When an army of darkness falls from the sky, Alex Kingsley enlists the help of her male peers and ventures into spirit-infested lands to save humanity.
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She's an outcast cursed to consume the memories o...
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My fingers traced the ridge of leather spines, moving, searching, as if they had little minds of their own, little eyes that widened when they recognized old friends and weathered faces.
"It's after closing."
The short man stuck his head around the corner, irritable and impatient. His droopy ears, nose, and eyelids formed a face of melting candle wax. A face that, upon our first encounter, had earned him the everlasting nickname Mr. Wick.
"Really?" I flashed him my best apologetic smile—the same one I used to feign contrition when I overslept on a school day. "I must have lost track of time."
He blinked at me several times, and I watched those old, shriveled lips crease into a line of dissatisfaction. Sort of like a rotten pumpkin caving in on itself.
"Give me another minute?" I tried.
Refusing to dignify me with a response, he slowly retreated from my view, his face still screwed up in that awful grimace.
Glad to have his gaze off my spine, I traipsed down another aisle, venturing beyond faded titles and crinkled jackets to the crisp backbones of history. I snatched the last textbook off the shelf, and my arm dipped under its weight.
Brain food, my mother had called these. More like brain fiber, really—practically indigestible. But I took what I could get.
Most history collections had been lost to the Crash, confining our selection to the High Court's manuscripts: sugar-coated chronicles glamorizing the rebirth of civilization and immortalizing the Patrons who united us. Sweets to rot your brain.
The High Court insisted no one knew of life before the Crash. They claimed the textbooks revealed all we knew about the Ancients, and the rest was molding, anecdotal fiction. But I knew the vast history of mankind didn't simply erase itself. The scribes didn't snap their quills and toss away the ink. The victors did.
I joined Mr. Wick at his desk and set the history book down between us. His gaze flicked over the cover and up at me, entirely unenthused.
"All that deliberation for a book you've read a dozen times?"
I huffed. "I'd spend less time deliberating if there were something new to read."
He flipped open his logbook and wrote my name beneath the other hastily scribbled AlexKingsleys on the page. "Is that so?"
I leaned over the desk—apparently too far into his personal space, judging by the habitual way in which he slid the book away from me. "I heard Havenbrooke has two whole floors' worth of novels. It's a shame we can't make some sort of exchange," I bemoaned, but he purposely avoided my gaze. "I could probably spend a whole week or two absorbed in new content. You know, at home...in my own space...not bothering anyone."
He handed me my due-date slip with an exasperated sigh. "I'll see what I can do."
