The Book of Peril

by Melissa McShane

“Won’t that make the tribunal exonerate you?” I said.

  “No. I might still be guilty of partiality.” Her face became even grimmer. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “Lucia—”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Lucia stepped by to let her people carry the body to one of the vans. “I’m going to do my best to close this and hope it’s not my last action as custodian.” She walked to the stairs and ran up them two at a time. Malcolm shifted to let her pass.

  “They can’t fire her. They just can’t,” I said.

  “They might do worse than fire her,” said Olivia.

  “I hate William Rasmussen right now.”

  “So do I. And not for the usual reasons.” Olivia patted me on my uninjured shoulder. “Let’s have Tinsley fix you up.”

  Apprehensive, I followed her to where Malcolm was standing up. He looked as gory as before, but the bleeding had stopped and the subtle weaving he’d been doing whenever he stood still was gone. “Your turn,” he said, guiding me to sit on the step.

  “Will this hurt?”

  “A little. Not as much as the comprehensive healing I did,” Derrick told me. He put his hand on my shoulder. Even that gentle touch hurt. The pain grew, the worst muscle ache I could imagine, and I bit my lip against tears. Then it subsided, and I discovered I could move my arm freely again. The raw, scraped feeling my arm had was also gone. “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. Are we done here?”

  “Lucia may have more questions for us, but I think Helena should get back to the store,” Malcolm said. “No, wait,” he told me when I would have left. He bounded up the stairs and returned with a square of origami paper and a pencil. “Take this augury, and see if everything’s been restored.”

  “You think it might not be?” The idea of permanent damage to the store filled me with dread.

  “I think you should verify it. I’ll come by tomorrow for the book.” Malcolm folded the paper in half and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket and, feeling bereft, got in my car and drove away. As I pulled away from the curb, I saw in my side mirror they were watching me go. The feeling I’d had of being part of a team vanished. I was just Helena Davies, custodian of Abernathy’s, and I had a job to do.

  made it back to the store without incident and felt too weary to be worried about attackers as I went from my car to the back door. Safely inside, I locked the door behind me and walked with slow, ponderous steps to the front counter without turning on the lights. I felt so tired—but I wanted to know if everything was all right. I unfolded the paper Malcolm had given me. Will my current endeavor be successful? A nice, generic augury, nothing to do with emotions or the lovely Andria, who was not his girlfriend but was still in a position to answer his phone. Holding the paper before me in two hands like a shield, I walked into the stacks.

  Light sprang up all around me, a glowing golden light that came from the air itself. I’d never performed an augury in the dark and had no idea if this was normal, but it felt like a good sign, and it cheered me. I walked through the aisles without hurrying, looking for the blue glow. I saw it almost immediately, but I dragged my feet getting to it, afraid of seeing the wrong name, afraid of seeing a dozen more glowing books. Stop being a coward. Olivia said she’d destroyed the illusion. But it had been in effect so long, what if there was permanent damage? What would I do then?

  The book was called A Boy’s Guide to Magic and featured a man’s hand pulling a rabbit out of a hat on the cover. I remembered Malcolm saying once when we’d first met that he’d sometimes performed this kind of magic as well as the real kind. I wondered in passing what kind of augury this might be, delaying the moment when I had to look inside. Gritting my teeth, I flipped to the title page. Malcolm Campbell, it said, and below that $10,000. Holy hell. What kind of endeavor is he embarking on?

  I looked around. There were no other blue glows, nothing but the golden light that made the whole place feel warm and inviting. I carried the book to the counter and put the origami paper inside. Maybe I should text Malcolm to let him know how expensive his augury was. But the idea wearied me even more. It was going to take several auguries to show whether things were back to normal. I had a few left over from today I could use, so Malcolm’s was unnecessary. But I appreciated his gesture. I’d tell him that in the morning.

  I did three more auguries. All of them were correct. None of them made me feel exhausted with more than usual tiredness, to be expected after the day I’d had. After the final one, I leaned against the counter and let out a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said to the air. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

  I carried the auguries to the office and flipped on the light, setting the pile of books on the desk. There was something else I had to do. Right. Look up Matt McKanley. I yanked open the file cabinet, which had a tendency to stick, and ran my finger over the M’s. It was too bad information on our customers wasn’t computerized, because this would be so much easier. Well, we had a computer now; maybe that was something we could do. Or, more likely, Judy could do. Running software programs was about the limit of my computer skills. I remembered Judy was still under arrest and cursed under my breath. Matt McKanley had done a lot more than try to kill the oracle.

  I found his folder and pulled it out, keeping a thumb in the space where it belonged and awkwardly opening it with my other hand. There were two sheets of ledger paper inside. Both had ABERNATHY’S printed in sans serif font at the top, with McKanley’s name written in a blocky script I recognized as my predecessor Mr. Briggs’ handwriting below it. Below that was—I drew in a startled breath. All the lines on the first page were full, and more than half the second page. It was rare to see so many auguries in one person’s record.

  The earliest augury was about twenty years earlier, with the next few spaced a few years apart after that. It was a typical pattern. But seven lines down, the pattern changed. McKanley had begun requesting auguries once or twice a week. The titles of the books meant nothing to me, but he’d always paid by check, no sanguinis sapiens or trade in kind. And the auguries weren’t cheap. I pulled my chair away from the desk, opened the calculator on my phone, and started adding. I did remember McKanley’s name now, from filling a lot of augury requests last December, but I’d still been new to the custodian’s position, and everything had been overwhelming enough I hadn’t known McKanley’s constant requests were unusual. I hadn’t seen his name at all since early January.

  The total I came up with stunned me. Unless McKanley had a fortune, and that wasn’t unlikely, he must have bankrupted himself paying for all these auguries. I wished more than ever that we kept records of the questions people asked, but that was a serious breach of privacy. But this was a story with too many missing pieces.

  My phone rang. I snatched it up. “It looks like McKanley had a grudge against the oracle,” Lucia said. “We went through the messages on his phone and found a correspondence we think was between him and his partner. It’s incomplete, but there are references to his wife and how the oracle failed her, and proof that either he or his partner killed the magus who made the origamis.”

  “I looked up his records,” I said. “He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on auguries. Suppose he was trying to find a cure for his wife? I don’t think that’s the kind of thing the oracle does, but he must have been desperate.”

  “Maybe. I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t like what?” She didn’t sound like someone who’d just solved a terrible mystery.

  “It’s too neat. There was just enough of the right kind of information to point to a motive. If it were that simple, why would McKanley’s partner have killed him? What more might he have told us?”

  “Couldn’t it be that simple, though? If he spent all that money on auguries and his wife died anyway, couldn’t he have blamed the oracle? Maybe his partner killed him to keep him from being executed more horribly.” I blushed, glad Lucia couldn’t see me. “I mean, I don’t know how you execute people, if it�
��s horrible—it probably isn’t—”

  “Stop before you hurt yourself, Davies.” Lucia sounded amused, which heartened me. “It doesn’t matter. Unless we capture the accomplice, and I have to admit that’s unlikely, there’s no way to know the full truth. I’m inclined to let it go at that. Is the oracle recovered?”

  “Yes, as far as I can tell. I’m still worried, but so far, it looks good.”

  “Excellent. Get some sleep, Davies. You’ve earned it.” She disconnected. I put McKanley’s file away and shut the drawer, shoving hard to get it to latch. Maybe I needed a second file cabinet to ease some of the pressure on this one.

  I texted Viv that I was home and she could come over. Then I went upstairs and cleaned my already tidy apartment, moving around in restless bursts of energy. I started putting away the dishes in the drying rack and noticed my shirt sleeves, and registered for the first time how filthy they were. I trudged to my bedroom and put on my pajamas, then picked up my dirty clothes and stared at them.

  Then it hit me, all the terror and trauma I’d been suppressing in the heat of the moment, and I sagged onto my bed and cried. I’d been kidnapped, I’d been left to die in that warehouse, I’d nearly lost the oracle entirely, and in shock and fear I sobbed into my pile of dirty clothes, shaking hard. I lay on my bed and shuddered until I was worn out, cried out and exhausted.

  My phone buzzed. Viv. I pushed myself off my bed and went downstairs to let her in. “Sweetie, are you all right?” she said.

  I looked at her, and shook my head, and began crying again. Viv put her arms around me. “Come upstairs, and we’ll eat ice cream and talk, and I’ll spend the night the way we used to do. It will be all right. You’ll see.”

  I woke the next morning feeling sore all over. Derrick’s healing hadn’t done anything for that. I got up and went into the kitchen, passing Viv, who snored like a contented buzz saw on my couch. Breakfast. I could manage breakfast so long as it was coffee and maybe an English muffin. I busied myself in my kitchen, and my spirits lifted somewhat.

  “Mmm, coffee,” Viv said, coming into the kitchen with my spare quilt wrapped around her. “Do you have any jam?”

  “In the fridge.” I poured her a cup of coffee, then one for myself, and we sat opposite each other at the table.

  “Are you better? Sleep always makes things better,” Viv said.

  “I feel a little better. Less discouraged, at least.”

  “That’s good.” Viv took a bite of English muffin and caught a large dollop of raspberry jam on her finger. She sucked it off. “I don’t have work this morning, so I’m going to hang around here for a while, okay?”

  “If you don’t mind being bored.”

  “I’ll play mindless games on your computer if I am. But first I’m going to take a bath in that wonderful tub of yours.”

  “You’re welcome to it as soon as I’m done. I feel so grimy from yesterday.”

  I finished my food, took a quick bath, and dressed in comfortable clothes. So I didn’t look professional. It wasn’t as if anyone was coming into the store to notice. Viv gave me a skeptical look as I passed her in the hall, but she looked at me that way anytime my wardrobe didn’t pass muster. I made a face at her. After the day I’d had yesterday, comfort was going to win.

  I was downstairs by nine and restless. The mail wouldn’t be here until after ten, and I was antsy, anxious to test the oracle again, afraid the results of the previous night weren’t enough proof. I made myself calm down. I hadn’t felt any of the terrible exhaustion I’d experienced in performing auguries recently, and that had to count for something. Still, I needed a plan for if I was wrong. I could use the Athenaeum to find the records of past custodians, which had to show something—why hadn’t Silas kept a diary like most of the others? None of the Briggses had kept diaries either, but I couldn’t imagine Silas being anything like the self-contained, close-mouthed Briggs family.

  Being surrounded by the store, inert and quiet, made me even more restless. I went back upstairs to the study to check my email. Viv was splashing in the tub and singing “Nobody’s Lady.” I loved her, but it was clear why she was the drummer. I had the usual assortment of spam—I needed a better filter—and a note from Harry Keller, inviting me for dinner. And a message from a sender I didn’t recognize, with the header Please read this, Helena. It didn’t look like spam, so I opened it.

  Dear Helena,

  I’m sending this from a public library, so don’t try to trace it. Or, actually, have a certain someone else trace it, because I know you don’t know how to do that. I wanted to say goodbye, and apologize one last time. I don’t know what I did, but I know I hurt you badly, and it’s killing me knowing that because the last thing I ever wanted was to cause you pain. Your friend told me he’d make me suffer if I came near you again, but this doesn’t count. I think. I’m going somewhere else to start over because I don’t think I could avoid you forever if I stayed in town. I’m not that strong. I want to say I’m sorry one last time, and I wish things were different. I know you don’t care, but I love you, and I wish the best for you and your new boyfriend.

  Love, Chet

  I sat back, blinking at the suddenness of it. I read the message again, thought about deleting it, realized I wanted to show it to Viv, and moved my finger off the Delete key. Chet was still delusional, but I believed him when he said he wished me well. With luck, this would be the last I ever heard from him.

  I read the rest of my email, then went back downstairs. Only 9:27. Waiting was torture. I sat on my stool and tried to think of things I could do to pass the time. Just as I’d decided to randomize the shelves, my least favorite activity, the key turned in the front door lock. Before I could do anything but take a few steps toward it, it swung open—and Judy stepped through. “Hi,” she said. “I’m free.”

  I gaped. Then I threw my arms around her. “I’m so glad.”

  Judy returned my hug in a way that told me she wasn’t used to receiving them. “Lucia called late last night and said they’d proved it wasn’t me. She actually apologized for taking so long about it. Not for arresting me in the first place, but I have to admit I did look suspicious.”

  I released her and took a step backward, giving her space. “I never thought you did.”

  “I know. Thanks for believing in me.” She looked around. “Is everything all right yet? Lucia didn’t say, but I assumed, if they were releasing me, it was because they’d found the person responsible.”

  “We did. He’s dead, but—it’s a long story.”

  “I don’t have time for it now. I’m testifying before the tribunal in an hour. For the defense.”

  “The defense?”

  Judy nodded. “I insisted on it. Father nearly popped a vein, but I convinced him I needed to speak. I came to let you know. I’ll be back after it’s over.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “The truth. That I don’t think Lucia acted out of malice or partiality. I don’t know how much good it will do, but I have to be honest.”

  “Thank you. I hope it helps.”

  “Me too. I don’t get along with Lucia, but I can’t imagine the Gunther Node without her. Also, she did complete her investigation while being tried before the tribunal, which should count for something.” She nodded at me and left the store, the door closing behind her with a quiet click.

  I felt suddenly cheerful. All right, maybe the store was still broken, but Judy was free, and Lucia might escape punishment, and I couldn’t stay depressed under those conditions.

  Once again I threw myself into unnecessary cleaning, sweeping the floor and polishing streaks on the windows even though they didn’t need it, dusting the shelves and the office. I took special care with Silas’s picture, spraying the glass and wiping it down. “Things aren’t so bad,” I told him. “Though I could use your advice right now. You oversaw the greatest trial the oracle ever faced, up until now, anyway, and disrupting it to move it across the Atlantic and most of
the United States had to have thrown it off a bit. I bet you’d know how to handle this problem. Well, maybe someday I’ll find the record you kept of your time as custodian. You were too meticulous in your description of your travels as a stone magus not to have kept one, I’m sure of it. Then I can handle anything.”

  Distantly, someone knocked on the front door. I checked the time—10:07. I hurried to the front, flipped the CLOSED sign over, and unlocked the door. “Sorry,” I told Malcolm. “I lost track of time.”

  “I’m rather early, so I don’t mind. Do you have an augury for me?”

  “I do, and I’m afraid to say it’s expensive.” I handed him the book. He took one look at it and laughed.

  “I’ve read this book before,” he said. “Excellent introduction to sleight of hand magic. I would never have guessed the store would present me with a relic of my past.”

  “It’s ten thousand dollars, too. I’m sorry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I expected it to be costly, but not that much.” He withdrew a couple of tubes of sanguinis sapiens from inside his suit coat, then drew a few more from his pants pocket. “I hope this is enough.”

  “I’m sure it will be.” I flipped open the book to check that the pages were all legible and not covered in runny ink. “Looks like it is.”

  “You had no trouble?”

  “No. But I shouldn’t have let you spend money on the augury. It didn’t occur to me I’d need several auguries to prove the store isn’t damaged, and I had some I hadn’t done yet. You don’t have to pay for this one—I can take it back—”

  “This is an augury I’ve had in mind for some time. It’s not a waste of money. I hope it’s not a waste of money.” Malcolm tucked the fat little book away in his suit coat without ruining its line, which as far as I was concerned was magical all by itself. “It’s for a personal matter that’s very important to me.”

  “Oh.” I hesitated for a moment, then decided to go for broke. “Did… was the last one helpful?”