Casting a gnarly eye at my desk, and the Libro Nihil where it lay upon the scarred old edifice, I began to wonder. When my psychotic great-grandfather returned, bent on global destruction, he had been brought back via the power of the Sleeper, a cosmic personification of entropy gone mad. It had wanted the Libro Nihil, for what I would rather not think about, but instead I had turned the power of the book on it. The book devoured Henry Grey and the power of the Sleeper that had been invested in him. Sometimes I would hold the book and concentrate, and every once in a while I would swear I could hear the voice of my great-grandfather whispering to me from beyond a vast gulf.
Which made me wonder what happened to the power of the Sleeper its own self.
Was it still in the book?
Could I use the book to access it, and amplify it, and turn it on my enemies like I’d done with the book itself on Swift’s doppelganger, the rogue malakhim? Thinking about it all was making my head swim. I staggered over to my desk and snatched up the book, stuffing it in my pocket and ignoring the pleasant warmness of it against my leg. I pulled my phone out of my bag, and a black permanent marker, and shoved them in my other pocket. Donning my coat and stuffing my feet into my boots I left the room and headed back downstairs.
I’d barely made it half way down when I could hear Hack screaming a near-incoherent barrage of expletives and curses at Swift. I must have missed something really good. Following the noise I ended up standing in the archway of the Der Haus’s museum wing, or what Rosa and the others tended to refer to as the living room.
It was a great big open space and every wall was lined with colossal, hand-carved wooden shelves and cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling, the wood stained a warm, dark brown that sucked up the light and turned back a diffused glow, making everything look soft. The shelves were loaded down with books of every kind, from moldering grimoires to modern technical manuals, pulp paperbacks and everything in-between. The cabinets, their doors fronted by panes of glass so one could look in, were filled to brim with a curious collection of knick-knacks and artifacts, items collected mostly by my globe-hopping father in his reckless archeologist years - or so my mother used to tell me.
I’d added to the collection myself over the years, though my relics were quite a bit less esoteric than dear old dad’s. An obsidian ritual knife from the subterranean kingdom beneath Antarctica sat next to a scratched, plastic toy sheriff’s badge I’d kept after banishing a kinderfresser a couple towns over.
There was a battered sofa covered in blankets and throw pillows, and a handful of recliners scattered around at strange angles from each other. Light came from an incongruous chandelier that hung from the ceiling by a black, cold iron chain, its stems curling black metal ending in someone’s nightmare of a Tiffany lamp, the stained glass all done in hellish yellows and oranges that gave the room a curious tone. There was an ancient television set, the kind with a wire coat-hanger serving as an antennae, it sat on a milk crate in front of one of the recliners playing an old black and white horror movie with the sound off.
I frowned and swung my gaze over to where Swift stood, by one of the two windows in the room, a tall and narrow affair squeezed between all the shelving with its curtain pulled back. Swift was looking out onto the front yard, out towards the road, and for all intents and purposes looked utterly oblivious to Hack’s tirade.
The old man was standing by his recliner, the one with the TV, jabbing a finger as he barked. “I told you this was going to come back to bite you and now look at what’s happened.” Spittle rained in explosive bursts and Hack even managed to stomp his foot on the hardwood floor a couple times for emphasis.

“Told him what?” I asked, stepping into the room.