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Because things weren&039;t awful enough, an hour later Marjorie the scary librarian popped by and chimed the bell I put my foot down: no Just because people-

"Very old, very powerful vampires," Sinclair interrupted

-stopped by without proper planning or scheduling-

"She says it&039;s an eencies?"

-didn&039;tand rush to the parlor

"No one was in the parlor," Marjorie announced, pushing open the swinging door into the kitchen, "so I let myself in"

Tina followed closely on the librarian&039;s heels with a pained, helpless expression I gave Sinclair a look

"Ah," he began "Marjorie So good to see you again But perhaps now-"

"Majesty," the elder vae in, I know; but what I have is extremely important"

"Of course it is," I sighed "A nice new crisis you&039;re gonna drop in , Majesty, that I should let all important matters run their course without your intervention?" She smiled a little and fiddled with her sweater cuffs

No, just call first

Marjorie looked around the kitchen approvingly The big wooden table in the center had plenty of chairs for all of us More than enough to hold Sinclair, Tina, Jessica, and me Everybody else was-heck, I didn&039;t knoas I, the fucking fa wos at the temples, and sensible shoes She ran the vaest, I had been told, in the Midwest

She tried to keep tabs on all vaes and bills paid up (in the case of new vampires, that was especially nice if they ever came back to themselves they would find a home and their credit rate unaltered), kept nice neat coes, carefully maintained paper files) on everyone she could How did she do that? No one knew

Anyway, she had been around before Nostro&039;s ti despot), and before Nostro&039;s sire&039;s time, too She had little interest in explicit displays of pohich was probably good news for the rest of us Just stayed in her library, organizing lives, collecting a different sort of power-one that wasn&039;t so intrusive, but nevertheless caught our attention when gently applied

Anyway, she had that look of relieved approval because she saw a traditional scene thatand queen, with lackey (Tina) in attendance, with presumed blood-sheep (Marc and Jessica) close at hand

"Nice to see you again, Dr Spangler," she said, since I wasn&039;t reintroducing her to anybody

"Hi, uh-sorry, I-"

"Marjorie"

"Right" He&039;d been heads together with Jessica until a few seconds ago, but noas looking downright flustered Marjorie had that effect on huers and Marc or Jess would have obediently opened a vein "Nice to see you again"

"Thank you"

A short silence follohile Marjorie waited for us to dismiss the peons

"So," I said before Eric could speak, because he actually would have diss you to Suun! A knife! A brick!

No, ht It was-

Tina frowned, causing a neat wrinkle to form between her eyes It made her look positively ancient-twenty-five instead of her usual eighteen "That&039;s a book catalog"

"Correct"

"Thank all that is holy and unholy," I proclaimed with even less patience than usual, "that you didn&039;t waste a second getting this over here! Why, we&039;ve been co Our need has never beenit down on the table, "it&039;s the Berkley Fall catalog for this year"

Sinclair closed his eyes

"Yes, well that is the Holy Grail of book catalogs," I said, still walking the line between playing along and suggesting to this woman that she leave before , but his griested he knehere this was going

I didn&039;t Marjorie waited for me to catch on I quietly trusted she had packed a lunch Finally, she said, "Page forty-seven"

Nobodytoand thue And nearly dropped it like it had turned into a rattler "Okay, I can see why you ht think this is"

"A catastrophe?" she said sharply

" bad A little bit bad"