Zachary passes one lion he assumes is Fortitude and stops near the center of the steps, halfway between the lions. He looks at his watch: 1:02 a.m.
Did he miss his meeting, if it even is a meeting, or does he have to wait?
Should have brought a book, he thinks as he always does while waiting somewhere without one before he remembers and reaches into his jacket.
But Sweet Sorrows is no longer in his pocket.
Zachary looks through all of his pockets to be certain but the book is gone.
“Looking for this?” someone asks from behind him.
Standing on the library stairs a few steps above him there is a man wearing a peacoat, the collar turned up around a heavy wool scarf. His dark hair is greying at the temples, framing a face that would be called handsome if the word rugged or unconventionally were attached to it. He wears black dress pants and shiny shoes but Zachary cannot remember seeing him at the party.
In one of his black-gloved hands he holds Sweet Sorrows.
“You took that from me,” Zachary says.
“No, someone else took it from you and I took it from them,” the man explains, walking down the stairs and stopping next to Zachary. “You’re welcome.”
The hairs on the back of Zachary’s neck recognize the voice before the rest of him does. This man is his storyteller.
“There are people following you who want this book,” the man continues. “They currently believe they have this book. What we have now is a window of time where they will not follow you, a window that will close in approximately half an hour when they realize that this has gone missing. Again. Come with me.”
The man puts Sweet Sorrows in his coat and starts walking, passing by Patience and turning south. He doesn’t look back. Zachary hesitates and then follows.
“Who are you?” Zachary asks when he catches up with the man at the street corner.
“You can call me Dorian,” the man says.
“Is that your name?”
“Does it matter?”
They cross the street in silence.
“So what’s the flower for?” Zachary asks, holding up the paper-petaled blossom between fingers near-numb from the cold.
“I wanted to see if you’d follow instructions,” Dorian answers. “Passable, though that’s not an actual flower. At least you’re good at improvising.”
Dorian takes the flower from Zachary, gives it a little twirl, and tucks it in a buttonhole on his coat.
Zachary shoves his freezing hands into his pockets.
“You haven’t even asked who I am,” he notes, confused as to how someone can be so intriguing and yet annoying at the same time.
“You are Zachary Ezra Rawlins. Zachary, never Zack. Born March eleventh, nineteen ninety, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Relocated to upstate New York in two thousand four with your mother shortly after your parents divorced. You’ve been attending university in Vermont for the last five-and-a-half years, currently working on a thesis on gender and narrative in modern gaming. You have a very high GPA. You’re an introvert with minor anxiety issues, there are several people you are friendly with but no truly close friends. You’ve been in two serious romantic relationships and both ended badly. Earlier this week you checked a book out of a library and subsequently the book in question was indexed in a computer system making it traceable and since then the book, and you along with it, have been followed. You aren’t that difficult to follow but additionally they’re mapping your phone and they planted a tracking device on you that you fortunately left at your hotel. You like well-crafted cocktails and fair-trade cocoa and you probably should have worn a scarf. I know who you are.”
“You forgot I’m a Pisces,” Zachary says through gritted teeth.
“I thought that was implied with the inclusion of your birth date,” Dorian says with a small shrug. “I’m a Taurus, if we get through this I should ask your mother to do my chart.”
“What do you know about my mother?” Zachary asks, exasperated. He rushes to keep up with Dorian’s pace and each intersection they reach brings a fresh blast of freezing air that cuts through his coat. He has stopped checking street signs but believes they are moving southeast.
“Madame Love Rawlins, spiritual adviser,” Dorian says as they turn again. “Only lived in Haiti until she was four but affects the accent sometimes because the customers tend to like it. Specializes in psychometry and dabbles in tarot and tea leaves. You lived above her store in New Orleans. That’s where the door that you didn’t open was, right?”
Zachary wonders how he could possibly know about the door but then the simple answer dawns on him.
“You’ve read the book.”
“I skimmed the first few chapters, if you can call them chapters. I wondered why you seemed so attached to it, now I understand. They must not know that you’re in it, otherwise they would be much more interested in you and they’re very book-focused at the moment.”
“Who are they?” Zachary asks as they turn down a wider street that he recognizes as Park Avenue.
“A bunch of cranky bastards who think they’re doing the right thing when right in this case is subjective,” Dorian says, bristling in such a fashion that Zachary guesses the crankiness might be personal and probably goes both ways. “I can give you the history lesson but not now, we don’t have time.”
“Where are we going, then?”
“We are going to their U.S. headquarters which is fortunately a few blocks from here,” Dorian explains.
“Wait, we’re going to them?” Zachary asks. “I don’t—”
“Most of them will not be there, which will be to our advantage. When we get there, you are going to give them this.”
Dorian reaches into his bag and hands Zachary a book, a different book. Thick and blue and familiar with a drawing embossed in gold on the cover. A bust of Ares.
Zachary turns the book to read the spine even though he knows what it will say. The Age of Fable, or Beauties of Mythology. The library sticker on the spine has been peeled off.
“You took this from the library,” Zachary says, the statement sounding more painfully obvious once he speaks it aloud. “You were there.”
“Correct, ten points to Ravenclaw. Though it wasn’t very clever of you to gather up all those books only to leave them unsupervised because you wanted a muffin.”
“It was a quality muffin,” Zachary defensively snaps in response and to his surprise Dorian laughs, a pleasant, low laugh that makes him feel a little less cold.
“A quality muffin is just a cupcake without frosting,” Dorian remarks before he continues. “You are going to bring this book to them.”
“Won’t they know this isn’t the book they want?” Zachary opens the back cover and finds its barcode is missing as well, the initials JSK written on the paper where it had been.
“The people who have been following you would,” Dorian says. “But they’ve been distracted. Those they left to babysit their collection will be the low-ranking sort, not high enough to be privy to details about which book it is exactly that anyone is looking for. You will give them this one, you will retrieve another for me, and I will give this back to you.”
He holds up Sweet Sorrows again and Zachary thinks a second too late that he could grab it and run. His hands are too cold to take out of his pockets. This man, whatever his actual name is, could probably outrun him, too.
“Does all this book-juggling serve a purpose?” Zachary asks.
Dorian slides Sweet Sorrows back into his coat.
“You help me with this book-juggling, as you call it, and I will get you there.”
Zachary doesn’t need him to clarify where “there” is but he also doesn’t know what to say. A blinking neon light catches the snow in the gutter in front of them, shifting it from grey to red to grey again.
&nbs
p; “It’s real,” Zachary says, not quite a question.
“Of course it’s real,” Dorian says. “You know that. You feel it down to your toes or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Is it—” Zachary starts but then he cannot finish the question. Is it the way it is in the book? He aches to know but he also suspects real places are never properly captured in words. There is always more.
“You will not get there without my help,” Dorian continues as they pause at a red-handed crosswalk despite the lack of traffic. “Not unless you have an arrangement with Mirabel that I am unaware of.”
“Who’s Mirabel?” Zachary asks as they begin to walk again.
Dorian stops in the middle of the street and turns to Zachary and stares at him, a questioning stare topped by skeptical eyebrows.
“What?” Zachary asks after the pause goes on long enough to make him uncomfortable, glancing both ways for taxis.
“You don’t…” Dorian starts but then stops again. The skeptical eyebrows lower into an expression that looks more like concern but then he turns and keeps walking. “We don’t have time for this, we’re almost there. I’m going to need you to listen very carefully and follow instructions.”
“No improvising?” Zachary asks, a little more sharply than he intended to.
“Not unless you have no other options. No lending pens to anyone, either, if you were wondering about the tracking device. You are going to tell whoever answers the door that you have a drop-off for the archive. Show them the book but do not let it out of your hands. If they do not allow you entry immediately say that Alex sent you.”
“Who’s Alex?”
“Not a who, Alex is a code. You are going to wear this and make certain that they see it but do not draw attention to it, it’s an older style than they wear currently but it’s the best I could do.”
Dorian hands him a piece of metal on a long chain. A silver sword.
“You will be led through a hall and up a flight of stairs to another hall with several locked doors. A room will be unlocked for you. At approximately this time the doorbell will ring. Your escort will need to attend to it. Assure your escort that you can handle the book drop yourself and you will see yourself out the back, this is customary and will not seem odd. Your escort will depart.”
“How can you be sure?” Zachary asks, pulling the chain over his head as they make another turn. The streets around them are more residential, dotted with trees and occasional corner stores and restaurants.
“They are quite strict about their protocols but some are more strict than others,” Dorian says, his pace quickening as they continue. “Always answer the door is one of the stricter ones and it will take priority. Now, the room will have books on shelves and in glass cases. You are concerned with the cases. In one of the cases there will be a book bound in brown leather, with faded gilding around the page edges. You will know which one it is. You will swap your Bulfinch’s mythology for that book. Place that book in your coat while in that room, there are cameras in the halls. Best keep your head down in general but I don’t think anyone monitoring will recognize you based on your photo.”
“They have a photo of me?” Zachary asks.
“They have a yearbook photo that looks nothing like you, don’t worry about it. Return the way you came, down the stairs but when you reach the main hall go around to the back of the stairs. From there you can go down to the basement and out the back door. That door leads to the garden and there’s a gate at the back, go out the gate and turn right. Proceed to the end of the alley and back to the street. I’ll be waiting across the street, when I see you I’ll start walking. Follow me for six blocks and if you are certain no one has followed you, catch up with me. This is it,” Dorian says, stopping at a partially shadowed corner. “Halfway down the block on the left, grey building, black door, number 213. Do you have any questions?”
“Yes I have questions,” Zachary says, louder than he means to. “Who the hell are you, anyway? Where did you come from? Why can’t you do this yourself? What’s so important about this particular book and who are these people really and what did the mouse do with Fate’s heart? Who is Mirabel and at what point during all this covert activity am I allowed to go back to my hotel to get my face windows? Eyeglasses. Spectacles.”
Dorian sighs and turns toward Zachary, his face half in light and half in shadow and Zachary realizes now that he is younger than he looks, the greying hair and the frequently furrowed eyebrows making him read older.
“Forgive my impatience,” Dorian says, dropping his voice and stepping closer. His eyes glance briefly down the street and then back to Zachary. “You and I have a common destination and before I can go there I need that book. I cannot do this myself because they know me and if I set foot in that building I will never come out of it again. I am asking you for your help because I believe that you might be willing to help me. Please. I will beg you if I must.”
For the first time Dorian’s voice takes on the quality it had in the darkness back at the party, the storyteller cadence that turns the street corner into a sacred place.
Dorian holds his gaze, and for a moment the feeling in his chest Zachary had thought to be nervousness is something else entirely but then it turns back into nervousness. He feels too warm.
Zachary doesn’t know what to say so he nods and turns, leaving Dorian in the shadows, his heart pounding in his ears, his feet drawing him down a deserted street lined with brownstone buildings illuminated by pools of light from streetlamps and persistent strings of twinkling holiday lights looped through trees.
What are you doing? a voice in his head asks and he doesn’t have a good answer for it. Doesn’t know what or why or even where, exactly, because he forgot to check the street sign on the corner. He could keep walking, hail a cab, return to his hotel. But he wants his book back. And he wants to know what happens next.
A quest has been set in front of him and he is going to see it through.
Some buildings do not have visible numbers so Zachary cannot keep count but it doesn’t take long to reach the one he is looking for. It is a different sort of building than the ones that surround it, the facade a grey stone instead of brown, the windows covered with ornate black bars. He would have taken it for an embassy if it had a flag, or a college club. Something about it is too cold for it to seem like a private residence.
He glances back down the street before he climbs the steps but if Dorian is waiting there Zachary cannot see him. Zachary goes over his instructions in his head as he approaches the door, worried he is going to forget something.
The doorway is lit by a single bulb in an elaborate sconce that hangs over a metal plaque. Zachary leans in to read it.
Collector’s Club
No hours of operation, no other information at all. The glass above the door is frosted but the lights are on inside. The door is black with gold numbers: 213. Definitely the right one.
Zachary takes a deep breath and presses the doorbell.
In the depths there is a man lost in time.
He has opened the wrong doors. Chosen the wrong paths.
Wandered farther than he should have.
He is looking for someone. Something. Someone. He does not remember who the someone is, does not have the ability, here in the depths where time is fragile, to grasp the thoughts and memories and hold on to them, to sort through them to recall more than glimpses.
Sometimes he stops and in the stopping the memory grows clear enough for him to see her face, or pieces of it. But the clarity motivates him to continue and then the pieces fall apart again and he walks on not knowing for whom or what it is he walks.
He only knows he has not reached it yet.
Reached her yet.
Who? He looks toward the sky that is hidden from him by rock and earth and stories. No one answers his question. There is a d
ripping he mistakes for water, but no other sound. Then the question is forgotten again.
He walks down crumbling stairs and trips over tangled roots. He has long since passed by the last of the rooms with their doors and their locks, the places where the stories are content to remain on their shelves.
He has untangled himself from vines blossoming with story-filled flowers. He has traversed piles of abandoned teacups with text baked into their crackled glaze. He has walked through puddles of ink and left footprints that formed stories in his wake that he did not turn around to read.
Now he travels through tunnels with no light at their ends, feeling his way along unseen walls until he finds himself someplace somewhere sometime else.
He passes over broken bridges and under crumbling towers.
He walks over bones he mistakes for dust and nothingness he mistakes for bones.
His once-fine shoes are worn. He abandoned his coat some time ago.
He does not remember the coat with its multitude of buttons. The coat, if coats could remember such things, would remember him but by the time they are reunited the coat will belong to someone else.
On clear days memories focus in his mind in scattered words and images. His name. The night sky. A room with red velvet drapery. A door. His father. Books, hundreds and thousands of books. A single book in her hand. Her eyes. Her hair. The tips of her fingers.
But most of the memories are stories. Pieces of them. Blind wanderers and star-crossed lovers, grand adventures and hidden treasures. Mad kings and cryptic witches.
The things he has seen and heard with his own eyes and ears mix with tales he has read or heard with his own eyes and ears. They are inseparable down here.
There are not many clear days. Clear nights.
There is no way to tell the difference here in the depths.
Night or day. Fact or fiction. Real or imagined.
The Starless Sea Page 9
