They rationalised all the way up the stairs. They were not bold by nature, and did not experience a gambler’s euphoria. Doubt threatened to overwhelm them. They thought Odessa would be back. But there was quite a lot at stake. Marie sat on the bed. A little more colour had returned to her cheeks. Cora sat next to her. “What did she want?” Marie’s tone suggested she knew the answer.
“She wanted me to abandon you. I didn’t.”
“Idiot.” Marie didn’t sound angry. “You absolute fool. Letting a magical being walk out on you because of sentimentality, and everyone thinks you’re the rational one.” The silence was briefly comfortable.

“I suppose you want to talk about it?” asked Marie. Cora didn’t, but they felt that some talking needed to happen.
“Tell me about Lily. I never knew her that well.” It may not have been the right thing to say, but nor was it the wrong thing.
“She was clever, in a quiet way. I met her in a bar. She wasn’t drinking. She was doing that thing, you know, where people give the appearance of getting drunk without having more than a sip?” Cora knew; it was how they had handled the two parties they had been dragged to. “So I introduce myself, she seems interesting.” Marie was slipping into her role as a storyteller, where people became characters and nothing was real. “She was wearing this purple dress, beautiful. Beautiful as in expensive. The sort of thing you’d see a lady wearing, even down to good stitching. No jewellery, a little rouge on her cheeks. She leant over, and she started talking to me. She told me all sorts of things about the people around us. Some of it was gossip out of the society pages, but some of it was observations. She told me about a man’s marital problems from his watch chain, that kind of thing.” Cora had witnessed those acts. Lily had almost certainly been an effective storyteller, as opposed to an observational genius. But there was no use in bringing that up. 

“She didn’t give me any way to contact her, but I started to see her around. Never in that purple dress. We looked out for each other. We all looked out for each other.” Marie was no longer looking at Cora. A reminiscence had become a eulogy. “She had family somewhere. Or another job, or an inheritance. Her finances made no sense otherwise. She liked books. Not penny novels, either, proper books. Classics. She spoke better than a princess, must have taught herself elocution. She gave a little to charity. For orphans, and things. We could talk for hours and she’d never tell you a single thing about herself.”

“I wish I’d known her better.” Of all the worthless platitudes, that one had the benefit of being true. “She sounds kind. Better than kind, she sounds interesting.” While Marie was talking, their hands had crossed the short distance between them and intertwined. Cora had no circulation in their fingers.
“She was a good friend. She’d disappear for months, but somehow she was never gone when you needed her.”

They talked until they both fell asleep. Through breakfast, Cora watched for the development of withdrawal symptoms. Marie had a shake in her hands. They knew that would soon progress into nausea. They also knew that they had a twenty four hour window that would be awful, and then things would largely improve. “At what point do we find Odessa and start grovelling?”
“She’ll find us. I think she’s bluffing.” Marie, the expert poker player, gave that a nod. “

“I’m going to that library in the wharf. Someone will have encountered these fragments before, and someone will have written it down.” Unless they lost the paper, or wrote in a lost language, or went mad before they could write a word. Cora didn’t vocalise any of those concerns. “Even if it's vague, it’ll give us a starting point.” It would also keep Marie busy through the worst withdrawals. 

Besides, they loved that library. It was set up by a university scholar, thrown out of respectable academic circles after he questioned a few too many established doctrines. He had stolen enough books to set up the tiny library, free and open to all in a city where everything was priced by the pound. Small though they believed their heart to be, Cora had always dedicated a piece to him. A few days a month helping order the shelves at the library was the only concession they ever made to civic duty. 

Cora climbed behind Marie, poised to catch her if she fell. It was entirely unnecessary; Marie was a far better and more daring climber than they were. Besides, the climb was slippery but otherwise unchallenging; the library didn’t want to scare off all its visitors. “If Odessa doesn’t come around in the next couple of days, you go and find her and you give me up to save the city.” Cora pretended they hadn’t heard over the rush of water.

They pulled themself through a wall into a blessedly dry catacomb and were struck by the uncomfortable sensation of having half a river on their shirt. “State your purpose,” boomed a disembodied voice. It bounced off the hard stone surfaces to great effect, echoing for almost a minute. Cora rolled their eyes. As much as they respected Professor Goddard, they didn’t have much time for his dramatism.
“To read. What do people generally come to libraries for?” It shouldn’t have been possible for a disembodied voice to smile, but it did.
“Cora, always a pleasure. And your friend-”
“Hannah,” cut in Marie. She liked to give false names sometimes. Having changed their name as a teenager, Cora thought it hypocritical to ask why.

“Cora and Hannah. Welcome.” A door swung open. It would have been very impressive, had the door not been a wooden plank barely attached to the wall. 

It was a cold room, with buckets everywhere to catch the water dripping from the ceiling. It was quiet enough that there was a constant rushing of water from the river above. The books were old and battered and more precious than diamonds; many of them had since been banned. It was their favourite place in the city.

The professor smiled at Cora. He was a tall man, prematurely aged by hardship. All evidence of his past had faded, except for a faint high-class accent and a torn, but well-made, wool coat. “You haven’t been in for a while?” It was curiosity, rather than a rebuke.
“I’ve been busy.” They were almost certain they could trust him. But the ‘almost’ stayed their hand. Besides, he knew the importance of privacy.

Cora knew what they were looking for and they knew there wouldn’t be much of it. Accounts from those who claimed to travel between words. Children’s tales and nursery rhymes, with scraps of truth hidden by centuries of myth. There would be a lot of nonsense, with a few gems of information. They walked through the shelves, pulling anything interesting. Marie sat on the floor, mouthing the words as she read. They handed her a cup of tea fragrant with ginger, to help with the cold flashes. 

They had been prepared for a dearth of information, but it was discouraging. They were getting ready to beg Odessa’s forgiveness. In legend, the fragments had been mixed with religious ideas of devils. The two were almost inextricable. They were often called the Adversary. And, according to each book Cora pulled, they were unkillable. Any victory in those stories was described as a ‘banishment’. Heroes didn’t kill the fragments, they simply ‘moved them on’. 

A few hours had passed, and Marie was getting twitchy. Cora knew they needed to leave; they had found everything they were going to find. Yet they kept staying for five more minutes, knowing that they wanted to hide among the shelves and never return. The library felt so far removed from the dangers of the city. It was a safe haven from uncertainty and fear. They nodded to the professor, and shut the door behind them with a sinking heart. 

Marie looked a little brighter. As they drew closer to home, they saw smoke rising above the buildings. Cora shuddered, hoping it was an empty factory. Newspapers had been talking for years about how vulnerable the tenements were to a fire. Cora had decided, from the first article that they read, that if the city was consumed by flames they would run to the river and drown themself. It would be a nicer death. They tried to think of something less macabre.
“They can’t be killed.” A much more cheerful conversation topic.
“Wonderful.”
“But they can be moved on to another world.” Cora’s grasp of the multiple worlds theory was shaky at best, but if the Sea existed it had to be right. “There’s some kind of ritual.” Every book had mentioned the ritual, but not a single author had bothered to write it down.
“We need Odessa.” Cora knew they did.
“If she’s not at the shop, I’ll go looking for her.”

The smell of smoke got more intense the closer they got to the shop. Cora’s hands shook. They knew the fear of fire would never leave them. But it wasn’t their shop. They had an elaborate system of fire prevention. Most of all, it wasn’t their shop because they couldn’t comprehend it. They turned a familiar corner. They saw the flames and heard Marie scream.