Page 97 of The Mirror of Beasts

Lord Death placed an approving hand on his shoulder. Smoke rose, spreading its delicate fingers up through the floorboards around us, seeking. Through the haze, I saw Cabell and the others escape.

I pushed up from the ground and ran for the door. Neve, at least, seemed to know exactly what to do.

She planted herself at the entrance to the central chamber, facing the radiating heat of the magic flames. Her spell sang out, as strong as it was unhesitating. The sprinklers had done nothing to halt the fire’s path, but as the priestess spread her arms, the flames seemed to acknowledge her, standing at attention.

They might have been sparked by death magic, but it was Neve’s magic, drawn from the Goddess’s source, that smothered them. The fires went out with a last gasp as she drew her hands sharply together in front of her.

The moment the raging heat abated, we ran through the choking cloud of smoke and the maze of worktables for the windows at the back. Coughing, I struggled with the lock leading out into the fire escape; its metal warped with the heat.

“Botheration,” I gasped out, picking up a nearby chair and throwing it through the glass.

Whatever wards had protected the guild library had only protected it from outside threats, I thought bitterly, not those coming from inside. The terrified library cats clustered around my feet until, finally, they were able to jump out onto the fire escape and flee into Boston’s dreary winter.

“Wait!” Neve stuck her head out of the window to call after them. “Come back! You’re indoor cats and those are mean streets!”

The thought of them out there, without any true shelter, was just as sickening to me as the sight of the smoldering black clumps that had once been books.

I dropped down onto my knees beside Librarian, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth. The death magic painted his bronze body with cruel silver stripes. For a moment, I didn’t know if I should even touch him. What the point would be.

Those with magic believed the Goddess would allow them rebirth in another life, in another form. Even the vilest souls among us experienced a second dark existence, in a different world. The promise of their deaths was life.

But what of those beings like Librarian, for whom death wasn’t merely the first step of another journey, but an end? How could he have been so morally upright, so pure of intention, and never be reborn, simply because he didn’t have a human soul?

How could he just … cease to be?

Maybe I’d been the biggest fool of all, believing, in my desperation for some sort of parental figure, that an automaton was capable of things like love. It was equally possible that Librarian had merely seen Cabell and me as an extension of his duty to the guild, and to the library itself. Small nuisances who were worse-behaved than the cats and harder to keep fed.

Maybe I’d imagined a life that never really existed at all. But it had been real to me.

My eyes burned from the smoke and lingering heat. I stroked my fingers gently down Librarian’s arm. For the first time that I could remember, it was warm. And even though I knew that was because of the fire, it let me keep pretending, just for a moment longer.

But then a voice, small and fading, rose from inside his ruined chest. “Young … Lark …”

“I’m sorry!” I cried. “Please don’t go. Please, tell me how to fix you.”

“… I have chosen … one you will … enjoy …,” he said, his voice flickering like a guttering candle. “… It will be … such a pleasure … to sit and read with you … beside the fire … once more …”

Librarian fell silent, and did not speak again.

“Tamsin?” Neve knelt behind me, touching my back.

One of the nearby shelves buckled, sending charred Immortalities and atlases of the ancient world tumbling to the floor. Neve winced at the noise, but I barely heard it. It felt like the smoke had wrapped me inside a mantle of my own and nothing could penetrate its numbing touch.

“Do you … do you have a bottle?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Just a little one?”

“I’m sure I do,” Neve said. “Why do you need it, though?”

The idea already felt stupid, but somehow, hearing myself say it aloud made it seem childish too. “I want to preserve some of the quicksilver. The death magic.”

“What are you talking about?” Neve asked.

“The death magic,” I said. “It’s all over him. You can’t see it?”

Neve shook her head.

My earlier conversation with the Bonecutter came back to me in a rush. I’d tried to ask her why only I could see death magic in its physical form. She’d told me to ask Nash.

“Are you thinking that it may contain some of his memories?” Neve asked. “Some part of his essence?”

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