Lenora paused, looking up at the screaming Not-Director. Then another voice screamed over his: “Daddy!” And suddenly Ada flew into view, clinging to her father and sobbing.
At the sight of Ada, Lenora raced up the ladder herself, emerging into a large, round room lit dimly by thousands of candles. There were no windows anywhere to let in sunlight. The room was circled by a dozen or so pillared balconies stacked one on top of another, going all around except for three huge alcoves embedded in a semicircle in the wall.
Lenora blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. For a moment, only a moment, she saw in the alcoves enormous thrones fifty feet high, on each of which sat one of three equally enormous shadowy creatures, all staring down at Lenora and the others. She blinked again, and the creatures vanished. Standing before Lenora now were three people (though of course, as Lenora knew, they were not really people at all). She had seen them all before:
A woman in a red raincoat, smiling a wicked smile.
A man in a green raincoat, grinning an evil grin.
A young girl in a long purple raincoat, baring hideous, sharp teeth.
Lenora shuddered. The Board had been right in front of her all along.
Lenora had only moments to take this all in before she was struck from the side. The projectile was Ada, who had hurled herself at Lenora, throwing her arms around her and screaming, “Lenora!” straight into her ear.
“Yes, yes, I’m here,” said Lenora, struggling to escape while her head swirled with no ideas at all on how to deal with these three creatures.
For his part, the Not-Director was somehow, again, recovering himself. He had stifled his screams and was patting down his hair and suit and struggling to change the expression on his face from fright to confidence. He jutted his chin out, frowned, and stabbed a finger at each member of the Board, one after the other.
“Now you listen to me,” he said with command. “The only one who does any firing around here is me. I’m the smartest and make the best decisions. I’m the one in charge!”
The girl in the purple raincoat laughed sharply, a noise so piercing that Lenora almost clapped her hands over her ears. The girl ignored the Not-Director and addressed Lenora. “Yes,” she said, her pointed red tongue flicking over those sharp teeth. “He’s the one in charge, isn’t he?”
“No,” said Lenora with as much firmness as she could muster. “Not anymore.”
“I am so!” cried the Not-Director. But there was uncertainty in his voice.
“His lies,” said the girl, again to Lenora, “have lost their power. He is beginning to realize that, very slowly of course.”
“Now just one minute—” started the Not-Director, but he was interrupted by the man in the green raincoat, who spoke only to Lenora.
“Do you not hate him?” said the man in a voice full of slime. “He destroyed your precious Library, after all.”
“Well, I don’t think, I, you know,” the Not-Director sputtered. “That’s not—”
“No,” said Lenora to the man. “I don’t hate him. He was only ever your tool.”
“What a shame,” sighed the man. “A girl such as you would have made a valuable ally.”
“I’m not a tool!” yelled the Not-Director. But no one was listening. Even Ada had taken her place beside Lenora now, her hands curled into trembling fists.
“You get out of here!” Ada cried. “Leave us alone, or I’ll—”
The woman in the red raincoat laughed. “You’ll what? I can see the fear in all three of you. You know you cannot stand against us. We’re going to devour all of you.” Her nose wrinkled. “Well, maybe not him. He doesn’t look very tasty. We’ll just hurl him into a void outside of time and let him float there forever.”
“No,” whispered the Not-Director. “Please … not Prin—I mean, Ada … not my daughter … I’m—”
“No,” shouted Ada, leaping in front of her father, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please! Not my daddy. He can’t hurt you!”
“No,” said the woman. “He cannot.” She gestured, and Ada was flung several feet through the air, hitting the floor with a hard thud.
“Ada!” Lenora ran to her, kneeling to place herself between Ada and the Board.
“Daddy,” whispered Ada weakly. Both girls looked toward her father.
All three Board members had clenched their hands into fists, pointed straight at the Not-Director. Beneath his suit, things began slithering, things that he struck out at desperately, landing blows all over his body. His face turned red, then purple, and though his mouth was open wide, he made no sound.
A dark portal appeared, and with a thrust of the Board’s fists, the Not-Director stumbled into it and vanished.
The portal started to close.
And too late, Lenora realized that Ada had gotten to her feet and was stumbling toward the shrinking portal, saying, “Daddy … Daddy … no…”
Lenora leapt to her feet and ran, reaching for Ada, pulling her back from the portal just before it vanished with a pop.
The Board began laughing, hideously and hysterically.
Lenora spun to face them. “Don’t you dare hurt him!” she shouted.
“Oh, don’t worry about him, little one,” said the girl in purple.
“Yes,” said the man in green, “we don’t care about him. You are the one who ruined all our careful planning, all our decades of work.”
“We have a special punishment for you,” spat the woman in red.
The girl in purple grinned her sharp grin and held out her hands. The others took them.
Lenora took several steps back, as she had seen something like this once before. The Board members were melting into one another like candles, growing larger and larger. Soon they were one hideous person, six times the height of Malachi.
The monster grinned down at Lenora with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. Lenora looked everywhere for a weapon, but there was none to be found. When she turned back to the creature, it had changed.
It was a grotesque thing, composed of pure darkness, black eyes glittering. Shreds of its raincoats flapped in tatters on each side, and within the tatters, within the darkness, Lenora could see images rushing past like broken bits of a movie—the entire Library in ruins, ceilings caved in, walls fallen over, weeds winding through the rubble. Here and there she could see fires, hideous blazes with a horrid scent that stung Lenora’s nose, and the Forces of Darkness rushing forward with books in their arms, hurling them into the blaze.
And all three members of the Board towered sixty feet over Lenora and Ada, standing all alone.