Conjured

The library looked gray, blue, and black. The shadows between books were crisp and layered, and the fibers in the carpet next to my cheek were in stark relief. I lifted my head. Beside me, a gray cat flicked his tail. He regarded me with narrow black pupils, and then he stood shakily. His front paws wobbled, and his tail swished behind him. Looking down at my own front paws, I placed them carefully on the rug and pushed up with all four legs. My center of gravity felt off, and the tail was an unfamiliar weight behind me. This won’t work, I thought. We’ll be seen. Hoping he’d understand, I shook my head slowly and emphatically and hissed.

He nudged his cat nose against mine and inhaled.

I felt my back itch.

Falconlike wings unfolded between his shoulder blades. They stretched out on either side of his cat body. Twisting my cat head, I saw black-and-white feathers behind me. A winged cat. Stretching my wings, I glared at Zach. His cat eyes were bright, as if he were laughing. Absolutely not, I thought.

I thumped my nose against his, exhaling into him. In less than a second, I felt myself shrink. I collapsed toward the ground. My bones squeezed, and my skin tightened as if it wanted to strangle me. As I gasped for air, the world fractured around me. It was as if I saw the library in a broken mirror, reflected over and over in a thousand shards. I could see in nearly every direction—the fibers of the carpet in front of me as thick and deep as my chest, the bookcases rising up like steel mountains beside me, the books like skyscrapers … I looked at Zach, focusing my fractured vision.

Two teal orblike eyes dominated his tiny face. His body shimmered with metallic green, and his thin blue tail looked like a chain of precious metal. He also had four ethereal wings that stretched as wide as his body was long. Dragonfly, I thought. I’d seen dragonflies speed across a meadow of wildflowers, their wings beating so fast that they blurred. Yes, this will work.

I flexed my back, and air swirled around me as my wings rose up and down. I felt my thin, sticklike feet lift off the carpet as I pumped faster, and then I shot upward into the air.

My four wings swiveled in figure eights, stirring up tiny whirlwinds on either side of me. Midway up the shelves, I steadied myself. Zach rose after me, wobbling and shaking in the air, and then he shot ahead of me. Straightening my tail like an arrow, I flew after him.

Side by side, we banked hard and careened into the center aisle. We shot through the stacks. Emerging into the reference area, we flew toward the ceiling. The glare from the lights bleached the world. It felt as if we were flying through the sun.

Below us, I saw the brightened heads of the librarians and patrons, including the same man in a suit that I’d seen before. With my sharp dragonfly eyes, I could see the bulge of a gun under his suit coat—he was a marshal. But it didn’t matter. In an instant, we were past him.

First Zach led, and then I led. We spiraled around each other, our wings nearly touching. If I could have laughed out loud, I would have. We swooped through the archway into the library lobby. Patti’s door was only open a crack. We aimed for it.

As we dove into her office, the carpet rose up toward us. It was a forest, and we were airplanes. The fibers were the treetops, and we were going to hit. I tried to slow, stilling my four wings. My thin feet skimmed the floor, and then I toppled over my wings and crashed against the bookcase. Zach landed on top of me, one wing folded over my torso.

I twisted my head and pressed my smooth dragonfly face with globelike eyes against his and breathed. Ripples spread across my torso. I felt as if I were cracking. In an instant, Zach and I were human again, splayed on the floor of Patti’s office. “Please don’t,” I gasped out as Patti opened her mouth to scream. I untangled myself from Zach. “They’re after me.”

Patti shut her mouth so fast that I heard the snap of her teeth hitting together. She strode to her door, closed it, and then slid the lock. Her high heels clicked as she walked back to her window and pulled the shade shut. “You shouldn’t have come here. I work hard to keep this place safe.”

I opened my mouth to reply and breathed in the wood smell of the bookshelf. Suddenly I pictured the forest; I saw a caravan of wagons disappearing into a silver wall, moving because people were coming … I shook away the memory and forced myself to focus on the present.

“She needs help,” Zach said. “We need help.”

“I can’t help you,” Patti said. “You need to leave. Before whoever is chasing you finds you here. I’ll call Mal—”