Grimoires and Where to Find Them

by Raconteur, Honor

  “And when you have it on display, is its protective box also there?”

  “Yes, of course. The box is part of it,” she assured me. “The display case has a charm on its base to keep the magic of the grimoires under control while they are out of their box. It was specifically crafted for that purpose.”

  “And both box and grimoire are missing?”

  “No, just the grimoire. The box remained, hence why we didn’t notice the theft sooner.”

  Because the missing box would have drawn attention. Clever of the thief to realize this. On the other hand, that meant we had yet another grimoire free of its protective box. This thought did not cheer me. In fact, it made bile rise in my throat. Wherever the grimoires were being held, they would definitely cause issues. Many, many issues. I’d not heard any reports of buildings losing their integrity, or an outbreak of sickness or madness, so it did beg the question of where they were being stored.

  Perhaps a search of the records for rogue magic might be in order. Or a call to the local hospitals to see if anyone had checked in for unusual magical sickness. I made a mental note to pass along the idea to Jamie later, assuming she didn’t think of it herself.

  Seaton caught my eye and motioned me back out of the room with a jerk of his head. I followed him out, past the counter and into the empty library. He stopped next to one of the tables lining the main floor and turned, still looking haggard and ready to sleep the rest of the year away.

  “I think that’s how he got in,” he said without preamble. “Without the intention to steal, the wards wouldn’t reject his entry. Once inside, he could do as he pleased.”

  I flipped a hand palm up, a silent acceptance.

  “If this truly was a spontaneous crime, and his intent was only to visit, then you’re correct. The wards wouldn’t have triggered, and they would have let him through without a fuss. But what of his exit? If he was carrying the grimoire, the wards would have stopped him and set off quite the alarm. So, how did he get it back out?”

  “I believe I’m here to provide you gents with some answers.”

  I spun, startled to hear the teenage voice, looking sharply about for its source. In the time since I’d last seen him, it looked as if he’d gained five inches, and his voice had certainly dropped, but there in front of me stood Eddy Jameson. He was better dressed, with clean clothes that actually fit, but there was no mistaking that impish grin.

  “Jameson,” Seaton acknowledged, sounding like death warmed over. “Jamie said she wanted to call you in. You came faster than I expected.”

  “All in the line of duty,” Jameson answered brightly. “No worries, gents, I’ve cured my wicked ways. I now only sneak in to test the defenses. Queen loves me, she does, gave me a raise.”

  I eyed him with due suspicion. This young lout had cost me hair the last time I’d crossed paths with him. I did not trust him farther than I could throw him. Considering his reflexes and new size, I doubted I could even readily lift him, so that should tell you something.

  Seaton challenged this assertion immediately. “If you’re so good at testing the defenses of this place, then how did someone steal something and waltz off with it?”

  Jameson lost his grin, looking determined. “Now, that bothers me, it does. I take it as a point of pride. Ain’t no one tap dancin’ on my turf, you see. When the Detective called me in, explained what was going on, I came here lickety-split to see it for my own self. Give me the facts, gents. I’ve got a theory or two on how it was done, but I need some facts to make a call.”

  I was not at all inclined to talk to this young whelp. I still had ill feelings towards him. Fortunately for us all, Jamie chose to walk out of the file room at that moment, no doubt because she heard Jameson’s voice.

  She greeted him with relief. “Eddy, there you are. You made good time.”

  Jameson spun and gave her a wide smile. “Detective! I dropped everything and ran here. I was telling the gents, I was, point of pride that someone snuck past me and the guards. I don’t like it, no I don’t.”

  “He said he has a few theories on how this might have been done,” I threw in. Mostly because I wanted to know everything he’d thought of so we could plug the holes before someone else had the same bright idea as our thief.

  Eddy nodded, head bopping.

  “Right, right. Two ways to do it, or as I see it, two easy ways to get around the wards. Both require an innocent dupe. First, take what you’re wanting to get out, and wrap it up in something like papers for disposal. Trash collection happens outside the wards, see. You’ll have to track it, but a staff member will carry it out for you, wards won’t kick up a fuss, and out it goes. You can retrieve it easy before the garbage men come.”

  I groaned. The simplicity of that method hurt my soul. Mostly my head, but my soul as well.

  Eddy shot me a sympathetic look.

  “Sorry, Doctor. Second option is a bit faster for retrieval, means some sleight of hand, but easy to do. Take the thing, whatever it be, and slip it into one of the tourists’ bags—them ladies, they always carry those large bags over their shoulders, full of things. Easy to slip something small in there. Then let them go ahead of you, follow them off grounds, catch back up long enough to slip it back out.”

  That also hurt my soul.

  I may need a box of chocolates after this.

  Jamie tapped a thoughtful finger to her mouth. “The stolen book was on display here for the tour groups that come through. The book it was replaced with was inventory from a nearby shelf. What do you think, Eddy? Sound like he used the bag method?”

  “Odds are. Or something similar.”

  Seaton was not so easily convinced and demanded, “Show me.”

  I, too, wanted to see this in action, actually prove that it worked, and I gave a firm nod.

  Eddy shrugged, amenable to this, and gestured toward Jamie. “I need you to carry a bag big enough to fit a book in, and a book to use.”

  “I can arrange that.” Jamie put up a hand, staying him in place, then retreated back to the librarian offices. She came back a few minutes later with the head librarian, who had an over-the-shoulder purse clutched in both hands, and while not the largest I’d seen, it was large enough to put a book into with ease.

  “They’re not about to let any palace property go marching out,” Jamie informed us with an understanding expression, “but they’re willing to let us borrow one of their blank record books for this purpose. No harm if something happens to it.”

  “Works for me.” Eddy clearly didn’t care.

  For the intents of the experiment, it would still work. While the book was not incredibly valuable, the wards would still recognize it as palace property and react accordingly.

  “Let’s do a dry run,” Jamie suggested. “We’ll gather the staff up, have them pretend to be a tour group, and walk the same route. Miss Adams, if you’ll put the record book in the same place the grimoire would have been? Thank you so much. And please play tour guide, I’d like to see the route the tours take through here.”

  An excellent suggestion. It would give us a better feeling for how plausible this scenario was. I found it hard to believe that even a skilled thief could switch books out, put something into a lady’s purse, and pull it out again without a single person catching a glimpse of it.

  Jamie had it arranged in minutes. We started at the front doors of the library, the head librarian walking us through the main floor.

  She stopped partway and gestured. “We normally stop here, talk about some of the books that are on display, and take some questions.”

  Jamie nodded. “Okay, good. Keep going.”

  It was a struggle to not turn and stare at Jameson, who was behind us. But the point of this was, the tour group wouldn’t have been staring suspiciously at each other the entire way through the building. I had to act naturally, which meant paying attention to my tour guide.

  Miss Adams walked a bit further, then to the next open area, where a g
rand, sweeping staircase led up to a second level. “We stop again here to tell them about what all we have on the second floor. We keep a great many specialty items up there for our royal mages and kingsmen.”

  “Okay, good. Next.”

  We continued at something of a leisurely pace until we reached the main counter.

  “And then, here’s the last stop before they leave, where we explain the checkout procedure and something of the history of how long the palace library has had a full staff of librarians on hand. It’s actually rather recent, as it didn’t start until Queen Regina’s grandparents took a more direct interest in building the library up.”

  Ah? That was news to me, I’d thought their history was longer than that.

  Miss Adams gestured toward the front door. “Do we go out?”

  “You don’t, no. Or, you can if you wish. Ladies, for the purpose of this exercise, I need you to actually exit palace grounds at this point. I understand this is the last stop for most tour groups and they’re escorted out after this. So, that’s what we need to do.”

  Everyone nodded, willing to play this out, and followed Jamie out of the building. We walked steadily toward the gate, and Seaton went ahead to explain that we were doing an experiment, and to ask the guards to let everyone in and out without challenge. We went through, and I spotted Phil sitting on the wall, watching the proceedings with interest.

  Once we were past the walls, Jamie led us a little farther, to a spot on the street designated as a taxi service, with several taxies lined up and ready for passengers. Only then did she stop and turn with an expectant look.

  “Eddy?”

  It was a relief on my part to turn as well, looking for him as I’d been itching to do this entire time. I spied him several feet back, far away from the group, and no one had to ask if he had been successful. The wide grin on his face, stretching from ear to ear, said it all.

  He held up his prize and waggled it over his head. “Easy.”

  I growled in vexation. Great. That meant I’d somehow have to alter the wards with Seaton in order to plug that hole. How, I did not know. I’m currently open to suggestions, as Jamie liked to put it.

  Jamie sighed as well. “That answers that question. Even if he didn’t do it exactly the same, our thief likely probably used something similar to this tactic. Eddy, you’re worth your weight in gold. I owe you ten books.”

  To my surprise, he shook his head.

  “No, Detective. I’m right glad you called me in for this. It’s my job, too, to keep things like this from happening. I should have warned someone this was a possibility. I won’t take the payment.” Eddy turned and looked me dead in the eye. “I’ll help you, Doctor. Let’s make sure this can’t happen again.”

  Well. Someone had matured more than physically since I’d seen him last. I was pleasantly surprised at the change. And if that was his attitude, then I might be willing to accept the help. Heaven knew, I hadn’t seen or heard a thing while he was switching the book in and out of multiple places. This wasn’t something I could have easily tested on my own.

  For the first time in our acquaintance, I returned his smile. “I’ll need your help, Mr. Jameson. And am thankful for it.”

  Because I was afraid Henri really was going to lose hair at this rate, I offered to cook him dinner that night, with a movie afterwards. He took me up on it readily, and I managed to put a call in to my grocer’s and get all the ingredients for curry delivered to my apartment at the right time.

  It was something of a trick, as I had to swing by the book broker’s first and close the scene down, then release Foster, Gerring, and Niamh for the day. Collect cats, all that fun stuff. Going back and forth like that cost me a lot of time. Niamh kept hassling the taxi drivers, too, trying to find out who had picked up Walcott, but at this hour, it was impossible. People were scurrying all over the city. It was better to leave a note with the supervisor at the taxi station, talk with people tomorrow when they got in from their shifts. I told her it was a fool’s errand to try and pursue it today, but she didn’t like being thwarted.

  She promised to follow up tomorrow before finally going off. With that settled, I raced back to my apartment. I’m using the word “raced” with full sarcasm because there was no way you could cross the city quickly at that hour. Even sacrifices to the traffic gods got you nowhere.

  Henri had swung by our favorite sweets shop and picked up a chocolate cake (which tells you something about his stress level). After a full plate of curry, we dove into the cake with relish.

  I’d fully intended to put the movie on after we ate dinner, but instead we ended up on the couch, my legs draped over his, with his hand in my lap as I gently massaged his palm. He was steadily relaxing, and every now and then he would breathe in deeply, a little murmur of contentment escaping him.

  He was really cute like this. I wanted to pinch his cheeks.

  “Where is the trio?” he asked, as if only now realizing we had an absence of furballs.

  “We got home to reports of a rat somewhere in the building next door,” I answered, still focused on his hand. He’d rolled his sleeves up, and I was thinking his wrist and forearm needed to be next.

  “You mean to tell me they worked a full day and still had the energy to go chase a rat?”

  “Are you kidding? Hunting is the best game ever for them. They lit up and were all sparkly even as they dashed off. I’m pretty sure it’s become a competition at this point to see who gets to the rat first.”

  “Ah. Of course.” He settled back another inch, eyes drooping. “I meant to ask. Are you still pursuing your goal?”

  “Of…?”

  “Sending another journal to your family.”

  “That? Yeah, you bet. I haven’t written anything the past three days, but I can catch up.”

  I glanced at the laptop, where it was sitting on the coffee table. The solar-powered battery still sat in the window, a silent testament to the fact that I’d not used the laptop today. Sunlight was the only way to charge it.

  When my family had first gathered up the laptop, Kindles, and external hard drives full of goodies, I’d vowed to do something in return. And I knew the thing they wanted most was to hear how I was doing over here. It wasn’t possible to tell them everything during our quarterly calls to each other. We didn’t have enough time. So, I hit upon the idea of keeping an electronic journal and saving it all to a thumb drive. It was easy to send to Earth since it was light, and it would help catch them up in detail.

  I was also translating over all the cases Henri had written down already. He’d started when he first met me, and it gave my family a good idea of what he was like, since he didn’t participate much during the calls.

  My mother was tickled I was dating a gentleman. I think my dad was just relieved.

  “Catch up soon,” he urged me. “I know it’s easy to think tomorrow, but it’s just as easy to forget the events of today.”

  “That sounds like experience talking.”

  “I used to fall into that trap often as a young magical examiner, thinking I’d remember some detail and jot it down later. I had to redo some of my work because I failed to retain it all.”

  Now, that was an interesting segue into something I’d meant to ask. “How did you get started as a magical examiner, anyway? I know you’ve been doing it for several years. Was it what you intended to do when you graduated?”

  He blinked his eyes open, and they crinkled at the corners in amusement. “No, not at all. When I first started university, my plan was to go into magical processing.”

  “Magic…okay, what?”

  “Magical processing,” he repeated, lips twisted up in wry memory. “I’m sure you’ve encountered things that were created with magical processing. Shampoos, for instance. Anything with a chemical base that has magic infused into it went through a magical process.”

  So, something like a chemical engineer? It sounded that way. “What made you change your mind?”

&
nbsp; “Hmm, a number of things. The idea of creating new products appealed to me, as I liked the challenge of it. But when I was in my senior year, barely six months from graduating, my mother urged me to shadow someone in the field for a day. It was a sound suggestion, and I took her advice. I’m glad now that I did. I learned quite a bit about it. It’s deadly dull and extremely repetitious. I discovered that the creation of new products was mostly done by the advertising department. They came up with the ideas, and then the other departments made them feasible. Not at all as I had assumed.”

  He would have been good at it. Henri’s good at a lot of things. He’d also have been bored to tears. “I can see why you changed your course.”

  “Oh, yes. I was casting about for some other direction, not sure what to do with myself, when a detective visited our university. He had three cases, all cold, that dealt with magical crimes. He wanted help cracking them, as he’d hit a wall and wasn’t sure what else to do to find the culprit. My professor brought together a team of six to help go through the case files, and I was one of them.”

  Oh-ho. “And you liked it.”

  “The challenge of it was immensely appealing.” A hint of pride entered his voice as he admitted, “We solved all three cases. The detective was ever so impressed with our work and told us frankly that if any of us were interested in becoming a magical examiner, he’d serve as a reference. I didn’t take him up on it immediately, but now knowing some of the scope of the work, it held appeal. I contacted him the next week and asked if it was possible to do an internship with his department. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into.”

  I had a feeling I knew where this story was going. “They kept you, didn’t they?”

  Henri chuckled. “The detective who brought the cases to us was Gregson.”

  I laughed outright. “Oh, now that figures!”

  “And, yes, he made sure they kept me. I started an internship and was hired a week later. Before I’d even formally graduated, mind you. I’d finished the classes, but the graduation ceremony wasn’t for another month. I was the first in my class to start working. It’s not the most lucrative position, but I honestly don’t know what other profession I’d switch to.”