Library of Souls (30 page)

I decided that I didn't want to think about it right now—a distinctly old-Jacob way of handling things—and focused instead on the distraction nearest at hand: the hollow, and what would happen
when it woke. I would have to give him up, it seemed.

“I wish I could take him with us,” I said. “He would make it so easy to smash anyone who got in our way. But I guess he has to stay behind to keep the machine running.”

“So it's a
him
now.” She raised an eyebrow. “Don't get too attached. Remember, if you gave that thing half a chance, it would eat you alive.”

“I know, I know,” I said, sighing.

“And maybe it wouldn't be so easy to smash everything. I'm sure the wights know how to handle hollows. After all, they used to
be
hollows.”

“It's a unique gift you have,” said Reynaldo, speaking to us for the first time in over an hour. He had taken a break from monitoring the hollow's wound to rummage through Bentham's cabinets for food, and now he and Mother Dust were seated at a small table, sharing a block of blue-veined cheese.

“It's a strange gift, though,” I said. I'd been thinking about how strange it was for a while but hadn't quite been able to articulate it until now. “In an ideal world, there wouldn't be any hollows. And if there weren't any hollows, my special sight would have nothing to see, and no one would understand the weird language I can speak. You wouldn't even know I had a peculiar ability.”

“Then it's a good thing you're here now,” Emma said.

“Yeah, but … doesn't it seem almost too random? I could've been born anytime. My grandfather, too. Hollows have existed for only the last hundred years or so, but it just so happens that we were both born now, right when we were needed. Why?”

“I guess it was meant to be,” Emma said. “Or maybe there have always been people who can do what you do, only they never knew it. Maybe lots of people go through life never knowing they're peculiar.”

Mother Dust leaned toward Reynaldo and whispered.

“She says it's neither,” said Reynaldo. “Your true gift probably
isn't manipulating hollowgast—that's just its most obvious application.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “What else could it be?”

Mother Dust whispered again.

“It's simpler than that,” said Reynaldo. “Just as someone who's a gifted cellist wasn't born with an aptitude for only that instrument but for music in general, you weren't born only to manipulate hollows. Nor you,” he said to Emma, “to make fire.”

Emma frowned. “I'm over a hundred years old. I think I know my own peculiar ability by now—and I definitely can't manipulate water, or air, or dirt. Believe me, I've tried.”

“That doesn't mean you can't,” Reynaldo said. “Early in life we recognize certain talents in ourselves, and we focus on those to the exclusion of others. It's not that nothing else is possible, but that nothing else was nurtured.”

“It's an interesting theory,” I said.

“The point is, it's not so impossibly random that you have a talent for hollowgast manipulation. Your gift developed in that direction because that's what was needed.”

“If that's true, then why can't all of us control hollows?” Emma said. “Every peculiar could use some of what Jacob's got.”

“Because only
his
basic talent was capable of developing that way. In the times before hollows, the talents of peculiars with souls akin to his probably manifested some other way. It's said that the Library of Souls was staffed by people who could read peculiar souls like they were books. If those librarians were alive today, perhaps they'd be like him.”

“Why do you say that?” I said. “Is there something about seeing hollows that's like reading souls?”

Reynaldo conferred with Mother Dust. “You seem to be a reader of hearts,” he said. “You saw some good in Bentham's, after all. You chose to forgive him.”

“Forgive him?” I said. “What would I have to forgive him for?”

Mother Dust knew she'd said too much, but it was too late to hold back. She whispered to Reynaldo.

“For what he did to your grandfather,” he said.

I turned to Emma, but she seemed just as confused as I was.

“And what did he do to my grandfather?”

“I'll tell them,” said a voice from the doorway, and then Bentham hobbled in by himself. “It's my shame, and I should be the one to confess it.”

He shuffled past the sink, pulled a chair away from the table, and sat down facing us.

“During the war, your grandfather was highly valued for his special facility with hollows. We had a secret project, some technologists and I—we thought we could replicate his ability and give it to other peculiars. Inoculate them against hollows, like a vaccine. If we could all see and sense them, they would cease to be a threat, and the war against their kind would be won. Your grandfather made many noble sacrifices, but none so great as this: he agreed to participate.”

Emma's face was tense as she listened. I could see she'd never heard any of this before.

“We took just a little bit,” Bentham said. “Just a piece of his second soul. We thought it could be spared, or would be replenished, like when someone gives blood.”

“You took his soul,” Emma said, her voice wavering.

Bentham held his finger and thumb a centimeter apart. “
This
much. We split it up and administered it to several test subjects. Although it had the desired effect, it didn't last long, and repeated exposure began to rob them of their native abilities. It was a failure.”

“And what about Abe?” Emma said. In her tone was the special malice she reserved for those who hurt people she loved. “What did you do to him?”

“He was weakened, and his talent diluted,” said Bentham. “Before the procedure, he was much like young Jacob. His ability to control hollows was a deciding factor in our war with the wights.
After the procedure, however, he found he couldn't control them any longer, and his second sight became blurred. I'm told that soon afterward he left peculiardom altogether. He worried he would be a danger to his fellow peculiars, rather than a help. He felt he could no longer protect them.”

I looked at Emma. She was staring at the floor, her face unreadable.

“A failed experiment is nothing to be sorry for,” Bentham said. “It's how scientific progress is made. But what happened to your grandfather is one of the great regrets of my life.”

“That's why he left,” Emma said, her face tilting upward. “It's why he went to America.” She turned to me. She didn't look angry, but wore an expression of dawning relief. “He was ashamed. He said so in a letter once and I never understood why. That he felt ashamed, and unpeculiar.”

“It was taken from him,” I said. Now I had an answer to another question: how a hollowgast could've bested my grandfather in his own backyard. He wasn't senile, or even particularly frail. But his defenses against hollows were mostly gone, and had been for a long time.

“That's not what you should be sorry for,” said Sharon, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. “One man wasn't going to win that war. The real shame is what the wights did with your technology. You created the precursor to ambrosia.”

“I've tried to repay my debt,” Bentham said. “Didn't I help you? And you?” He looked at Sharon and then Mother Dust. Like Sharon, it seemed she, too, had been an ambro addict. “For years I've wanted to apologize,” he said, turning to me. “To make it up to your grandfather. That's why I've been looking for him all this time. I hoped he would come back to see me, and I might figure out a way to restore his talent.”

Emma laughed bitterly. “After what you did to him, you thought he'd come back for more?”

“I didn't consider it likely, but I hoped. Fortunately, redemption comes in many forms. In this case, in the guise of a grandson.”

“I'm not here to redeem you,” I said.

“Nevertheless, I am your servant. If I can do anything, it is yours for the asking.”

“Just help us get our friends back, and your sister.”

“Gladly,” he said, seeming relieved I hadn't demanded more or stood up and screamed in his face. I still might've—my head was spinning, and I hadn't quite sorted out how to react. “Now,” he said, “as for how to proceed from here …”

“Can we have a moment?” Emma said. “Just Jacob and me?”

We exited into the hall to talk in private—out of sight of the hollow, but only just.

“Let's make a list of all the terrible things this man is responsible for,” Emma said.

“Okay,” I said. “One: he created hollows. Without meaning to, though.”

“But he did. And he created ambrosia, and he took away Abe's power, or most of it.”

Without meaning to
, I nearly said again. But Bentham's intentions were beside the point. I knew what she was getting at: after all these revelations, I wasn't so confident about putting our fates and those of our friends in Bentham's hands—or his plans. He may have been well-meaning, but he had a dismal track record.

“Can we trust him?” Emma said.

“Do we have a choice?”

“That wasn't my question.”

I thought for a moment. “I think we can,” I said. “I just hope he's used up all his bad luck.”

* * *

“COME QUICKLY! IT'S WAKING UP!”

Shouts echoed from the kitchen. Emma and I dashed through the doorway to find everyone cowering in a corner, terrified of a groggy hollowgast that was struggling to sit up but had managed only to droop its upper body over the edge of the sink. Only I could see its open mouth, its tongues lolling limply across the floor.

Close your mouth
, I said in Hollow. Making a sound like it was slurping spaghetti, it sucked them back into its jaws.

Sit up
.

The hollow couldn't quite do it, so I took it by the shoulders and guided it into a seated position. It was recovering with remarkable speed, though, and after another few minutes it had regained enough motor skill to be coaxed out of the sink and onto its feet. It no longer limped. All that was left of the gash in its neck was a faint white line, not unlike the ones fast disappearing from my own face. As I relayed this, Bentham couldn't hide his irritation that Mother Dust had healed the hollow so thoroughly.

“Can I help it if my dust is potent?” Mother Dust said via Reynaldo.

Exhausted, they went off to find beds. Emma and I were tired, too—it was nearing dawn and we hadn't slept—but the progress we were making was exciting and hope had given us a second wind.

Bentham turned to us, eyes alight. “Moment of truth, friends. Shall we see if we can get the old girl running again?”

By that he meant his machine, and there was no need to ask.

“Let's not waste another second,” Emma said.

Bentham summoned his bear and I rallied my hollowgast. PT appeared in the doorway, scooped his master into his arms, and together they led us through the house. What a strange sight we would've made, had anyone been watching: a dapper gentleman cradled in the arms of a bear, Sharon in his billowing black cloak, Emma stifling yawns with a hand that kept smoking, and plain old me muttering at my white-daubed hollowgast, who even in perfect
health shuffled as he walked, as if his bones didn't quite fit his body.

Through the halls and down the stairs we went, into the bowels of the house: rooms crowded with clanking machinery, each smaller than the last, until finally we came to a door that the bear couldn't fit through. We stopped. PT set his master down.

“Here it is,” Bentham said, beaming like a proud father. “The heart of my Panloopticon.”

Bentham opened the door. PT waited outside while the rest of us followed him in.

The small room was dominated by a fearsome machine made of iron and steel. Its guts stretched from wall to wall, a baffling array of flywheels and pistons and valves glistening with oil. It looked like a machine capable of making unholy noise, but for now it sat cold and silent. A greasy man stood between two giant gears, tightening something with a wrench.

“This is my assistant, Kim,” said Bentham.

I recognized him: he was the man who'd chased us out of the Siberia Room.

“I'm Jacob,” I said. “We surprised you in the snow yesterday.”

“What were you doing out there?” Emma asked him.

“Freezing half to death,” the man said bitterly, and he went on wrenching.

“Kim's been helping me search for a way into my brother's Panloopticon,” said Bentham. “If such a door exists in the Siberia Room, it's likely at the bottom of a deep crevasse. I'm certain Kim will be grateful if your hollowgast succeeds in bringing some of our other rooms online, where there are sure to be doors in more accessible places.”

Kim grunted, his face skeptical as he looked us up and down. I wondered how many years he'd spent battling frostbite and combing the crevasses.