Camille held up her left arm, pointing to it with her right.
“Is that so,” the woman said. “Come here and let me see your bag.”
Camille sighed and heaved her camo bag up on the counter of the front desk. At least she was certain she wasn’t carrying anything suspicious. She just set off metal detectors everywhere she went.
“Kids these days and their hoodlum jewelry,” the old woman muttered, sifting through Camille’s textbooks. “Alright, you can go.”
Camille nodded, and looked around the first floor again, seeing no sign of Tailor.
“Can I help you?” the elderly woman prompted again. From the tone of her voice, it sounded like she wasn’t so much desirous of helping as she was obligated.
“I’m...waiting,” Camille said. “For someone. My teacher.”
The old librarian gave her a sour look, like she suspected she was lying. She went back to stamping book checkout cards, throwing Camille the occasional suspicious glance.
Camille adjusted her messenger bag over her shoulder. This was just awkward. She was considering what excuses she could make for leaving - and setting off the alarm again - when Tailor finally came through the front doors.
“It’s hot as hell out there,” he complained. “How are you still wearing that sweatshirt?”
Camille shrugged. There was no simple way to explain what the hoodie meant to her. Besides, it was quite cool inside the library. Now that she’d been inside for awhile she was glad she had it.
“Fine, fine,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs and claim a table. Afternoon, Mrs. Thrush,” he nodded at the old librarian.
“John Tailor,” she acknowledged, sourly.
“You may want to think about getting a library card,” Tailor said, as they climbed the stairs. The fountain was actually in the center of the spiral, halfway between the first and second floor. Camille fought back the urge to run her hands over the ferns surrounding it as they passed.
“Why?” she asked.
Tailor spared a final glance at the main desk through the open stairwell as they reached the second floor. “This way,” he pointed around the walkway to the section that bore the legend ‘Fiction.’ “Because,” he said, quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry throughout the open, echoing space, “Old lady Edna doesn’t trust anyone without a library card. That’s not to say she will once you do,” he admitted, shrugging.
Camille searched the shelves for the books she’d been asked to collect. She knew the exercise was intended to reinforce her comprehension of the alphabet, but she found herself reading the full titles of many of the volumes Tailor was having her pull. There was certainly a trend.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dante’s Inferno. The Odyssey. Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Did he think she wouldn’t notice? Or was he telling her something?
She emerged from the stacks with a pile of books and dropped them on the table in front of Tailor.
She raised an eyebrow. “Kaibutsu?”
“English,” he said, not looking up from whatever he was writing.
“Akuma. Youkai. Bakemono.”
“English, Teague.”
“All of these,” she gestured to the pile of books, racking her brain for the right word. “Monsters.”
Tailor looked up then, briefly, then put a final flourish into his notebook and shut it and sat back. “Monsters, yes. But not all of them had to be.”
He pulled one out of the pile. The cover was faded blue cloth imprinted with a gothic script whose gold embossing had long worn away. “Frankenstein’s monster was created by one man’s hubris – pride,” he said, seeing her face twist at the unfamiliar word, “It never should have existed, but it never asked to. And though it was hideous to behold, it was not innately evil or monstrous. What made it so was the reactions of the humans around it. The acts it committed made it a monster – but it was never given another choice.”
He pulled out another book. “Dr. Jekyll wanted a different life. But rather than making the hard choices to improve the life he had, he invented a completely different person to change into - and ended up destroying his life and the lives of others in the process. And the fairy tales, well...” He regarded the tome of stories but seemed reluctant to leaf through it. “Tale after tale of those who chose wisely, and cautionary tales of those who chose poorly.”
Camille’s chin lifted. “You think I chose poorly.”
“I don’t think you’ve chosen yet,” Tailor said, folding his arms and sitting back again. “Right now all the choices have been made for you. You do what Gabriel says without question, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t sound so proud of that,” he said, grimacing. “Don’t you know how to think for yourself? Do you know the reasons behind anything he tells you to do? That hunk of metal,” he gestured at the bracer, “do you know what it is?”
Camille took her arm off the table self-consciously. “Do you?” she challenged, even as part of her was dying to know.
“I don’t,” he said. “But if I had something that was probably unnatural permanently attached to me, I’d want to know what it was.”
“It keeps me safe,” she said defensively.
“How convenient,” he said. “That might even be true. Gabriel does like to mix his lies to make them go down easier.”
Ire bubbled up. “He warned me,” she said. “About you.”
Tailor laughed at that. “Gabriel? Warned you about me? God, the world has gotten strange. I guess I’m back to where I started. Why the hell am I the only one who can see him for what he is? You live with him, it should be so obvious that he’s using you.”
“He saved me,” Camille insisted.
“Yes, but for what purpose?”
Camille stood up, shouldering her bag. “Are we done?”
Tailor caught her wrist, and she looked down at him, defiant.
“Monsters are made by their choices, not their abilities,” Tailor said. “Whatever you can do - whatever you think you’re capable of - you can help people, or you can help yourself. The choice is yours. Do you know what they call a monster who helps people?”
“Confused monster?” Camille said bitterly.
“A hero,” Tailor said. He handed her a dog-eared copy of A Tale of Two Cities. “Your reading assignment.”
She regarded it with a frown, then stuffed it into her bag. “Now we’re done?”
He sighed, sitting back. “Now we’re done.”
She started to walk away, then stopped, and turned.
“Why can’t Gabriel come in the library?” She couldn’t explain it, but somehow this was what was burning a hole in her perfect resolve.
Tailor regarded her silently for several moments. The hushed sounds of people browsing the aisles of books and typing away on laptops suddenly seemed quite loud.
“There’s a spell on the building,” he said at last. “You can’t get in if you’re immortal.”
Immortal. Camille nodded slowly.
“You don’t look very surprised,” Tailor noted.
She wasn’t. Not really. But hearing someone say it out loud, confirm what she’d always guessed at...
“There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who can’t die,” Tailor said. “They have nothing to lose.” He returned to scribbling in his notebook.
Camille stood silently, still absorbing the information. Nothing to lose, was that it?
“You’re wrong,” she murmured.
“What was that?” Tailor looked up.
“You’re wrong,” she repeated. “He has me.”
Chapter 8
Mac