Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

since Ms. Fletcher had never been willing to answer questions about them. Somehow, I found the prospect of their survival to be even more depressing that the thought of them being dead.
    Why did you burn down your foster parents’ kitchen, lad? Grandpa Smedry had asked. I quickly turned away from that line of thinking, focusing again on Bastille.
    She was shaking her head, still muttering about the Smedrys who get themselves into trouble. “Your grandfather,” she said, “he’s the worst. Normal people avoid Inner Libraria. The Librarians have enough minions in our own kingdoms to be plenty threatening. But Leavenworth Smedry? Fighting them isn’t nearly dangerous enough for him. He has to live as a spy inside of the shattering Hushlands themselves! And of course, he drags me with him.
    “Now he wants in infiltrate a library. And not just any library but the regional headquarters – the biggest library in three states.” She paused, glancing at me. “You think I have good reason to be annoyed?”
    “Definitely,” I said, again proving my cleverness.
    “That’s what I thought,” Bastille said. Then she slammed on the brakes.
    I smashed against the dash, nearly losing my glasses. I groaned, sitting back. “What?” I asked, holding my head.
    “What what?” Bastille said, pushing open the door. “We’re here.”
    “Oh.” I opened my door, dropping the inside handle to the street as it came off in my hand. (This kind of thing becomes second nature to you after you break off your first hundred or so door handles.)
    Bastille had parked on the side of the street, directly across from the downtown library – a wide, single-story building set on a street corner. The area around us was familiar to me. The downtown wasn’t extremely huge – not like that of a city like Chicago or L.A. – but it did have a smattering of large office buildings and hotels. These towered behind us; we were only a few blocks away from the city center.
    Bastille rapped the hood of her car. “Go find a place to park,” she told it. It immediately started up, then backed away.
    I raised an eyebrow. “Handy, that,” I noted. Like Grandpa Smedry’s car, this one had no visible gas cap. I wonder what powers it.
    The answer to that, of course, was sand. Silimatic sand, to be precise – sometimes called steamsand. But I really don’t have room to go into that now – even if its discovery was what eventually led to the break between silimatic technology and regular Hushlander technology. And that was kind of the foundation for the Librarians breaking off of the Free Kingdoms and creating the Hushlands.
    Kind of.
    “Old Smedry won’t be here for a few more minutes,” Bastille said, standing with her handbag over her shoulder. “He’ll be late. How does the library look?”
    “Umm… like a library?” I said.
    “Funny, Smedry,” she said flatly. “Very funny.”
    Now, I generally know when I’m being funny. At this moment, I did not believe that I was. I looked over at the building, trying to decide what Bastille had meant.
    And, as I stared at it, something seemed to… change about the library. It wasn’t anything I could distinctly put my finger on; it just grew darker somehow. More threatening. The windows appeared to curl slightly, like horns, and the stonework shadows took on a menacing cast.
    “It looks… dangerous,” I said.
    “Well, of course,” Bastille said. “It’s a library .”
    “Right,” I said. “What else should I look for, then?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m no Oculator.”
    I squinted. As I watched, the library seemed to… stretch. “It’s not just one story,” I said with surprise. “It looks like three.”
    “We knew that already,” Bastille said. “Try for less permanent auras.”
    What does that mean? I wondered, studying the building. It now looked far larger, far more grand, to my eyes. “The top two floors look… thinner than the bottom floor. Like they’re squeezing in slightly.”
    “Hmm,” Bastille said. “That’s probably a population aura – it means the library isn’t very full today. Most of the Librarians must be out on missions. That’s good for us. Any dark windows?”
    “One,” I said, noticing it for the first time. “It’s jet-black, like it’s tinted.”
    “Shattering Glass,” Bastille muttered.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Dark Oculator,” Bastille said. “What floor?”
    “Third,” I said. “North corner.”
    “We’ll