Talk about carpal tunnel.

And then, to my shock, I focused in on a word.

The word. “Uh, I think I have something.”

“Good,” Naomi said, and was around the table in a flash, reading where I pointed. “That is not what I am looking for, but it does pertain to the draug. Keep searching.”

Draug, draug, draug. I was honestly sick of thinking about them. I wanted a day without a crisis. Just one. As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end.

It was another hour and a half before I got another hit. A spiky splash of letters on the page caught my eye just as I turned another leaf, and I flipped back. Yeah, that said draug, again. I held up my hand. Naomi glanced at what it was, then leaned forward and smoothed her fingers over the old ink.

She took the book from me and sank down in the chair beside mine. Even tired, even rumpled, she was beautiful, and I had a revival of the Jealousy Parade for a second or two, even though I knew Michael wasn’t interested in her … and even if he had been, Naomi was an iceberg. I knew that now.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her eyes had grown wider, and a bit of color bled into her ivory-pale cheeks. “Yes!” She stood up, pacing with the book held in both hands as she read aloud: “ ‘The draug are creatures of the hive. The workers die, but the master draug survives to found his hive anew.’ ”

“Yeah, we kind of knew that already,” I said. “He’s here. The hive’s breeding, it’s awful, et cetera. What does it say about stopping him?”

“That he cannot be killed,” she said softly. “Silver will not destroy him.” She put the book down and closed it, then rested her head on the palm of her hand as if she had a pounding headache. A really human gesture, for really human distress. Around us, the library was silent—deep carpets, big shelves, solid books. The dry smell of ancient paper. Books that the vampires had spent thousands of years gathering … I’m not Claire—I don’t get overwhelmed by that kind of stuff, but all of a sudden it seemed like I was standing in a tomb, or a museum, a building that was nothing but a memory of something long gone by.

The vampires were fighting their last fight here. The very last one, out of too many to ever count.

And Naomi, I realized, thought they were going to lose, big time, for all her talk of politics and future games.

“What about Claire?” I asked. “She can see him. How does that matter? Why does he care, if he can’t be killed?”