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It was really a mundane sort of evil, this particular Leitner. It didn’t corrupt, it didn’t trap, it didn’t transform. It didn’t even provide any particular knowledge of note. It was just a book that killed people, and as Leitners went—as the Powers themselves went—that wasn’t much to write home about.
Death was boring. Of all the evils Gerard had ever seen, killing was the least of them. It was almost a mercy, compared to all the other things they could do to you.
Pausing outside, with one hand on the door handle, he took a deep breath to settle himself. He’d always hated this particular entity, more so with Mum's recent interest in it. It’d probably be one of her favorites, if she weren’t so careful not to favor any one of the things over another.
A shudder ran through him. She’d been gone for almost a week by now. She could be back soon, and that meant he only had so much time to get this one. It might not be a terrible blow against her, but a Leitner was a Leitner, and there was no such thing as time wasted when one was setting the damn things ablaze.
He pulled the door open, and walked into a quietly bustling children’s library.
It was easy to find, if you knew what to look for. Once you knew you were dealing with puppets, you had a better chance of spotting the strings.
He looked to the librarian behind the desk first, a squat middle-aged man who couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d been sporting four extra arms. Gerard was very careful not to look at him, for what little good it did. Spiders had a way of spotting you no matter how carefully you hid. They were almost as bad as the Eye.
The librarian wasn’t alone, Gerard noted. Another poor Web-touched bastard stood off in a corner, trying to look interested in the bookshelf he was staring at, and failing because of the way his hands shook and his eyes darted. In any other kids’ library he might’ve gotten kicked out for making parents nervous, but he was right at home in this little spiders’ nest. One more danger to watch out for.
Besides them, the place was strung with more threads than a marionette theater. They caught on kids here and there, on sleeves and jackets and thin little wrists. There were too many puppets to risk making himself noticeable, too many books to look through, too little time. And so, Gerard found a spot to loiter—out of the librarian’s line of vision, a good distance from the twitchy one in the corner—and settled in to wait. He watched the kids. He tried not to think about the passage of time, because that was one of many, many things that were out of his control.
His mother would be returning soon. She never stayed away longer than a week at most, and she liked making up for lost time. As he stood and waited and watched, he dreaded the sound of his mother’s voice, the flicker of her outline in his peripherals. She’d manifested in the middle of his outings before. It never ended well for him.
He tried to tell himself that this wasn’t even the kind of Leitner she liked. It was one of the boring ones, hardly more interesting than dead animal poems. But she’d still make him hurt for it. She always did. It was the principle of the thing.
At last, he spotted it.
There was a reading nook in one corner, on the other side of the room from where Gerard stood. It was tucked out of the way of foot traffic, lined with pillows and bean bags and soft kid-sized chairs. The webs were clustered there more thickly than anywhere else, but of course no one seemed to notice. There was a man sitting in a plush chair that didn’t quite fit him, with a toddler on one knee and a book on the other. At first glance he appeared to be reading his little daughter a story.
A second glance showed him the spider silk wound tight around the man’s throat, sewn into his hands as he turned the stiff cardboard pages, moving jerkily to the yanking threads. His eyes were glazed, his mouth moving robotically to form the words on the page. The little girl sat rooted in his lap, threads wrapped around her neck to keep her looking at the page.
Gerard almost left his vantage point, only to hesitate at the last moment. The quickest route to the book would take him directly within view of the librarian. If he was going to make a move like that, then he had to be absolutely sure he had a clear way out.
They were getting up now, the man and the little girl. Their movements were jerky, pulled along by strings they couldn’t feel. The father held the book in one hand, his daughter’s hand in the other. He didn’t have to pick her up, tiny as she was, when the spider strings had her as well.
There was a door on the far side of the room. Gerard hadn’t noticed it before, but there it was, dark and stained against a white wall. The little girl was pulling ahead, held back by her father’s slower pace but still straining toward the door, one chubby fist raised as if to knock.
Fuck it. If he died here, at least Mum couldn’t bother him anymore.
He intercepted them, just in time to snatch the book from the father’s hands—and with it, the threads pulling them to the closed door.
Gerard didn’t look back to see if they reacted, if they were scared. He had the book in his hand, and he could already feel the threads winding around his fingers, urging him to open it. He was so close to the stained door now; if it drew him in, he might not have time to break free.
He could feel eyes on him, and looked to find the librarian watching him, never blinking. The book in his hand begged to be read. He couldn’t trust himself to run, couldn’t trust the threads not to trip and catch him before he reached the exit.
An idea came to him, bitter and bile-tasting. Stiffly, willing his legs to move on their own, he made his way to the circulation desk. The threads did not fight him as he placed the book in front of the librarian, but neither did they let him stop touching it entirely.
“Can I check this one out?” he asked. “I think my mother might be interested in it.”
He wanted to choke, invoking his mother for this. She wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this, the one thing left in his life that was his and his alone.
But it might work.
Gerard didn’t know the man behind the desk, but he knew the Web. Mary Keay dealt with monsters of every color. He might not know every puppet, but their Mother knew him.
The librarian watched him with beady, ink-dark eyes. Gerard tried to focus on something that wasn’t the librarian or the book beneath his hand—the cup of pens with flowers on them, the office scissors with spiderwebs etched into the handle, the off-white notepad with writing he couldn’t read, the stains on the pitted surface of the desk.
“Perhaps you’d like to take a second look,” the librarian replied. “Just to see if you’re sure.”
And he did want to, in that moment. Or at least, the book very much wanted him to. And with his hand still on the cover, it was very difficult to tell the difference. He braced himself, feeling all the points at which the threads had dug in.
Behind him, he heard the telltale scratch and hiss of a match lighting.
The librarian went rigid, blankness giving way to confusion and anger, and started out of his chair. The smell of burning reached Gerard’s nostrils, and he abruptly found that he could snatch his hand away from the book. He whipped around.
The reading nook was burning. No, not just burning—it was on fire, proper fire, with flames spreading over the chairs and pillows, webs blackening and falling away. The nearest people were noticing, reacting, shaking off the now-smoldering threads to grab their children and run for the exit.
Another match was lit, another mass of web went up in flames, and the twitchy little Web-touched man came running to the front desk.
Gerard flinched back on instinct, but the man lunged past him instead. The librarian had snatched up the book, but the man threw himself over the desk to grab it. With a hiss, the librarian lashed out with something that glinted, but as the fire spread and the smell of smoke and burning webs grew stronger, his fury faltered, and he finally let go. In an instant the other man was off and running for the doors, forcing his way into the crowd as the library emptied. Cursing, Gerard followed.
What the hell was that even about? Followers of the same entity could work at cross purposes; Hunters and Slaughterers were just as likely to go after each other as they were anyone else. But the Web? Since when did the Web’s followers fight amongst themselves?
And then Gerard remembered that he didn’t really care. What mattered was that he’d lost the book, and he didn’t have time to track it down again before Mum showed up. What mattered was that he’d known he had to keep an eye on the man, and he hadn’t, and now he’d taken the damned book and was probably long gone by now—
The crowd parted. From the other side, the Web-touched man was watching him, wide-eyed and barely blinking. In one hand he held the book, in the other he clutched at his shoulder. In the distance, a siren went off—probably the fire brigade—and the man broke eye contact and hurried away.
Gerard didn’t have to follow him far. Two blocks down, he turned into an alley tucked between two closed shops, and found the man leaning back against the brick, catching his breath.
Out here, away from the spiders’ nest, Gerard's view was clearer. He had been right and wrong—the man was Web-touched like he’d thought, but not Web-bound. Even with a book of the Spider clutched in his white-knuckled hand, there were no threads holding him in place. As Gerard stepped closer, he could see the man’s fingers curl around the pages, nearly thumbing them apart, but the book remained shut.
He could also see, from up close, why the man was holding his shoulder. The spiderweb-handled scissors were sunk into the flesh by his collarbone; the librarian must have stabbed him.
“You should probably get that looked at,” he said dryly. The man startled at the sound of his voice, then bit down on a whimper of pain. While he waited for a reply, Gerard stood back and took in as much detail as he could.
Short. Thin in a way that fell just short of underfed. Glasses crooked across the bridge of his nose. Hair that may have been neatly trimmed once, now uncombed and starting to go a bit shaggy. A single streak of gray, standing out starkly against the black.
“You—” The man started, then stopped. He was staring again, hardly blinking as he looked Gerard up and down, from head to toe and back again before he settled on looking him in the eye. “You’re him. Aren’t you? You’re Gerard Keay.”
He tensed, just on instinct. He liked anonymity because of how rare it was in his life. The things that knew his name just by looking at him were usually… well.
Mum’s friends.
It was odd, though, the way the man said his name. Gerard wasn’t sure what it meant, because he’d never heard it that way before. Mum always sounded sickeningly proud when she called his name—proud of herself, of what she had created or was trying to create. The things she did business with always said it like… like they were sounding out the name of a foreign dish, a new food they were eager to try.
But this drab little nothing of a man said it softly, almost in a whisper, while his wide eyes never left Gerard’s face. He almost fidgeted under the scrutiny, and the unfamiliar light in this stranger’s eyes. What even was that? Fear? No, he knew fear, and this wasn’t it.
No use trying to lie; he’d left it too long to be convincing. “How do you know my name?” he asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m—you—” He seemed to take a moment to gather himself. “Sorry, I’m just—er. I’m Jonathan Sims. I'm a researcher at the Magnus Institute.”
The Magnus Institute. Of course. Obvious, now that he had the answer. Touched by the Web but bound to the Eye. If he were anyone else, he might be inclined to feel a kinship there, but he knew perfectly well that the Eye didn’t care, so why should he?
“I’ve been reading statements,” Jonathan Sims was saying, still without taking his eyes off of Gerard. “And you’ve… well. You’ve shown up in, in a lot of them.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “I… have?”
“You—of course you have.” Sims took a step closer. “The Reform Club in Pall Mall, back in 2002? Genoa in 2009. St. Thomas Hospital, last year.” He paused. “Ex Altiora.”
Gerard stiffened. “That was weeks ago.” He still smarted from Mum’s punishment for it.
“I’m very good with research,” Sims informed him. “I do projects for Ger—for the Archivist, every now and then. I’ve tracked down a lot of Leitners. And for more than one of them, I’ve followed the trail all the way to someone giving a description of you.” He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was something bright in his eyes that Gerard couldn’t put a name to. “It wasn’t until I talked to Mr. Swaine that I finally got an answer to what you were doing with them.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about me,” Gerard said acidly.
“You destroy Leitners. You help people.” He paused. “You—you helped me.”
Gerard raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t do much for you,” he said dryly. “You seemed to have it handled. Besides the scissors.”
“No, I mean… not directly.” For a moment, Sims looked almost shy. “Do you remember Andrea Nunis?” Gerard frowned. “In Genoa.”
“Oh, right, her. I just gave her a bit of advice.”
“She took it,” Sims told him. “She got out, and she came back and gave a statement at the Institute. I read it.” He met Gerard’s eyes again. “I got lost, a few months ago. Somewhere empty. But then I remembered what you told her, and I got out, too.”
“Oh,” Gerard said, suddenly feeling supremely uncomfortable and not entirely sure why.
“So… thank you,” said Sims. “Never thought I’d actually get to say that in person.”
“Oh.” Gerard had no idea what to say to that, so he didn’t bother trying to think of anything. “So… you work for the Archivist. That what you’re doing right now?”
“Oh, er, no. Maybe? She asked me to look into the spiders, and it led me here, but this…” Sims gripped the book, wincing when it agitated his shoulder. “This is more personal, to be honest.”
“That’s dangerous, letting it get personal,” Gerard said tightly.
Sims looked away. “I suppose. But as long as it gets destroyed, I’d say that’s a net positive.”
The pieces clicked into place at last. A Web-touched man on a personal mission to destroy a book of the Spider. So it was a revenge thing. Lashing out in the little ways you could, against forces you could never hope to control. He could understand that.
Gerard sighed and held his hand out. “Fine. Give it here, then.” Sims hesitated. “What? You know what I’m about. You know what I’ll do with it. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. But…” The hand gripping the book was white-knuckled. It had to hurt, holding it that tight. Gerard wished he knew what the expression meant. He was afraid, obviously, but why? “Are you sure you’ll do it? Are you sure it won’t… stop you?”
Gerard raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure it won’t stop you? I’m guessing it already caught you once. Or someone you knew, at least.” Sims flinched, and Gerard gave an impatient sigh. “Come on. You’d need two hands to do it, and you’re already using one to keep those scissors still. I’ll even burn it here, right in front of you. Got a lighter and everything.”
Sims stared at the cheap zippo in Gerard’s hand as if it was the most comforting sight he’d ever taken in. He looked at the lighter, then at Gerard, then at his injured shoulder, before finally coming to a decision. Slowly, straining against threads that Gerard knew he couldn’t see, he held out the book. “Just be careful,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen what it does to people.”
“I’ve seen books do worse things,” Gerard said, and took it from his hand. He could feel the prick of threads, but the lighter was already open and ignited. And if he ended up having to burn his own hand just to force the Web to let him do this, then so be it. He’d catch far worse from Mum once she found out.
He had about two seconds of satisfaction, of relief, as he held the book over the lighter and watched the tiny flame lick at the cardboard cover and start to catch.
And then it ended.
He felt her like sharp fingers in his chest, reaching inside his ribcage to dig into his heart and lungs. Gerard knew his own fear better than he knew any other part of himself; he had lived and breathed it for as long as he could remember, since the first time his mother welcomed something into her home that made him want to vomit whenever it looked at him.
He knew his fear well enough to know when it was telling him Mum was back.
“I can’t leave you for a moment, can I, Gerard?”
She must have manifested right behind him, because he could see Sims’ eyes widen as he stared over Gerard’s shoulder. The book slid from his grasp, and he didn’t bother trying to fight it—how long had it been since he honestly tried to fight her
“There we are, that’s better.” Her voice was dry and cold and cracking, and still she tried to mold it into something soothing. It rarely worked when she was alive. These days it made him think of an old corpse in a coffin three sizes too small, bones snapped and dried flesh crumbled to make it fit. “For shame, Gerard. I thought I’d taught you better than this.”
He heard her dry fingertips rasp over the cover before he remembered to breathe. Sims hadn’t moved—that was good. Mum was too pleased with the new Leitner in her hands to spare him a first glance, much less a second. That was good. Mum wasn’t anything like the Powers, no matter what she liked to believe about herself, but if there was one thing she shared with them, it was that people were safer when she didn’t notice them.
“Oh, now this is charming, isn’t it?” Her laughter slid beneath his skin like hooks, and he gritted his teeth and waited. That was all his life was, now. Waiting, usually for her. Waiting for her to fade again, waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to hurt him, waiting for her to stop. “And to think, you were trying to burn this. It’s been so long since I’ve found something new from the Web.”
“You won’t get anything out of it,” he said, and already his own voice sounded so far away. “It won’t give you anything. Just steals children, or anyone else who reads it—”
He stopped talking, because her hand was on his face, and he’d lost the ability to talk while she was touching him years ago. Before she bound herself to the book, at least. Maybe even longer than that. She was in front of him now, holding his chin so he would look at her and nowhere else. She was the same as ever, of course: hairless and emaciated and covered in the Sanskrit that bound her to the skin book.
“My poor Gerard,” she sighed. “You never did have a drop of ambition in you. It’s all how you use these things, Gerard, I’ve told you this before.” Her eyes glittered, but not enough to look less dead. “There’s plenty I can get out of a book of the Web. Spiders always did love children.” Her fingers slid from his face, almost caressed it, before running through his hair in a mockery of affection. She twirled a lock around her index finger. “So you can imagine my interest.”
He made a cursory attempt to answer, but his throat just wouldn’t produce a sound.
“Can you begrudge me for having spiders on my mind, when you’ve spent the last five years throwing these tantrums?” Her grip on his hair became painful. “Oh, to come back from fading away without having to clean up another of your messes.”
There was movement over his mother’s shoulder. Gerard’s first thought was good, at least he’s getting away clean. His second thought was oh that’s it, he’s suicidal then, because Jonathan Sims was not running away; he was lunging for Mum’s back, making a grab for the book in her other hand.
All at once her fingers left his hair, the smell of her breath left his nose, and she had her back to him as she pinned Sims to the alley wall by the shoulder—no, not by the shoulder, by the scissors, she was holding the handle of the scissors, driving them deeper until Sims cried out in pain and the dark bloodstain on his sleeveless sweater spread wider.
Before Gerard registered his own decision, his hand was already on her arm, gripping her dead, dry skin. His stomach roiled at the feeling, but there was a difference between touching her and being touched by her, and he found his mouth working when he asked it to.
“Don’t. Mum, don’t.” This was stupid. He was stupid, Sims was stupid for sticking around, for not running when he had the chance, for walking into that damned library when he didn’t have to. Gerard had watched a lot of people die, most of them his mother killed with her own hands, but.
But.
This stupid, suicidal bastard had walked into a spiders’ nest to burn a Leitner, and Gerard didn’t want to watch his mother kill him, too.
“He’s from the Magnus Institute,” he heard himself say. “He works for the Archivist.”
That was enough to make her pause, at least. Her grip on the scissors didn’t loosen, but he could feel her hesitating, considering. “Is that so?” Her eyes glittered. “How is dear Gertrude, then?”
“You cunt,” Sims choked on a snarl, and Gerard wanted to shake him and scream. The scissors went in deeper, and Sims bit down on a strangled whimper.
“It’s a bit odd to see you here, I have to admit,” Mum went on thoughtfully. “Gertrude doesn’t bother much with the Web these days. Can’t think of why she’d go to the trouble of fetching this. Lucky my Gerard’s little fit brought him right to you, or think of what a waste that would have been.” Gerard looked away, swallowing the taste of bile.
“Leave him alone,” Sims gritted out, and Gerard stared at him, wide-eyed and willing him to shut up.
“And why would I do that? My Gerard’s been so helpful, in spite of everything.”
“He doesn’t be—” He broke off with a strangled scream when she twisted the scissors with a violent flick of her hand.
“Do tell Gertrude I said hello,” Mum said pleasantly. Sims barely managed a pained wheeze when she finally ripped them out and admired the blood-spattered handle. “If you don’t bleed out first, of course. Oh, would you look at that pattern, how lovely.” She tucked the scissors under her arm along with the book, and her now free hand locked around Gerard’s wrist again. “Come along, Gerard. It’s time we went home.”
He managed one look back as she towed him away, and saw Sims sliding down the alley wall, one hand pressed to the hole in his shoulder. He was watching them leave, face twisted in pain and fury. Gerard could only meet his eyes for a few seconds before he had to turn away.
He didn’t look back again.
She stayed for a few weeks, probably. It was difficult to pin down exactly how long, when Gerard made it through these periods as far from it all as he could be when he couldn’t escape her. There was nowhere he could go, not when she took pains to destroy every bit of a life he tried to build while she was gone. He’d stopped trying years ago, after what she did to the woman who walked him through opening a bank account.
It was easier to just… drift. At least it passed the time.
The longer he spent like this, the longer it took to come out of it once she faded again. That made it difficult to know how long he had before she came back. And so, when he blinked one morning and realized he was alone on a park bench surrounded by snow, he wondered if he’d have a week to enjoy the solitude, or a few days, or an hour.
He was cold. His leather coat covered a lot of surface area, and he’d lost enough weight recently to properly bundle up in it, but the bone-deep chill of English winters took its toll—wait, no. He was in Scotland. Inverness, to be exact. Scottish winters, then. Shivering, he leaned his head back and stared up at the gray sky.
He could always just stay here. Maybe take his coat off, let the cold take him. Maybe by the time Mum found him, he’d be too frozen solid for her to carve the skin off his back for a new page.
It was a nice thought. But he’d spent far too long surviving. At this point, he wasn’t sure his body would let him give up on it. That was fear’s biggest curse, really. Not Powers, not monsters, not rituals. Just that relentlessly human drive to survive, even when there was nothing to make it worth your while.
It wasn’t enough to make him react to the footsteps in the snow. He might be disoriented and cold and probably a bit lost, but he had enough in him to know it wasn’t anything dangerous. Still, they were coming closer, fast enough to be running, only to slow on the approach and stumble to a halt.
A half-familiar voice breathed out a short sigh. “There you are.”
He looked up—or down, rather—and sat bolt upright so fast he saw stars. Here he was in a park in Scotland with only a vague idea of how he’d gotten there, and Jonathan Sims from the Magnus Institute was standing over him, casual as anything.
“How the hell did you find me?” His voice was rough from lack of use.
“I told you,” Sims replied, with a note of satisfaction. “I’m a very good researcher.”
Gerard stared at him.
“Also I have a coworker who’s good with computers and doesn’t mind breaking the law.”
That startled a laugh out of him, sort of. It was more of a short bout of voiceless wheezing, but it got the point across, even if it didn’t last long.
“You should leave,” Gerard said, sitting back on the bench. “Dunno what you’re doing here or what you want with me, but you need to leave. I never know how long I have before she manifests again. You should leave while you still have one good shoulder.”
“My shoulder’s fine,” Sims retorted. “And what I want is to help you.”
This time, Gerard really did laugh. “You can’t help me.”
“If you’ll just listen—”
“Oh, yeah, you did a great job before,” Gerard went on ruthlessly. “What makes you think you’ll do any better this time?”
“Well, for one thing,” Sims said testily. “I didn’t come alone this time.”
He stepped to the side and turned to look back. Gerard blinked, sat up again, and followed his gaze to where Gertrude Robinson was crossing the snow to reach them.
She was a small woman, aged and weather-beaten and hard as iron. There was a smile on Sims’ face as he watched her approach, betraying satisfaction and pride and a bit of relief. The kind of earnest, open expression that Gerard rarely ever saw in the world he lived in. Gerard could see him unconsciously mirroring her; standing together, they could easily pass for mother and son. Maybe that was on purpose, for when they needed to pass unnoticed.
Gertrude, though—on her own, Gertrude was more like what he was used to.
“Good work, Jonathan,” she said, with a nod to her assistant. Sims… didn’t quite preen at that—he struck Gerard as the type to think preening was beneath him—but he did stand a little taller at the praise. “Hello, Gerard. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
He shifted uncomfortably, telling himself that there wasn’t all that much in common between how Mum said his name and how Gertrude Robinson did. There was no sickly-sweet pride in her tone, because there was nothing for her to be proud of, not when they only barely knew each other by reputation. But there was still something measured about it, about the way she looked at him. Like she was sizing him up and making a decision on how to treat him based on what she saw and judged.
It was a bit like being under a microscope. Which made sense, her being the Archivist and all.
“What do you want?” he asked.
She smiled. “It’s been brought to my attention that you’re in a difficult position,” she replied, tilting her head toward Sims. “I’ve also met your mother before, and I know that she can be a… difficult woman.” Gerard snorted. “But we can help.”
“What’s in it for you?” Gerard asked.
“The opportunity to do a good turn,” she replied, and sighed when Gerard scoffed again. “Well, all right, if you want to be ruthlessly practical about it, you may have heard that I’m in the business of stopping various parties from performing rituals to end the world. Parties with whom your mother so often does business. It’s in my best interests to remove her as a resource. And that’s not even taking into account the harm she does on her own. Beyond just you.”
She… had a point. The Archivist was calculating and ruthless, from what little he knew of her, but at least she was trying to put some good in the world—or take out some of the bad.
“And besides,” she went on, in a more subdued tone. “I worked closely with your father for years. And while I was unable to prevent what happened to him… I would appreciate a chance to right that wrong with you.”
Gerard wanted to laugh, or scream, or throw something at her. It was such bullshit, it had to be, because if she really felt that way then what had taken her so damned long? Where was she for the last five years while Mum was tormenting him? Where was she when he came home to find Mum stringing herself up on fishing wire? Where was she when he was a child, trying over and over again to escape from a world that wouldn’t let him stay away?
“You don’t have to keep living like this,” Sims told him earnestly. “Just let us help you, and you can be rid of her. You can be free.”
And Gerard almost did laugh, then, because—
Because Gertrude Robinson was just as calculating as Mum always said she was, every word and expression and response measured carefully for the best results, but Jonathan Sims—he meant that. He said it because he honestly believed it.
Gerard knew better, of course. He’d never be free, not really. Not when he’d been bound to this world without the chance to say no. He was doomed the moment he was born to his mother.
“No,” he said. “I really can’t.”
Sims looked like he wanted to argue the point, but stopped himself at the last moment. “But wouldn’t it be better if she was gone? One less monster in the world?”
Point. “A net positive,” Gerard murmured, half to himself.
“Right,” Sims agreed. “So why not take the chance? What do you have to lose?”
His sanity, if he were to fail. That was if he still had it, at this point. “What’s it going to cost me?”
“It’s less about a cost and more about what you can do to help us,” the Archivist replied smoothly. “Do you know where she keeps the book?”
His stomach turned. “Yes. She won’t let me near it, though. And I’ve tried to burn it before, but it always brings her back faster.”
“Well, then you’ll have to take it while she’s fading,” she replied. “Bring it to me, and I’ll do the rest. Can you do that?”
“…Guess so,” he murmured, and watched Sims’ face light up with an eager, relieved smile. He couldn’t remember the last time a smile like that was aimed his way. Probably never. No one was ever really happy to see him.
“Well then,” the Archivist said, offering her hand to shake. “I expect we’ll be in touch.”
He shook it, because she was polite enough to offer instead of assuming he wouldn’t mind her touching him. And it was nice to touch someone living for once. “Where do I go once I have it? The institute?”
“That’ll do,” she said. “If I’m not there, then Jonathan will be. He has a habit of working late.”
He nodded mutely, and tried not to think about the possibility looming on the horizon. If he let it in, it might swallow him whole. Hope was dangerous like that.
Considering the circumstances, he couldn’t afford to drift again, not if he wanted enough time and awareness to do what was asked of him. And so, when Mum came back to him, pleased to find him home already, his only real option was to stay present for it.
The less said about that, the better.
He didn’t even have to touch the book, in the end. Even leafing through it, searching every soft, leathery page for an inscription with a familiar name, the bandages on his burned hands shielded him.
There was nothing for him to find. Mum’s pages were there, along with many others, but not…
Of course not. That would’ve been kind, in a sick, monstrous way. And Mum didn’t understand kindness, not even the twisted kind. It was the one language she never bothered learning.
He was starting to drift again on the way to the institute, hunched over on the Underground with a bag in his lap. He didn’t mean for it to happen—it wasn’t all that bad, as tube rides went—but he’d spent the past ten days forcing himself to live moment by moment. Feeling things was starting to get a bit old.
His fingernails dug into his arm as he clutched the bag to his chest, pain driving back the fog and anchoring him to the here and now. The bag was loosely fastened shut, and with his face this close to it, he could smell the ink and not-leather of one, the burnt-paper ashes of the other—
The voice chimed overhead, announcing his stop. Nearly there, now. Just a short walk, and then he could rest. Then he could drift all he liked.
Until Mum comes back.
His hands tightened on the bag. No, she wouldn’t. That was the point of this. That was why he was doing this, so she’d be gone.
Unless it doesn’t work. Unless she comes back too soon and takes it back and learns from this.
He put one foot in front of the other, until they took him to the institute.
The Archivist was in. Her office door stood ajar, and Gerard didn’t bother knocking. There wasn’t any point to it, when she already knew he was here.
“Did you bring it?”
He pulled it out, barely feeling the pain and pressure on his bandaged hands. He placed it on the desk in front of her: old not-leather, coarse stitching, inked Sanskrit and streaks of gray-black on the cover.
The Archivist brushed at one of the streaks, and her fingertip came away soot-stained. “You didn’t try to burn this all on your own, did you?”
“No.” It was so hard to stay here, to stay now. But he wasn’t finished, not yet. “Is, er. The other one in?”
“Hm? Oh, Jonathan? Yes, he’s in the other office. Just down the hall, first door on the left. I was just about to send him home.”
He went.
The door creaked when it opened. The room was half-office, half-storage, with three empty desks at the front and rows of shelves filled with boxes beyond them. The sounds of footsteps and rustling papers drifted from the back. He stepped inside.
“Gertrude, did you need—?” A familiar head poked out from behind the shelves. “Oh. You came.”
“Said I would,” he said.
Sims was staring again. “I suppose you did. Did you—Gertrude’s down the hall, if you wanted to give her—”
“Already did.”
“Oh. …Sorry, do you need to… I don’t know, sit down or something? You look like you’re about to faint—Good lord, what happened to your hands?”
“Nothing new.” He couldn’t sit just yet. If he sat down he’d probably sleep for a week. “Wanted to talk to you, actually.”
“Me? What for?” Sims had come out of the shelves and was standing closer, but not quite close enough.
He stepped forward, reaching into the bag with his bandaged hands. It was harder to pull out than the last book—at least that one was still in one piece—but he managed it. It was brittle and crumbling in his hands as he held it out: the tattered, blackened remains of a children’s board book. There was barely enough of the cover left to make out the title.
A Guest for Mr. Spider, it had said, before he’d burned the Web out of it.
“Should be safe,” he heard himself say. “The Web doesn’t like fire. You can burn the rest of it if you like. Just thought you’d like to know for sure.”
Sims took it with trembling hands. He stared at it for a moment, and then raised his eyes to stare at Gerard again. It was the same look as before: open, but so alien that Gerard could barely recognize it.
“Seemed important to you,” he said, answering a question that Sims hadn’t asked.
“I suppose it was.” It was barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”
“Right. I’m off, then.” Maybe to another park bench. Maybe the bed at Mum’s place. Somewhere horizontal, preferably.
“You—wait.” Sims caught him at the door, one hand on his arm, a single point of contact that kept him tethered just a little longer. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
“Guess so. I’ll find somewhere.” God, he was tired. “Might go home. Least then I’ll know right away if this doesn’t work.”
“It will work.” Sims said it like a simple fact: water is wet, the Buried is cramped, and It Will Work. “Gertrude’s been dealing with these things for years. She’ll know what to do.”
“If you say so.”
“Listen.” A huff. “If you’ve got nowhere else better—well. I’m off soon, and I’ve got room at my flat if you need a place to stay.” A pause, softening. “I can’t imagine home’s pleasant for you.”
“I’m used to it.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to.”
“Fine.” Too tired to put up a fight, too tired to argue for something he didn’t want anyway. “Fine, if it’ll get you to stop…” He waved vaguely. “Fussing.”
“I am not—” A sigh. “Right. Just—sit down somewhere, give me five minutes and then we’ll go.”
He didn’t spend that time working, as it turned out. Instead he pulled out an empty wastebasket and a cigarette lighter, and burned the remains of the Leitner with vicious satisfaction.
Sims came to him less than a week later with a spring in his step and triumph in his eyes, and presented Gerard with the skin book, open to his mother’s pages—or rather, the place in the book where they used to be. All that was left were their burned remains, the Sanskrit scorched to nothing, empty shreds of skin still hanging from the stitches that held them in place.
He’d barely registered what he was seeing, what it meant, when the tears came. They hit him like a full-body blow, and he fell apart beneath the overwhelming force of them. His voice was nearly gone by the time they stopped, and the only thing keeping him somewhat upright was the light, awkward hand on his shoulder.
“Fuck,” he managed to gasp out, scrubbing at his face. “She’s gone. She’s finally gone.”
“I did tell you.” Sims sounded so damned pleased with himself that Gerard could help but choke out a… laugh? It was trying to be one, at least. “Jesus. Are you all right, Gerard?”
And maybe it was the lingering exhaustion, maybe the sheer elation of the moment, that made him answer, “Gerry.”
“What?”
“It’s…” He hesitated, looking blearily up at the other man’s face through his tangled curtain of hair. “Gerard’s what my mum called me.” The next laugh was a bit more successful—only a bit, but at least it didn’t sound like he was dying. “Always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”
“Oh.” He sounded more embarrassed about it than Gerard did. “O-oh. I see.”
“Thanks, Jonathan.”
“Just Jon,” he replied. “That’s what most people call me. Gertrude’s the only one who likes the extra syllables.”
“Got it.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “So what now?”
“I think it’s up to you,” Jon said. “That’s sort of the point.” He must have seen the pained look on Gerard’s face, because he set the book aside and stood up. “But first, how about lunch?”
“What?”
“We’re apparently friends now,” Jon said patiently. “And that is something friends do, get lunch.”
“I don’t have a lot of practice,” Gerard admitted.
“Thank God, you won’t notice if I’m crap at it.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
Gerard wasn’t a stranger to learning; he’d been doing it all his life, whether he liked it or not. But it sounded nice, now—learning things Mum never cared to teach him.
He tried for a grin. It must have worked, because he got one right back.