Portland, Oregon
“Any word from Flynn?” Baird asked.
Jenkins looked up from polishing the long-lost arms of the Venus de Milo, which tended to get a bit cranky if they were neglected for too long. Although the arms usually resided in the Library’s Greco-Roman gallery, the ageless caretaker had them propped up at his personal workstation a few yards away from Baird’s usually neatly organized desk, which had an annoying tendency to clutter itself when she wasn’t looking. The ground-floor office of the Library’s Portland Annex currently served as the Librarians’ base of operations and anchor to this physical plane of reality. Adjacent doorways and corridors led into the Library proper, which was infinitely larger than the institutional-looking gray building housing the Annex. Polished wooden bookcases, crammed with volumes both useful and arcane, lined the walls of the office, while an old-school card catalog ran alongside the sweeping staircase leading up to the mezzanine. Antique cabinets and sideboards, framed maps and scrolls, and an eclectic assortment of vintage knickknacks and curios, including an old-time radio and a genuine nineteenth-century bowie knife, gave the Annex a cozy, timeless feel that Baird had come to appreciate over the last few years. It was more than just her workplace. It was a sanctuary.
“I’m afraid not, Colonel,” Jenkins answered. A distinguished, silver-haired gentleman in a conservative gray suit, who only appeared to be in his sixties, he had been tending to the Annex for far longer than you might guess just by looking at him. The Library was, Baird suspected, the closest thing he’d had to a home since the fall of a certain bright and shining kingdom a long, long time ago. “But that’s to be expected,” he continued. “The Lemurian conclave was always going to take a good while, leaving Mister Carsen effectively incommunicado for the duration.”
Flynn Carsen, the most experienced Librarian still on active duty, had been called away to serve as an impartial arbiter at some delicate deep-sea treaty negotiations between various feuding clans of mer-people. And the fact that “mer-people,” complete with gills and scales, were actually a thing still boggled Baird’s mind occasionally.
“Given the frequently rancorous relations between the parties involved, most notably the displaced tribes of Mu and Ys,” Jenkins elaborated, “I rather suspect that Mister Carsen has his hands full at the bottom of the Marianas Trench … for a few more days, at least.”
“I know, I know,” Baird said with a sigh. She and Flynn were more than just Librarian and Guardian, so she was understandably impatient for his return. A framed photo on her desk reminded her of his boyish good looks. “Flynn said he would be back when he was back.”
“An accurate assessment,” Jenkins judged. “You wouldn’t think that water-breathers could be so long-winded, yet simply reciting the genealogies of the various breeding populations can take forever.…”
Despite Jenkins’s jaded tone, Baird couldn’t help worrying a little.
“But this is just a diplomatic thing, right? There’s no real danger involved?”
Jenkins shrugged. “It’s been said that diplomacy is nothing but warfare concealed.”
Baird thought she recognized the quote. “Von Clausewitz?”
“Star Trek,” he corrected her. “Nonetheless, this is hardly Mister Carsen’s first conclave. I’m quite confident that he’s staying afloat, metaphorically speaking, despite being more than thirty thousand feet beneath the waves.” His voice softened in an obvious attempt to reassure her. “Chances are, the greatest perils he’s facing are an excess of seaweed salad and overheated oratory.”
“Thanks, Jenkins. I guess I’ll just have to wait for him to come sloshing back onto dry land.” She contemplated, without much enthusiasm, the overdue filing and correspondence on her desk. “Too bad we don’t have a case to occupy me in the meantime.”
“It’s not too late to join Game Night,” Cassandra called out to her from the nearby conference table, where she and the other Librarians were relaxing with a hard-fought game of Trivial Pursuit. The long oak table rested at the center of the office, atop the compass design embedded in the floor. “You could be my partner.”
“Hey, no fair,” Ezekiel protested, his face still deeply tanned from his recent stint in the Phantom’s torture oven. “We’re not doing teams. This is strictly one-on-one-on-one.”
Stone rolled the dice and moved his plastic playing piece around the board. “And it’s not as though you’re exactly hurting for wedges, Cassie,” he said before swiveling in his seat to address Baird. “Not that you’re not welcome to join in on your own. We can even spot you a wedge or two, since we’ve got a head start on you.”
“Thanks,” Baird said, appreciating the offer. “But I bet I can catch up with all three of you without any concessions. I may not be an actual Librarian, but I’ve picked up a thing or two in my travels.”
“Not doubting that one bit,” Stone said amiably.
Baird wandered over to check out the game. Scanning the board, she was amused to see that the Librarians’ gameplay reflected their individual specialties. No surprise, Cassandra was cleaning up on the Math and Science questions, Stone already had his Art and History wedges, while Ezekiel had aced the Entertainment and Leisure categories. All three Librarians had mastered Geography, which was to be expected given all the globetrotting they did on a regular basis, although Baird doubted that there were too many Geography questions concerning Shangri-La, El Dorado, or the Bermuda Triangle.
“Maybe we can do girls against boys,” Cassandra persisted, still pushing the teams idea. “Come on, please, I’m never going to get the Sports wedge on my own.…”
There was something to be said, Baird reflected, for putting together a well-balanced squad whose members’ strengths and weaknesses complemented one another’s. She was about to throw in with Cassandra when the Clipping Book interrupted the game by thumping loudly on its book stand at the other end of the table. As though blown by a mystic wind, its pages flipped of their own accord to a formerly blank page that now displayed a pasted newspaper clipping that hadn’t been there only moments before.
“Never mind, people,” Baird said. “Looks like we’re back on the clock.”
The Clipping Book, which was a large leather-bound scrapbook of the sort that newspaper archives employed back in the predigital era, was the Library’s preferred means of alerting the Librarians to developing situations requiring their attention. These typically involved outbreaks of freaky occurrences caused by dangerous magical knowledge, relics, and/or entities that had not yet been safely filed away in the Library. In many ways, the job was much like Baird’s former career in NATO; the only difference was that, these days, the potential weapons of mass destruction tended to involve ancient myths and sorcery.
“Ooh,” Cassandra enthused, visibly excited as ever by the prospect of a new case. Possibly even more than any of her compatriots, being a Librarian had brought purpose and excitement into her life. “Where do you think it’s sending us now?”
“Not another glorified sewer, I hope,” Ezekiel said. “If you ask me, I think we’re overdue for an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii or Monte Carlo.”
Stone shot him a warning look. “Don’t jinx us, dude.”
Game Night already forgotten, Baird and her team hurried to inspect the Clipping Book, as did Jenkins, who carefully locked Venus’s notoriously roving arms in an antique mahogany armory before joining the others. Baird didn’t waste time speculating about what the enchanted scrapbook had in store for them this time, not when the tantalizing newspaper clipping was now pasted in the book right before their eyes:
IRON-AGE MONUMENT VANDALIZED
COUNTY MAYO—A weathered stone monolith, which had stood for more than a thousand years on a remote island in Clew Bay, was finally toppled by unknown parties who left the site in ruins. Authorities have no leads regarding the identity of the vandals or their motives and are asking the public for assistance. The monument, one of many scattered throughout Ireland, is believed by historians to date back to the fifth century at least.
“Ireland?” Cassandra said, sounding thrilled. “We’re going to Ireland?”
“Okay, I can live with that,” Ezekiel said, “as long as we don’t get stuck out in the sticks the whole time, dodging cow poop.”
“Lots of intriguing sites and history in Ireland,” Stone observed, “going all the way back to the Neolithic era. The Celts, the Vikings, the Normans … they’ve all left their mark on the island’s art, language, and architecture.” He scowled as he reread the article, absorbing the whole story. “Damn it, I hate hearing about stuff like this, priceless landmarks wrecked without any consideration for their historical or cultural significance. What kind of loser trashes a genuine piece of history?”
Baird understood his indignation, but guessed that the Clipping Book would not have been triggered by a simple, if inexcusable, act of vandalism. There had to be more to the story, a mystical angle worth alerting the Librarians to.
“Someone looking for something they shouldn’t?” she wondered. “Or out to unleash something? Or with a very old score to settle?”
She had been associated with the Library long enough to know that there could be any number of possible reasons for desecrating an ancient monument, few of them good. She reviewed the news article, which had apparently been imported from The Irish Times, before consulting Jenkins.
“Any thoughts or convenient exposition?” she asked the immortal caretaker, who possibly knew more about history’s most obscure magical nooks and crannies than anyone else alive. “There anything we should know about this particular location or monolith?”
“Not that I immediately recall, Colonel.” He peered over her shoulder at the clipping. “As correctly noted in the article, Ireland is well-supplied with a generous assortment of age-old menhirs, dolmens, henges, barrows, raths, and other stubbornly durable remnants of times long past. You can find them in bogs, pastures, hills, caves, and elsewhere, many of them still quite far from the beaten path. The unlucky stone in question is but one of many.”
“Oh well,” Baird said, disappointed. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, although I suppose I should be relieved that you’re not immediately sounding a pre-apocalypse alarm. This news isn’t raising any obvious red flags we should know about?”
“Believe me, Colonel, if toppling this monument opened up one of the Seven Seals, you would be the first to know.” He strolled over to a bookshelf and started leafing through a heavy tome on some related topic. “Further research may yield some light on the matter, of course, though it may take a fair amount of digging.”
Baird could believe it. The Library’s records stretched all the way back to Alexander the Great—and then some. Not even Jenkins could be expected to have instant recall of every ancient scroll, journal, or illuminated manuscript tucked away in the Library’s ever-expanding collection.
“Roger that,” she said. “You hit the books while the rest of us head out to examine the scene of the crime. With any luck, we’ll find some clues pointing us to whatever the Library is worried about.”
Not for the first time, she wished the Library could provide more guidance than just provocative newspaper clippings, like perhaps a detailed military-style briefing, complete with maps, backup plans, rules of engagement, and a decent amount of actionable intel, but that was not how it worked. The Library, in its enigmatic wisdom, simply let them know when there was a fire that needed to be put out; it was up to her team to find the fire, figure out its source, and bring it under control before too many innocent people got scorched.
Good thing she had three bona fide geniuses on the case.
“All right, people,” she said, glancing at her wristwatch. Ireland was seven time zones away, so it was late afternoon there. “Gear up and get ready. Let’s hit the road at ten-forty hours, ten minutes from now.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Stone said, as the Librarians scrambled to prepare for the expedition ahead. Nobody bothered to put the board game away. “Hibernia, here we come.”
Getting to Ireland in a timely fashion was easy enough. A Magic Door, which could conceivably connect with any other door on the planet, made crossing the globe as simple as stepping through a doorway, assuming Jenkins got the coordinates right. In theory, they would be setting foot on the Auld Sod before sunset, local time.
And then?
The strategist in Baird liked to plan ahead, but being a Guardian had taught her that no scenario was too unlikely where magic was concerned. Anything could happen—and probably would—so how did you anticipate the impossible?
She was still working on that.
“Good luck, Colonel,” Jenkins said.
“The Luck of the Irish?” she quipped.
Jenkins frowned. “A peculiarly inapt expression, if you ask me. With all due respect to fabled Eire and its people, Ireland’s tumultuous history contains more than its fair share of invasions, conquests, famines, plagues, and strife. Quite frankly, I’m not certain I would be doing you and your charges a favor by wishing you luck of that sort.”
Baird sighed.
“You know, Jenkins, we really need to work on your pep talks.”