Elias's mind, already reeling from a day of impossible revelations, struggled to find purchase on the old man's words. A draft from 1923. It was said so casually, as if commenting on the weather. He automatically reached back and pushed the heavy wooden door shut. It closed with a soft, definitive click, and the already-muted sounds of the alley vanished completely. The shop was now an island of perfect, warm silence.
"Better," the old man, A. Corbin, sighed, a faint wisp of a sound. He looked Elias up and down, his cloudy blue eyes lingering on the satchel, then on Elias's face. There was no surprise in his gaze, only a weary, ancient sort of recognition. "You've had a rather trying day, haven't you, Archivist?"
The title, spoken aloud by someone other than the voice in his head, sent a jolt through Elias. He took an involuntary step back, his hand tightening on the strap of his satchel. "How… how do you know what I am?"
Corbin chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "My dear boy, this shop is a knot in the threads of reality. Things that are lost, things that are forgotten, things that exist between the ticks of the clock… they tend to wash up here eventually. And you," he said, pointing a thin, trembling finger at Elias, "you are a walking, talking, catastrophically powerful example of a thing that has been forgotten. You radiate it. It's a wonder the whole city doesn't curdle like sour milk when you walk by."
He gestured to a rickety wooden stool near his armchair. "Sit. You look as though you're about to collapse. The initial shock of finding a stable reality can be rather disorienting."
Elias didn't move. "A stable reality?"
"This shop," Corbin explained, waving a hand at the impossible clutter. "It is not entirely… here. Nor is it entirely now. It is anchored to a point outside the normal flow. A safe harbor for delicate things. And for people like us."
"People like us?" Elias repeated, his voice barely a whisper.
"Fugitives," Corbin said simply. "Survivors. Those of us who remember, in our own ways, what the Librarians want the universe to forget. I am a collector. You are a living library. Our methods differ, but our enemies are the same." He leaned forward, his expression turning serious. "You were seen. In the landfill."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact. Elias felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft from 1923. "How could you possibly know that?"
"I felt the signal," Corbin said, tapping a finger to his temple. "The chime. A Librarian marking its prey across the veil. A very bad business. They will not stop now. They will unmake this entire city block by block to find you. Your little trick of folding space was clever, but it only made you a target for a different kind of predator. You've traded the janitor for the ghoul."
Everything the old man said confirmed his worst fears, yet hearing it from someone else, someone who understood, was strangely grounding. He wasn't completely alone in his madness. He finally moved, sinking onto the offered stool, the strength draining from his legs.
"What do I do?" Elias asked, the question raw with desperation.
Corbin was silent for a long moment, studying Elias with those unnervingly perceptive eyes. "That is the question, isn't it? You have two paths, as I see it. You can run, or you can hide. But both require a currency you do not possess."
"Currency?"
"Every action in the real world leaves a trace, a footprint in causality," Corbin explained. "The Librarians are masters of following those traces. To run, you would need to learn to walk in the gaps between, to move without leaving a trace. To hide, you would need an anchor, something so powerful and real that it could overwrite your own chaotic signature."
He gestured vaguely at the cluttered shelves around them. "This shop is my anchor. It is a story so old and so strong that it convinces reality to leave it alone. You have no such thing. You are a ghost, and the wind is rising."
Elias looked down at his hands. He was a ghost. A man with no home, no history that was truly his own, haunted by the memories of a thousand dead worlds.
"But," Corbin said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "there may be a third option. Not running, not hiding, but… changing the board."
He leaned forward, his pale eyes glinting in the lamplight. "The Librarian that marked you, it cannot cross from the terminal reality easily. But it has now been given a target. It will petition for entry. That takes time. Not much, but some. Before it arrives, you could, perhaps, find an anchor of your own."
"Where?" Elias asked, latching onto the sliver of hope.
Corbin's smile returned, thin and unsettling. "Why, where all lost things eventually end up, of course. The city has its own graveyards, Archivist. Places where things were forgotten long before you were born. The wound you found is not the only one in this city. There is another. An older one. A deeper one."
He pointed a trembling finger not at a map, not at a book, but at the silver locket Elias had noticed earlier, the one that radiated a familiar, soul-deep cold.
"There," he rasped. "You must go there. You will not find a shield. You will not find a weapon. You will find a choice. And you must make it before the Librarian comes to collect you."
End of chapter 10