Off by a Breath

Lilah · Chapter 4 of 21 · 13-minute read

Raven and I stood in front of the circulation desk, both of us staring at the blank search screen as if willing it to fill with data that simply wasn’t there. No websites. No podcast transcripts. No videos. No MOJO seminars. No mention of him in cached articles or priesthood records. Just an empty white field with the message:

No results found for “Harlan Coker”

Gently, I elbowed Raven out of my way. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, itching to try another combination, another spelling—anything that might prove this wasn’t happening. But even as I typed variations of his name, I already knew. The emptiness on the screen mirrored the hollowness growing inside my chest.

This isn’t helping my anxiety.

“He’s gone,” Raven said hoarsely. “Like… erased.”

I leaned back from the monitor, arms crossed tightly over my ribs as if holding myself together. The library’s temperature seemed to have dropped a few degrees, though the air vents above us were silent. “This doesn’t make sense. He was in The Book of Heroes. Near the front. It said he was a High Priest. A motivational speaker. He changed lives. Like Samantha said. And Dru thought he was dangerous.”

Raven nodded. His jaw muscles tensed beneath his skin. “And now—nothing. No footprint. No memory. Not even from Dru.”

“But you remember him. I never met him. Or at least, I don’t think I did.”

“You can’t remember someone you never met. Harlan was, eh, charismatic. You would definitely have remembered him if you’d met him. On the other hand, I did know him. That’s not in my imagination.”

“You didn’t like him.”

Raven grunted. “That’s an understatement. I despised him. The way he uses his gifts to get into the heads of the vulnerable. Dru was correct when she said he was dangerous. And Samantha was right.”

“Which time?”

“Both. He did a lot of good changing lives outside the priesthood, but she was also right that he was a fraud. ‘Usurper,’ Aoife called him. He liked power and wanted more of it. Not that he didn’t find power in helping other people. That might be admirable. Some people find their identity in helping others. But that kind of fulfillment wasn’t enough. I saw that more than once, and I was only on the periphery, watching him try to manipulate his way into control of the priesthood so he could remake the world to fit his ideals.”

I laughed. “Just another day in the Order of Daegan. Politics everywhere you look.”

“And yet some of us hate the politics and love the public service.”

“It’s kind of a shame for him, don’t you think, Raven? That the only person who remembers him disliked him so much. I’ve heard you say ‘that which is remembered lives,’ so if it weren’t for you, Harlan Coker would be truly dead.”

“Which is why priests and priestesses usually contribute at least one book of their own to our library system. Even after memory fails or centuries pass, something remains of them. Only now, with Harlan and his flagship MOJO program, there’s no record. Only bad memories of him. Only mine.”

“Raven?” Something else felt off-center. This library was too quiet. “Where’s Dru?”

We both glanced down the hallway toward Dru’s office. Her door remained closed and the slim pane of frosted glass dark. The lights at the end of the corridor were all off. Even in the storage area and break room.

We called her name twice. No answer.

I felt the pulse of the protection spell around us—not a visible aura, but a subtle pressure against my skin, like standing too close to a subwoofer playing a frequency just below hearing range. The spell from The Wards of Braided Light was still active; I was sure of it. Without it, we’d probably be just like everyone else—oblivious to the seismic shifts in reality unfolding around us.

Without it, Raven wouldn’t remember his disdain for the older priest.

“Are you okay, Lilah? I’d swear you just turned a pale shade of green.” He touched my shoulder but didn’t linger.

“Mmmm.” I shook my head and closed my eyes tight to get my bearings.

“Veronica tells me that’s normal in reality shifts.”

Normal, sure. Except I already lived with anxiety as a background hum—and now it was blaring like an emergency alert no one else could hear.

“Maybe it’s Samantha.” I kept my voice low, even though it seemed the entire library was vacant. “She’s always been interested in darker magic. And she clearly has issues with Harlan now, even if she doesn’t remember liking him.”

“Or did before he was erased.”

I winced. “I can’t keep up. She adored him, then hated him, and now he doesn’t exist.”

“That’s how shifts work.” Raven dragged a hand over his hair where it had fallen loose from its topknot and adjusted the tiny daggers that served as hairpins. “Or it could be Jakin. It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed magical boundaries to get what he wants. He just hasn’t been successful in a while.”

“Maybe Rune somehow got involved,” I suggested. “She’s been stealing books, selling pages out of them. What if she found something powerful?”

But the likeliest explanation—the one neither of us wanted to say aloud—was that we did this. Raven authenticated the grimoire. I read the spell. And we were the only two in Gate 4 when it happened. Our spell predated every outcome we were aware of. Maybe it had anchored us in the original timeline before whatever was rewriting reality took hold.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, where a headache was forming. “What did we do, Raven?”

Instead of answering, he moved to the front of Gate 1 and dropped the privacy shades across the tall windows that looked out over the vestibule and the staircase leading down to all the non-dangerous books available to university students. Then he flipped the door sign to CLOSED. Protocol allowed this when Gate 4 was active and Dru was off-duty or busy in her office and no one else was on-duty. It bought us space, time to think.

I felt a wave of dizziness pass through me, like the floor had tilted for just a split second. When it passed, I realized Raven was watching me.

“You felt that too?” he asked.

“You mean it wasn’t my anxiety?” I steadied myself against a reading table. “Another shift?”

“Maybe.” He studied the security door leading to the vaults. “Let’s go back in.”

“To Gate 4?” I straightened. “You think whatever happened is still happening there?”

“I don’t know. Just trying to figure it out. Maybe something’s still in the book. Something we missed.”

“And if it’s not the book? Then what did we just unleash?”

Together, we approached the first security door. One at a time, per protocol, we entered the vault system—individually badging through Gate 2, with its glass cases of rare manuscripts and display copies, then Gate 3, with its heavier security and thicker walls. Finally, we reached Gate 4.

The door hissed open on pneumatic hinges, and I stepped inside first.

What I saw made my throat close.

Dru was already inside, sitting casually on one of the deep leather sofas, The Wards of Braided Light grimoire open in her lap. She was flipping through its pages as if she’d been there all day, one finger tracing the ancient symbols with casual interest. She looked up at our entrance, startled but not alarmed.

“Oh. There you are,” she said, voice warm but with an unfamiliar cadence.

Raven and I locked eyes just long enough to register the wrongness. The vault felt different—subtly off. The air was warmer than usual, heavy with the scent of old books and something sweeter, like vanilla or almond extract. While it was normal for antiquarian books to smell of vanillin and benzaldehyde as the organic compounds in the paper broke down, this was far more synthetic. Off-brand. It was still vanilla… but fluffed up, sugared over. Like someone had taken Dru’s usual edge and smoothed it down until nothing sharp remained.

I wrinkled my nose and tried not to sneeze. Dru was strictly a bergamot and amber kind of person. Or maybe cashmere and fig. But vanilla and marshmallow?

“We just—” Raven started, but stopped, clearly reassessing. “Professor? How long have you been in here?”

Dru shrugged, a loose, rolling movement foreign to her usual precise gestures. I hadn’t seen her move that way since before I dragged her out of a wrecked car only seconds before a bazooka turned it into a flaming heap. “I’ve been here awhile. I needed some peace and quiet. My jaw’s been pounding, but I can’t get in to see the dentist until a week from Friday.”

I stared at her, my empathic senses tingling with wrongness. She was dressed more casually than usual—a long, flowing cardigan in soft beige over a simple top, comfortable-looking pants, her silver-streaked hair pulled back in a low, loose bun instead of her customary elegant twist or perfectly styled bob. Not a typical Daeganean archivist look. Not Dru’s usual controlled, elegant aesthetic.

No jewel tones to match her “winter” palette. Just beige, like she was trying not to take up space.

The difference was jarring. It was Dru but… not quite. Like someone had replaced her with a nearly identical copy that wasn’t quite matching the original.

“You’re authenticating the grimoire?”

Her mouth pulled awkwardly to one side, then her brows shot upward. “Of course. That was our plan. Actually, I’m done. Just wanted the peace and quiet, like I said.”

“Dru, do you mind if we take a look at it?”

I walked over and gently took the book from her lap, handing it to Raven. His fingers brushed mine as he took it, a brief touch that felt like the only real thing in this increasingly unreal world. Holding the book low enough for me not to stand on my tiptoes, he flipped to the section we’d used for the protection spell, his brow furrowed in concentration.

There it was.

“You are my anchor.”

Our spell. My handwriting. Still there. Even the stray strand of hair I’d jokingly marked the spot with was still there. At least the book hadn’t changed since we’d last seen it.

Raven silently turned the grimoire so I could see it better, then shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“I don’t think we caused this,” I whispered.

Dru frowned at us, her head tilting in confusion as she flung her palms wide. “All right, you two. What’s going on?”

How do you make a person believe that their reality isn’t reality?

I knelt in front of the sofa, putting myself at eye level with her. Up close, I could see other subtle differences—her makeup seemed a shade lighter, the lines around her mouth less pronounced. A scar normally hidden at the edge of her hairline, behind her ear, was missing, too. From that time when she was attacked in her own home with one of the antique weapons.

“Dru, things are… off. Something’s happening.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about. And why are you—are you sniffing me?”

I stood up quickly. “Uh, sorry. I thought you were wearing a different perfume.”

“You know I don’t wear perfume.” She paused to smell the back of her hand. “I don’t smell anything but soap. Is it that strong?”

“No. No, just different.”

“Lilah, why are you looking at me like that?” She frowned at Raven. “You, too. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No worries, Professor. It’s probably some kind of Daeganean magic. It happened this afternoon. We’ve noticed some, um, anomalies.”

I knew what he was doing: trying not to scare Dru. I wished I’d been afforded the same luxury.

“Um, okay? What kinds of things? I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Well, Samantha is in full Goth makeup again and insisting we call her Hellebore. Charlie disappeared. And you⁠—”

Dru lifted an eyebrow. “Me?”

“You’re not, ah, where you’re supposed to be.”

Dru chuckled, but it was thin, uncertain. Her fingers toyed with the fringe of her cardigan. “Where am I supposed to be, exactly? We’ve got plenty of staff, and Charlie has the day off. He’s probably at home.”

I pressed harder. “But Samantha⁠—”

Dru cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Samantha’s one of our best student assistants. If she’s wearing crazy makeup, she’s probably prepping for story time in the kids’ library downstairs. She’s playing the part of the Evil Queen in one of their fairytale productions. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.”

Kids’ library? The university library had never had a children’s section. Not in any reality I’d ever known.

Raven stepped in, his voice steady but with an edge of urgency. “Do you remember Harlan Coker?”

Dru squinted, as if searching through mental files. “No. Should I?”

My voice tightened. “He was in The Book of Heroes.”

Dru shook her head. A flash of annoyance crossed her face. “We never opened it. Raven was supposed to authenticate it today while I examined The Wards of Braided Light.”

Raven opened his mouth to contradict her, then closed it. I could almost see the calculations running behind his eyes, deciding how much to press, how much to reveal.

I straightened, my knees cracking slightly. “Where is it now? The Book of Heroes.”

“Oh.” Distracted, Dru pressed her fingers briefly to her jaw, wincing as if the pain had flared again. “It’s at the circulation desk. I changed the protocol so that our scholar-in-residence has a chance at authentication and then logs the books when we’re done. It’s good training for her.”

We have a new scholar-in-residence?

“Speaking of which, Raven, I’m surprised you’re running behind. You’re supposed to report back to Aoife by the end of the week.”

That name—Aoife Jung—didn’t surprise me, but the tone did. There was no tension, no edge. Dru said it like they texted each other cat memes at midnight. In our timeline, she only ever mentioned Aoife with the brittle politeness of someone who followed orders she didn’t agree with. This sounded more like… alignment.

“You told Aoife about the new books?”

The deal was, Aoife and the priesthood occasionally sent Dru an acquisition task, often assigned to Raven or me, but for the most part, they left Dru alone to handle the Special Collections Library. She’d fulfilled whatever blood oath she’d sworn, and a temporary peace had been the prize. They’d never been friends. Ever.

“Why wouldn’t I tell Aoife?” Dru waved us off, clearly done with the conversation. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to get back to reading. My tooth hurts.”

We nodded slowly and began to leave, recognizing the dismissal. Gate protocol required we exit one at a time, waiting for each secure door to close before the next opened. Raven remained behind while I stepped through the sequence first.

It was an incredibly slow process. Intentionally slow. Sometimes it took a solid fifteen minutes for one person to get from Gate 9 all the way back to Gate 1. Both the forced wait and forced isolation always set my nerves on fire.

The air in Gate 3 felt denser, almost viscous, as if reality itself was congealing around me. If there was such a thing as wading through molasses, this was it.

By the time I reached Gate 2, my skin felt hypersensitive, each brush of fabric against my arms leaving ghost sensations. The protection spell was working overtime, I realized, insulating me from something trying to rewrite me along with everything else.

As the final door to Gate 1 clicked shut behind me, I paused to wait for Raven, but my steps slowed. The molasses caught up with me, and I froze.

Across the room, sitting at one of the central tables, was a blonde woman in a soft, trendy sweater and tailored slacks. She was laughing, the sound bright and musical, her head tipped back to expose the pale column of her throat. Across from her sat Jakin Crutchfield.

But not the Jakin I knew. This one was clean-cut, clean-shaven, in a pressed button-down black shirt and black—preppy-professor-meets-Daeganean-dress-code clothes that the Jakin I knew wouldn’t be caught dead in. His hair was short, styled precisely, and there wasn’t a tattoo in sight except for the mark of Daegan on his right wrist.

He was leaning forward, speaking animatedly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He was… flirting. Not in the darkly seductive way I’d known during our brief entanglement. This was lighthearted, charming—almost wholesome.

At a nearby table sat Godfrey, the religious studies student I recognized—head shaved to a gleaming dome, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms inked with Bible verses, reading from a worn, leather-bound book.

And behind them⁠—

No!

How?

Sound rushed away from me, leaving only a hollow ringing. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be sick or scream with happiness.

Behind them, calmly leafing through a large book of astrology diagrams, was Emry.

Emry, with her wiry black hair tucked behind one ear, the same way she’d worn it for as long as I’d known her.

Emry, with her lips moving silently as she followed a complex sequence of symbols.

Emry, wearing a vintage red cardigan I recognized because I’d given it to her for her birthday after she talked me down when Charlie and I broke up.

Emry.

My former best friend.

Who died.

In Raven’s arms.

← Chapter 3: Version Control Chapter 5: Un-Erased →

You’re reading The Book of Heroes free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →