Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

pulled a giant book closer to her. “I’ll check the sorcerer’s omnibus.”
    “Sorcerer’s omnibus?”
    “It’s like a giant magical dictionary,” she absently said, and she was already thumbing through the entries. “If it’s not in here, it doesn’t exist.”
    She flipped the book open to a page, then skimmed a finger down the page she’d found. But when her shoulders slumped, I knew she hadn’t found it.
    “Nothing?”
    “It doesn’t exist.” She looked up at me. “If that was really a term of magical art—and not just a description—it would be in here. This thing is super-thorough.”
    Maybe, but I wasn’t willing to give up so easily.
    “Dark one” was an odd phrase. It wasn’t the kind of thing someone would just randomly say. On the other hand, Todd was an unusual guy.
    “‘Sorcerers just don’t get us,’” I remembered him saying, and I began to smile. Maybe we weren’t coming at this from the right direction. Maybe “dark one” was a magical term of art . . . but not for sorcerers.
    I jumped up, ignored Paige’s question about where I was going, and ran down the aisles until I found the librarian.
    “Are you running in my library?”
    “Only because I need you. Do we have any books written by gnomes?”
    He frowned but nodded. “Yes. Why? I thought you were looking for conjuration spells.”
    “Been there, done that.” I smiled and thought of Todd. “I need gnome books. You know, because sorcerers just don’t get them.”
    He didn’t get the joke. “They’re in cultural studies. About four rows to the left. Your other left!” he corrected, when I dodged right.
    A few minutes later, Paige found me on the floor pulling books into my lap. “Bright idea?”
    “I think it’s a gnome’s phrase.”
    “Damn,” she said. “I wish I’d thought of that.” She sat down on the floor beside me, and I handed over A Gnome’s Guide to Names .
    “Come on in,” I said. “The water’s fine.”
    It wasn’t in A Gnome’s Guide to Names . It wasn’t in Life from the Ground Up . It wasn’t in Better Underground Gardening , Home Sweet Hillock , or Homes for Gnomes . (I couldn’t make this stuff up.)
    We did learn that gnomes are especially careful about the layout of their underground dwellings. We learned they preferred plaid to gingham in their decor and often used a dozen or more false entrances and baffles to thwart unwelcome visitors.
    When we could map out their favorite color palettes, we called the librarian back into it.
    Well, Paige called the librarian into it. After flouncing up her hair.
    Maybe she had been lonely in Nebraska.
    “What exactly are you looking for?” he asked.
    “Todd, one of the gnomes who fought with us in Nebraska, called Tate a ‘dark one.’ We’re wondering if there’s anything to that.”
    The librarian rolled his eyes and walked down the row. “Sometimes I wonder why you don’t just ask me the questions in the first place. Follow me.”
    We shoved our books back on the shelves and traced his path to a bureau of long, flat drawers. He opened a long drawer and rifled through it, then pulled out a dark blue paperboard box with brass corners, which he carefully carried to the closest table. He walked slowly, as if the materials in the box were delicate enough to disintegrate if he rattled them too much.
    He placed the box on the table and lifted the lid. Scents of old paper and herbs—rosemary and thyme—filled the air, along with the damp scent of earth.
    “Gnomes,” I said.
    The librarian nodded and pulled a pair of thin cotton gloves from the pocket of his jeans. He slipped them on and carefully removed a sheet from the box.
    The sheet was thick and yellowed, the warp and weave of fibers from some ancient plant visible like a watermark through the page.
    Across the surface were tidy rows of neat Latin words, and the lines were illuminated with drawings and fanciful letters in red, blue, and gold paint. It wasn’t unlike medieval manuscripts I’d seen while in graduate school.
    “It’s beautiful,” I said. “What’s it from?”
    “It’s a hand-copied page from a document called the Kantor Scroll . Kantor was a gnome, a scrivener who put together an impressive library of texts.”
    Paige walked around the table to give the document a closer look. “About what?”
    “The usual. Love. Religion. Politics. War was a particular specialty. Gnomes are close to the ground, so people tend to forget they’re there. They do