The Book of Mayhem

by Melissa McShane

  The man glared at me. The woman on his left made a move as if she wanted to punch me, but the second man, the one who’d stood still during all of this, grabbed her wrist. “You’ll regret this,” the first man said, and led his team out the door.

  I let out a long, slow breath, then turned to face the crowd. “Anybody else want to make insane requests of me? Then let’s have the first augury.”

  The steady stream of variations on Where is Malcolm Campbell? became tedious after half an hour. “I wish you’d do something about this,” I whispered to the oracle as I entered once again. “It’s becoming unbearable. Do you know how I feel about him? Does it matter to you that I might be contributing to his death?”

  The oracle kept its silence. I sighed and removed the augury, The Wizard’s Dilemma, from the shelf. $3500. Not the most expensive augury I’d had all day, but it was up there. I wondered why, if the questions were all mostly the same, the prices for the books were so variant. Maybe some of these books easier to interpret than others, and if so, were the easy ones more or less expensive? I thought about comparing the prices and titles, which would be easy with the new database, but decided it was a bad idea. I didn’t think the oracle liked people running tests on it.

  Judy was there when I returned, chatting with the Nicollien at the head of the line. “Have you heard the rumor that Campbell is the serial killer?” she said.

  “I have. It’s idiotic.”

  “I agree. Campbell might be many things, but he’s no serial killer.”

  “Then how do you explain that he was in the vicinity of most of the killings?” said the Nicollien.

  Judy rolled her eyes. “He and his team were hunting the killer. Of course they’d be in the vicinity. Use your brain for something besides keeping your ears apart, Lucas.”

  I took Lucas’s augury slip and smiled at Judy, warmed at her defense of Malcolm, whatever had prompted it. “Can I be compelled to submit to magic that will let me recall what someone’s augury question was?”

  “Of course not. Neutrality custodians are exempt because of confidentiality.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, and sailed away into the oracle.

  The Nicolliens were all gone by twelve-thirty. I sank onto the rickety chair next to the front door and sighed deeply. “I’m hungry.”

  “I brought food from upstairs. You don’t mind, right?” Judy had a couple of plastic containers in her hands and an uncharacteristically eager expression on her face.

  “That’s last night’s dinner, isn’t it? You just wanted more of the roast chicken.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  Judy retreated to the break room. I followed her, rubbing my eyes. I didn’t know how much longer I could endure these auguries. Something had to change, and soon.

  The door bells jangled before I’d taken more than two bites of my ravioli. I groaned and put down my fork. “Don’t you dare eat that.”

  “I have chicken,” Judy said with her mouth full.

  “And you said I have bad table manners,” I said.

  Cynthia was standing inside the door, dressed down in business casual. “I’m on my way to the airport, but I wanted to stop in and say goodbye.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, and gave her a hug that didn’t feel at all forced. “I—excuse me.” Two Wardens came through the door, past which I could see a tiny black ball of spite and despair, the smallest familiar I’d ever seen. “Let me help these two, and then we can talk for a minute.”

  The two Wardens glanced at Cynthia nervously, as if they were afraid she could see their aegises imprinted on their foreheads. Both were elderly, but unlike my friends the Kellers, they were frail and the man had a tremor in his hands. “I—would like to know if you have this book,” the woman said.

  “Why don’t I look?” I said, and took a few steps into the silence of the oracle.

  The question was How should we divide our fortune? and it was such a relief after the dozens of requests about Malcolm I took a little extra time savoring the feeling of being surrounded by thousands of books, any one of which could be the answer to their question. Eventually I spotted it high on a shelf and had to throw a few other books at it to dislodge it. I put my impromptu missiles back, patting them in apology, and headed back to the front of the store.

  “Here you are—” I began.

  Two men had entered while I was gone. One was tall and thin, the other bulkier, but both of them wore dark sunglasses and suit jackets, and both looked grim, as if they had bad news for me. This was almost certainly true.

  “Ms. Davies?” said Detective Acosta. “We’re here to ask you about some stolen books.”

  17

  “Stolen books?” I said, clutching the augury to my chest. “We haven’t had anything stolen.”

  “We believe you may have received stolen books recently,” Acosta said, smiling unpleasantly. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a piece of paper. “Recognize this?”

  I took the paper from his hand. It was one of our receipts, filled out by Judy, with a title, date, and purchase price written on it. Below the price was written “pd. in trade and cash.” It was muddy on one corner as if it had been ground into the dirt. “It’s an Abernathy’s receipt,” I said.

  Acosta’s smile broadened. I hated that smile. I’d met Acosta and his partner, Detective Green, when my old boss, Mr. Briggs, had been murdered, and Acosta had thought I was involved. Then he’d showed up when my ex-boyfriend Chet had “disappeared” and suggested I had something to do with that too. I was pretty sure he had me on some kind of watch list down at the precinct, or wherever he and his partner lurked when they weren’t harassing innocent young women.

  Except, this time, I might not be innocent. Paid in trade…we didn’t have any way to prove the books our customers brought in weren’t stolen, and if the oracle didn’t care enough to reject stolen books, it was entirely possible I had received stolen goods and hadn’t known it. “It means the customer paid partly in cash and partly in used books,” I continued.

  “Can you tell us the name of the customer?”

  “Um…I think so.” The number of the augury was in the upper left corner of the receipt. I got out the ledger from beneath the counter and flipped through the pages. The database would be faster, but I didn’t like leaving these two unsupervised in my store. “Mitch Hallstrom.” I remembered the smoky smell of the books he’d brought in. Desperate, eager Mitch Hallstrom.

  “What else can you tell us about him?”

  “Do you suspect him of stealing books?”

  “We’ll ask the questions, Ms. Davies. Anything else?”

  I decided against antagonizing the man further. “He’s been in two—no, three times. He always pays with trade and sometimes with a little cash. What is this about, detective?”

  Acosta wasn’t paying attention to me. He was scanning the room, taking an inventory with his eyes. “Mr. Hallstrom may have participated in several high-end book thefts. We believe he used this store to fence his stolen property.”

  “I had no idea any of Mr. Hallstrom’s books were stolen.”

  “Let’s hope that’s true.” Acosta took out his notebook and wrote a few words. “Do you have any of the books Mr. Hallstrom brought in?”

  “I…don’t know. We don’t keep a very good inventory here.”

  “We’ll have to take a look around.”

  “Do you have a search warrant?” Cynthia said.

  Both detectives focused on her. I’d forgotten she was there. “We don’t need a warrant to browse,” Detective Green said. “This is a bookstore.”

  “But you need a warrant if you want anything you find to be legitimate evidence,” Cynthia said. “And you certainly need a warrant if you want to do a full inventory of the store. So I suggest you come back when you have one.”

  The detectives turned their attention to me. “It would be better if you cooperated,” Acosta said. “Better for you, certainly.”
<
br />   “I’ll be happy to welcome you back when you have a search warrant,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling the way my knees were.

  Acosta gave me one final, long stare, then followed his partner out of the store. I slumped against the counter. “Why does this keep happening to me?”

  “You can’t let them inventory Abernathy’s,” my female customer said. “It would kill the oracle, oh dear, kill it dead.”

  “What oracle?” Cynthia said.

  My face felt suddenly numb. “Um,” I said, but my tired brain couldn’t manage anything creative. The two elderly Nicolliens looked like they might have heart attacks right there on Abernathy’s linoleum floor. “It’s…um…”

  “I know what an oracle is,” Cynthia said. “But what was she talking about? Killing an oracle? That doesn’t sound like something out of legend.”

  “She was talking about Abernathy’s,” Judy said, prompting all of us to turn around and look at her. “Abernathy’s isn’t a bookstore. It gives out prophecies to those who know to ask for them.”

  “Judy!” I exclaimed.

  “Sometimes you have to cut your losses, Helena,” Judy said, approaching us until she stood nose-to-chin with the much taller Cynthia. “And she’s not going to tell anyone. Are you, Cynthia?”

  “I don’t even know what I’d say.” Cynthia turned to me. “Is this true? You run a store that sells prophecies?”

  “Yes. They’re called auguries.”

  “That’s what that man was talking about last week. Augury. Not a book series.” Cynthia’s eyes were gleaming. “Do they always come true?”

  “Yes. Sort of. Cynthia—”

  “No, I believe you. It’s just amazing. Why doesn’t everyone know about this?”

  “Because most people wouldn’t believe it,” Judy said, “and it’s not intended for frivolous purposes.”

  That was a lie, but I guessed Judy didn’t want to go into details about magi and the Long War. Cutting our losses didn’t mean giving everything away.

  Cynthia smiled broadly. “Oh, I won’t use it frivolously,” she said.

  “Wait—what? Cynthia, you can’t—”

  “Why not? I know about it now, so why can’t I use it?”

  “There’s no reason she can’t,” Judy said. “Call it trade in exchange for her silence.”

  “No one would believe it if she started talking about it. And I know the Board of Neutralities have some way of shutting people up.” The thought of how permanent that shutting-up might be made me wish I hadn’t said anything.

  “I won’t tell,” Cynthia said. She looked hurt that we’d even suggested she might. “I just want to use it. Can’t I, Helena?”

  Her expression was so imploring I sighed. “You can’t tell anyone, all right?”

  “I won’t, honest! But you should help these nice people. Is this the prophecy? This book? I don’t think The Double Comfort Safari Club is much of a prophecy.”

  I explained how auguries worked while Judy filled out the ledger and the receipt for the Nicollien couple. They scurried out the door as fast as they could, casting frightened glances at me as if they couldn’t quite believe I wouldn’t have them arrested for accidentally revealing the truth about Abernathy’s. Maybe I should, but they were so scared, I felt bad about doing it. Besides, everything had worked out, and my sister knew some of the truth about my life…

  …my rapacious, no-nonsense sister who had a take-no-prisoners attitude toward life and the steely determination to get her own way. New York might be doomed.

  I didn’t tell her anything about the Long War, or magi, reasoning that Judy was right and the details would only confuse her. Maybe it was something I could tell her some other time. I couldn’t believe I was contemplating sharing secrets with Cynthia, who a week ago was my sworn enemy. Maybe things still weren’t perfect between us, but I felt friendlier toward her now than I ever had.

  Finally, Cynthia hugged me, and said, “Well. We’ve exchanged some pretty big secrets. Thank you for listening. And for being my sister.”

  “Good luck,” I said, “and thanks for wanting to spend time with me. Maybe we don’t have as many differences as I thought.”

  “I’ll call you once I’ve talked to Ethan.” She kissed my cheek and waved goodbye. “Sorry to hear about your boyfriend, Judy.”

  “Uh…thanks,” Judy said, casting a confused look at me. I shrugged.

  When she was gone, Judy said, “Well, hell. Now what do we do?”

  “We just gave access to Abernathy’s to a non-magus, non-Warden who doesn’t even know about the Long War,” I said. “Do you think Lucia will kill us slowly, or will she make it quick?”

  “I don’t think anyone needs to know about this. We handled it the best we could, and Lucia can’t blame us for that. Besides, there’s always Margie and George to throw under the bus if we have to. It was Margie’s fault, after all.”

  “I feel bad about blaming them. It’s not their fault if they forgot Cynthia wasn’t a Warden. People come in here all the time who are strangers, and I never ask to see their Warden cards. There’s no such thing as a Warden card, is there?”

  “No. But I take your meaning.”

  “It’s funny, but those detectives were asking about Mr. Hallstrom—”

  “What detectives?”

  “My old friends Acosta and Green. Apparently Mr. Hallstrom has been paying us in stolen books. I was just thinking it’s weird that I’d never seen him before a week ago last Friday. Did you know him?”

  “I’d never seen him before. But I don’t know all the Nicolliens in the city. Lots of them, but not everyone.”

  I walked away toward the back of the store. “Let’s see what he left behind.”

  The box of books the oracle had rejected was still in the office. “I wish I actually knew anything about old books,” I said, sorting through them. “I should probably give these to the detectives. I’m sure, if the stolen books were valuable, they’ve got a list. Though they might insist on searching the entire inventory if there are more than just these. Which there are.”

  “They were going to search?” Judy sat back on her heels.

  “Cynthia made them go get a search warrant.”

  Judy stood up. “Call the Board of Neutralities right now,” she said. “Get their lawyers involved. We can’t let anyone search Abernathy’s that closely.”

  “But they wouldn’t,” I said, and closed my eyes. “They would.” I whipped out my phone. “I don’t have Mr. Ragsdale’s number.”

  “I do.” Judy recited it for me. I waited, listening to it ring.

  Finally, a voice said, “Ragsdale’s office.” It was a nasally female voice with a slight Brooklyn accent, making me wonder just where Ragsdale’s office was.

  “This is Helena Davies,” I said. “I need to speak to Mr. Ragsdale immediately. This is an emergency.”

  “One moment, please.”

  “How long does it take to get a warrant?” I said.

  Judy shrugged. “I only know about it from watching Law and Order re-runs.”

  “Ms. Davies,” Ragsdale said. “You have an emergency?”

  I quickly recounted the episode with the detectives and my concern about them inventorying Abernathy’s and voiding the indeterminacy principle.

  Ragsdale said, “Leave it to us. Just go on running the store.”

  “Should I give them the books we still have?”

  “Put them aside for our lawyers to handle. Admit to nothing, but don’t obstruct the detectives in any way. Don’t worry. This isn’t the first time Abernathy’s has received stolen books.”

  I didn’t like how casual he sounded about the possibility of the store being an accessory to crime, but if Abernathy’s had accepted Hallstrom’s stolen books in trade, it clearly didn’t care about human laws, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. “Thank you,” I said, and hung up.

  “This doesn’t tell us anything about Hallstrom, though,” Jud
y said. “Just that he’s a thief and we don’t know anyone who knows him.”

  “I wish I knew what kind of magus he is. If he’s a wood magus, and a loner, and a stranger to the community…couldn’t he be our serial killer?”

  “Why a wood magus?”

  “Lucia said they were mostly sure the killer is a wood magus, based on where the attacks happened.”

  “I don’t think Father knows that.”

  “He’s not part of her investigation. I’m not sure she’s bound to tell him everything.”

  “True, but he’s trying to catch the killer too. It could only help him to know.”

  Startled, I exclaimed, “You can’t tell him! That might be privileged information!”

  “Don’t worry, Helena, I’m not going to tell him. But I might lean on Lucia to do it.”

  I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “Is this day over yet?”

  No Ambrosites came in at two o’clock. Around three-thirty, a couple of women in severe business pantsuits with their hair pulled straight back arrived. “The box, Ms. Davies,” one of them said to me.

  “The—oh, the box.” I retrieved the box of Hallstrom’s rejects and handed it to her. Both women nodded and left with no other word. It felt like I’d just had a visit from the Mob. If they were representative of the Board of Neutralities’ lawyers, I felt suddenly more hopeful.

  The store stayed mostly empty for the rest of the afternoon. Derrick and the team didn’t appear. The detectives didn’t return, with or without a warrant. A few Ambrosites came in toward closing time, moving furtively and checking their surroundings constantly as if they feared being attacked. I asked each of them if they knew Mitch Hallstrom; none of them did. Well, if he was a Nicollien, that made sense.

  It occurred to me that I didn’t actually know if he was a Nicollien. I’d assumed it because he always came in the morning, but I’d never seen him with a familiar, and if he was a stranger to Portland he might not even know about the curfews. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced Hallstrom was suspicious. I tried to tell myself I was just desperate to find the killer so Malcolm could be exonerated, but my mind wouldn’t let go of the theory.