Cass raised an eyebrow, though it of course didn't carry over the phone. "Uh, not that I want to look a gift horse in the mouth," she said, "but don't you already have a staff of translators and such?"
There was a wry chuckle from the other end. "I believe you're thinking of the CIA," the director said. "Our agency was only reinstated as a fully active body less than two months ago; we've had to reorganize on the fly. And not every government agency is eager to share its staff, resources, or intelligence, so we oftentimes do find ourselves trying to fill positions from anywhere we can that we feel is safe."
"Ah," Cass replied, nodding thoughtfully.
"Now, most of our focus has been on domestic happenings thus far," Fields continued, "but that doesn't mean there aren't times we could use a translator - especially with some of the peculiar...shortcuts between nations that have popped up, as I'm sure Lucas has shown you. And it's quite possible that the scope of our investigations will extend outside the country at times, since it's certainly not like the Sun phenomenon is limited to one part of the world. But I will admit that this is as much a matter of convenience for us as it is a business need. I don't expect that having Lucas on our payroll is going to give us any more sway than we had - as she points out, she can fill any and all needs quite easily herself, if she wants - but it'll keep us in better contact, so it's still advantageous for us. And I'd say it's likely advantageous for her, as well..."
"...since I have personal ties in the US now," Lucas finished, glancing at Cass. "Well, it's not like I can't contact her easily enough any time I want," she said, "but I suppose if some legal thingy comes up, it might be helpful."
"Right," Fields replied. "I think it could easily be a mutually beneficial relationship. Now, I can give you some time to think it over, if you like..."
Jenny and Artemis looked nervously around the library, wondering what was going on here. Obviously they'd been right in guessing that something out of the ordinary was going on here, but neither of them were sure what. Was it the Enemy? But Jenny had thought that they only came to Earth in order to do...whatever it was they wanted to do. They'd come for her when they'd made Minus-four, but what would they want with a library? Or...was it a creature that slipped through the cracks, like that dog-thing in the mall? But why would something like that know how to close and lock the doors? She didn't know - but if it wasn't one of those things, then what was it? And whatever it was, if she couldn't transform, what could she do about it?
She glanced at Artemis, who was also a bit worried. Unlike Jenny, she was not exactly an ordinary human in one state, and magical in another - she was what she was. But she was very young, only just beginning to understand her own nature, and not really at all powerful yet - in the one instance thus far that she'd accomplished much of anything, it was by calling upon her mother Selene. And if she couldn't speak, could she do that? She wasn't really sure. Even if she was protected by her divine nature, Jenny wasn't, so she didn't want to just go barrelling ahead into something that might get them in real trouble.
But they couldn't just stand around doing nothing, could they? Certainly they couldn't remain locked in the library forever. They had to at least find another way out of here. Artemis nodded toward the door by the checkout desk, which looked like it led to the front hall. If that was unlocked, maybe they could get out to the front door, and unlock it from the inside. They went over to it, and Jenny pushed on the bar latch. It didn't budge. Artemis tried, then both of them together; nothing. Whatever had them in here intended to keep them in here - but why? They turned back to the main area of the library, intending to look for another possible exit, and froze.
It was fairly dim inside the library; whenever it was that it had been closed down in favor of the smaller library in the public-works complex downtown, most of the windows had been covered with heavy blinds to protect the interior from the effects of overexposure to sunlight, and with the power off it was lit only by the light that filtered in around the edges of the blinds. But there was enought light to see by, and the girls could make out the area by the checkout desk perfectly well - well enough to note the black shape immediately behind it.
Jenny grabbed Artemis by the arm, not really sure whether she intended to make a break for it, or whether she just needed someone to hold onto. The one thing she was struck by was that this didn't feel like the Enemy - it was frightening, but it didn't have the same feeling of wrongness to it, or even the alien out-of-placeness the dog-thing had had. But still...it couldn't exactly be of this world, could it? It was a...a...
Magical or not, Jenny was still a little girl. So as her eyes adjusted to the shape, in the dimness of the light, and as she could make out enough about it to understand that it was a human shape, the thought that she was looking at a ghost struck her with full force. Clenching Artemis's arm harder than she really intended, she ran for all she was worth past the checkout desk and towards the back of the library.
Lilly waited a little while longer, wondering whether her friends were okay, but something felt...a little off to her. The fur on the back of her neck felt kind of prickly for some reason, even when she brushed it down, and Sakura seemed to be getting agitated for some reason. Maybe...maybe she should go in and check on them? She knew they were worried about her getting hurt, but...well, they were her friends, weren't they? She couldn't just leave them by themselves if she was worried they might not be okay! She went back around to the window they'd entered through - only to find that it was shut.
Now she knew that something was up. She tried to open the window, but she couldn't budge it - and while she thought Jenny might be stronger than her, they hadn't needed that much effort to open it the first time. This was no good...she didn't have anything heavy enough to break the window, and the library doors were locked...
Looking around, the squirrel-girl spotted a sizable oak tree that grew close to the side of the building, and she had an idea. She went over to it and looked it over. It was still alive and well, which meant the bark wouldn't pull off easily; it should be perfect for climbing. And some of the higher branches actually hung out almost to the edge of the roof. It couldn't have been simpler if there was a ladder up the side. Grabbing her blue stick in her teeth, she scampered up the tree and onto the roof, Sakura following close behind her.
On the roof, she took a look around - there was very little up here but a scattering of dead leaves and a handful of pigeons congregating at the far end. But there was a large ventilation intake, plenty big enough for a little girl like her to fit in. She went over to it - darn! There was a metal grate covering it, probably specifically to keep animals from climbing in. She briefly wondered what she could do - then she remembered her stick. She took it in both hands and felt it. It wasn't a big tree branch, but it had a little bit of heft to it - at her size, it was big enough to use for a walking-stick. Briefly feeling guilty for what she was going to do, but knowing that her friends might be in trouble, she hauled back and slammed the end of it hard into the corner of the grate.
It took a couple more solid whacks, but it accomplished the job - the grate, the metal already aged and a little rusty, was knocked loose, and she was able to use the stick as a lever to pry the whole thing out of the vent, leaving nothing but a yawning rectangular tunnel that veered slightly up before dropping down into the building. She looked at Sakura. She knew the cat was probably a lot less at risk of a fall than she was, but she didn't want it getting trapped inside, too. "Y-you gotta stay here," she said. "If I can't get out either, you gotta get someone t' help, 'kay?"
Whether the kitten fully understood what she said or not, it seemed willing to stay put. Lilly took her stick and dropped it down the vent. It clattered to a stop almost immediately - so it couldn't be a big drop, right? Though the echoing clang it made was a little unsettling. Taking a deep breath, she scooted inside and over the hump, and dropped down.
It was farther than she thought, but she managed to catch herself against the inside of the vent partway down, and the rest of the drop was manageable, if not exactly a comfortable landing. The sheet metal gave quite a bit when she landed, though (and the noise was far louder,) and for once she was grateful to be this size - if she'd been her old size, she might have torn the whole thing apart. Picking herself up as best as she could in the narrow space, she grabbed her stick and began to crawl her way down the vent.
It was slow going, even given that she was small enough to move through it, and every move she made seem to send more noise echoing down the vent. But curiously, the further she went down the tunnel, the more it seemed like the noises got quieter, more muted. She wondered why that would be...but before she had thought about it too much, she came at last to an air grate. She peered through - it was almost as dim in the room as it was inside the vent, but she didn't see anything that looked like it would be dangerous to land on. She fiddled with the grate until she figured out how it came out, and tossed it off to the side so she wouldn't land on it. It hit the carpeted floor with a thud that seemed entirely too quiet. Lilly crawled over the opening and let her feet through first, then dropped down into the room.
Jenny and Artemis huddled in the back of the library, behind one of the shelves. Many of the books had been taken to the new library, but many more were still filed away here - old editions of encyclopedias, novels that apparently weren't popular enough to make the cut, archives of magazines people stopped reading, and how-to manuals for things nobody did anymore. (Jenny saw a book about building a computer - you could do that?) Neither of them had any idea what to do - was there really a ghost keeping them locked in the library? Why? And how could they get out?
All of a sudden Artemis clenched Jenny's arm, and both of them looked down to the far end of the row. The dark shape was standing there. They wanted to run, but where else was there to go? They'd already tried the front door, and there didn't seem to be a back door - at least, not one they could get to from within the main library area. Unsure what to do, they held tightly to each other, and fixed their attention on the ghost...
...which simply stood there. A long, long moment passed, and then, in defiance of all expectations, it turned and drifted away, back towards the front desk. The two of them turned to each other and stared in mute amazement - what was this? It locked them in, but the moment they ran back into the bookshelves, it left them alone? Did it want them here? Why?
Then there came a distant crashing, clattering noise, followed by a series of shuffling scrapes, somewhere above them. Even though it was muted like every other sound, it gave them quite a start. They wondered what on earth was causing it. Whatever it was, it was headed away from them, towards the front of the building...
Lilly dropped down into a little storeroom somewhere in the building. Dim as it was, her vision was good enough that she could make out her surroundings pretty accurately. Or rather her surrounding, singular - the only thing of note in the room was a big cabinet thing that she realized, after a moment of inspection, was a very big and old computer, old enough that it came in a cabinet almost the size of the refrigerator at home. She was astonished - it was old enough that it even had switches and lights on the front! How long ago had this library been closed down?
There was a little desk, too, with a screen and a keyboard for the computer. On top of the cabinet was stacked a box containing the card file it had replaced - both now equally obsolete. Lilly was reminded of a similar big, old computer in an old movie she'd seen, about a castle with a ghost and people who tried to study it. She shuddered; that had been creepy enough when she was an older boy - now, and in this place, it was downright scary. She wanted to hide under the desk...but she wanted to find her friends and get out of here even more.
Cautiously, she opened the door and stepped out into a little hallway, trying not to think of that one part at the end of the movie... She looked down one way - it ended in a door going to another storeroom. Turning the other way, she went out into the main library area, right next to the front desk...and stopped dead in her tracks.
Lilly's sharper eyes didn't need to adjust to see what Jenny and Artemis had seen. There, seated at the checkout desk, was something she had never expected and had no idea how to handle. She couldn't think of what to do, but her imagination was already primed to respond to exactly this, and began to run wild with possibilities far beyond even the mere sight of this one ghost. She screamed, but no noise came out. Forgetting, for the moment, any plans she had to do anything other than run, she sprinted from the little hallway to the front door and plowed right into it, hitting it hard but failing to knock it open. Panicking, she pushed on the bar - nothing. She began to pound on the door, the thuds muted and distant, her voice still failing her. Then the fur on the back of her neck prickled, and she turned. The ghost was standing right in front of her, looming over her.
QUIET! If silence could shout, it was doing it. She couldn't make it out in enough detail to read its face, but it seemed irritated. She tried to back away, but she was already right up against the door. Quiet, quiet...it was already too quiet! Lilly clutched her stick in her hands, but she had no illusions about being able to fight off a ghost with it. It felt good in her hands all the same...and her arms flexed almost on their own... Not quite sure why she was doing it, Lilly raised the stick vertical and brought one end down as hard as she could onto the marble tile that the very front of the main area was floored with.
The stick seemed to surge in her grasp as it hit the floor. A loud and most definitely un-muted crack split the silence like Moses parting the Red Sea.
