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“Find a way to honor the trappings of your youth without clinging to them. This is especially true if you grew up in an era of the ruff collar or parachute pants.”
—A Gentleman in Any Era: An Ancient Vampire’s Guide to Modern Relationships
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People who said libraries were a useless and outdated relic of the pre-Internet age had never spent time around the McClaine pack.
The Half-Moon Hollow Public Library might have been a dinosaur. But it was a silent dinosaur. A “keep-me-from-losing-from-my-freaking-mind-due-to-my-loud-ass-family-osaurus.”
Maybe calling it a “dinosaur” was unfair. The place certainly hadn’t seen new public funding in a few years. The most recent addition was the Jane Jameson-Nightengale Youth Reading Room, which was marked with a rather showy brass plaque very close to the head librarian’s office. But the computers in the lab were less than five years old. The gray industrial carpet was worn, but not shabby, the dust pilling ever so slightly around the edges of the floor-to-ceiling walnut shelving. And I did recognize some of the titles from the last few years’ bestseller lists, probably also donated by Jane Jameson-Nightengale. Her name seemed to be on a lot of plaques around the building, most of them within the direct eyeline of the head librarian’s office.
Something about that seemed to be a little vindictive. But having met Mrs. Stubblefield, the head librarian with the inexplicably aggressive eyebrows, that made sense.
Mrs. Stubblefield seemed to think the library was her kingdom to rule. She’d reminded me multiple times that the library didn’t allow “loitering” at the private study carrels—despite the fact that I had a laptop with me and was very clearly working. As a werewolf, I respected her need to protect her territory. As someone who depended on the library for a quiet workspace to earn their living, it was deeply annoying.
Living on the pack compound, surrounded by the constant noise and interruptions of my large extended family, going to the library was the only peace I got all day. I tried working from a café, using a secure wi-fi hotspot to protect my clients’ privacy while I designed their social media, email campaigns, and other digital promotional materials. But the constant motion from other customers, plus needing to pack up my stuff every time I left for the restroom, was a non-starter. It was just easier to work in the library, where there was less “traffic.” The locking study carrels—another contribution from Jane Jameson-Nightengale—were quiet and clean and comfortable. My productivity had skyrocketed when I started sneaking to the library in the afternoons several times a week.
My phone grumbled inside my precious backpack, a sturdy blue camouflage model I’d carried since high school. I’d set it up to sound like a growl when the text was from my family. I was sure it was a message from my mama, asking where I was. I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. It was after eight. Where had my time gone? It felt like I’d just gotten here! I rolled my shoulders. Nope, apparently, I’d been in this position for far too long.
The project I was working on—social media headers for a small bed-and-breakfast in upstate New York that themed itself around a Medieval Celtic romantic imagery—needed help. The owners kept insisting on using a specific stock photo of a sword, but it simply didn’t look right to me. The carvings on the hilt just didn’t have the sort of patterns I’d seen in Celtic weapons. It looked more like Viking swords I’d seen on TV shows, all pointy runes and triangles. But knowing these difficult-but-always-prompt-with-payments clients as I did, I was going to have to have evidence on my side if I was going to convince them that they were wrong.
I stood from the comfortable desk chair, cracking my spine back into place. I rarely ventured into the stacks unless it was for reference material. Sometimes clients wanted to center their promotional messages around some strange detail that was not accurate. I liked being able to check actual physical books written by experts—as opposed to online image searches—to prevent that embarrassment for them…and for me.
While they may not have liked being told when they were wrong (and sometimes “super-wrong”), it was my attention to that sort of thing that kept my clients coming back for repeat business. I’d developed a solid reputation for engaging, affordable, and correct work. Sure, there were plenty of platforms out there that helped not quite computer-literate people design their own graphics and such. But for small business owners who already had enough on their plate, it was easier to just pay my very reasonable rates to bring clients to their doors.
I slipped my phone into my back pocket, just as it growled a second time. I wouldn’t respond to my mother’s text, because that would only mean pointless arguing until I left earlier than planned. My time would be better spent wrapping up for the day and then texting her on my run home. I closed the small study carrel door behind me and punched in my temporary code to protect my stuff, silently blessing the name of Jane Jameson-Nightengale—even though she wasn’t exactly a favorite around my household.
Jane, who I’d only met in passing when I was a kid, was a close friend of my cousin. Jolene had been the pack’s pride and joy until she’d married a human, had his adorable children, and moved a whole ten miles away from the packlands. Well, Jolene was still pretty much the pack’s pride and joy, but my relatives grumbled under their breath about her a lot more often—usually involving the phrase “such a shame.” Jane was (unfairly) blamed for this.
Turning out of the study carrels, I narrowly missed bumping into a guy around my age, wearing a hoodie and jeans.
“Sorry,” I murmured, brushing past him without looking up. I had to move with purpose if I was going to finish this assignment and get home on time.
As I passed the European History section, I saw two teenage boys wrestling around, bumping against the bookshelf while they fought to look at woodcuttings of nude women from the Dark Ages.
This was one of many reasons why I’d rarely dated in high school.
What were so many teenage boys even doing at the library on a Friday night? That was suspicious in itself. Shouldn’t they be in a nearby field somewhere with an illegally-obtained keg, shouting “wooooo?” I knew why I was at a library on a Friday night. I was avoiding my house and pursuing cash. I liked cash. It was silent, dependable, and never judged you for not having a social life.
Rolling my eyes, I turned my back on the disruptive goofballs and walked into the weapons section. I crouched, scanning the bottom shelf for an illustrated guidebook to swords throughout history. I’d used it for a report on warfare in the Renaissance period when I attended Half-Moon Hollow High. There was a comforting sort of consistency to that book still being there seven years later. Being able to count on the little things was one of the perks of living in the Hollow. It almost outweighed the many, many drawbacks.
The teenage tussle behind me continued and I blocked it out to focus on the book in front of me. It was a skill I’d developed as a teenager, very useful when trying to ignore about a dozen people all trying to tell you how you should be running your life over Sunday dinner.
Opening the thick reference guide, I studied the illustration diagramming the various parts of Celtic swords versus Viking swords. The photo my clients wanted to use was definitely Viking. And even if it was a beautiful image, they couldn’t use it. People delighted in calling companies out on inaccuracies like this—especially history enthusiasts, who were very quick to pick up on social media gaffes, no matter what era. Sometimes, those gaffes made you famous for the wrong reasons.