Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

and where power is in the hands of his followers. A world where nothing strange or abnormal exists. Where magic is derided, and everything can be blissfully ordinary.”
    And that’s what we fight, I thought, coming to understand for the first time. That’s what this is all about.
    Sing threw his duffel over his shoulder, adjusting his glasses as Bastille went back to the door, cracking it open to make certain nobody was in the hallway. As she did, I noticed the discarded uzi, lying ignored on the floor. Trying to look nonchalant, I wandered over to it, absently reaching down and picking it up.
    This is, I would like to note, precisely the same thing any thirteen-year-old boy would do in that situation. A boy who wouldn’t do such a thing probably hasn’t been reading enough books about killer Librarians.
    Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t like most thirteen-year-old boys. I was special. And, in this case, my specialness manifested itself by making the gun break the moment I touched it. The weapon made a noise almost like a sigh, then busted into a hundred different pieces. Bullets rolled away like marbles, leaving me sullenly holding a piece of the gun’s grip.
    “Oh,” Sing said. “I meant to leave that there, Alcatraz.”
    “Yes, well,” I said, dropping scrap of metal. “I thought I should… uh, take care of the gun, just in case. We wouldn’t want anyone to find such a primitive weapon and hurt themselves by accident.”
    “Ah, good idea,” Sing said. Bastille held open the door, then we all moved into the hallway.
    “Next door,” Bastille said.
    I nodded, switching glasses. As soon as the Tracker’s Lenses were on, I noticed something: bright black footprints, burning on the ground.
    They were still fresh – I could see the trail disappearing as I watched. And there was a certain… power to the footprints. I instantly knew to whom they belonged.
    The footprints passed through the hallway, beside a yellowish-black set, disappearing into the distance. They burned, foreboding and dark, like gasoline dropped to the floor and lit with black fire.
    As Bastille crept toward the next door in the hallway, I made a decision. “Forget the room,” I said, growing tense. “Follow me!”

Chapter 10
    Are you annoyed with me yet?
    Good. I’ve worked very hard – perhaps I will explain why later – to frustrate you. One of the ways I do this is by leaving cliff-hangers at the ends of chapters. These sorts of things force you, the reader, to keep on plunging through my story.
    This time, at least, I plan to make good on the cliff-hanger. The one at the end of the previous chapter is entirely different from the hook I used at the beginning of the book. You remember that one, don’t you? Just in case you’ve forgotten, I believe it said:
    “So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.”
    This sort of behavior – using hooks to start books – is inexcusable. In fact, when you read a sentence like that one at the beginning of a book, you should know not to continue reading. I have it on good authority that when an author gives a hook like this, he isn’t ever likely to explain why the poor hero is tied to an altar – and, if the explanation does come, it won’t arrive until the end of the story. You’ll have to sit through long, laborious essays, wandering narratives, and endless ponderings before you reach the small bit of the story that you wanted to read in the first place.
    Hooks and cliff-hangers belong only at the ends of chapters. That way, the reader moves on directly to the next page – where, thankfully, they can read more of the story without having to suffer some sort of mindless interruption.
    Honestly, authors can be so self-indulgent.
    “Alcatraz?” Bastille asked as I took off down the hallway following the footprints.
    I waved for her to follow. The black footprints were fading quickly. True, if the black ones disappeared, we could just follow the yellow ones, since they appeared more stable. But if I didn’t keep up with the black ones, I wouldn’t know if the two sets diverged.
    Bastille and Sing hurried along behind me. As we moved, however, the thought of what I was doing finally hit me: I was chasing down the Dark Oculator. I didn’t even really know what a Dark Oculator was, but I was pretty certain that I didn’t want to meet one. This was, after all, probably the person