Page 29

It’s me.

The Guild Headquarters in New Hampshire encompasses nearly a thousand acres and spans across a wide valley and several entire mountains. I didn’t see most of it as a kid. And I don’t think that was due to me being a charity case, it’s just everything but the school was off limits to anyone but Guild Citizens. Which is different than being a Guardian, even though the two separate statuses are related.

You can be a Guardian and not a Citizen, but all Citizens were Guardians at one point in their lives.

The first few years I went to school here I thought being a Guardian was the pinnacle of aspirations. I saw the headquarters that night I arrived with my grandma at age seven but it was dark, and mostly empty, and I was too frightened to take notice of anything of consequence.

It was also a quick visit. Maybe two hours total to sort things out. And then I was put into a gondola and sent up the mountain to the Guild school campus. This was a mostly self-contained community that had shops, and restaurants, and local services like a market, laundromat, and health center. There were other things to do on the school campus as well. Entertainment things. There was a lake with access to small boats, a campground and hiking trails, and a movie theatre.

So once I arrived at the school there was almost no reason for me to ever leave it.

The other kids did go home for semester and summer breaks, but I never did. Not even as a guest with one of the other students. Not even with Zusi.

At the time I didn’t think about this very much. Kinda like I never thought about the books. I just accepted the fact that I was an outsider. I accepted the idea that I should expect less because no one had ever bothered to teach me to expect more .

I didn’t feel worthy of the things other students took for granted like trips home to see family and reading the books in the library.

I felt like… like this incomplete existence was all that I deserved. Not that anyone ever said something like that to me—no one ever did. I always just felt… lucky? And that when given a gift, one should not look at that horse’s mouth too closely?

But lucky is the wrong word.

I didn’t feel lucky. I felt… indebted. Like I was getting something that I didn’t earn.

A loan. It felt like a loan. One I didn’t put up collateral for and would never be able to pay back.

Of course, it took a while for this feeling to fully bloom. I lived in the Community building with all the other younger kids until I was eleven and didn’t move over to the Merchant building until middle school. That’s when the differences between myself and the others really started to show.

All the other kids lived on floors two through nine. But I was put up on the fifteenth floor. The attic, as it was called by the other kids. I wasn’t given a roommate but Zusi volunteered to move in with me.

Looking back now, I guess it’s pretty clear that she didn’t volunteer.

She was assigned to me.

But even this realization isn’t enough to foul my mood today.

Ryet and I were not given some after-thought attic bedroom. We aren’t even on the same mountain as the Guild school.

We live with all the other Citizens. In a nice one-bedroom apartment inside a charming A-frame house that looks like something right out of a Swiss fairytale. The whole village that we’re staying in looks like that. A cross between a chalet and a ski resort—though most of the snow is gone now.

The village is vertical. Going up and down the side of the mountain. And I get the feeling that it’s a coveted spot because everything is close by. The research center—where Ryet reports every morning—is about a quarter mile down a little path that is so picturesque I can’t help but bliss-out out at the view when we walk that way.

And the library—not the same library where we came in through the mist—is another quarter-mile walk in the opposite direction.

I’ve only been gone a couple of months, so I don’t know why I was expecting everything to feel foreign and strange, but I was expecting that.

And it’s not. Like… at all. There are familiar faces from the Guild school campus all around me. They smile at me, greet me, and Ryet and I have even gotten invitations to weekend gatherings.

Each morning he and I say goodbye outside our little chalet house and go our separate ways until lunch when we meet up for an hour at one of the restaurants in our village. Then we say goodbye again, go back to work—or… whatever it is—and meet up at home around six.

We are both hungry at that point, and not for food.

We drank each other at lunch that first day we were here, but the blood makes us tired and lazy. So we’ve decided to eat food at lunch and save the drinking for dinner.

I never imagined a life where I drank my boyfriend’s blood for dinner every night, or a life where I was carrying a wraith-like demon of the Darkness inside me, or a life where everything was so… temporary.

Because of course, nothing about this life we’re living is permanent. I don’t even have a soul.

But there’s no way to change any of that.

Either I find a way through it or I give up.

And I have decided that Ryet, and the Guild, and the library are my way through it.

This is our fifth day here .

I step through the doors of the library and walk in just far enough to get out of the way of people behind me. But then I pause, like I’ve done every morning for the past few days, to take it all in. I just can’t believe I never knew about this place.

Even though Tristin brought us back to the Guild using the mist that led to the school library, that’s not where I was told to report on the second day. This library is everything you picture in your head when you think of a place called the Guild Library. Old, and Gothic, and ornate. The one for the school kids—the one I worked in (the only one I knew existed four days ago)—would be considered utilitarian in comparison.

I’ve been reporting to a private first-floor reading room that is more like a small office than the study rooms I was used to from school. It’s comfy with golden velvet-tufted couches facing each other and a round wooden table between them. Every single inch of wall space is filled with bookshelves.

I have yet to be allowed to read a book. Which is funny—but not in a funny way—since upon arrival with Tristin five days ago, I was told to get started.

I haven’t even been allowed to touch a book yet.

The brass plate on the outside of this door calls this room ‘Level One’.

I’m starting at the beginning, I guess.

I’ve been in kind of an orientation with the Guild Archivist—a middle-aged man called Jaedon. He is tall, and handsome, and wears a cliché robe that gives off a high-ranking priest vibe.

But that’s not who’s waiting for me when I enter the ‘Level One’ room today.

I recognize his face, but can’t immediately place his name. His robes give off a similar priest vibe, though not a high-ranking one like Jaedon’s.

He extends his hand. “Syrsee. Hi. It’s…” He pauses here to just stare at me.

And that’s when I realize why he’s familiar. “ Myer ?”

He was already smiling but it grows bigger now. “You remembered. I wasn’t sure you would.”

I let out a long breath but don’t say anything. Because the last time I talked to Myer I was fourteen years old and we were about to have ourselves a kiss out by the Guild school lake.

This kiss was preempted by my bodyguard.

To save him, Myer the Guardian, from me, Syrsee the Black witch. Not the other way around.

“What are you doing here?” I glance around, looking for the Guild Archivist, acting like there is any possible way another person might be hidden from view in this small room.

“I’m your guide. From now on, anyway. I was assigned to you last night.”

I meet his gaze again. Unsure what this is all about. “Guide for what? I know how to read, I know how to find books in a library, and I know what I’m looking for. I’m pretty sure I don’t need a guide.”

“Well.” He sighs this word out. “You think you know. But.” He pauses to frown. Then his tone becomes more serious. “There’s actually a lot more to reading the Guild books than… well, reading them. So they—the Archivists—they want me to…” He shrugs. Almost bashfully. “They want me to take you through it.” He leans forward when he says this last part. And his voice lowers. Like he’s telling me a secret. “I’m the youngest Archival apprentice and I guess they figured, since we knew each other, that it would be…” He shrugs again. “Funner?”

“Funner?” I’m confused.

“I mean, more enjoyable. Since funner isn’t even a word.”

I smile, then chuckle unexpectedly. “What are you talking about?”

“Why don’t I just show you?” He walks over to the book shelf, pulls on the spine of a thin, colorful book, and then turns back to me and walks over to one of the couches. He sits down, and beckons me to take a seat next to him.

I hesitate. Feeling exasperated, and tired, and a little bit like a fool. Because all I want is to read the fucking books and every time I feel like I’m getting closer to doing that, something gets in the way.

But he pats the couch again and, well, I think throwing a fit over this right now would probably be the wrong move.

So I sit and Myer places the book on the table in front of us.

I glance down and read the title out loud. “Good. Dog. Good?” I look back up at Myer. “What the hell? I didn’t come here to read a picture book about a dog, Myer. I’m looking for secrets, and history, and… and… illumination .”

He raises a single finger. “Hold that thought.” Then he reaches for the book and with that one single finger, he opens the front cover.

In this same instant the brightest, most glorious gold light spills out of the book. Illuminating the room in a brilliant glow—like the sun just rose inside the room with us.

It takes me several seconds of open-mouthed staring to actually look back up at Myer. “What is that?”

But before he can answer, the light becomes a mist and the room is gone.

We are somewhere else.

In front of us is a cartoon dog, white with black spots, wagging his tail and looking up at me with a goofy cartoon smile.

Myer shifts closer to me until we are bumping shoulders. Then he pans a hand down at the dog. “We don’t read books, Syrsee. We go inside them.”

He says more, but I’m lost now. Lost in the possibilities before me.

Lost in all the ways in which my life just changed.

Lost in all the ways in which I was misled, as well.

But none of that matters. Because I suddenly realize I’ve done this before. I’ve been inside the story before. And then I’m there. Back, under the water with Lucia, watching the aquis equī in all its tentacled glory, and I shiver.

Not from the lingering memory of the ice and cold, but from the sudden realization that the Guild is going to keep their promise and that I am going to learn things. And that I will finally understand my place in this world.

And all this understanding will come to me, not by reading about it, but by living it .

In this moment I forget.

I forget about the unfairness of my time here at the Guild the way a mother forgets the pain of childbirth. Every complaint I had about my life before this moment with Myer is wiped away.

I let out a breath and meet Myer’s gaze straight on. “Does every book do this? Does every book in the library contain the light?”

Myer is shaking his head before I finish. “No, Syrsee. It’s not the books who have the light. It’s… you .”

And just as he says this, the light disappears and we’re back on the couch.

He closed the cover.

Myer gets up, walks over to the bookshelf, and chooses another book. Then another. And another. Until there is a stack of them on the coffee table in front of us. They are all children’s books, simple things meant to ease me into the world of living stories, but I don’t even care that I am starting out at Level One.

I don’t even care because finally, I’m starting .

I forget about Zusi’s betrayal, and Paul’s obsession, and Josep, and the Darkness, and how I am carrying its demon seed inside me, and all the ways in which my life fell apart over the last two months.

I even forget about my addiction to the blood, and how I drink my boyfriend for dinner, and how none of this is going to save my doomed, severed soul.

I forget because even though the price was high, it was worth it .