The Book of Secrets

by Melissa McShane

“Do I pass?” I said.

  Lucia looked up from the book. Then she turned it around so I could see the title page. Reflections, in big Gothic lettering, and below that, in smaller print, Silas Abernathy.

  “Abernathy,” I said. “Is that a coincidence?”

  “Silas Abernathy used to run this store,” Campbell said.

  That shook me. “I didn’t know,” I said. “I got lucky.”

  “That’s not how the store works,” Lucia said. “Did you feel anything strange earlier? Change in your vision, dizziness?”

  “Sort of. There was a moment when the whole room seemed filled with blue light. I thought it was a head rush.”

  Lucia closed the book and handed it back to me. “Briggs keeps—kept a spare ring of keys in his desk drawer. You’ll need those.”

  “Why?”

  She sighed, and suddenly she was just a very tired middle-aged woman, not at all terrifying. “Abernathy’s hasn’t closed mid-day in over a hundred and fifteen years,” she said, “but you can’t be left to tend it, uninformed and unprepared. One hour, and I’ll tell you what I can in that time. Then it’s up to you.”

  “Can’t it be faster? I need an augury,” Campbell said.

  “You’ll have to wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Campbell, haven’t you learned patience yet? Come back tomorrow.” Lucia pushed open the door and made a little shooing gesture with her free hand. Campbell said something under his breath, glaring at Lucia, but left the store.

  I was about to follow him when he turned back toward me. “Miss Davies,” he said, “take care. The murderer is still out there. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Um… goodbye,” I said, but he was already getting into his car, a vintage silver Jaguar parked a few spaces down the road from the store. It was exactly the sort of car I’d have expected him to drive. He made a three-point turn, forcing another car to stop and honk at him, then drove away in the direction opposite the one the van had gone. I watched until he turned a corner out of sight, and felt stupid for feeling bereft. It said something about the day I’d been having that Malcolm Campbell had become comforting and familiar.

  ucia cleared her throat, and I startled.

  “The keys, Davies,” she said, and before I could stop myself I let her peremptory voice propel me back inside to the office, where I set the blue book down on Mr. Briggs’ desk. As I rooted around in the desk for a ring of keys, my eye fell on the stack of boxes. I’ll have to mail those out soon, I thought, and had enough time to be stunned by how casually I’d assumed responsibility for the catalogues before I found the keys. There were five of them, attached to a keychain made from an alligator’s foot, dried out and horrible. I hoped it didn’t have mystic significance.

  Lucia waited impatiently as I fumbled around, trying to work out what key fit the front door, and hung an ancient CLOSED sign in the front window. Then she stalked through the store like a bird of prey hunting a mouse, her eyes darting everywhere. It made me nervous for a completely different reason; I felt sure Mr. Briggs would have objected to her being in the back rooms of Abernathy’s. But I didn’t think I had much choice.

  She went directly for the break room, like she’d known where it was, and dropped heavily into one of the folding chairs. I took a seat opposite her.

  Lucia didn’t speak for a long time. Her eyes were bright blue, startling against her darkly tanned skin, and her short brown hair curled up at the ends. I stared back at her, wondering what she saw when she looked at me: dark blond hair caught up in a ponytail I hoped looked professional, brown eyes like my father’s, a mouth that crooked on one side like my mother’s. Finally, she said, “Why did you apply for work here?”

  “I saw the ad in the paper,” I said. Actually, it had been my father who saw it. When I’d said something about nobody placing want ads in the newspaper anymore, he said “Then you’ll be the only one who applies, right?”

  “A newspaper ad,” Lucia said disgustedly. “What was he thinking?”

  “Was he supposed to do something different?” I asked.

  Lucia waved that away. “So you just walked into the store and Briggs gave you the job. Did he say why?”

  “He said something about how I didn’t have any bad habits to unlearn.”

  “Well, at least he wasn’t completely out of his mind. Why did you take the job?”

  “It pays well, and it seemed interesting. Working in a bookstore, I mean. Are you going to keep grilling me, or do I get some information?”

  Lucia’s lips thinned, pressed tight together in a straight line. “This has never happened before in all the years of Abernathy’s existence. Every custodian has come to the position with years of instruction behind them. And now you walk through the door and end up—” She pushed her chair back, but didn’t stand. I didn’t move. I had the feeling if I said or did anything, I’d lose my chance at understanding what the hell was going on.

  “You’re going to have trouble believing what I’m about to tell you,” Lucia said.

  “If it’s about magic being real, Mr. Campbell already convinced me of that.”

  “Typical. Campbell’s got no sense of self-preservation. For all he knew, you might have gone running off to tell the world what you’d seen.”

  “I don’t think it’s that much of a risk. Who’d believe me if I said I’d seen someone light a fire with magic?”

  “You’d be surprised. But it doesn’t matter. You know magic is real. What else did he tell you?”

  “That there’s a war going on.”

  “That’s true. This world is at war,” Lucia said. “It has been at war for nearly seven hundred years with creatures beyond your imagining—alien in every sense. What do you know about parallel universes?”

  “Isn’t that science fiction?”

  “Yes. But the idea is useful. We are at war with creatures who come from somewhere outside our reality, but the thing is, we don’t understand where that place is.”

  “What do you mean, outside our reality? Like, some kind of dreamland?”

  “Nightmareland would be more accurate. For a long time, we believed it was Hell, and the creatures were demons, but the Enlightenment taught us otherwise. And no, I don’t know whether there really is a Heaven or a Hell. Theology isn’t my idiom.”

  Since I’d been about to ask that question, I decided shutting up was still the best policy.

  “Anyway. Calling it a parallel universe is as close to the truth as humanity can fathom, even though it’s a false analogy. Whatever or wherever it is, it’s a reality that produces monsters that invade our world regularly. These invaders want what we have and they are willing to kill us to get it.”

  “And that is…?”

  “Magic.”

  She leaned back in her chair, examining me closely. I had no idea what she was looking for—shock? Disbelief? Horror? Well, it was too late for shock; Campbell’s magical fire had taken care of that. I knew too little about what she was talking about to be horrified by it. And disbelief… I always hated it in books where the heroine is presented with evidence of a mystical world and then spends the next two hundred pages insisting it’s all a hoax. “You mean… like some kind of natural resource?” I said.

  Her eyes widened briefly in surprise, like she’d asked a question she didn’t think I knew the answer to. “Like that,” she said. “They need magic to survive. So do we. Our survival depends on winning this war.”

  “That sounds dire.” I regretted my words instantly. They sounded more flippant than I felt. Lucia’s expression went cold.

  “This is not a joke,” she said. “Men and women die every day, casualties of the war. The Wardens fight and they, too, die.”

  “And the Wardens are… magical guardians?”

  “Yes.” Lucia scowled. “You’re going to misunderstand what I’m about to tell you.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “It’s not about being stupid. Just… listen, and don�
��t jump to any conclusions.” She took a breath. “All humans are sources of magic. It flows through us like… you’ve already started thinking mystically.”

  “It sounds mystical. Like—”

  “If you say ‘like the Force,’ I’m walking out of here. It’s not mystical. It’s just a thing that is. Magic fills us, like… it’s not too wrong to think of it as similar to blood. Having it doesn’t make us capable of doing magic. People can’t use their magic any more than you could make your blood more oxygenated by thinking about it. But we need it to survive. So when an invader drains someone of their magic, they die.”

  I kept my mouth shut. Any questions I’d ask would no doubt be stupid ones, and maybe if I stayed quiet, I’d eventually understand.

  “At any rate,” Lucia went on, “Human beings are born incapable of wielding magic. That leaves us vulnerable to the invaders, who use magic as easily as you locked the front door. Wardens take the fight to the invaders, using magic and whatever other resources we can provide. Like Abernathy’s. It’s a weapon, and now, apparently, it is in your hands.”

  “Mr. Campbell said it was a Neutrality,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like a weapon.”

  Lucia made an indelicate snorting sound. “The war is not the only conflict. Some seventy years ago there was a rift within the Wardens. A disagreement as to how the war should be fought. Now the two groups fight each other almost as much as they do the invaders. Abernathy’s is neutral in the matter. You’re expected to treat each side as equals, regardless of your personal feelings.”

  “I don’t have any personal feelings. I don’t know anything about it!”

  “You will.”

  “What’s the disagreement?”

  Lucia sighed. “Seventy-three years ago, Marie Nicollier discovered a way to capture and bind an invader that would allow a magus—someone who’s undergone a ritual that changes them to make wielding magic possible—to control the invader’s own magic. Force it to fight for us. The disagreement was over whether this was a good idea.”

  “It sounds unsafe.”

  “It is unsafe. It’s also a huge advantage. But it doesn’t matter to us.”

  “‘Us’? That sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

  “Briggs was a fool to drag an outsider into this, but your appointment is legitimate. You’re now the custodian of Abernathy’s, God help you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Lucia stood. “Come with me,” she said.

  We left the break room and went back into the bookstore. “What do you know about indeterminacy?” Lucia asked.

  “I don’t—you mean, like in quantum physics? I know it has something to do with Schrödinger’s cat.” I’d seen Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about it once on TV. Why did she keep coming up with scientific questions? “Could be alive, could be dead, don’t know until you open the box.”

  “That’s close enough. Abernathy’s maintains a state of indeterminacy by never organizing anything. No one knows what’s in here, therefore anything could be in here.”

  “But what about the catalogue? Isn’t that a record of what’s in the store?”

  “The catalogue is different, and not the point right now. Did you want an explanation or not?”

  “I’ll shut up.”

  Lucia stopped and turned to face me. “What Abernathy’s is,” she said, “is the greatest oracle since the disappearance of the lady at Delphi. People come here asking for an augury or a prophecy, and you find them a book that answers their question. Not by knowing what they want, but by letting the store work through you.”

  I gaped at her. “That’s impossible,” I said, forgetting my resolve about not being that girl from the fantasy novels. “I’m not an oracle. I can’t do anything like that.”

  “You’re not the oracle, the store is.” Lucia sounded irritated again. “But it needs hands to carry out its work. You’re the hands.”

  It was too much. “I accept that there’s magic,” I said, “because I saw it. I believe you’re telling the truth about the war, because what’s the point of playing that kind of joke on a complete stranger? But this—it doesn’t make any sense! These books couldn’t possibly have been written with just one reader in mind!”

  “I don’t know how it works, so don’t get snippy with me, Davies.” Lucia took hold of a book and half-pulled it off the shelf, rocking it back and forth on its base. “How straightforward do you think prophecy is? People don’t just receive a book and read out exactly the answer they came for. They have to work at understanding it.”

  “So I can take a book—”

  “Not you. Custodians of the Neutralities can’t use their magic on their own behalf.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s part of the Accords. If you became a Nicollien sympathizer, or a Ambrosite, you could circumvent the limits placed on Abernathy’s to give information to that faction. We’re meant to be neutral.”

  “What does your Neutrality do?”

  “I’m the custodian of the Gunther Node. It’s a source of magic that magi can siphon in wielding magic.”

  “I thought they were called Wardens.”

  “Magi are people who can wield magic. People fighting the war are called Wardens. Becoming a magus doesn’t mean you have to be a Warden, even though almost all of them are, and not all Wardens can wield magic. Get it?”

  “Sure.” Surprisingly, I did. “But—then you can ask it who killed Mr. Briggs!”

  Lucia shook her head. “I told you it’s not that straightforward. Abernathy’s won’t answer questions beginning with ‘who’. Or anything else requiring a direct answer. We don’t know if it can’t, or if it’s just stubborn. Either way, it’s totally unhelpful in our current situation.”

  So much for that thought. “So how do I… when someone comes in looking for a prophecy, what do I do?”

  Lucia smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I have no idea. Maybe there are instructions somewhere in here. But you’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

  “But—”

  Lucia pushed up her sleeve and ostentatiously looked at her watch. “Time’s up,” she said. “The rest is up to you. Abernathy’s is open from ten in the morning to six at night, every day except Sunday. You have to be on the premises during that time. Good luck.”

  I followed her to the front of the store. “But… I thought you said Abernathy’s was important! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Lucia said, and the door banged shut behind her.

  I realized my hand was clenched on the edge of the counter, the plywood cutting into my palm. I jerked my hand away quickly and shook the blood back into it. My eye fell on the charred remains of the book, and I bent to pick it up. It smelled of the ash that crumbled and shifted as I tilted the book, raining down onto the cracked linoleum to make new pale stars there. My hands began trembling, and I had to set the book down or drop it. I caught hold of the counter and shook uncontrollably. I’d seen a murdered man, I’d seen fire come from nothing, I’d been told… it was all too much.

  I stared sightlessly at the glass countertop until the shaking passed. Then I stood up straight and brushed ash off my skirt. I wanted to believe it was all a joke, that maybe my father had set me up—he liked a good practical joke, he might have put the ad in the paper—but in my heart, I knew it was true.

  There was magic, real magic, in the world.

  And I was a part of it.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the store. One of the keys was a second key to the front door. Another, an elaborate, lacy thing, locked the cash register, which turned out to contain about two hundred and fifty dollars in small bills. On a shelf below the register was a long, narrow book bound in gray leather, about half an inch thick. Inside, the pages were divided into three columns, and there were rows and rows of neatly lettered entries, each with a five-digit number, a name, and a date. The most recent date was yesterday. The five-digit numbers wer
e consecutive. I set it aside to puzzle over later.

  I did some poking around and discovered another door, this one leading to a side alley; it opened reluctantly, as if it had been closed for a century. The alley it opened on was narrow, barely big enough for two people to walk side by side, and certainly not big enough for large shipments. I hauled it closed and locked it again. Whoever had murdered Mr. Briggs hadn’t come through that way.

  Mr. Briggs’ desk—my desk, now, and the thought made me shake again for a few seconds—was neatly organized. The brass key he’d used to unlock the middle drawer lay in a shallow tray in the long, narrow top drawer, along with pens, pencils, paper clips, and other basic office supplies. I unlocked the middle drawer; it was empty. After a moment’s thought, I put the mailing list away and locked the drawer. Maybe something around here would give me some idea as to why it had to be protected.

  The file cabinet wasn’t locked, but it took me some effort to get the upper drawers open, because they were overflowing with papers jammed into manila folders. Some were yellowing and ancient, others were as bright as if they’d been filed yesterday. I slid one of the folders halfway out, careful to keep its spot in the drawer, and fanned through the papers. Each one had the name ABERNATHY’S printed in bold sans-serif font at the top, with what looked like a ledger drawn in crisp black ink below. The first one I looked at had Alice Greenacre written in a fancy, more elegant script above the ledger, and below that a line printed in neat block letters that read:

  34874 aug. pers. Devil In Hand $5000 pd. cash & trade—12-07-1949

  That made no sense. I glanced through a few others and realized the filing cabinet was probably the only thing in Abernathy’s that was organized: the pages were all alphabetized by surname. Some ledgers were full, some had only one entry, but all followed the same pattern.

  I took a closer look. Well, the first numbers were five digits long, which reminded me of the ledger book by the register. And the last numbers were probably dates. So, dated transactions. “$5000 pd. cash & trade,” that was definitely a receipt. Not that I knew what “trade” meant, but it could be exchanging old books for new ones, since this was a bookstore. And “Devil In Hand” could be a title—all of them looked like titles. That made sense too.