Young Writers Society

Sebastian stared.

"...But why would they trap us in a library?" he repeated. There was a pause as he looked between Carter and Paul. "And why would Carter tie you up?"

Without a bit of notice, Carter burst out laughing and held his hand in front of his face when it turned into choking on air. To his husband he said, "Paul, we've managed to find someone more vanilla than you."
The librarian simply glared at him while continuing to smoke his cigarette so Carter continued, "If I'm remembering the spirit correctly that I may or may not have trapped in a movie theater when I was young, then they had a certain affinity for burning down libraries. So I think that we should be trying to get out of this basement as quickly as possible."

Harper nodded her agreement, bouncing on the balls of her feet in what was either anxiety or excitement. It was difficult to tell the difference sometimes.

"Sounds like a plan. Shall we try the stairs?" she gestured toward the objects in question.

He still didn't understand why someone would tie another person up when they liked them, or why he would be considered "vanilla" for not knowing, but he pushed aside his momentary confusion. He finally had an answer for the more pressing of his two questions: they were trapped in a library because it would be burned down.

Sebastian gave a nod in agreement, already heading towards the stairs before anyone else had a chance to voice their opinions.

Harper trotted after the man without thinking much about it. He might as well go first. Who knew what the...were they spirits? Whatever they were, who had trapped them here had done to keep them contained. Or something. She didn't actually know what they wanted. Maybe Annie?

Maybe they did want Annie, but Harper couldn't imagine why. Annie was blinder than a bat except to souls. Perhaps they were trying to see if someone had a soul? Oh....that could be interesting. Harper wondered if she'd be able to tag along, just to see. It would be the chance of a lifetime to see something like that happen right in front of her!

The deputy and the librarian hadn't notice the stairs before, but it was fair to say that they had been a bit preoccupied. Carter was more focused on the ghost that he had pissed off and Paul was thinking about the fight that they had in the theater just moments before. Neither of them were talking but then both exclaimed at the same time, "Let's take the stairs then."

As he walked up the stairs, a thought suddenly occurred to him.

He glanced back at the two farther down the stairs.

"How will we stop this spirit?" he asked. "None of us have the supplies."

Harper giggled and turned to walk backward up the stairs as she said, "We have magic, don't we?"

If worst came to worst she could always just summon Annie, too, but she wouldn't tell them that. The ability to just summon a demon might not be one they like very much, even if at least one of them was a witch.

He frowned as he looked at her. "Magic can only do so much," he said. "We don't have silver, any kind of herbs or even iron."

Paul took his cane back from Carter, finding a moment of strength to stand on his own and extract a sword from the cane.
“Did you mean iron like this?”
The deputy looked at the cane in confusion, wondering exactly when Paul had installed that snazzy little trick. He didn’t have any herbs on him but there was likely some silver to be borrowed from the library if they came across such a spirit.
This was of course the day he left his silver bullets at home.

Sebastian studied the sword for a moment.

"Yes," he said. There was a pause as he turned to head back up the stairs. "Silver is better, if you have it."

Harper stared at the sword, reaching out for a second like she wanted to touch it before wrapping both arms around her grimoire and bouncing on the balls of her feet. She had to hold back the urge to ask about the sword. Specifically, to ask if she could have it, or at least touch it.

"My pendant is silver," she said, shifting the tome to one hand so she could hold up the sigil.

Carter looked at his revolver for a moment, wondering if the old wives tale about carving crosses in bullets would really detain full figured spirits. If he had killed this person three times already he might as well be the person to hit them all of the way out of the park.
The deputy flipped open his knife with a silent wish he had Wild Wild West style tools to help them out in this situation. But knowing The Lincoln family, there would always be a next time to get new weapons.

“You know uh there’s probably some silver that we can borrow from this library.”

He furrowed his brow in confusion. They did need the silver, but he knew that they would never return it to the library. "Do you mean steal?" he asked. It was hard to tell if he had said borrow as a mistake or as an attempt to make things sound better than they were.

Harper chuckled, "For now, we intend to return it at some point, right?"

That was what mattered, wasn't it? The intent. Whether or not they would be able to follow through was completely up to whatever gods ruled in this..whatever it was. They intended to return whatever they took, so there wasn't anything too immoral about it.

Not that Harper minded taking a thing or two without permission anyway, but the innocent fellow seemed so innocent on every conceivable level. It was on its way to being ridiculous, in all honestly.