Curse of the Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen

Author:Michelle Knudsen [Knudsen, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536206470
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Sometime during the next interminable interval of silently following LB, trying not to fear the worst for Annie and Ryan, and also trying to ignore the ever-more-insistent tugging of my newly installed internal GPS, I realize that I have once again been neglecting to take advantage of a primary source of information.

“Hey, so what do you know about this amulet guy?” I ask Peter. “I mean, other than that he made the amulet and is locked up down here somewhere.” Just as I say this, my demon-compass tries to get me to turn around and walk in the opposite direction. You have to wait, I tell it silently for what must be the hundredth time. I’m sure it’s my imagination, but the tugging is beginning to feel somehow sulky and annoyed.

“Not a lot, unfortunately. He’s super powerful, but I’m sure that much was clear already. They called him — well, in your tongue, he’s called the Craftsman. Making powerful items was sort of a . . . a hobby of his, I guess. An addictive one. And eventually he started making things that drew too much interest from the wrong demons — or, well, the right demons, depending on your perspective — and they locked him up for it.”

I scrape one finger along the endless stone wall. “He doesn’t sound that scary.” I find myself picturing a kind of gremlin-like Geppetto, tinkering away in his little demon workshop.

“He’s going to be terrifying, Cyn.” Peter reaches over and grabs my arm to get my full attention. “Don’t have any misconceptions about that, please. The amount of power it takes to create the things he does — it’s more than I can even imagine. And to have found an outlet for that power, one that he loved, and to have been prevented from ever doing it again . . . he’s surely lost his mind, locked away down here. He’s going to be huge and powerful and angry and insane. I think there’s more than one reason Mr. Gabriel didn’t try to come down here himself.”

My mental image of Geppetto has morphed into something monstrous and unrecognizable, and I quickly shove him out of my imagination.

“How long has he been here?”

“A long time. Thousands of years, maybe.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

I pick up our pace a little, closing the distance between us and LB. “You almost sound like you feel sorry for him,” I say after a minute.

“I do,” Peter says. “It must be terrible, what they did to him. What they’re still doing. It would have been kinder to kill him.”

“Why didn’t they?”

Peter gives me a condescending glance. “Demons, Cyn. Not so interested in the kindness, remember? Besides, the more horrible the punishment, the greater the deterrent. They didn’t want anyone else to follow in his footsteps. And no one has, as far as I know. Which makes the things that he created all the more precious now.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I don’t know how Mr. Gabriel’s friends got their hands on that amulet.

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