The sleek, gleaming Ducati 999 leaned slightly on its spring-loaded kickstand. Chess's heart began to pound. The bike was beautiful, a little prissy in its lines, but capable of amazing things once you got it out on the open road. It wasn't really a town bike. For one thing, it pulled too hard and you really didn't get the full effect until you were well above a normal speed limit.

But damn, it was beautiful. And the library had a few standing subscriptions to some of the better cycle mags. The only thing better than looking at pictures of the bike was riding it.

It's going to be cold. But I'll get there quick. She was able to fiddle with her purse strap to lengthen it so she could settle the strap across her body under her coat. I'm going to get drenched. At least if anything demon shows up I'll be able to outrun it. God, Charlie's just going to die. Well, too bad, it's my bike too, dammit.

She straddled the bike, popped the stand, and eased the helmet over her hair. The world immediately took on a distant wavering sound. The sudden claustrophobia of the helmet was soothed when she clicked the key over and pressed the button, hearing the engine rouse itself. It wasn't a Harley's growl, but then again, nothing was.

I haven't been riding in months. She grimaced at the odometer; Charlie had been taking the baby out on walks again. Sneaky older sister, always lecturing Chess on being cautious and law-abiding. Come on, baby bike. Be nice to Mama. Let's go to the library, shall we?

It wasn't as wet as she feared, since the storm was taking a brief break. But it was cold, and she was shivering by the time she'd gone half a mile. Traffic was the lightest it ever got on the fringes of downtown. Chess penetrated the tangle of one-way streets, taking a looping circuitous route that nevertheless got her near the library in a shorter amount of time than if she'd gone the direct way. There was even—hallelujah—a parking spot in the far corner of the pay-for lot on Vox Street, under the drooping, dripping branches of a cedar tree whose roots were beginning to crack the pavement on the other side of the chain-link fence. It was a miracle the tree had survived, but the lot was dotted with small islands of greenery, and the owners made more in parking fees than they could leasing the plot for development. Unfortunately, they didn't believe in giving the library employees a break, a fact bemoaned regularly at staff meetings.

She paid the pimpled, greasy attendant, who barely looked up from his skin mag. The windows of his little hut were clouded with condensation, and Chess grimaced as she walked away, swinging her helmet. If she went in through the side door nobody would see her. Everyone would be too busy dealing with the regular Saturday circus. Tomorrow would have been better; the library was closed on Sundays and she could have walked right in the front door singing a few Gilbert & Sullivans at the top of her lungs and nobody would have been the wiser.

Needs must when the devil drives, she thought, fishing her keys out of her pocket. Rain began to flirt down, kissing already wet pavement. Chess glanced nervously over her shoulder, seeing only the blank back wall of the bank and an alley holding Dumpsters. She normally didn't work Saturdays, taking a few hours on Sunday to come in and deal with the ever-increasing reams of paperwork her job required. Still, she felt guilty, and the back of her neck crawled as if she were being watched.

Ridiculous. You sound like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Any moment now Bugs is going to pop out and say “Eh, what's up, Doc?” And you'll scream like a girl. Where's the tough Francesca Barnes, demon hunter extraordinaire?

Unfortunately, the tough Chessie had taken a powder. Maybe it was the sound of bones creaking and crackling that had pervaded her uneasy dreams and made her thrash Charlie's spare futon out of all recognition. Or the horrible, chilling sounds of gunfire as Ryan was left to deal with more of those things alone.

Or maybe it was the vision of the dead man's eyes, staring into Chess's own with wide, horrible calm. Of the woman's slumped, half-naked body, her hair clotted with drying blood.

Stop it, Chess. You knew what you were doing when you went out to hunt the skornac. Deal with it, dammit. Just deal with it.

The trouble was, she didn't want to deal with dead people. Dead demons, certainly; sometimes she could even pretend she was a character in a movie, watching particularly gruesome special effects. But a dead body she just couldn't pretend her way around. She stepped gratefully through the door and pulled it shut. It locked automatically as she slid her keys back in her pocket.

A short, dim hall turned into stairs at the end, the broom closet was to her left and the stairs going up to a back hall on the main floor slanted up on her right. She heard the drone of a weekend at the library, the indistinct noise of people speaking softly and pages turning, not to mention computers humming, and relief wrapped her in a warm blanket even as she sniffed back a sneeze. She was so cold she'd stopped shivering, and damn near soaked through. It was a blessing to be out of the wind.

She edged down the hall, grabbed the banister, and descended into the cavern of the basement. Shelves full of boxed files and other supplies jumbled together, the old boiler crouching far back and seeming to glower even though it was dead and dusty, turned-off. Chess moved to her right, penetrating the tangle of odds and ends, sloping metal bookcases and boxes of decorations.

Along the far back wall, two bookcases leaned crazily next to a blank space of wall. The first time she'd found the library, she'd been feeling around in total darkness, muttering imprecations against anyone who had voted down the last bond issue and their families unto the seventh generation, when her hand had closed around a chill, carved iron doorknob.

Now she simply strode for the blank piece of wall. It looked just like a bit of wasted space, the bookcases on either side arching over to slump against each other higher up, both twice as tall as Chess, the top shelves reachable only with the help of an ancient stepstool. Her wet sneakers squeaked and probably left prints on the dusty floor, but it was such a jumble down here nobody would notice. She sniffed, getting a good lungful of dust and the unpleasant smell of a cellar, before reaching out toward the blank wall and confidently closing her fingers.

The knob was there, cool and hard and solid even if she couldn't see it. Chess twisted it and stepped through the door, keeping her eyes closed against the sudden vertigo that would happen when her eyes tried to convince her brain this was a solid wall, and dammit, you can't walk through it!

Just as she swept the door closed from the other side she thought she heard something, a soft footstep or a sigh. But she sneezed immediately, destroying all hope for getting through the beginning of winter without a cold. Dammit. I knew I should have taken some zinc.

She snapped her fingers twice. “Fiat lux.” Her voice fell flat and chill, as if she had suddenly closed herself in a windowless space. Well, she had. “Light."

And the silver trickle of light bloomed. Chess heaved a relieved sigh. Nobody knew about this place, which made it the safest damn place for her in the whole damn city.

Time to do some research, she thought, and sneezed again, miserably. How about we make a hot cuppa tea and dry off a bit first, though? Don't want to drip on the books.

The room was long and rectangular, with a vaulted ceiling that was much higher than it should have been. It appeared to be walled in solid stone, with flagstones that seemed oddly like the ones in the troll tunnels under Jericho, fitted together with such precision the floor was a little slippery if you weren't careful. Long butcher-block tables almost black with glossy varnish marched down the middle, and along all three walls were high bookshelves full of leather spines. Dust never seemed to settle here, and the light came from silvery crystal globes hanging from the ceiling, brightening in response to need—soft and luminous when she was mixing up the salve or experimenting with the jars of herbs and other substances from the cabinet in the far left corner, bright and clear when she needed to read. She'd given up wondering how the lights seemed to know what she was doing.