Version Control
I blinked and glanced at Raven. He noticed, too. His brow furrowed slightly, just enough to register that he saw it—something was off—but not enough to say it aloud. We shared a look that was all questions and no answers.
“Wow, she’s got that ‘burn-it-all-down’ sparkle back,” I murmured.
He shrugged faintly and kept walking. If he was disturbed, he didn’t show it.
I eyeballed the room. The cool air carried that faint smell of old paper and leather bindings that usually calmed me, but today it felt wrong somehow. The space was familiar—bookshelves in their usual order, lamps casting the same golden pools across the floor and furniture—but the feeling of it had changed. Like reality was slightly misaligned. A painting hung half a centimeter off-center. Nothing obvious. Just wrong enough to feel.
Then I saw Jakin Crutchfield.
He was standing by the far wall, flipping through a thick, leather-bound tome with none of the reverence Raven or I would have shown. His dark hair was longer than I remembered—shaggy and falling into his face. His black leather duster hung open over a worn black T-shirt, and he had that same devil-may-care posture I remembered from his worst moods.
How is it he’s still here?
Even though his status at the university as a physics professor was currently in doubt due to his flirtations with female college students—including Samantha—and more than flirtations, he was still here.
Definitely some powerful magic going on.
He didn’t look up. Didn’t nod. Didn’t even smirk.
The leather spine creaked in protest as he slammed the book shut, jammed it onto the shelf so hard the entire unit rocked, and turned on one heel.
Samantha watched him walk out. Her eyes lingered on his back for a beat longer than necessary. If she had glowered at me for being Jakin’s next dalliance after her, I thought we were past that, thanks to her newfound joy manifested to the optimum.
Raven and I watched her watching him.
“When did he get here?” I whispered to Raven. I felt the warmth of his arm against mine as I leaned closer. “Were we in there that long? Jakin wasn’t in the library when we went into Gate 4.”
“No, he wasn’t. Last I heard, Aoife pulled rank on Dru and was sending him on assignment to Montana.”
“Let me guess: City-Boy griped about it incessantly.” Then again, Aoife was the most powerful High Priestess in the order, and Jakin wouldn’t have had a choice.
Still, the energy in Gate 1 felt… strange. No Charlie. No Rune. No Godfrey. None of the usual students this time of day.
I stepped toward Samantha, then stopped before I reached her.
A quick glance at the clock above the circulation desk showed 4:30 PM—exactly thirty minutes before closing time.
Dru had announced earlier today that we’d be closing up a little early, just in case she wasn’t feeling great after the dentist. She’d planned to come back, finish her notes, and head home by six, long after our visitors had gone home.
“Hey. Do you know where Charlie went? It’s not closing time yet.”
What I didn’t say aloud was what we all knew. Charlie had been goofing off every chance he could get. At least, that’s how it seemed to people who knew him. More often than not, he was pouring every ounce of his energy into making Rune happy. Some of that I knew because Dru had sent Raven and me to plant surveillance in the house where he now lived with Rune, the same house where I used to spend all my free time with Charlie. The memory of that mission still clung to me—finding that crow feather he’d kept, my pathetic acts of petty revenge with the microwave plate and batteries. Rune had been especially unhappy with Charlie since she’d discovered he kept the memento I’d given him, and since then, he’d missed more work than in the last year.
I cleared my throat.
Samantha didn’t look at me. Her black-lacquered nails tapped impatiently against the table’s polished wood as she kept packing her notebook and pen into a black leather backpack that matched the rest of her current aesthetic. If she’d come to the library for proximity to Jakin, it left neither of them in a good mood. Or me.
I tried again. “Samantha!”
“It’s Hellebore.”
Uh-oh. I thought we were past the I-only-answer-to-my-witch-name phase.
“Charlie. Circulation desk guy, credentialed librarian, currently married to a literal nightmare in lipstick?”
“Took off two hours ago.” Samantha made a vague sound. Then to herself, “Sheesh, some women just cannot let go of toxic men.”
“Excuse me?” My voice sharpened.
She rolled her eyes. “You heard me.”
I was still staring at her, deciding whether I wanted to fight her or just question reality, when the door to the back hallway opened and Dru stepped out. The hall led to her personal office, but also to the old mini-apartment where I used to live, complete with a tiny break room and storage room tucked into the same space.
She looked… normal. Tired, but normal. Maybe a little more casual than usual. Her hair was tucked behind one ear. She’d definitely changed clothes. She wore dark slacks and a long-sleeved blouse in that particular shade of wine red she always swore made her feel “commanding but open to questions.”
Dru had color-coded half her wardrobe around emotional strategy, and I’d heard this particular justification at least three times before budget meetings. Today, it looked more like an attempt to reassert control than radiate warmth. Her steps were confident and unfazed. As usual.
“Dru,” I said, surprised. “I thought you left for a dental appointment.”
She frowned. “I did. Last Friday.”
I stared at her. “No. You told us it was today. You just said… before we went to authenticate the book… you said…”
Dru shot a quick glance at Raven, who shook his head.
“Not unless I’ve developed retroactive amnesia,” Dru said. “I had a crown replaced Friday. I was telling both of you about it after lunch today. I even complained about it to Samantha, didn’t I?”
I instinctively touched my wrist where my pewter cuffs guarded old scars, a nervous habit when things felt out of control.
Samantha zipped her bag shut and swung it over one shoulder. “Don’t drag me into it.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re going to a MOJO session?”
Samantha stopped mid-step. “What?”
“Harlan Coker. Manifest Optimum JOy. You’re always talking about his seminars.”
She sneered. “You’re kidding, right? I wouldn’t go within five miles of that manipulative fraud.”
Now it was my turn to freeze. It was Raven I turned to, but he simply took it all in and didn’t react.
Dru gave me a long look. “Who?”
“Harlan Coker,” I repeated. “High priest. Motivational speaker. You were ranting about him earlier. About him being dangerous? He was in The Book of Heroes—” I stopped, throat tightening. “You know. The last book you pulled out of the box, the one that was like a who’s who of secret society VIPs.”
Dru tilted her head. “Should I know a Harlan Coker?”
A cold knot formed in my stomach. “Samantha was talking about him. She’s… she’s going to one of his events in Orlando tonight. And you said—”
“Okay,” Samantha muttered, heading for the door. “You can stop punking me now.”
“What are you talking about?” Dru asked. “Lilah, I’ve never heard of Harlan Coker.”
Samantha pushed open the door, but before it closed behind her, she added, “Good. Because you haven’t missed anything but bullshit.”
My mind reeled. Every detail—the books, the people, the memories—was almost right. Just enough to fool the eye. Just enough to gaslight the soul.
It wasn’t that the world had been rewritten. It was that our version of it had been overwritten.
I turned to Raven. “What the hell just happened?”
He looked to Dru instead. “Forget Harlan for now. What about the books from the box? Can I see what’s been logged?”
Dru nodded, walking over to the nearby table. “These two. Astrological and agricultural journals. Nothing restricted. I’ll shelve them in Gate 1.” She looked at Raven. “Did you authenticate the spell book?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s in Gate 4, waiting to be logged. Lilah and I tested it. It’s the real deal.” He paused. “What about the others?”
She blinked. “What others? The Book of Heroes? I asked Charlie to lock it in the wall safe until I could get to it.”
I stepped in. “Right. And the scorched one. The field notes from the Daeganean pilgrim—”
Dru frowned, her head tilting slightly. “What field notes?”
“You pulled it out right after the agricultural guide,” I said, my pulse accelerating. The memory was vivid—the smell of charred canvas, the crinkle of brittle pages as she’d turned them. “Canvas cover, half-burned, handwritten rituals. Smelled like rosemary and maybe blood.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember that at all. Lilah, I only saw four books in that box. And you both watched me unpack them.”
“No,” Raven said, voice firm. “There were five. We both saw them. So did Samantha. So did everyone here.”
Dru’s gaze flicked to the open table, then to the nearby safe. “I-I’m sorry. I’ve been on meds since the dentist last Friday. Maybe that’s messing with my memory.”
A draft curled at the nape of my neck. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. This wasn’t just misremembering. This was… something else.
“Let’s open the safe.” I folded my arms. “You told Charlie to lock it in the safe. The Book of Heroes. You said you didn’t want Rune getting her claws on it. Maybe he locked away the fifth book.”
“If it’ll make you feel better.” Dru crossed the room to the wall safe, spun the dial, and opened it.
Empty.
“Rune took it, Dru! I know she did!”
Dru’s voice flattened. “Rune hasn’t been in this library in weeks. You know that. I banned her.” She looked at me then, for just a second longer than needed. “It was too hard on you—watching her hover around Charlie like she belonged here. I should’ve shut it down sooner.”
Reading Raven’s face, I was suddenly aware that I’d been carrying the whole conversation like it was a lifeline. “Tell me you saw Rune here when we came in today.”
He nodded. “She was here. When you brought the books in. She was still here just before we went into Gate 4.”
A muscle twitched in Dru’s cheek. “Then I don’t know who you saw. But it wasn’t Rune.”
It was.
I didn’t say it aloud—but I knew it. Not some echo or ghost. Not a lookalike. It had been Rune. The same too-sweet scent, the same syrupy smile when Charlie looked away. The same presence that always made my skin crawl.
And if she hadn’t been there…
Then something was very wrong.
Was this related to the protection spell we’d cast in Gate 4? The wards from The Braided Light grimoire had been designed to shield us from other magic—to make us “impervious to the charms and enchantments of others” for three days. Had that somehow backfired?
“Let’s check the security footage,” Raven suggested. “Maybe that will help clarify things.”
Raven being Raven. Looking first for what made sense on the mundane level. Looking at the available data. Not basing his decisions on feelings like some of us. Okay, like me.
Dru led us to her office, a large room past the break room and storage area, and behind a security door. Her desk was dominated by three monitors, one displaying a screensaver of illuminated manuscripts.
“Wow, Dru, when did you get these?” Usually her desk was stacked with books to authenticate and maybe her laptop. She had whole teams of people to handle her tracking programs, but rarely the equipment in her own space.
The smell of her office was different, too—less leather and lavender, more metal and electricity.
Frowning at me as if she’d misheard, she waved us closer. Dru tapped the space bar on the nearest keyboard, and the screen shifted to a security grid showing different angles of the library.
“As you know, Lilah, the system keeps footage for seventy-two hours,” she explained, typing commands to scroll back through the timeline. “Let’s look at what happened this afternoon.”
The screen showed the library as it had been earlier that day and began a stop-and-jump forward motion of the day’s events. There I was, standing at the circulation desk. Raven beside me. Charlie sorting cards at the counter. Two visitors I’d never seen before. Jakin in and out of one of the secure vaults and finally settling himself in the far corner with a stack of books about different types of apocalypses. Charlie leaving unannounced. Dru and the box of books. Raven and me disappearing into the vaults to authenticate the book in Raven’s hands.
But no Rune. No Godfrey.
And Samantha was already in full Goth mode: black lipstick, heavy eyeliner. No sign of the pink-lipped, lighter version we’d seen.
“That’s not right,” I muttered, leaning closer to the screen. “Rune was right there. And Samantha was different. And Godfrey. And there were five books, not four.”
“So I’m not misremembering?” Concern crept into Dru’s expression. “Lilah—”
“I’m not imagining things,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I took a breath. “Sorry. But I know what I saw.”
“We both saw it,” Raven added quietly.
“Maybe we should talk privately for a moment,” I said to Raven. “Dru, could you check when Charlie’s badge was last used? He might have left a digital trail.”
She nodded, clearly relieved to have a concrete task. “Good idea. By the way, I have an assignment coming up for you, and Lilah, I know it’s going to be hard on you, but I need you and Raven to plant some surveillance equipment in Charlie’s house. I suspect he and Rune are selling some of our holdings before they get logged in and chipped. I’m not sure how they’re weaseling them out of the building or if they’re intercepting them, but the priesthood wants me to get to the bottom of it. Quietly. Raven will install the surveillance while you search for anything that belongs inside our vaults.”
I froze. We just did that. Last week. In the reality I remembered, anyway. I specifically recalled vaulting over the back fence, hiding under Rune’s nose, then letting my idea of petty revenge creep into a hot mission. But Dru said it like it had never happened. Like we hadn’t already been inside that house—hadn’t already seen the worst.
I stared at Raven. The slight furrow in his brow told me he remembered, too. This wasn’t déjà vu. This was a rerun of a show we never agreed to rewatch.
“Uh, Dru, we’ll be right back.”
“Sure. Give me five minutes. I’ll come find you.”
I dragged Raven out to the circulation desk in the abandoned Gate 1 where Dru wouldn’t hear us.
“Raven, what the hell is happening?” I whispered once we were alone. My fingers gripped the edge of the desk so hard my knuckles went white.
He held up one finger, listening. The entire library seemed quieter than usual, including downstairs where most students spent their time. Normally, crowds gave my empathic gifts anxiety, but this time, it was the distinct lack of crowds. No emotions filling up the library and overwhelming me. And no one at all within earshot.
“Shhhh, we’re okay. There’s nothing wrong with you, Lilah.”
“Did we hallucinate the same thing? Like, did that spell book do something to us? Am I… am I dreaming? Oh, my God. This is what they call lucid dreaming, isn’t it?”
Raven stood close, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder, warm and solid. The scent of his sandalwood cologne grounded me, his presence a steady counterpoint to my growing anxiety. “No. Not a dream, lucid or otherwise. The protection spell was real. I don’t think what’s happening is related. No ill intent that we could feel, remember? But something out here changed while we were in Gate 4.”
“Everyone else seems to think this is normal.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Are we the crazy ones?”
“No. The spell in the grimoire. The Wards of Braided Light are protection spells written by Mythryx. Our spell made us immune to other spells. That’s why we can see what’s really happening.”
Understanding dawned. “You think this weirdness is some kind of spell.”
“Exactly. Or the result of one. It’s a time shift. I’m sure of it.”
“A what?”
“A shift in realities. Remember when I was telling you about what Veronica has been through for the last few years? That someone in the priesthood shifted her timelines so that her life is just a little different from what was supposed to happen?”
I nodded. Veronica Winzler von Windlach, or Jaryx as her soul was known, was a well-respected High Priestess some said should have been the leader of the priesthood instead of Aoife Jung. According to Raven, her reality had shifted just enough to cost her everything she held dear. She was still fighting her way back.
“Does this mean we can’t get back to our timeline or something?”
“I don’t know, but we’re insulated from the shift. At least, I think we are.”
“For three days,” I added, remembering the spell’s duration.
“For three days,” he agreed.
“And then what?”
“Lilah, I… honestly, I have no idea. We probably realize what’s going on only because we have a protection spell around us now.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what changed?”
I ticked off the inconsistencies on my fingers: Samantha’s sudden Goth revival, Jakin’s reappearance, Rune’s vanishing act, Dru’s dental déjà vu. The wrong outfit, the wrong tech, the wrong number of books. The Book of Heroes still real, but the field notes erased like they were never written. It was all stacked wrong—like a story retold with the middle ripped out.
I met Raven’s eyes. “Do you think anyone else noticed?”
“I don’t know. We have only the people who’ve been in Gate 1 as barometers. Mainly Dru and Samantha.”
“And we know something is related to Harlan Coker. Dru doesn’t remember him now, but Samantha still does,” I pointed out. “Just… differently. Samantha called him a fraud instead of a guru.”
Raven’s expression darkened. “Why is Harlan suddenly getting our attention? If you want to know where the magic is being worked, you look at the patterns, or the disruptions in the patterns.”
“You think Harlan is behind this?”
“Hmmm, not his style. But he has influence over Samantha that’s visible. In this reality, he’s not an influence on her. And Dru is unaware of him. So it’s more like he’s an ingredient in a spell than the wielder of it.”
A chill settled in my bones. “An ingredient for what? To change reality?”
“Or erase people from history,” he said quietly. “Both. I need to do some research. These changes have something to do with Harlan, but I don’t know what. The priesthood tolerates him, but he doesn’t have much of a place in it anymore, and certainly no say in how it’s run.”
“Does it mean anything that he was one of the last additions to The Book of Heroes?”
Raven grimaced. “When it was written in 2015, he might have been regarded as a hero who motivated others and changed lives—not just within the priesthood, but for ordinary humans, through his inspirational writings and speaking engagements. The priesthood doesn’t think of him now as someone with real impact in the world. Another few years, and the author of that who’s who might not have been so impressed with him.”
“That’s sad. That a man’s existence doesn’t make a difference when it might have once. Is there a way to track what might have changed about him that changed reality?” I tried to say it casually, as if shifting timelines was something I encountered daily without it being a threat to my own existence.
Raven shrugged and stepped around the desk to Charlie’s station with its computer monitor looking like a big daisy with its yellow note papers all around the screen. The overhead lights flickered once, making me jump. I almost gagged when I saw what the notes said. They were all love notes from Rune. Between the keyboard and the monitor were several frameless photographs of Rune in too much makeup, a feather boa, and nothing else that I could discern.
“That’s… new. Isn’t it? I could have sworn Charlie’s wedding photo was there when we came out of Dru’s office.”
What I didn’t say to Raven was that I was the kind of obsessed person to notice that sort of thing about a former boyfriend I had to look at every day.
Raven cleared his throat and turned the boudoir photo face down on the desk, then slid it underneath the keyboard. He tapped a few keys and the screen bloomed to life, this time with a screensaver of Charlie and Rune on their honeymoon to some beach.
“Weren’t they in the mountains?” I bent closer. “She never shut up about their week at that resort in Gatlinburg.”
Whatever Raven did next, he overrode any security on Charlie’s computer and in another second was into the fancy software Dru had installed on some of the library’s computers. “Harlan Coker,” he muttered as he tapped on the keyboard.
Nothing.
No results found.
“That’s… not good. Okay, cross-referencing.”
He and I both knew that Dru’s IT team had the best tech available. By now, we should have had everything we could ever want to know about Harlan Coker summed up in bullet format for easy reading.
He stopped to squint at the ceiling. “What did Samantha call it? Manifest Optimum JOy. MOJO.”
No results found.
No records. No social media. No websites. No legal documents.
No Manifesting Optimum Joy videos on YouTube. No events tonight in Orlando.
No internet presence whatsoever.
Almost as if he had never lived at all.
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