Page 86 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Lex closed their eyes and took several deep breaths through their nose. “Colin, do I need to explain to you that Syphilis the Who-Gives-a-Shit is not a real person? Or thatCastles & Chimeras, while invented by our company as a way to ensnare the minds and souls of vulnerable young people, is not an accurate representation of magic?”
“Of course it isn’t. But you don’t become a level twenty wizard without learning how to choose your spells strategically. You need to anticipate what will be useful and prepare accordingly. I don’t have to master the fundamental tenets of sorcery, I just have to find one or two pieces of crazy-powerful magic and then figure out how to do them.” I shrugged. “How hard can it be?”
Lex started massaging their temples as if they felt a headache coming on.
“Wait a minute,” Amira chimed in, “your company createdC&C?”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah. It was part of their big push in the 1980s to indoctrinate the American heartland. They engineered the whole Satanic Panic, too. Nothing got teenagers more interested in evil than everyone from their parents to their teachers to their pastors telling them to avoid it. Hell saw a real big bump in profits after that.”
“Hell,” she repeated. “Like, as in actual Hell? It’s a real place?”
I laughed nervously. “Uh. You know what? Let’s table the discussion about other realms of existence until after we save this one.”
“I have so many questions, though! How can this space existinside the building we entered? What evenisan Abomination? Plus, you’re talking about learningsorcery! Am I hallucinating?”
“How about this?” Lex suggested. “You ask me whatever you want while we go looking for the materials we need. As much as I’d love to sit down and answer a million questions, we only have twenty-four hours to put this ritual together.”
Taking a deep breath, Amira nodded. “Okay. Deal. I feel like my head is about to explode.”
“You get used to it,” I told her. Putting out my hand, palm down, I waited for them to place theirs on top of mine so I could say something inspiring followed by “Go team!” But they just stared blankly at me, so, with a disappointed sigh, I prepared to trek all the way back down to the Repository’s catalog and begin my tutelage in the darkest of dark arts. Soon enough, I’d bend the cosmos to my will and strike fear in the twisted hearts of Abominations everywhere. And then? Then I’d take whatever I wanted—from Dark Enterprises, from the world, from everything and everyone.
My laughter echoed through the stacks as I set out to realize my nefarious plans.
Thirty
Time passed strangely after that.The lights never dimmed, the silence remained unbroken, and my existence narrowed to a vague blur redolent of old paper and beeswax polish. Without buzzkill librarians getting in my way, I frolicked through the Forbidden section that lay just off the atrium, pulling tome after tome off the shelves and stacking them on a table in the center of the reading room. The possibilities I glimpsed as I leafed through them were beyond thrilling. Why wasn’t everyone reading these books all the time?
Finally settling on a volume with the evocative titleMost Puissant Magicks with Which to Smite Thine Enemies and Secure Their Wailing Lamentations(because that sounded fun), I experimented with something called the “Grasp of the Endless Void.” It was both simple and effective, and I got a real rush from toying with the fundamental forces of the universe. Unfortunately, my experiments destroyed most of the reading room, but some collateral damage wasto be expected. I mean, how irreplaceablewerethese ancient texts anyhow? I was sure the company could find more.
Deciding I’d experimented enough, I waded through mounds of debris to examine the books I hadn’t destroyed and promptly hit the mother lode: a massive volume bound in dark blue leather with the wordsOn Abominationswritten in looping silver script along its spine. Eureka! Despite it being the middle of the night, a surge of excitement at the sight of those two words helped me power through hundreds of musty pages, my gaze rapidly scanning the old-fashioned typeface. It was pretty boring, honestly, filled with endless chapters of philosophical and epistemological musings on the nature of evil and its roots in the human condition, blah blah blah, moving on. Finally, toward the end of the book, I reached a section titled “The Binding” and bent eagerly over its pages, hoping to uncover the answers we needed to defeat The-One-Who-Hungers.
What I found instead changed everything.
Somewhere outside, the sun wasrising over a devastated Manhattan when I finally returned to the Obsolete section. Amira and Lex had fallen asleep at their respective tables, heads pillowed on their arms, Lex drooling a little on the ancient stone tablet in front of them. Carefully placing the book I’d found next to the tablet, I left the two of them to their uneasy dreams and curled up on the dusty carpet some distance away. It was deeply uncomfortable, but that wasn’t why I had trouble falling asleep. My mind kept returning to what I’d learned, and all the implications that followed.Don’t think about it, I kept telling myself.Just don’t think about it.
Exhaustion claimed me at last, and when I opened my eyes again some indeterminate time later, everything looked depressinglyidentical. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with the same maddening hum as I pushed myself upright, the muscles in my back protesting sharply at the minutes or hours I’d spent on the floor. Groggily, I became aware of hushed voices and turned to Amira and Lex, sitting at a table with their heads together as they pored over the book I’d left.
Looking up as I staggered to my feet, Amira asked, “How did you sleep?”
“Not well.” I winced as I tried a few experimental stretches.
“You look like shit,” Lex observed. Then they tapped the book in front of them. “This is a gold mine, by the way. Where’d you find it?”
“The Forbidden section.”
“Huh. Makes sense, I guess. The section on binding Abominations has just about everything we need to put the last pieces together.” Lex ran their fingers along a ragged edge of paper. “There’s a page missing, though.”
Bending down to grab my toothbrush from my bag, I mumbled, “Yeah, it was like that when I found it.”
“Let’s hope it didn’t have anything super important.” Amira eyed me carefully before adding, “Are you okay?”
“Sure.” I gave her a smile. “Just a little stiff. I’m going to brush my teeth. When I get back, let’s make a coffee run, okay?”
A little while later, Amira and I descended to the lobby and found it empty. For the first time that I could remember, the receptionist was gone. Outside, the air smelled of smoke and the skies were heavy with ominous clouds. We were almost three hours away from the executive ritual.
I wondered what Ms.Crenshaw was doing at that moment. Running the board through whatever preparations remained, probably.The way things had gone for me lately, I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to walk into the Starbucks and see her standing there, waiting for her usual mocha. Thankfully, however, the only people in there were the poor baristas, all of whom looked like they’d slept in their uniforms. They stared at us with haunted eyes when we walked through the door, and a couple of them flinched as we approached the counter.
“Why are they still working?” Amira whispered to me once we’d ordered. “They look scared to death.”
