Reality Check
The world shifted.
I felt the pop in my ears first, like the pressure drop on a flight. Then a rush of heat swept over my skin. One moment, the air had smelled like sulfur and old ash, heavy with cold and dread. The next, it was comfortably warm, the air clean and still, almost humming with invisible power. My knees buckled slightly as the world settled.
We were back.
Staggering, I reached out blindly for the edge of the table. The sudden rightness of the air almost hurt. I took a breath and coughed.
This air was too clean. Too full of… memory. Emotion. My throat caught on it. My empathic gifts resurrected on the spot.
Gate 4 surrounded us. Intact. Familiar. Waiting.
The big oak table stood exactly where we’d left it, its wide surface gleaming faintly under the warm lights. Around us, the library vault was just as we remembered it: the high, arched ceiling; the perimeter of leather sofas and mismatched reading chairs; the faint, ever-present scent of old paper and incense. Faint chalk lines undisturbed, the symbol circle we’d drawn on the tiled floor was still there. It felt like we’d never left, and yet, we had traveled lifetimes.
The spell book sat on the table beside us, open to the page still marked in bold, slightly smudged ink:
You are my anchor.
My eyes locked onto those words. I stared so long I began to lose all sense of time. The ink looked fresh. Too fresh. Was it still wet? I couldn’t tell. Only when my eyes began to burn did I realize I hadn’t even blinked yet.
I gasped softly and turned to Raven. Then I spun, looking around for a reflection.
“There,” I whispered, tugging his sleeve. A framed manuscript page hung in the reading alcove to our left, its glass surface offering a dim reflection. I rushed over, pulling him with me, adrenaline surging through me.
I stared into the glass, and there we were. I saw myself, flushed and breathless. Raven, solid and steady beside me.
“We’re here.” I still held my breath, just to make sure.
He didn’t speak, but when I turned to look at him, he nodded once—slow and sure. Blood drummed in my ears, but it was the right kind of drumming. The kind that meant: alive.
Then my eyes widened. I inhaled sharply.
“Oh, no.”
I bolted.
Still holding Raven’s hand, I dragged him with me to the archway that marked the beginning of Gate 3, then dropped his hand as I swiped my badge and punched in my code. As soon as I passed through the threshold, there was a low click, and the door behind me began its slow-motion, impossible-to-stop closure.
“Shit—sorry,” I muttered, spinning to watch the green and red lights along the frame flash briefly, resetting the security sequence. Through the slow-closing crack, Raven, already reaching for the access panel, gave me a wry look.
One after the next, we passed the secure gates in reverse: Gate 3 to Gate 2, security wards flickering as they deactivated behind each of them. My urgency propelled me forward. Every vault opened just like it had three days ago, but I didn’t pause to appreciate it.
I slammed the final vault door open and burst out into Gate 1, the Special Collections Library reception area—a spacious, open chamber filled with study tables, rare book displays, and the curved walnut circulation desk. Familiar chairs, tall leaded-glass windows, rows of carefully lit cases. Everything was exactly as it should be.
Yet… something was off.
People turned slowly. Not in alarm. Almost as if they were reacting to something that had already happened. I heard myself yell “Everybody freeze!” before the words left my lips. The sound echoed back at me from different corners of the room. A visiting scholar dropped a pen. A Wiccan student I’d seen a few times looked up from a book on divination with a delayed blink, as if waking from a deep dream.
Reality wasn’t just settling back into place.
It was catching up with me.
I stood in the center of Gate 1, my breath ragged, the echoes of my own voice still hanging in the air.
The room snapped into clarity. Like a magic lens locking into focus.
At the nearest reading table, Samantha looked up slowly from a worn paperback copy of Manifesting Your Ideal Timeline: The Law of Attraction in an Entropic Age. Her strawberry lip gloss caught the light, and her dark brows knitted just slightly—surprise tinged with mild irritation. She slid a Gothic cross bookmark between the pages before closing the book with a patient sigh. She looked at me as if she were the mother of a toddler who had just spilled finger paint on her vision board.
Godfrey, a religious studies student who styled himself to look like a 1960s version of American Jesus, was standing at a bookshelf filled with Bibles and books about angels. He paused, confused, but froze as ordered and raised his hands to shoulder height.
On the other side of the room, behind the circulation desk, Rune stiffened as she zipped her denim backpack. Her expression, caught halfway between smug detachment and nervous calculation, hardened into something cold.
She didn’t even turn her head.
Instead, she sighed dramatically and murmured, just loud enough to be heard, “Oh, her again…”
I realized I’d been expecting, somewhere in the back of my mind, to see Emry behind the desk, the friend both Raven and I had loved. But this wasn’t Groundhog Day repeating itself.
I took a step closer, fists clenched. “Where’s Dru?”
Samantha tapped her book against her palm. “She said she had a dentist appointment, remember? Something about an old crown coming loose.” She blinked and tilted her head. “Why?”
“And Charlie?” I scanned the space.
Charlie should be behind the desk, not Rune. Rune shouldn’t even be here at all, I thought.
This time, Rune answered but with a forced casualness so obvious it was practically a billboard. “Hmmm, must be in the back. Said he was looking for… something.” She finally turned to look at Samantha. “Didn’t he say he was grabbing a folio or something?” Her voice was syrupy now, laced with that brittle edge of someone playing a role they’re desperate to control.
Samantha didn’t even glance at her. “Don’t ask me. I don’t manage his calendar.”
Rune’s lips pressed into a thin line. She clutched her bag tighter, its backpack straps looped around her shoulder, and adjusted it in one graceful motion.
I took another step. “Where’s The Book of Heroes?”
Rune sighed again, this time with full theatrical flair. “Are we really doing this?” She turned to Samantha instead of me. “Can you tell her I’m not doing this today?”
Samantha leaned back in her chair. She crossed her legs slowly, deliberately. “You’re the one with the bag, sweetie. And the history.”
Rune smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “History is in the past. I thought you were all about living in the now.”
“I am,” Samantha replied, the words silky and sharp. “Which is why I don’t lend my grimoires to people who mistake selling them on auction sites for promises to take good care of them.”
Rune’s nostrils flared, but she smoothed her expression instantly. She pivoted back toward the exit and crossed in front of me, deliberately looking back at Samantha instead of at me.
“Tell my husband I’ll see him at home.” She was already reaching for the door handle even though she was twenty feet away.
Samantha didn’t move. “You want to send a message to Charlie? Say it yourself.”
Rune paused, back still to me, her hand almost on the crashbar of the exit door. The tension in the room knotted, tighter and tighter, as if even the books were holding their breath.
I took a step closer, determination flooding through me. I wasn’t letting Rune walk out of here.
Not this time.
Before Rune could open the main door and step into the hallway, I lunged forward. I grabbed for and missed the backpack as Rune shifted sideways. Already in free fall, I tackled her from behind.
The impact knocked the wind out of both of us. Rune shrieked as we hit the floor, her backpack slamming down first, buckles clattering, the sound loud and jarring in the quiet of the library. My shoulder drove into Rune’s back as we skidded across the floor, and Rune twisted, trying to throw me off, fingers clawing at the floor.
I gritted my teeth, breath coming in gasps. “Give it back! I know you have it!”
Rune twisted beneath me, slippery with panic. My fingers locked around a strap, but my grip faltered as Rune bucked violently, and for a split second, I was flying—memories flaring behind my eyes. A stolen book. A stolen kiss. My own betrayal. This wasn’t about one moment. This was about every one.
“I don’t have anything!” Rune screamed. “You’re insane!”
Chairs scraped against the floor. A table wobbled. Samantha shot to her feet, startled, her own book thudding onto the floor.
One of the other library visitors—Godfrey—let out a sharp yelp and ducked behind a bookcase. “What in tarnation!”
The second one just stared, a forbidden but half-eaten protein bar paused halfway to her mouth.
Raven came bounding out of Gate 2. His boots slammed the threshold with its special security alarms. “Lilah!” he barked. “Let go! Rune, stop thrashing!”
Still shrieking, Rune clutched her backpack to her chest. She curled around it protectively as I wrestled with the straps and buckles.
Charlie emerged from the back rooms just in time to see me straddling Rune.
I yanked at the pack.
Rune tried to dig her long fingernails into my forearms. My pewter cuffs were impenetrable, so Rune instead swiped at my eyes.
I planted a knee in her chest to push her back, but one fingernail still caught my chin and left an instant line of blood.
“For fuck’s sake, Lilah!” Charlie bellowed. “You can’t assault my wife every time you get jealous!”
He dove between Raven and Samantha to grab my arms but tripped over the claw-foot leg of a display table set up with antique miniature books, sending it toppling with a crash. Tiny tomes scattered like dominoes as the stool clattered to the floor before he could regain his balance.
Samantha blinked as if just remembering she had legs and choices. She darted forward, bent low, and snatched the backpack from between Rune and me.
“What am I looking for?” Breathless, she stood and took a single step backward.
Rune, still on the ground, lashed out and caught Samantha’s ankle with a desperate grip. She dug her fingernails into Samantha’s bare skin. Samantha nearly toppled, hopping backward with a startled, “Whoa!” before yanking her leg free and stumbling into a chair.
“You bitch! Give it back!” Rune shrieked. “That’s my property!”
“No,” Samantha said coolly, regaining her balance. “Everyone else might play nice to spare Charlie’s feelings, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not everyone else.” She began yanking open the zippers and flipping compartments. “Let’s see what you’ve got stashed in here, Little Miss I’m-Such-an-Innocent-Victim!”
Raven had grabbed Charlie and was holding him back with one arm. He planted him in a chair like a bouncer at last call. Of all the people in the room, Charlie was the least likely to be able to defend himself.
Rune shoved me backward onto my elbows, then crawled after Samantha. “Stop! Stop—none of this belongs to you!”
“And yet,” Samantha muttered, “you’ve made a career of pretending that things that aren’t yours… are.”
Samantha upended the open backpack. Contents spilled across the floor—pens, crumpled tissues, half-melted lip balm. Three single, unmarked keys. I blinked as I recognized Charlie’s handwriting on one of the torn notebook pages. Rune hadn’t just been stealing books. She’d been collecting scraps of information, and this one looked like a password.
Samantha gave the backpack a shake as she kicked at Rune’s fast hands. More notes. A hastily scrawled list. A piece of mail addressed to Dru, which Raven quickly grabbed.
And then it happened.
The last item slipped free from the bag and hit the floor with a strange, solid thunk.
A sleek, black volume with no title on the cover.
The Book of Heroes.
The air shifted, just slightly, as if the whole room had inhaled.
Everyone went still.
Even Rune stopped clawing.
Everyone stopped but Charlie. Charlie, whose view was blocked by Raven.
“I can’t believe what a bitch you are, Lilah,” he snarled, jabbing a finger in my direction as he stood. “When are you going to get it through your head that we are over? You need to move on! I’m never going to leave Rune for—”
But then he saw it.
Bewildered, he looked from the book to Rune. His expression changed to disbelief.
“Rune… Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Rune’s mouth opened. Closed. She looked toward the door, then to Samantha, then back to Charlie. Her expression went blank.
“Someone must have—must have put that in my bag.”
To anyone else, she might have seemed lost or hurt or blameless, but my empathic antennae were on high alert. There was nothing innocent about Rune now, just as there never had been anything innocent about her. Samantha was right: Rune had a history. So did Samantha, but she was truly trying to be a better person.
“It wasn’t me! I swear, my sweet Charlie! Maybe one of those weird cult students…” Rune glanced up at Godfrey.
His jaw dropped as he made a face. “Great Googly Balls! What the heck?” He threw his palms out in front of him, but the expression on his face remained.
“Or it was Samantha! She’s always hated me!”
“Who?” Charlie said, his voice flat. “Who would do that?”
Rune faltered. “Lilah. It was Lilah. She’s trying to frame me. She wants you back, and if she can get rid of me—”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, that’s a no on all three counts.”
But Charlie was already shaking his head. “Rune, sweetheart, you’re going to get me fired,” he said quietly. “You’re going to burn everything down around us. And for what?”
He didn’t look at me.
Not once.
But the resignation in his voice said everything. He knew. He’d married a thief and a fraud, and he was stuck with her. He wasn’t going to admit it—not here, not now, probably not ever—but he knew. I had spent months hurting over what he’d done and regretting ever knowing him. He had married the wrong woman, but now, today, it was Charlie who had regrets.
I slowly walked over, boots silent on the floor. I knelt and picked up the book, turning it in my hands.
The book was cool, heavier than I remembered. It buzzed faintly under my fingertips, as if remembering me. As if waiting.
I handed it to Raven, who took it with a genuine smile for me.
Samantha looked at me and hiked her chin. “You and me. All that stuff that happened when you first came here. Are we good now?”
“Yeah. We are.”
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