Chimes at Midnight

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.