“But I mean…”
“It’s him,” I said. “The footprints seem like they’re … burning. Like they were seared into the stones and are slowly melting away the floor. That’s how black they are.”
“That’s the Dark Oculator, then,” Bastille said. “We don’t want to follow them.”
“Of course we do. We have to find the sands!”
Bastille grabbed my arm, yanking me to a halt. Sing puffed up behind us. “Goodness!” he said. “Ancient weapons certainly are heavy!”
“Bastille,” I said, “we’re going to lose the trail!”
“Smedry, listen to me,” she said, still gripping my arm. “Your grandfather might be able to face a high-level Dark Oculator. Might. And he’s one of the Free Kingdoms’ most powerful living Oculators, with an entire repertoire of Lenses. What do you have? Two pairs?”
Three, I thought, reaching into my jacket pocket. Those Firebringer’s Lenses. If I could turn them on the Dark Oculator …
“I know that look,” Bastille said. “Your grandfather gets it too. Shattering Glass, Smedry! Is everyone in your family an idiot? Do your Talent genes replace the ones that give most people common sense? How am I supposed to protect you if you insist on being so foolish?”
I hesitated. Down the hallway, the last of the dark footprints burned away, leaving only the yellowish set. I looked down at them, frowning to myself.
I’m missing something, I thought.
Grandpa Smedry had explained about the Tracker’s Lenses. He’d said … that the footprints would remain longer for people I knew well. I glanced back down the way we had come. My own footprints, glowing a weak white, showed no signs of fading. Bastille’s and Sing’s sets, however, were already beginning to disappear.
That yellow set of footprints, I realized, turning back toward the way the Dark Oculator had gone. They must belong to someone I know.…
That was too big a mystery for me to ignore.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out the small hourglass Grandpa Smedry had given me. “Look, Bastille,” I said, holding it up before her. “We only have a half hour until this place gets filled with Librarians back from patrolling. If that happens we’ll get caught, and those sands will fall permanently into Librarian hands. We don’t have time to go poking around, looking in random doors. This place is way too big. There’s only one way to find what we need.”
“The Dark Oculator might not even have the sands with him,” Bastille said.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But he might know where to find them—or he might lead us to them. We at least have to try to follow him. It’s our best lead.”
Bastille nodded reluctantly. “Don’t try to fight him though.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Don’t worry—it’ll be all right.”
And if you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you … on the moon.
To my credit, I didn’t really want to face down a Dark Oculator. I was half hoping that Bastille would talk me out of the decision. Usually when I tried to do reckless things, there had been adults around to stop me. But things were different now. By some act of fortune—perhaps even more strange than the appearance of talking dinosaurs and evil Librarians—I was in charge. And people listened to me. I was realizing that if I chose poorly, I would not only get myself into trouble but I might end up getting Bastille and Sing hurt as well.
It was a sobering thought. My life was changing, and so my view of myself had to change as well. You might think I was turning into a hero—however, the truth is that I was just setting myself up for an even greater fall.
“We’ll stay out of sight,” I said. “Eavesdrop and hope the Dark Oculator mentions where the sands are. Our goal is not to fight him. At the first sign of trouble—or, in Sing’s case, tripping—we’ll back out. All right?”
Bastille and Sing nodded. Then I turned. The yellowish footprints were still there. A little more cautious, I followed them down the hallway. We passed a couple more archways, set with solid wooden doors, but the footprints didn’t lead into any of them. The hallway led deeper and deeper into the library.
Why build a library that looks like a castle inside? I thought, passing an ornate lantern bracket shaped like a cantaloupe. The lantern atop it burned with a large flame, and—despite the tense situation—something occurred to me.
“Fire,” I said as we walked.
“What?” Bastille asked.
“You can’t tell me that those lanterns are more ‘advanced’ than electric lights.”
“You’re still worried about that?”
I shrugged as we paused at an intersection, and Bastille peeked around it, then waved the all clear.
“They just don’t seem very practical to me,” I whispered as we started again. “You can turn electric lights on and off with a switch.”
“You can do that with these too,” Bastille said. “Except without the switch.”
I frowned. “Uh … okay.”
“Besides,” Bastille whispered. “You can light things on fire with these lamps. Can you do that with electric ones?”
“Well, not most of them,” I said, pointing as the footprints turned down a side corridor. “But that’s sort of the idea. Open flames like that can burn things down.”
I couldn’t see because of the sunglasses, but I had the distinct impression that Bastille was rolling her eyes at me. “They only burn things if you want them to, Smedry.”
“How does that work?” I whispered, frowning.
“Look, do we have time for this?” Bastille asked.
“Actually, no,” I said. “Look up there.”
I pointed ahead, toward a place where the hallway opened into a large room. This diversion was in fact quite fortunate for Bastille, for it meant that she didn’t have to explain how silimatic lanterns work—something I now know that she couldn’t have done anyway. Not that I’d point out her ignorance to her directly. She tends to start swinging handbags whenever I do things like that.
Bastille went up the hallway first. Despite myself, I was impressed by her stealth as she crept forward, close to the wall. The room ahead was far better lit than the hallway, and her movements threw shadows back along the walls. After reaching the place where the hallway opened into the room, she waved Sing and me forward. I realized that I could hear voices up ahead.
I approached as quietly as possible, creeping up next to Bastille. There was a quiet clink as Sing huddled beside us, setting down his gym bag. Bastille shot him a harsh look, and he shrugged apologetically.
At the end of the corridor was a large, three-story entryway. It was circular, and our corridor opened up onto a second-story balcony ove
rlooking the main floor down below. The footprints turned and wound around a set of stairs leading down. We inched forward to the edge of the balcony and looked out upon the people I had tracked.
One of them was indeed a person I knew. It was a person I had known for my entire life: Ms. Fletcher.
It made sense. After all, Grandpa Smedry had said that she’d been the one to steal the sands from my room. The idea had seemed silly to me at the time, but then a lot of things had been confusing to me back then. I could now see that he must have been right.
And yet it seemed so odd to see a person from my regular life in the middle of the library. Ms. Fletcher wasn’t a friend, but she was one of the few constants in my life. She had directed my moves from foster family to foster family, always checking in on me, looking after me.…
Spying on me?
Ms. Fletcher still wore her unflattering black skirt, tight bun, and horn-rimmed glasses. She stood next to a hefty man in a dark business suit with a black shirt and a red power tie. As he turned, conversing with Ms. Fletcher, I could see that he wore a patch over one eye. The other eye held a red-tinted monocle.
Bastille breathed in sharply.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“He only has one eye,” she said. “I think that’s Radrian Blackburn. He’s a very powerful Oculator, Alcatraz—they say he put out his own eye to increase the power focused through his single remaining one.”
I frowned. “Blackburn?” I whispered. “That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s a mountain,” Bastille said. “I think in the state you call Alaska. Librarians named mountains after themselves—just like they named prisons after us.”
I cocked my head. “I’m pretty sure that Alcatraz Island is older than I am, Bastille.”
“You were named after someone, Alcatraz,” Sing said, crawling up next to us. “A famous Oculator from long ago. Among people from our world—and among our opponents—names tend to get reused. We’re traditional that way.”
I leaned forward. Blackburn didn’t look all that threatening. True, he had an arrogant voice and seemed a bit imposing in his black-on-black suit. Still, I had expected something more dramatic. A cape, maybe?