Fur again, but warm, followed by the silky brush of feathers.
She dug her fingers into the ruff of Potroast’s neck and yanked back, dragging him into the light with a sucking noise like a boot from cold mud.
Viv tumbled backward with Potroast on her chest, shattering a chair and falling hard on sticks of wood and scattered books.
Fern cried a wordless sound of relief.
The gryphet scrambled away as Viv leapt to her feet and reached the book in two long strides. She seized and closed it tightly, pressing hard from both sides.
Not a moment too soon, as the book pulsed, heavy blows striking the interior of the covers. She grunted, pressing harder and baring her fangs in a grimace. The veins on her forearms stood out as the book fought her with a force that should have been impossible.
Viv dropped to her knees and slammed the book onto the floor, bearing down with both hands as the pounding from within continued … and then weakened … and then ceased altogether.
The four of them waited in breathless silence for seconds that stretched like minutes, and then all at once the bones that bound her friends collapsed with a clatter and a plume of dust. Gallina and Fern fell to the floor amidst gray clouds and brittle shards. The lectern followed in a fountain of phalanges.
“Faithless fucking hells!” cried Fern, pushing herself up to her knees.
“I have to get him out,” said Viv breathlessly.
Or maybe he crumbled just like the rest of them, she thought, and felt her stomach twist.
She reopened the book and frantically tore through the pages until she found the dogear. She let the tome lie still, fearing that at any moment Varine’s wrathful countenance would surge from the blackness and grab her instead. Rising to eclipse that worry was a sick dread that nothing would emerge at all.
Then bony fingers caught the borders of the page, and a horned skull with eyes of blue flame emerged.
“Satchel!” cried Viv, and grasped him by the shoulders to drag him into the open air.
Only his ribcage followed. Viv set him aside as quickly and gently as she could before slamming the book closed and scrambling to her feet.
She snatched Blackblood from the floor, strode to the side table, and placed Varine’s awful book atop it.
With two hands on the greatsword’s hilt, she drove it through both the book and the table beneath it, with a purring rip of leather and a crunch of splintering wood. A shrieking wail arose from the grimoire, and a cold blast of wind burst from between the covers, twirling the loose pages in the room into a blizzard of print.
Satchel clambered onto the chair, and the rest of his body emerged from the bag, snapping into place. On his own two feet again, he cautiously surveyed the book and the blade piercing its heart.
They all stared at one another as pages drifted to the floor like the ashes of a forest fire.
“Well,” he said. “I must admit, I cannot believe that worked.”
40
They’d borrowed chairs from The Perch and set them up in a circle, conspicuously mismatching the ones belonging to Thistleburr. Fern thought they’d brought too many. It turned out there weren’t enough.
Viv rested against the counter and watched folk fill them one by one, glancing at the battered interior of the shop as they did. It was three days since Varine had wounded the place, and while the bruises were evident in hastily patched shelves, long rents in the rugs, and the mortally injured side table, the shop glowed with the ragged vitality of a survivor. Gaps left by the volumes the necromancer had destroyed stood out like the missing teeth in a pugilist’s smile.
She couldn’t help but feel an ache of responsibility. A sick throb of guilt. Nothing rooted in logic, of course. Balthus had stashed Varine’s book here, not Viv. Satchel had all but assured her the necromancer would’ve descended on the place regardless.
Still, Viv had braved the pages and stolen something that wasn’t hers—and kept it—and who knew how events would’ve played out if she hadn’t?
She felt like she’d tracked blood across the floor, all unknowing, and nasty things had come sniffing after her.
In some ways, that made it easier to leave.
In others, it made her wish she’d watched where she stepped in the first place.
Viv packed those thoughts away as Highlark slipped inside. He nodded to Viv, a slim volume in hand, and settled himself neatly into a seat beside Luca the dwarf. There were faces she didn’t recognize, too, but when Pitts sidled through the door, Viv couldn’t suppress a grin. The orc tried to hide himself in a corner with a book held before him like a wholly inadequate shield.
“Should’ve brought more scones,” said Maylee, perched on the stool beside Viv. The pile on the tray before them was prodigious, though, and steam curled from a brass teapot to the side of it.
Their elbows touched while they watched, and Viv thought that casual press of warmth was going to lodge in her memory in a way that other moments wouldn’t. She wanted to reach out with her whole arm and tuck Maylee close, but that felt too big a gesture.
A parting was imminent, and big gestures felt like lies.
There was an ache almost visible beneath Maylee’s deliberate casualness and in the way she never tried to fit anything further in between her words.
If Viv could’ve seen herself from the outside, she thought she might’ve appeared much the same.
It was an honest sort of pretense, though.
She watched the bookshop brim with conversation and warmth and community. But while she was surely present with the rest of them, Viv also felt like a ghostly observer.
Rackam would come soon, assuming he was still breathing. And she had no reason to believe he wasn’t.
Any trails they followed would lead them here.
And then, she would go.
Fern emerged from the back hallway with a stack of books in her paws, a bag over her shoulder, and Potroast trotting behind like a proud rooster.
The rattkin blinked at the size of the crowd and then at Viv and Maylee.
Viv smiled back and half shrugged. “It’s a good book.”
“Um, is everyone here?” asked Fern, raising her voice. “Oh, hells, what a question,” she muttered. “Who’s going to say no?”
Then the red door opened once more, and three unexpected attendees filed in, one after the other. Viv’s brows rose further with each one. Gallina, looking sheepish, followed by Berk and Zelia Greatstrider, somehow resplendent in practical riding attire.
“I’ll be damned,” said Viv.
“Oh!” exclaimed Fern, as a murmur passed through the assembly. “Miss Greatstrider, this is … this is a surprise!”
“Zelia,” insisted the elf, smiling benevolently. “Well, you’re all here to discuss my book, so I suppose I should be on hand to take the poison with the sugar, shouldn’t I?”
Luca’s jaw dropped, and Viv thought he might have stopped breathing.
“Of … of course! I’m so—Well, I’m surprised. In a good way!” Fern stammered. “I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we’re all so happy you came.”
Luca hurried to offer his seat to her, and Greatstrider accepted with a regal tip of her chin.
Berk unbelted his longsword and edged around the circle, sliding in behind Viv and Maylee.
“Seems I missed all the excitement in town a few days ago.”