"A private library. On the Hill."

Sorcerers. "I'm psychic." I didn't like that answer.

"You don't know anybody up there?"

"I know people. Met another one today. They ain't our kind of people."

"You wouldn't know anybody in The Call?"

"Uh... Why?"

"You could try to get into the library at their Institute For Racial Purity. Where they research racial issues. They came here trying to hire a librarian. They have a lot of stuff from private sources. They wanted it cataloged and organized so they could use it to support their theories."

"Linda Lee, you're a treasure."

"I know. What made you realize it?"

"I do know somebody in The Call."

"Aha!" the chief librarian shrieked in the distance. "I've caught you, my pretty!" But she crowed too soon. She always declares before she has me in sight. I moved with trained silence and deliberate speed to the end of a stack. I could remain unseen there till the old woman committed to a particular path. Linda Lee would signal me, I'd take a different route and once again the old woman would be scratching her head and wondering what she'd really heard.

It's unnatural that anyone her age would hear so well.

Linda Lee whispered, "I'll see what I can find out." Then she glommed on and kissed me. Linda Lee knows kissing better than she knows books. I didn't start it but after about four seconds I was plenty read to continue. Weider who? Shapeshifter what? I don't know no Relway.

The chief librarian cackled.

"I've got you for sure this time, my proud beauty! I'll teach you to tryst with your leman in a holy place!" She stomped and clomped her way closer.

I slipped away from Linda Lee, who winked and made noise heading another direction while I sneaked between stacks on little mouse feet. We'd played this game before. Linda Lee probably more times than me.

"Awk! Shit!" said the Goddamn Parrot, with impeccable timing. "Help!" He started flapping.

I'd kill him for sure this time.

A vise closed on my right shoulder. It turned me. I gaped at the ugly grin of a foul-breathed ogre I hadn't seen before and whom I hadn't heard coming. He was twice my size and twice as stupid. I had a notion he wouldn't ask me to recommend a good book.

In fact, I suspected he was the kind who liked to hit people and watch them bounce. Exhibit number one: He had a gargantuan green fist pulled back three yards, all set to whistle my way.

The old lady had foxed me.

I kicked the ogre hard where a sharp knock will drop any reasonably constructed critter, puking. The ogre just showed me more green teeth and put some moxie into his punch. Only trolls and zombies are less vulnerable there.

I never got a shot at his ears.

Ogres drop like stones if you slap both ears at the same time. So I'm told. Nobody I know ever got close enough to try. The source is always a friend of a friend of a friend, but, "It's gospel, Garrett. It really happens that way."

Before the lights went out I had the satisfaction of knowing the old woman would need weeks to pick up all the books that scattered while I was flying through the stacks.

Might be wise not to visit Linda Lee at work for a while.

If anybody robbed me while I was splashed all over the alley behind the library, they sure overlooked the one thing I wouldn't mind losing. I came around to find the Goddamn Parrot muttering like one of those psycho guys who stomp around shaking their heads and arguing with ghosts. I hurt everywhere. I had book burns. That ogre had pounded me good after I couldn't see to make a getaway.

There'd been way too much of this stuff lately. I never recovered from one thumping before I stumbled into the next.

Was I nurturing some kind of death wish?

63

Time to tap an old resource.

Time to drop in on the Cranky Old Men.

I didn't look forward to it. It wouldn't be pleasant. But with my aches and pains and premature cynicism I'd fit right in.

They say there's more than one way to skin a cat. Undoubtedly true, but why would you want to? Whoever the first they was. Somebody with strange habits. Who needs to flay felines? I hear they keep right on shedding after they're tanned.

Maybe the saying was started by the guy who knocks out ogres with his bare hands.

The Cranky Old Men are an ongoing crew of antiques who pooled resources to purchase, maintain, and staff an abandoned abbey where they await the Reaper, many because they're so unpleasant their relatives don't want them around home. Somebody in a black humor named the place Heaven's Gate.

In its prime the abbey housed fifty monks in luxurious little apartments. More than two hundred Cranky Old Men live in the same space, three to the apartment and who's got any use for even one chapel let alone the three of the original setup?

The place is cramped and smelly and almost as depressing as the Bledsoe and makes me hope that in my declining years some twenty-year-old lovely with an obsession for chubby old bald guys who smell bad takes me in so I don't have to buy into anything like Heaven's Gate. Of course, with my luck and the way things have gone lately I shouldn't worry about getting old.

The abbey was constructed in a square around an inner court, two stories high, filling a larger than normal city block. Not an uncommon layout in TunFaire. Tinnie's clan resides in a similar though larger compound, which includes their tanning and manufacturing facilities. In a display of misplaced faith in their fellow-man the monks had included ground-floor windows around the street faces. The Cranky Old Men had adapted to modern times by installing wrought-iron bars. Most people just brick them up.

There are two entrances, front and rear. Each is just wide enough to permit passage of a donkey cart. Both are blocked by double sets of iron gates. The place looks more like a prison than the Al-Khar does.

Somebody's grandson was on some scaffolding, installing bars on a second-floor window. The deeper poverty arriving with the immigrants might make the place attractive after all.

I eased around the scaffolding to the gate. It was comfortable in the shadows there.

"Eh! You! Move along!" a creaky voice insisted. "No loitering." A sharp stick jabbed between the bars too slowly to hurt anyone.

Everyone got this treatment, including favorite sons.

"I came to see Medford Shale." Not strictly true, but you do need to offer a name and I knew that one. The hard way.

"Ain't no Medford Shale here. Go away."

"That's him back there under the olive tree. On the cot." Which was true. And handy. So maybe my luck wasn't all bad.

The sharp stick jabbed again. I didn't go away. The old man on the other end came out of the shadows. I said, "Hello, Herrick."

The old man squinted. He scowled. He tried to stand up straight. "I ain't Herrick. Herrick passed. I'm his kid brother, Victor."

"Sorry to hear about Herrick, Victor. He was good people. I need to see Shale."

Victor's eyes narrowed again. "You ain't been around lately, have you?"

"It's been a while." Medford doesn't make you want to hurry back.

"Herrick passed two years ago."

All right. It had been a big while. "I'm really sorry, Victor. I need to see Shale."

"You got a name, boy?"

"Garrett. We go way back."

Victor sneered. "Shale goes way back. You're just a pup." He started to shuffle off, thought better of it. Maybe he decided he'd given in too easily. "What you got there?"

I didn't think he'd miss the bundle. "Little something for Shale." There was more on the way. These sour old flies would need a lot of sweetening.

"Bigger than a breadbox," Victor muttered. He considered the Goddamn Parrot. "You better not be carrying no birdcage there, boy. We got no truck with useless mouths."