The Book of Secrets

by Melissa McShane

  As soon as she got the harness fastened, the white eyes lost their glow and became pearly gray. It turned away from the door and walked with Brittany to the back of the Animal Control truck, stiffly, like a sleepwalker. People aimed their phones at the pair, backing well away from the thing’s dripping jaws. I caught one more glimpse of it before Brittany urged it into the truck, followed by her oozing familiar. The trapped creature howled so piteously I almost felt sorry for it. Brittany flipped up a mesh gate that gleamed silver in the streetlights, then shut the door, and the howling faded to a muffled keen.

  I let go my death grip on my phone—what image would my camera record? Not the truth, or those Wardens would confiscate every one of them. Viv took hold of my other hand. “Is it safe to leave?”

  “I think so.” The Wardens were climbing back into the truck, all except Brittany, who was approaching up the steps. I let go of Viv and walked forward to meet her. “Thank you,” I said.

  “We didn’t do it for you,” Brittany said. She had beads of sweat along her hairline as if she’d been exerting herself instead of just standing there watching. “Why, was it following you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.” Brittany swept a hand through her spiky red hair. “Then I guess you’re welcome.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Harness it permanently. Make it someone’s familiar. It’s a good strong one.” Brittany glanced over her shoulder. A slow, malicious smile spread across her face. “Good thing we got here first.”

  Another Animal Control truck was approaching from the other direction. It drove up onto the sidewalk and eased forward until its bumper nosed the front of Brittany’s truck. I recognized the driver as the dark-skinned man who’d been with Campbell’s team the night Brian was killed. The rear door opened, and Campbell hopped out, followed by Quincy. He was again dressed in black fatigues and had a long knife in one hand. He looked around, then made straight for us. “This is our territory,” he said in a low voice.

  “Imminent risk to a civilian population trumps territorial rights, Campbell,” Brittany said. “Though I’m not surprised you’ve forgotten that.”

  Campbell closed one hand into a fist. “Release it.”

  “Make me.”

  “I won’t ask again.”

  “I don’t have to give up my prize. It was properly captured and contained without harm to anyone. Unlike your operation. How many died the last time you answered a call?” Brittany flicked a glance at me. “Oh, right. Just the one.”

  “Spinelli—”

  “Give it a rest, Campbell.” Brittany nodded at me. “You take care, Helena.”

  Campbell swore at her. She grinned and walked away, climbing into the cab of her Animal Control truck. It reversed off the sidewalk and drove slowly away, flashing its lights at the remaining pedestrians to make them move.

  “Is it bad, that she captured it instead of killing it?” I said.

  Campbell was silent for a moment, looking after the disappearing truck. Without looking at me, he said, “It’s only a matter of time before one of those things escapes containment and attacks someone. If there’s any justice, it will be Spinelli. She’s too damned cocky.”

  “It looked safe,” Viv offered, startling me—I hadn’t realized she’d joined us.

  Campbell made a derisive sound. “Nothing about the invaders is safe. You saw what happened to that young man, Miss Davies. Imagine that happening here among all these people. To a child. Better to destroy them outright.”

  I didn’t respond. I trusted Campbell, but Brittany’s familiar had subdued the attacker without anyone having to get right up close, within knifing distance. Within distance of being killed. On the other hand, Brittany and Rasmussen and the rest of the Nicolliens didn’t see their familiars’ true forms, and how much easier would it be to accept them if they looked like dogs? I wasn’t sure either side was completely in the right.

  “At least no one was hurt,” Viv said.

  “True,” Campbell said. “You were smart to run for St. Agnes’s. How did you know it was warded?”

  “I didn’t. Silas wrote something about churches frequently being warded, and I took a chance.”

  “Ask Lucia for a list of warded buildings in the city. I hope you won’t need it.”

  “Me too.”

  Campbell nodded, and returned to the truck. As it drove away, Viv said, “He’s even more gorgeous in fatigues.”

  “Viv, we were nearly killed. How can you think about how he looks?”

  “Being nearly killed makes you appreciate the finer things in life.” Viv held out her hand. “Look, I’m shaking. Let’s go get food.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “You need to eat. You’re shaking too.”

  I clasped my hands together. “Just the cold,” I said. “All right, let’s get food.”

  The crowds had already gone back to their normal, unpanicked state, though I saw a few knots of people bending their heads over someone’s phone, gasping and exclaiming. A couple of people pointed at me. I ducked my head and walked faster. Viv, with her longer legs, had no trouble keeping up. “Do you think they noticed it was chasing us?” she said.

  “I’d rather not find out. Move faster.” The stone ward had gone, not cold exactly, but no warmer than my skin. I would have to ask Dunlop if it was still good, or if it had used its magic up.

  Fidorini’s was warm, almost muggy, a welcome heat after the chill of outdoors. It also smelled incredible—hot marinara sauce, seasoned meats, and the faint fresh scent of green salad. It was surprisingly empty given the crowds outside, and we got a table immediately. The server (female, short, round, and fortyish, offering no opportunity for Viv to ogle) left us with our menus, and I immediately found what Dunlop had recommended. Veal parmigiana.

  “Veal is baby cows, Helena,” Viv said.

  “And lamb is baby sheep, but I don’t see you turning up your nose at the gyros at Athenos.” Even so, I decided on plain spaghetti. My stomach was still a little queasy from our encounter. “That reminds me, though.” I pulled the stone ward from my shirt and displayed it to Viv, dangling it from the long twine.

  “What is it?”

  “A stone ward. It’s supposed to protect me from invaders.” The stone was now covered in a white patina, making the curves of the design stand out more starkly.

  “It wasn’t much use tonight, was it?”

  “I think it kept the thing from approaching too closely. Or something like that. The way the ward on the church did.”

  “So it wouldn’t have mattered if it had caught you?”

  “That’s not an experiment I wanted to try.”

  The server returned to take our orders, and set down a couple of Cokes and a big bowl of green salad. Viv heaped her little plate high. “The gorgeous Mr. Campbell seemed to think this might happen again. You can’t just move from warded place to warded place for the rest of your life. Or stay in your bookstore.”

  “Maybe I need a stronger personal ward. Or Lucia will think of something.”

  “You have a lot of faith in her.”

  “I trust her. And Mr. Campbell.”

  “What about that woman, the one who captured the monster?” Viv’s voice dropped to a near whisper.

  “Brittany? I don’t know. I only met her once before this, and she’s… intimidating. Plus I’m not sure I want a defense based on using those things to defeat their own kind.”

  “I wish I’d seen its true form. The cougar and the dog fighting was sort of sad. I felt bad for the cat.” Viv rustled in her enormous bag. “Let’s see what Abernathy’s has to say about that.”

  She pulled out a battered but familiar magazine—Abernathy’s catalogue. “Where did you get that?”

  “From the stack by the door. That’s a dumb question.”

  “You know what I mean. Those are for magi!” I lowered my own voice.

  “I don’t see why. You said it’s as simple as asking
the question and pointing to a page. And you don’t know that everyone who’s asked for an augury is a magus. It’s just that nobody else knows about the oracle. So I don’t see why I can’t take advantage of it.” She bent back the creased cover of the catalogue and laid it flat on the table between us, pushing the salad bowl out of the way. “What should I ask?”

  “How about ‘What kind of trouble will I be in for abusing Abernathy’s power?’”

  “You’re such a spoilsport. I know.” She cleared her throat, then intoned, “When will I find true love?” With her eyes closed, she riffled the pages, then stuck her finger out and touched the middle of one page. “Read it. I’m scared to,” she said without opening her eyes.

  I rotated the catalogue so it was right side up for me. “It says Time and Again, by Jack Finney. I’ve read that. It’s about time travel.”

  Viv groaned and blinked at me. “Perfect. The man I’m destined to love is in some other time. I wish I hadn’t asked.”

  “Serves you right. Besides, maybe it only means you’ll find true love over and over again.”

  “You don’t think I’m fickle, do you?”

  She sounded a little forlorn, and I squeezed her hand. “No, I think you have a loving heart and you see the best in a lot of different men. What about Shawn?”

  She shrugged. “Shawn’s nice, but he’s maybe a little too intense. I want to have fun and he’s serious. I think I led him on.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “Does it matter, if it hurts him?”

  “Viv, stop worrying. You’re the nicest person I know, and you wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. Except maybe Judy, who I have to call in the morning and beg for help. So you’re not the person in this room worst off.”

  Viv smiled. “I guess not.” She took the catalogue back, closed her eyes, and said, “When will Helena find true love?”

  I gasped and snatched at the catalogue. She held it out of my reach, flipping pages rapidly and then stabbing at it with her forefinger. “Oh, Helena, it’s a book by a woman named Campbell!”

  “What? Viv, you’re joking!”

  “Yes, I am. The title is Ask Me No Questions. I guess you were right that you’re not allowed even the smallest auguries on your own behalf. You’ll just have to let your love life unfurl as God intended and wait for your gorgeous monster hunter to realize he needs you desperately.”

  I threw a roll at her head.

  ucia,” I said, “it’s Helena. I need to speak to Judy Rasmussen, but I don’t have her number. Please call me back.” I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket, where it stuck out by about half an inch. What was it about women’s pants that they never had pockets deep enough for a phone? My brother Jake never had this problem. Malcolm Campbell never had this problem. Of course, he had a suit coat and who knew how deep those interior pockets were.

  The door banged open. “We’re so glad to see you’re safe,” Harriet Keller said. “When we heard about the attack… it’s so fortunate Brittany was in the area.”

  “Brittany’s the best hunter in the last fifty years,” Harry said. “She’s captured twenty-eight invaders, and she’s only been working for seven years. She’s sure to surpass the record, the way she’s going.”

  I didn’t want to ask what they thought of Campbell. “Does she ever have to kill them?”

  “We say ‘destroy,’” said Harriet. “They don’t have life the way we do. And yes, she’s had to destroy many. Familiars are sometimes hard to control—well, that’s not true, keeping them under control is simple. I suppose I mean it’s sometimes difficult to direct their actions when they go into battle against their own kind.”

  “I’ve never seen you with your familiar in the store.”

  “Familiars aren’t allowed in Abernathy’s, dear. Part of the Accords. The Ambrosites were absolutely determined to prevent them getting anywhere near the source of magic.”

  “Is that why Abernathy’s is warded? Because it’s full of magic?”

  “Just like all the nodes,” Harry said. “All the Neutralities are nodes, but not all nodes are Neutralities,” he added, when I looked confused. “Many nodes are under Ambrosite or Nicollien control. And all known nodes are warded. Keeps the invaders from growing powerful, feeding off unprotected magic sources.”

  “I see.” My phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Lucia, and all it contained was a phone number. “What do people do with the protected nodes?”

  “Magi top off their personal magic reserves.” Harry made a complicated gesture with both hands. “The Ambrosites use theirs to fuel their weapons. They don’t use familiars, so they’re at a disadvantage when fighting, and their engineers have developed any number of hybrid weapons, you know, technology and magic combined. I have to say I admire their persistence, even though they’re wrong-headed.”

  “Mr. Campbell said it was only a matter of time before a familiar broke free and killed someone.”

  Harry and Harriet exchanged amused glances. “Malcolm means well, but he’s unnecessarily concerned,” Harriet said. “If it hasn’t happened in seventy-three years, it’s unlikely to happen now.”

  “Still, he’s a damn fine fighter, and committed to winning this war.” Harry shook his head. “Wish he’d reconsider his allegiances. He and Brittany together would be a devastating team.”

  “I think Malcolm would rather chew glass than work with Brittany,” Harriet said with a chuckle. “There’s a definite conflict of personalities there.”

  “Anyway, we should be going. Just wanted to stop by and say hello.” Harry adjusted his scarf. “Stay safe, Helena.”

  When they were gone, I stared at my phone’s display, trying to gather my confidence. This was potentially the most humiliating thing I’d ever had to do. Judy was probably going to laugh in my face, or at least into her phone, and I would be no closer to knowing how to perform the augury. But I had to take the chance. I tapped the number in Lucia’s message and listened to the ring. It went on ringing for a while. I switched hands, wiped my damp palm on my pants, and took a seat on the rickety stool.

  The ringing stopped. “Hello?”

  “Um… Judy?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Helena Davies.”

  Silence. “Have you come to your senses?”

  Oh, this is not going to go well. “I’m not abdicating, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want your help.” I drew a deep breath. “I don’t know how to do the augury tomorrow and I hoped you would tell me how it works.”

  More silence. Then Judy’s laugh pealed out shrilly into my ear, sharpened by the phone’s receiver. “That’s rich,” she said. “You admit you don’t know what you’re doing and yet you still have the nerve to say you won’t abdicate? You’re more selfish than I thought.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm. “The instruction manual is missing,” I said. As long as I was humiliating myself, I might as well go for broke. “There are a lot of things I don’t know how to do, but Abernathy’s accepted me and I am the custodian. If you care about the oracle as much as you claim to, you’d help me instead of ridiculing me.”

  “What do you mean, the instruction manual is missing?” Judy didn’t sound amused now.

  “I mean I’ve looked everywhere and it’s not in the store. And Mr. Briggs didn’t have it on him when he… it’s just gone.”

  “So, someone stole it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the murderer might have taken it, or it might have been lost a long time ago, and no one knew because Mr. Briggs was so experienced.”

  “No. It’s a reference manual. There were things in it—look, I’ve never seen it, just learned about it, but I know it has the keys to creating the catalogue, among other things. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Because I’m having enough trouble proving I’m competent without admitting to how much I don’t know!”

&nb
sp; Judy fell silent again. I was about to say her name to make sure she was still there when she said, “I don’t know how the Ambrosite augury works. It happens so infrequently I wasn’t instructed in it. Whatever it is, it’s in the manual.”

  The lights seemed to dim briefly. I hopped off the stool and paced, back and forth from the door to the first bookcases. “The manual I don’t have.”

  “Maybe Nathaniel took it home.”

  “Or maybe it was stolen by the murderer.”

  “Why would the murderer care about the manual? If they were trying to stop their blackmailer?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Please. Everyone knows about it now. Nathaniel was blackmailing someone, the person either got tired of it or couldn’t pay, and they killed him.”

  “Unless it was about control of the store. Unless someone wanted Mr. Briggs out of the way so y—so someone else could control the oracle.”

  Judy sucked in an outraged breath. “You mean so I could control the oracle. How dare you make such an accusation? My father is not a murderer!”

  “I never said that.” In public.

  “Well, you can forget about it. And I wouldn’t use the oracle on his behalf, anyway. You think I studied for twelve years to run Abernathy’s just to throw that away to give my father more power? Power he doesn’t need?”

  “You studied for twelve years?”

  “Yes.” Judy sounded like she wished she could crawl through the phone and strangle me. “Twelve years, all wasted because that idiot Nathaniel thought he knew better than the Board of Neutralities how things should run. And then you come in and screw up over and over again—”

  “I’m sorry!” I shouted. “I just—I came in and I’d never felt this connected to anything before, and then Silas spoke to me, and—”

  “Silas spoke to you? Silas Abernathy? Dead Silas Abernathy?”

  “He wrote his book to me. He saw I was the one who’d pick it up. I thought it meant… that I had a right to this store. But you’re right, I’ve been selfish.” I took another deep breath. “Is it too late to abdicate? For the augury, I mean?”