A woman’s face drifted in the green light enveloping Daelin. She felt so dizzy, She groped for a wall. The woman’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Her face was round and eyes hard, neither old or young. She spoke slowly, her gaze boring into Daelin’s. It appeared as if the woman said, ‘Beware.’ She silently spoke the warning several times then the green disappeared.
Wald tapped Daelin’s cheeks. “What happened? Did you see something?”
Beware echoed in her thoughts. “It’s silly,” she said, laughing. She didn’t know what else to do other than laugh.
He grabbed her shoulders, his brow crinkling and lips frowning. “What did you see?”
“I…” She didn’t want to tell him, but she needed to know she wasn’t crazy more. “I think I saw a ghost.”
“Really? You know, the founder of Settler claimed this area haunted, very haunted. You’ll see evidence of it when you come tour his house. What did the ghost look like?”
“I’d never seen her before. Maybe it was the murdered woman. Although the clothes were wrong. Too old fashioned.” Daelin fanned her face. This town should have been called Unsettler.
“Let’s get you inside, huh?” Wald pushed open the library door.
Daelin stumbled in, smelling paper, cedar, dust, a lack of use, and old library. Before leaving New York, she had studied up on libraries. Old library smell meant some very aged books decayed on the shelves. She’d have to order some magnesium oxide to slow their deterioration.
The lowered blinds and lack of other windows cast the library in gloom. She groped the wall for a light switch. A beam blasted from Wald, bouncing around worn green carpet, wood, and books. It lit up the desk and the wall behind it. Wald squeezed past Daelin to go slap the switches. Old-fashioned 1960s rectangular fluorescent lights hummed, faintly glowing, growing brighter, illuminating the room, the only room.
If it spanned more than two thousand square feet, she’d need her eyes checked. Shelves crammed the floor space, and every inch of the bookcases were piled with references, knowledge, and stories. Stacks lay on the floor and rose on the uppermost shelves to the ceiling. A few cobwebs draped over the books from the ceiling lights, connecting the shelves and books in dusty lines.
A high counter gave the librarian a bit of protection from the cold and the public. Made from dark paneling, it had chips enough to have been gnawed by a rabid dog, and the varnish had begun to peal. The desk beside it had to weigh over a hundred pounds, built from substantial pieces of lumber. A portrait behind the desk froze Daelin in place. It was the face she had seen when unlocking the door. “That’s her. That’s the ghost.” She inched up to it and peered at the name on the brass plate attached to the frame. Cordelia Swit.
“Patrick Swit’s granddaughter. She crafted the desk from a single board of cedar. She and her husband felled the giant on their land, and the shelves come from that same tree. This library was her dream and gift to Settler. She was quite the character. Made her husband take her last name. Rebuilt this town after the fire. Settler would be long gone if not for her. Makes sense she would want to greet the new librarian. I’d say it’s a good omen for you.”
Right. A ghost would be a blessing in a town riddled with weirdness. Daelin didn’t know how to feel about it, other than Cordelia didn’t seem to want to harm her. “It’ll be nice to have a friend.” She returned to surveying her new workplace.
The monitor sitting on top of the desk was as bulky as the 1990s. Daelin shuffled around to get a look at the rest of it. The PC came from the early 2000s, a vast improvement over a typewriter.
“There are newer laptops in the locked cabinet.” Wald pointed behind the desk at a metal cupboard next to Cordelia’s portrait. “Culver… Have you met Culver?”
She nodded.
“He put in Wi-Fi two years ago. He’s a descendant of old Patrick too, and Wi-Fi is his gift to the library on behalf of the Swit legacy.”
“Hmm.” Daelin plucked a book off the New Releases rack, a popular novel about teenagers killing one another. “Not too terribly old.” She set it down and pivoted in a slow circle. “It’s rather dusty. How long since my predecessor left?”
“The high desert surrounds us. We’ve always got dust. The library has been closed for three months.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What happened to the last librarian?”
“Dante Grimes was his name. His mind started going, so he retired. He moved to Arizona into a retirement community.”
The first name hit her ear with familiar notes. She had heard it before. Puzzling over it, she frowned. The answer eluded her. The harder she thought about it, the farther it slipped from her conscious thoughts. “I have a lot of work to do.”
“Will you be all right? I can stay longer and scare off any ghosts.”
She tucked her arm through his, smiling, and led him to the door. “Cordelia will look after me. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, call if you need me. For anything. The county office is in the book and so am I.” He pointed at a quaint printed phone book the thickness of a slice of cheese lying on the desk.
The phone had push buttons and, thankfully, had come from a more recent decade than the equipment Wald worked with. “I won’t hesitate if I need you. Before you go, can you tell me what these other two keys are for?” She held out the library keys.
“I assume one is for the cabinet where the new computers are kept, and there’s a storage closet in the back somewhere.”
“Guess you don’t come to the library often.”
“I can see that changing.” He grinned and tipped his hat. “In fact, I’ll bring you some lunch later.” With a wink, he scooted out the door.
She couldn’t return the smile. The last thing she needed was a romance, especially with a guy she considered a coworker. Once she had her life settled, she’d take a gander at the men around here to see if one would suit her.
The room had more books than space. Daelin didn’t know where she’d put them. It’d take her a decade to get them all organized, but she didn’t concern herself with work at the moment. She needed to find out if Cordelia was real. She peered into the racks one by one, picking her way through the books. “Cordelia? Are you here? Beware of what?”
A tap on her shoulder whirled her about, and she gasped into the face of a very tan, very square man. He took off his cowboy hat, and the top of his head barely reached her shoulder.
“Excuse me, miss. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you the new librarian?”
Her breath settled back into her lungs, and she gasped again. “Yes. That’s me.”
His hands moved nervously around the brim of his hat. “My name is Scott. Scott Zayas. From… uh… I need some information and hope you can help me.”
“Have a seat.” She motioned at a couple of chairs set around a table piled with books. She turned her seat to face him and sat down. “What is it you need to know?”
“I’m researching a man, a man from history.”
“Did he live around here?”
“I don’t know. I found his name among my grandfather’s things. That’s all I know.”
“It’s a start.” She went over to the large desk piled with books, mail, and papers, grabbing an envelope and a pen. “Jot his name down. Sorry I’m not better organized yet.”
“That’s all right, miss. I think he was an outlaw. He had an alias, Haw Shot.” Scott wrote both names down and handed the envelope back to her.
Mysteries and stories. Maybe working in a library would be fun. “How soon do you need this? You can see I have a lot of straightening up to do.”
Scott scanned the floor-to-ceiling mess around the entire room. “Before sunset if you will, señorita. I could send my wife to help you clean. A fair trade for your time.”
“Finding things out is part of my job, Mr. Zayas. No need to offer the labor of your family.” What was so urgent about the history of an outlaw? A siren screamed outside, the library’s doors and walls offering no defense against its wail.
Scott’s gaze darted in that direction, and he visibly gulped. “You heard of the phantom? The one seen at the murder? I think it’s him. I think it’s George Hawley’s ghost.”
Daelin rubbed her arms against a sudden chill.
hapter 