of police, rather than the bell-book-and-candle kind, a simple flash of the badge would have gotten her through most doors. Now, she wasn’t entirely certain whom she could tell about her job. The default assumption was: no one. Including this armed yutz standing between her and the Black Archives.

Look, she said, and sidled left; the guard mirrored to block her. Obviously you’ve been put here to protect what’s behind that door. I’m telling you I want to go through, because I know what’s behind it, because I work there. I’m jet-lagged. I just got off the world’s worst transatlantic flight. Literally all I want to do is check in and make sure the boards are clear before I go back to my apartment and sleep. Your orders can’t possibly be to keep the people who work behind that door from getting through it.

Though of course they could. Six months ago, Sal’s teammates had been kicked out of the Vatican and hunted across Rome, while she herself was imprisoned and tortured by Society officials. Water under the bridge, she’d thought. Hoped.

Be reasonable, she told herself. If this was a Society coup sort of thing, he’d be trying to shoot you already. These are new security protocols, that’s all. We need them. Hell, you suggested them.

But Sal didn’t find herself very reassuring these days. You’re doing a great job of protecting this door, she said.

Thank you. He looked uncomfortable.

But you can’t be set here to keep everyone from getting in. If that were true, they’d just have locked the door. So how do you decide who to let through? Do you need identification? Credentials? Sal drifted left again, and again the guard shifted to match. A tour group passed behind her. Arched ceilings reflected the guide’s sepulchral voice. Saint Peter’s Basilica is the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, and an architectural marvel in its own right, with murals and frescos by artists as diverse as …

You will understand, the guard said very slowly when the tour group passed, that my telling you what you’d need to show me in order to get through would violate basic principles of operational security.

Oh, come on.

If you knew what I needed to let you through, and were a sophisticated attacker, you could acquire the credentials by a range of illegitimate means. You might steal or forge an identification card, blackmail or impersonate an official with clearance, spoof an RFID tag; even two-factor authentication could be subverted, given time.

So you’re just not going to tell me?

Yes.

That’s security through obscurity.

The guard frowned. Not really, miss. Security through obscurity would be if we trusted this door to be too out-of-the-way to find, given the sheer number of doors in the Vatican. Security through mystery is a completely different, though I’ll admit related, protocol, relying—

Sal jerked her body left; the guard lunged in that direction, hit the wall, and Sal darted right around him, grabbed the door, pulled it open, and ran straight into Liam Doyle.

Hey, Sal, he said, before the guard tackled her.

• • •

You jerk, she said as they wound down the long wrought-iron stair toward the Archives. You were waiting there the whole time, listening to me argue with that unrepentant—

Don’t be too hard on poor Siggy, Liam said, several stairs ahead of her He’s only been saddled with what we all hope is the most boring job in all creation.

Guarding our front door?

The very same. And it’s a good thing I was there. If I hadn’t been, you’d be sitting in a very dark room right now, with quite a lot of rifles pointed your way. Not a good way to start a Monday.

I’ll say. She rapped on the iron railing. Rebuilt to spec, at least. Where did Siggy come from?

Since our trouble with the demons a few months back, the Vatican’s decided we’re a bit more of a security, ah, asset. Which was another way of saying risk. Siegfried the Security Expert’s our day-shift point man, reinforced by two squads of Swiss Guard watching on closed circuit camera. It could have been worse. Father Menchú and Asanti took weeks arguing the Vatican higher-ups out of a full security checkpoint, with barbed wire and everything.

Might not have been such a bad idea.

Be a pain to pass through in the mornings, though—not to mention, what would the barbed wire really do if a demon came calling?

There’s always Team One.

You don’t use a katana to cut vegetables, and you don’t set holy warriors to guard doors. Hell, posting Siggy at the door is a criminal waste of brainpower on its own. Show your card next time, and you’ll be fine.

"I don’t have a card."

He fished in his pocket and handed her one. Janitorial Supervisor, she read, beside her mug shot, which looked about as flattering as mug shots tended to. Banner line for the resume.

Accurate description of the job, though, isn’t it? he said. "Wait. Yours says supervisor?"

Don’t hate the player, hate the Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

Liam shook his head and continued down. Sal generally found that familiarity compressed distance: The first time she’d walked downtown from Brooklyn seemed to take years, but by the twentieth the blocks and bridge flew by. But each time descending the Archives staircase seemed to take longer than the last.

How was I supposed to get this card, anyway?

Oh, I would have given it to you.

"But if I had to get downstairs to get the card …"

We, ah, saw you coming on closed circuit. And it’s possible Asanti sent me up to defuse any tension between you and Siggy. I took the opportunity to observe your problem-solving skills. Impressive.

Jerk!

You said that already.

I know.

A little good-natured fun in exchange for being used as an errand boy—is that too much to ask? The fake-left, jag-right routine’s a classic, though you might be a touch too dependent on it, if you ask me.

They’d added another door at the bottom of the stairs. A red light burned beside the iron gate, above a keypad. More new security—and seeing it, she understood Liam’s resistance to the barbed wire. After facing real demons, this setup looked flimsy, another layer of organizational ass-covering. Nobody got fired for adding layers of security, whether or not those layers worked. Anyway, it’s not like Asanti couldn’t have sent one of her underlings to get you. He touched the keypad, and the light went green.

Maybe she thought I’d like to see a familiar face, Sal said. "Wait. Did you say underlings?"

You’ll see. And he opened the door.

Since Sal had joined the Society, she had seen the Black Archives in many states. When she first saw the place, she had thought the main chamber an impossible maze of piled scrolls and tomes and cuneiform tablets punctuated by desks, statuary, and display cases squeezed in as space allowed. Upon her return from the Market Arcanum, she’d discovered the already chaotic system further mussed by wind summoned by malicious techno-cultists; finally, after the Hand and his demon rivals fought out their cannibalistic three-way monster mash among Asanti’s tomes, the place had been a sea of chewed, burnt, and toppled text. Asanti rebuilt, always. But this was more than rebuilding. This was architecture.

Concentric bookcase circles transformed the Archives into a librarian’s labyrinth. The stacks remained, reinforced with vertical shelving. At the labyrinth’s center stood Liam’s and Asanti’s desks, Liam’s piled with magazines and disassembled electronics, Asanti’s covered with lenses and jewelers’ optics and the delicate silver tools the archivist used to manipulate books that were ancient, dangerous, or both. Between those desks rose the Orb, a glowing crystal ball atop an ornate cabinet of wire, glyphwork, metal pipes, and astrological machinery. The Orb’s old glass case had broken; no one seemed to have replaced it.

Shockingly clean, yes. Professional, yes. And—crowded.

Sal hadn’t realized until just now how rarely she’d seen anyone save the archivist and members of Team Three inside the Archives. Asanti, Menchú, Grace, Liam, and herself, that was who belonged here. Maybe Monsignor Angiuli, on the rare occasions he came by to review the troops.

Sal didn’t recognize any of the young men and women who drifted among the books, shelving, consulting texts, dusting scrolls. She didn’t recognize the woman staring through bottle-thick glasses into the Orb, making notes on a clipboard. She did recognize Asanti, who looked up when the door opened, smiled, and waved. Sal! What took you so long?

Disorientation or no, Sal ran down the last few stairs, zigzagged through the Archives, and gave the archivist a hug. Asanti smelled like good dust, and looked fantastic: graying braids piled high on her head, sharp in a sweeping red dress, as if she’d rebuilt herself along with the library in Sal’s absence. "This place looks amazing! How did you—how did you do any of this?"

Far more easily than I expected, let me tell you. Asanti swept one hand through a broad circle that included the whole transformed library at once. Monsignor Angiuli’s been acting head of the Society since they defrocked the cardinal at the inquest. Their, what did they call it, after-action debriefing tiger team damage control subcommittee something-or-other brought me in and asked what materials I’d need to rebuild the library so nothing like this ever happened again, which I took as an opportunity to discuss our limited cataloging and research resources, and the difficulty of post-accident recovery without a full inventory of our materials—and, next thing I know, I have a quintupled budget and a staff. She chuckled at the prospect. If I’d known threat of universal annihilation was all it took to open the Holy See money faucet, I’d have almost destroyed the world sooner.

Behind them both, Liam stopped rummaging through his desk and made a brief strangled sound. Sal laughed. That’s what you get for leaving me to deal with Siggy on my own.

Liam glared over the top of his monitor. Excuse me if I don’t find global destruction a laughing matter.

If we can’t laugh, Sal said, the demons have already won. Trust me, I’d know.

She heard a gasp and shuffling feet. Clinical fingers explored her scalp. Is this Detective Brooks? As if she were a rare butterfly spotted outside its habitat. Sal spun round, looking for the person who held the pin, and found herself staring through thick glasses into the eyes of the woman who’d held the clipboard. I expected someone taller. From all the damage.

The first reply that sprang to Sal’s mind was Only when I’m possessed, but that didn’t seem like a good thing to say to someone she’d just not-exactly-met, so she settled for, Um—

Frances, Asanti said, sliding between them, meet Sal; Sal, this is Dr. Frances Haddad, my new assistant.

Nice to meet you. Sal held out her hand. Frances blinked at it, then shoved her own hand into Sal’s, gripped hard, and shook twice.

Dr. Asanti has said so many interesting things about you, I’d love to pick your brain, metaphorically speaking, of course, about your experiences in the hell realms, and to be honest it would be pretty cool to pick your actual brain too. We were talking the other day about possible neurobiological effects of possession, not to mention exposure to and immersion within magical environments. My second cousin’s a neuro-researcher at the Sorbonne; she can get us fMRI time whenever you’re in Paris, though of course it’s hard to make any conclusive statements without a prior—is there any chance you had a skull fracture while working with the New York Police Department? They might have taken the necessary observations. Natural experiments are so hard to come by in this field.

You could scan me now, and then I could get possessed again, Sal said, and grinned at Liam’s groan.

It’s kind of you to offer, only I don’t think that would be a useful control, since you’ve already been exposed. Sal thought Frances was joking, but didn’t want to press it. Anyway, it’s an honor to be working here, with you.

How did you—

Dr. Asanti consulted on my PhD, Frances said. Though it was damn difficult to include the information she provided in the actual text of the dissertation, since most of the sources don’t exist outside the papal archive. She set one hand on a slowly revolving gear on the Orb’s casement—so far as Sal could see, the gear connected to nothing at all. Worth it, though.

I’ve been telling them for a decade that the archivist position’s the chink in the Society’s armor, Asanti cut in. Bus number of one, and all that—if I get hit by a bus, there’s no one to take over for me. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The same applies if I get sick. And it’s even worse now that I find myself going into the field more frequently. There were all sorts of security reasons why it was impossible earlier, but with the bureaucrats focusing on selecting a new cardinal, I’ve been able to do real work without politics and paperwork getting in the way. We’ve made great strides.

Liam finished whatever he was typing on his computer with a flourish of angry keystrokes. "If by great strides, you mean the fox is loose in the henhouse, then yes."

Asanti shrugged. I prefer to think of myself as a hedgehog, actually.

That doesn’t make any sense.

"You really should read Berlin, Liam."

The city?

Um, guys, Sal said. With all due respect. The Orb is glowing. Shouldn’t we be—um. Something?

Liam kicked his legs up on his desk. Does that look like an outbreak to you?

Sal touched the crystal surface; it felt cold and hot at once, which made no sense, which fit her general experience with magic to a T. When the Orb had warned them of magical outbreaks in the past, its glow had reminded her of lightning, or of animations of a thinking brain—sparks cascading and cracking through crystal. This looked more like the sun behind a thin layer of high cloud in a northern winter: a diffuse brilliance like a bruise of light, flecked with sun dogs. I don’t know what it looks like.

Neither do we. Frances made a note on her clipboard. Isn’t it exciting?

Exciting is one word for it, Asanti said. The Orb started behaving this way three months ago, not long after you left on vacation. We were concerned, at first, that it foretold a broad-spectrum outbreak, but we received no indication of demonic activity, or—to be honest—of greater than usual magical activity of any sort, since it began. The world’s been quiet. We wondered if it might have something to do with Perry. She said Sal’s brother’s name without hesitation—all the kindness of tearing off a duct tape gag. Have you heard from him? And no trace of pity, either, for the brother lost and found and lost again. Sal wanted to hug her again for that, for how normal she made the whole absurd situation seem.

Not for a while, she replied in the same tone. Not for a while barely covered the truth. She’d gone home to visit her family, and heard from them that Perry’d just been through weeks before, bound for Utah, that he’d spent an utterly charming week with them before he left, and he’d written regularly ever since, postcards that arrived without postmarks or postage. If her brother gave them any indication that he was sort of sharing his body with something that claimed to be an angel—that they’d merged somehow—that info hadn’t made an impression.

She’d gone to Utah and hunted down Perry’s hotel, only to find he’d flown out a week after he’d arrived. And so the chase continued.

Sal, Asanti said, and Sal knew she was about to press for information that she, Sal, didn’t have, that she wished she had, and she didn’t want to confess she’d spent months chasing leads that never came through. She just wanted to get back to work.

Fortunately, before Asanti could say anything more, Father Arturo Menchú burst into the Archives. I just got a call from Sansone. We have a problem.

• • •

It’s Halloween, of course. It’s always Halloween somewhere in America. Halloween waits in unswept corners behind bookcases, lurks in the branches of trees. Halloween knows where you don’t look. Some days you see the monster before it sees you—when the night’s crisp and cold for the first time in two seasons and Halloween hasn’t remembered quite how to blend with the clearer air. Or, stepping sweatered onto the porch after a storm, you stare up into bare branches and glimpse the crouched beast once hidden behind the fallen leaves.

Joseph burst through the rear doors of Saint Francis Xavier School and fled across the yard, past the jungle gym. Footsteps pounded behind him, nearing. The kids chasing Joseph were bigger, older. Stevie Jenks had been held back a year, and the others were almost as big. They weren’t shouting anymore. He’d made them run too fast for shouting. This was a real chase, now.

Sweat and tears streaked his makeup; his torn costume robe flapped behind him, trailing glitter from stars where the glue couldn’t hold. He’d tossed his plastic pumpkin full of candy behind him, but they hadn’t stopped.

Running didn’t help, but Joseph ran anyway. That was how the game worked—it never felt like a game to him, of course, but the other boys seemed to enjoy it. Don’t flinch, Stevie Jenks would shout as his fist blurred toward Joseph’s face; if he flinched, Stevie would stop short and laugh and call him a coward; if he didn’t, he’d get hit. Don’t fight back and the teachers said you should have; fight back and you got hit you until you stopped, and the teachers took you to the nurse and said nothing. Don’t run and there’s no escape; run and they’ll catch you. Give them what they want and they’ll come back for more; don’t, and they’ll take it anyway.

Joseph ran and his eyes were hot and the makeup he’d put on before the party burned and his nose was bleeding.

The library waited across the yard.

Mrs. Milligan might be there, minding the haunted house. He’d helped her put up the display of scary books. Even if she didn’t help him, he knew the squat stone building with the odd statues in the corners better than he knew the contents of his closet; Ron and Stevie and the others might not know the back door wasn’t locked. He could lose them among the shelves, in the fake cobwebs and between the ghosts, and slip out the back.

He strained to budge the heavy library doors; turned round, saw Ron and Stevie and Chris and Ted tearing toward him across the rain-slick yard: two skeletons, Frankenstein’s monster, and a ghost. Their boots ripped troughs in the grass.

Joseph stumbled through orange-and-brown construction paper chains into the dim library. Spooky wind-chime music from hidden speakers echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Ghosts wafted between the shelves. Bats flapped, and unearthly fog covered the stone floor. He’d filled the helium balloons for the ghosts, rigged the bats on fishing line, looked up how to work the smoke machine online, but panic made the place new. He was in hell.

And Mrs. Milligan wasn’t there.

2.

Working with the Society, Sal thought, tended to distort one’s sense of the meaning of the word fortunately.

America, Liam said as he paged through the folder he’d been passed. I really hate that place.

At least it’s big, Hilary Sansone said from the head of the table. The digital projector cast a mottled autumn forest on the woman’s face, and her shadow on the image behind her. The effect should have been comical, but nothing could make Hilary Sansone look comical. Describing Sansone, Sal reached for words like carved and molded, neither of which was right, because they suggested Sansone was the product of some agency other than her own. Sal didn’t like the Team Two director much—liked her even less since Sansone had, effectively, saved her life. Sal wondered when Sansone would call in that particular favor. Your target’s Saint Francis Xavier School, in northern Massachusetts, USA.

A school? Liam shook his head.

Listen to the briefing, Grace Chen said from the shadows behind the projector. She leaned against the wall, perfectly still, with a paperback under one arm. Stop wasting time.

A school, Sansone continued smoothly. K through twelve, where all the students and faculty seem to have disappeared. Next slide: a round, smiling clergyman who looked wholesome enough to Sal, allowing for his poor choice in facial hair. Father Cullough, the chaplain at Saint Francis Xavier, happens to be one of our informants in northern Massachusetts. We’re pretty densely staffed in that part of the country, in part because of the heavy Church presence, and in part because we want to avoid another Enfield Incident. Anyway, Father Cullough missed his regularly scheduled report, and while the man’s a generous soul—which Sansone made sound like a euphemism—he’s never missed a report before. I dispatched one of our Boston agents with a streaming camera. Next slide.

Video: Mist stroked the campus ground, and naked tree limbs clawed an overcast sky. The camera toddled toward a pointy building with the words Benefice Hall carved in Gothic letters in the artificially aged limestone over the front doors. Speakers reproduced the crumpled-paper jumble of footsteps, leaves, and fierce wind crushed through a button mic. A voice must have been hiding in that mush, because yellow letters appeared at the bottom of the screen, barely legible against the yellow fallen leaves: Central building looks deserted. Cars parked— The camera veered sharp left. Oh, God.

Sal saw nothing in the blur, maybe a twist of colors that shouldn’t have been there, a dash of static, but magic didn’t show up on video and anyway, the agent wasn’t sticking around long enough to find out. He ran toward Benefice Hall, breath roaring in the mic. The camera darted left, right, left again. They’re in the trees, they’re in the grass. Jesus God. Howling, howling, all— Static warped the screen and scraped the speakers. The subtitles stamped across distortion, glowing, nonsensical: —after me—can’t see—so big—the wriggling and the—

Static.

Sansone stepped into the wash of black and white. Nobody’s approached the school building since. We lost two mailmen and a police officer before we closed the loop with our contacts in the state capital. The site’s locked off now, but we wouldn’t know if it was spreading—Saint Xavier sits on eighty acres of undeveloped land. If the event’s stationary, we have two hundred and twenty-three people inside to rescue. If it grows linearly, based on our agent’s position relative to the classroom building, we have several weeks before it reaches the nearest town. If the growth is exponential, we have days, if we’re lucky. So. Time to do what you do.

The Orb, Liam said, is supposed to warn us about these things.

Father Menchú pressed his steepled fingers to his chin. He looked more tired than Sal remembered, which was saying something, considering that Menchú at the best of times looked like a man coming off a month of all-nighters. Obviously it did not.

Sansone said nothing.

Asanti closed her folder and placed it on the table. The Orb’s become unreliable as of late. It’s possible that higher levels of atmospheric magic are making it less useful as a predictive tool.

Possible?

We’re investigating. Now that we have the remit to research magic, we’re moving as fast as we can. But there’s a lot of ground to cover.

Liam frowned. Solving magic with magic feels a bit homeopathic to me.

Sansone drummed her fingers once on the table, and all eyes revolved back to her. With all due respect, she said, the Orb’s not your only source of intelligence, and by treating it as if it were, you’ve hamstrung yourselves. Team Three’s always tended to rely on itself—but there are other teams. Mine, for example—around the world, cultivating sources, building diplomatic ties. You have had your issues with my people, but those are done, now. Do you trust us?

Yes, Menchú said, not giving anyone the opportunity to disagree. We’ll fix this Massachusetts problem. And we appreciate your support. If the Orb’s issues don’t resolve soon, we may come to depend on your sources even more. The Father even sounded as if he meant it. Then again, Sal thought, maybe he does.

Thank you, Sansone said, passed them all plane tickets, and left. Menchú followed her. Hilary. A quick question about the elections? Asanti and Liam tidied their paperwork, determinedly not looking at one another, and walked out side by side, stiff and silent.

I do not trust that woman, Grace said when they were gone. Static snow danced on the screen, subtitled with a scream.

Sansone? Sal blinked herself back to the conference room. Her mind had followed Liam and Asanti out into the hall. Are Liam and Asanti okay?

Asanti’s getting what she wants—free rein to investigate magic. Liam has his issues with that. Grace shrugged. They’ll deal. Sansone’s the one who worries me.

She saved my life.

Because there was something in it for her. She wanted a chance to clean house, consolidate her own position in Team Two. Balloon and Stretch had a close relationship with the old cardinal, a relationship which undermined Sansone’s authority—in a way, we were lucky they tried to kill you. Don’t scoff.

Sal wasn’t scoffing.

She wanted them out, and she got what she wanted. What happens when our interests and hers don’t coincide?

She’ll leave us to hang. Sal stood and took her file.

And that doesn’t bother you?

She shrugged. I like clarity.

• • •

Come in, Arturo, said the small, precise voice on the other side of the rosewood door. I’m just cluttering.

Menchú opened the door despite his reservations, entered the cardinal’s office, and tripped over a box of papers. He stuck out one hand to catch himself, and in that imbalanced moment it occurred to him just how much priceless artwork hung on the walls of this room, how many pieces of seventeenth-century crystal occupied its surfaces, and just how much apologizing he would have to do if he accidentally put his fist through a Vermeer.

A hand as small and precise as the voice caught Menchú’s shoulder, steadying him. Sorry, Arturo, sorry. Still getting used to the place.

Menchú found his footing on the plush red carpet. Thank you, Monsignor. Or should I call you ‘Acting Cardinal’?

Oh, please, Arturo, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Angiuli raised both hands and backed away, stepping neatly between piled boxes. The thin man gestured up and out, embracing the office with its roseate wood paneling and brass accents and tapestries of saints’ lives borrowed from the Vatican collection. I’m uncomfortable enough here. They’re right, of course, my place in the east wing—a closet, Menchú had always thought, more than an office, an out-of-the-way nook crowded with bookshelves and statuary no one else wanted, unbefitting the monsignor’s role as Team Three’s administrative liaison to the Vatican, but nonetheless cozy, a warm, dark room where Monsignor Angiuli had nestled like a pearl in a dusty oyster—was barely large enough for me, and now that I may be expected to host team leader meetings and councils, it really wouldn’t do. Perhaps they’ll let me go back once this whole business is done.

You mean the confirmation process?

It’s a search process, technically, the monsignor said. They have to find an ideal candidate.

You’re the ideal candidate, Monsignor. Sansone’s ineligible.

There’s always Fox in Team One. Or some other cardinal.

Fox distrusts politics. As for another cardinal—who would take the post?

Management of the Society is quite prestigious.

It’s honorable, Monsignor, Menchú said, gently. That’s a different thing. Most of those qualified for the job would be too scared to hold it.

Because of the papal ban. Angiuli sighed. It’s a shame, really. Ambition calls away too many great leaders from this vital role.

Demons sneak, Monsignor, and they plot. Even for us, even with silver, the risks of possession are high. Would you want a secretly possessed man on the papal seat?

You’re making me sound like the best bad option, Arturo.

Not at all, sir. I think you’ll do well.

I am all too aware of my own limits, Angiuli said. I will do what must be done until God and the search committee settle on an ideal candidate. With luck, someone better will suggest himself.

"You said cluttering, earlier. Menchú stepped over a box of photographs—Angiuli’s older sister’s family farmed outside of Parma; she had ten children and a second husband she’d married after the first died of a heart attack. Angiuli kept a handwritten ledger containing all the Christmas presents he’d sent each one, and filed the thank-you notes he’d received in reply. There was, Menchú remembered, a chair somewhere in front of the desk, though he couldn’t see it for all the boxes. Are you sure you didn’t mean cleaning?"

Of course not, the monsignor replied, and knelt beside an especially large document crate. Here, can you help me bring this over to the desk?

Menchú lifted from his legs, and kept low to take most of the weight from Angiuli; still, the monsignor staggered, grinning broadly as he guided them around and past boxes.

My predecessor, Angiuli said, with a note that Menchú interpreted as actual respect, kept this entire office neat as an empty house. It’s too big and too grand for me. I rattle around inside it. If the extra space is needed, then it is needed, but why spend my time staring at distant walls? Don’t put your foot there, there’s a painting—

Menchú tottered, and as he tried to recover balance he shifted, by accident, most of the box’s weight onto the monsignor. Angiuli’s face went pale, and his thin arms shook. He bared his teeth, a rictus that almost resembled a smile. Menchú leaned back in, took the weight, and helped the old man heave the box onto the desk. The antique silver fountain pen rattled in its penholder, the cut glass ink jar rattled on the lacquered desktop, and Menchú’s teeth rattled in his skull. What do you have in this box, Monsignor?

Bric-a-brac, Angiuli said. Arturo, Sansone told me you’re taking the whole team out on this call.

Menchú shook feeling back into his hands. Yes, now that Brooks is back.

And you’re bringing Asanti along?

So he’d heard about that. Her decision, Menchú said. She wants to deal with more magic in the field, especially now that she’s recruited a team to mind the Archives in her absence. She’ll accompany Team Three to America.

Isn’t studying our materials enough? Angiuli opened the box and removed a thick binder with a cover label in Hebrew.

Her only chance at actual contact with magic is to meet it in the field, since we still won’t let her experiment.

Dangerous. The binder’s contents were printed in braille; Angiuli skimmed a few pages with his fingertips without looking. She’s so—vital to our operations. Besides, doesn’t her presence in the field confuse things?

She was a great help in Rhodes. And while we’re in the field, she’s agreed to follow orders like the others.

The others follow orders, do they?

Yes, Menchú said though he allowed himself a slim smile at the bad joke. It’s important to have a chain of command in a crisis. Asanti knows that. Really, this is just a new case of our arrangement. She keeps the Archives, and works closely with Team Three, but fieldwork is our responsibility. She’s just along for the ride.

She almost lost herself to magic in Rhodes.

She didn’t lose herself, though—and if she had, we would have dealt with it. And this next bit he had to say, even though he doubted it was true, even though the thought made him wake up sweating on calm nights. One way or another.

Angiuli looked across the desk at him. Menchú stared back into the monsignor’s green eyes, and remembered the man he’d first met three decades before, who’d helped his people and cleared their paths. Somewhere in the intervening years they had both grown old, but Angiuli had aged faster. The world didn’t treat the softness in him kindly. Menchú had less of that, at the beginning, and he’d weathered harder. I couldn’t do what you do, Arturo.

You could, Monsignor. He looked for the right words, but had to finish with: You’re a very kind man.

There was more to say, of course—Angiuli was still fighting his way through ossified paperwork strata, trying to capture, or at least describe, the various truths his predecessor had swept under this rug or that throughout the Vatican. Cardinal Varano had filled every closet in Saint Peter’s with skeletons, it seemed. But when Menchú closed the office door behind him at last, Asanti was waiting outside. The archivist’s hands were clasped in her lap, and if Menchú hadn’t known her almost as long as he’d known Angiuli, he wouldn’t have thought she was nervous. He’s okay with it?

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call him okay, Menchú said, when they were far enough from the office that he was relatively certain their voices wouldn’t carry. But we have enough rope to hang ourselves.

That’s what I love about you, Arturo, Asanti said, and slapped him heartily on the back. So positive! Now, come on. We have packing to do.

• • •

Grace maintained her crash bag with care. After a few decades of being trapped in a decades-old curse that kept her alive only so long as a (thankfully large) candle burned, she’d refined packing to a science. As soon as she made it home from a mission, Grace zipped open her bag, threw out the clothes stained with sweat, blood, or ichor—which amounted to most of them—tossed the few she wanted to keep into a hamper for Vatican mooks to dry clean, replaced travel toiletries with new equivalents from the boxes under the sink, packed fresh underclothes, and left the top layers for the day of the mission—no way to prepare for that, since she had no sense when she’d be needed next. Massachusetts in late autumn meant golds and reds; she chose loose cream pants and a burgundy silk top and a camelhair coat to meld them, a dress and tights for non-combat formal wear, and the right shoes, and headed for the armory.

She didn’t spare a glance for the racked firearms. She had never liked guns—liked them even less since she had first stumbled into work with the Bureau of Official Secrets back in Shanghai in the twenties and found that most demons, ghosts, goblins, and assorted crawlies didn’t tend to notice bullets. Guns were useful for making men and foreigners listen to you, and that was about it. Since the curse, they’d proved even more hindrance than help. She was weapon enough without the aid of something people could see.

She checked out four crosses and two silver rings from the spindle-boned monk behind the armory desk. He adjusted his glasses, bobbed his head or nodded (she’d never been able to tell the difference with him), and retreated into the back. Grace took her copy of The Collected Works of Keats from her handbag, and read while he was gone. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness—

Stateside, said Thavani Shah behind her. Sounds like fun.

Grace took her time finishing the poem. Then: Sansone gave you the brief already? They usually wait until we screw up.

New procedures, courtesy of Monsignor Fox. Improved transparency; this way we’re less likely to get caught with our trousers down if you fail.

Grace turned.

Not that I expect trouble. Shah was leaning against the rifle rack. Team One’s operational lead looked more than a bit like a rifle herself. Dog owners grew to look like their dogs and vice versa; if Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Of course Thavani Shah looked like a weapon. But we might as well be ready.

Do you find the waiting worse? Grace asked. Or the action?

Neither.

Grace waited.

It’s the space between that bothers me. When I know we might be called up, I’m alive. When we’re in the field, I go in assuming I’m dead—and when we win, I’m born again. Between, though—I don’t really exist, in that time. I’m stuck in a half-life, wondering what’s out there that your Orb and Team Two’s spies haven’t yet picked up. She trailed one hand over the shoulder stock of a rifle. You ever wonder if we’ve lost already? Maybe demons already control the world, and they’re good enough at it that no one’s ever noticed?

How are your knights?

The ones you put in the hospital? Improving. Ms. Soo will be back on the squad soon, though I expect she’ll have to pass on her gear to one of the trainees. You did a very thorough job on her knee.

I’m sorry.

You did what you had to. Even hiding from us how strong you could be, how fast you could move—it makes sense, Grace. I’m just grateful I had the chance to see you really fight.

The armorer returned with a manila envelope that held Grace’s load-out. She signed for the crosses and rings, he countersigned, and she added the envelope to her purse.

The lack of clarity bothers you, Shah said. I know it does. You’re at your best when you’re fighting. Anything less than open battle and you feel lost. I understand.

You think you do, Grace said, and walked past her toward the door.

Join us. You’d be perfect on Team One—you’d glide through the waiting without the slightest notice, and wake to perfect clarity. No shadows. No wasted time. No muddling.

I like muddling, Grace said. Can’t make a proper cocktail without it.

She heard fabric shift behind her; sharpness whispered through the air. Grace burned—in a room not so far away, her candle flared, a few minutes of her life melted away, and the world slowed. She reached without looking, and caught the knife Shah had thrown by its handle. Clouds obscured the blade—not striations like on watered steel, but clouds like an afternoon before a storm, limned with sun.

A gift, Shah said. Team One picked it up in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Cleared quarantine last week. We think the clouds will part as it’s used. What happens then, who knows? We thought you should have it.

What do you want?

Shah laughed. It’s a token of good faith, Grace. We’re on the same side. She tossed the sheath underhand, and Grace caught that too.

Then she left.

• • •

Back in a sec! read the sticky note on the empty bowl of candy on Mrs. Milligan’s desk. The librarian herself was gone.

Joseph didn’t have a sec. The door opened behind him, slow and heavy.

He pictured himself pinned to the stone floor here, while the rubber bats circled above.

Okay, okay, okay. Get it together.

The fire exit glowed red in the rear corner of the room. They’d see him if he went for that, would catch him out behind the building. But the library was on a hill, and there was a loading dock door one floor down—Mrs. Milligan rarely locked that. He could lose them in the basement, slip out the loading door. Yes.

Stevie Jenks half-fell into the library, searched, pointed one skeleton finger toward Joseph—Hey! (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Joseph’s brain prompted, unhelpful as ever.)

Joseph sprinted toward the fire door; Ron and Chris ran to block his path, and Joseph cornered hard, skidded on stone, grabbed the railing, and vaulted downstairs through fake cobweb.

They’d banked the downstairs lights low. No ghosts and goblins lurked down here, just shadows broken by the fire exit light. Joseph ran from that light, turned right and right again, wove through tall shelves toward the loading dock. Footsteps followed, panting, hunting breath, and there were monsters in the basement: two skeletons and Frankenstein’s monster and a ghost. And Joseph. He kept his head down, hiked up his starry robes, and tiptoed through the science section toward the loading dock door.

He approached, bent low. He had to time it just right, make as little noise as possible when he opened the door.

It won’t work, kid.

Joseph froze. His lungs seized up; he squeaked. A hand made of ice clutched him by the throat. The voice had whispered into his right ear. But it wasn’t Stevie Jenks’s voice, or Ron’s, or Chris’s, or Ted’s. And he was kneeling against a bookshelf—who could have spoken?

Just me.

3.

So it’s another creepy town, is it? Liam asked as Sal drove them toward Saint Xavier.

It doesn’t look creepy to me.

Grace frowned out the window. Creepy town.

Trees drooped after a cold November rain; an abandoned tricycle sat on the lawn of an Addams Family house set back from the road. Multicolored sodden streamers dangled from the tricycle’s handles. A single traffic light blinked on and off. They drove past. The place could have been a ghost town; when they’d first turned off the highway, Sal had worried it was. But after three blocks’ drive into the dilapidated red-brick town of blank glass windows, Sal saw an old man shuffling along a broken sidewalk, led by a golden retriever at least as old in dog years. The old man might be an illusion, but she doubted malevolent magic would come up with a golden retriever.

Uncanny, sure. Disturbing as hell. But also mundane, so far.

Sal wasn’t sure whether that made it worse. This is just how towns look in Massachusetts.

Creepy? Menchú said.

Not all American towns are creepy, guys. Sal’s eyes burned and her body felt like it was about to kill her. One transatlantic trip had been bad enough. Two in a row constituted enemy action. Literally, in this case.

Hashtag, Liam said. Sal punched him in the shoulder, and pulled to the curb. Hey, I didn’t mean—

They’d stopped in front of a vine-and-brick box that a dingy sign named as Mike’s General Store. Someone around here might know more about our missing school. No sense going in blind. Come along, if you want. Might do you good to meet the locals—once you do, they won’t look so creepy.

Liam followed her onto the sidewalk. Want to bet?

Grace rolled down the window and called after them, We know where the problem is. We should just go straight there.

Intelligence, though.

Grace returned her attention to her book. Get me a soda water.

The general store was lit so brightly

Reviews for Bookburners

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve finally caught up with season two of Bookburners! This urban fantasy series by Max Gladstone is a Serial Box story. Serial Box creates serial fiction akin to television seasons. Various different “episodes” make up seasons. Each episode has it’s own plot arc, but they connect together to form a plot arc for the season. Thus, you can read season two without having read season one. Serial Box provides recaps, which may be helpful if you decide to start with season two.Bookburners follows a secret society within the Vatican responsible for searching out and destroying magic and demonic activity. Last season, it became clear that the amount of magic in the world is increasing. Ashanti, the Archivist, believes that Team Three should seek to understand more about magic, using magic to fight magic. This isn’t a popular idea. Meanwhile, a new magical plot is a foot from a mysterious group called “the Network.” Once again, Team Three will find themselves facing previously unimaginable situations.As was the case with season one, the transition between different authors feels seamless. While it may be a whole bunch of different authors writing these episodes, the entire story really has the same style and voice. It’s well written in general, but I’m highly impressed by how these authors work with the same voice.The high point of Bookburners is the characters. After the first season, I was already attached to the main cast. I’ve really come to enjoy each of them and their interactions with each other. Grace and Sal’s friendship remains a favorite aspect of mine, but I was also glad that we got to see more of Liam’s backstory. Ashanti’s a major source of conflict this season, as she’s increasingly pushed on the society to do with magic… and the society’s starting to push back. Also, how much of Grace’s candle is left? I’m getting worried about her, and I think her situation will come to a head in season three.I wasn’t as wowed by the season two’s plot arc. I think this season might be a bit more episodic? It felt like less of an overarching story. Or maybe I was just less interested in the Vatican politicking than the demonic activity of last season. That’s not to say that this season didn’t include plenty of magic and monsters. It actually explored the magic side of things more, which I appreciated (plus Middle Coom was deliciously creepy). However, I felt like the Network was never the strong villains that the Hand were last season.Still, season two of Bookburners is thirteen episodes of urban fantasy fun, loaded with pop culture references (I spied one to Steven Universe!). If you want urban fantasy with an ensemble cast and no romantic focus, you should really check Bookburners out. I think it’d also appeal to those who like a police procedural element and horror influences. All in all, Bookburners is a story I’d recommend.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.