“Got it, she’s a perv too,” Rose piped up from the peanut gallery.
“Who isn’t?” Dana shot back.
“Dammit,” I cursed, “I have research to do while I heal up,” I told Rasmussen and the others. “Sigmund, can you drop Vivian off on your way back to New York? She was too wiped out to go yesterday and now that I have my phone back, we can—”
“Yeah, this place isn’t set up for a lady to visit,” Vivian said, looking pointedly at the bunks I had set against the far wall across from the workbench.
“He had one stay the night the other day,” Rose shot back. “There was no boinking going on then either, I think.”
“What is it with boinking?” Rasmussen asked.
“The kids here are obsessed with sex,” I told him quietly.
“You can’t even go there, not when I have your mojo,” Rose said, making obscene hip thrusts.
“Oh god. I need a beer, and I still haven’t had breakfast,” I groused.
JJ and Dana carried stuff in from the Jeep and headed off to the trapper's shack. They were going to work on getting the artesian well plumbed so at least there’d be running water available to them inside there. JJ didn’t mind living in the rough, and I suspected Dana didn’t either, but it gave them another excuse to be out of my hair. Rasmussen took Vivian with him, and Rose, for a while, disappeared. With absolute silence and some time, I started unloading all the packs of various gear. Explosives, claymores, guns, ammunition, magazines and runed objects.
Once that was all put away, I got the athame out and went to my workbench and laid it out. I fired up my lighted magnifier and then pulled out a stack of books. I split my time between studying the runes on the blade and the books I had on runology. So much was runes lately. That wasn’t unusual with my gear, but Vassago seemed to have magical gear falling out of his ass. If I could figure out a way to track him down...
I didn’t have to worry about him going after Cindy and her mom again; that was something Rasmussen took care of on his way to gate out. It was something similar to the runes I used to activate my alarm systems. It did a lot of the same things, but it also alerted him, and I guessed it was supposed to ping me too. So if he showed up, he’d be gone in a heartbeat. I mean, I’d shot his knee out in the Arches, so we’d know if he came back—
“We have his blood,” I thought with a ferocious grin, “they have his blood. I’ve worked with less.”
Hours of studying had left me feeling drowsy. I was still ravenous and, just as I polished off a bowl of something that was magically delicious and was considering frying up some eggs and potatoes, my phone started blasting out Du Hast inside the bunker. I pulled it out and had to fight the urge to check the futures to see who it was and what they wanted, but saw instead the caller ID was somebody I should have been in touch with last week or the week before. I had a book he’d run down for me. I hoped he wasn’t pissed.
Dammit! I’d forgotten.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hey, Thomas, it’s Isakson.”
“Hey, man, how you doing?” I asked.
“I’m doing good. Sitting in my bookstore looking at a copy of a book you had me pick up at an auction.”
“Oh yeah, sorry about that. Got into an accident. Hit a deer,” I told him.
“Oh man, that sucks. You know what else sucks?”
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“That it cost me twenty-five G’s, and my good buddy told me to get it at any cost.”
“Twenty-five large?” I asked him, surprised.
“Yep. And see, since we were good buddies and we’ve done business forever, I didn’t ask you to put a deposit down—”
“I can be there in about an hour. Would say… $27,000 in cash cover your costs and interest?” I asked him.
“Oh, well, yeah. That’d be cool. See you soon.”
He hung up. I snorted and locked my phone before pocketing it. I looked longingly at the box of Lucky Charms but decided I’d get some food on the road. The healings had left me drained and hungry, as normal, but whatever Zania had done had negated the all-out bone-crushing weariness and hunger that a normal healing charm did to me. Still, a big bowl of cereal wasn’t enough. After I got the book, I’d stop at the diner and see if I could snag some fresh apple pie and two scoops of vanilla for breakfast. Maybe I’d call Cindy on my way back to Coalville and have her…
“Hey, boss,” Rose said, popping into sight in front of me.
“Hey, Rose,” I told her, putting my dirty dishes in the sink.
“So, uh, are you mad that Vivian and I teased you?”
“No,” I told her after thinking about it, “But for a minute there I believed you.”
“Yeah, she didn’t mean for you to sneak a peek. Your door did that funny thing and stuck when she thought she’d pushed it closed already. She was embarrassed and mortified… so I told her to do what all ladies should do. Own that shizzna and be aggressive. It scares the badonkadonk off men in most cases.”
“I don’t know if it scared me, but oh boy, was that uncomfortable,” I told her, pulling a flat tote out from under my bed.
“What you getting?” she asked me.
“I need to get some cash out. I didn’t deposit it all from the night I met Vivian… and there’s a book I need to pick up,” I told her, pulling six stacks of cash out of the bin and then shoving it back under the bed.
“That’s a lot of scratch, boss. What kind of book are you getting? Seducing the Succubae… wait, wait… Fifty Shades of Gray skull? No? Wait, I got this… the Monarch’s Mis—”
“Rose,” I cut her off, trying not to grin at her attempt to patch things up over their earlier joke. “It’s a book about runes and ancient druidic magic and cantrips.”
Her eyes went wide and then she nodded.
“You want to come with me, or hang out with JJ and Dana?” I asked her.
“I’d rather go with you. Those two aren’t done wearing out the mattress in the shack up the hill.”
“You really are a perv,” I told her, grinning.
“Yes, but it’s not like I was up there; I can hear them from here.”
Oh!
“Well, uh… what were you up to?” I asked her.
“I stopped in and saw Cindy’s mom. She gave me some fennel seed.”
“Fennel?” I asked her.
Rose’s eyes looked everywhere but mine, then down at her new heels that sparkled in a way that reminded me of pink salt for some reason.
“I was going to ask you. Would it be okay if I started my own garden here?”
“Of course,” I told her. “Wherever you’d like.”
“Really?” she asked, hopeful.
“Sure. Let’s go get this book, then I’m going to get some pie.”
“But she’s not working today—”
“Then we’ll get some from Cindy’s house,” I told her.
“I like how you think, boss.”
10
Instead of heading west, I went east and down the mountain toward the town of Emory. Before I got into town proper, I headed off on what looked like a two-track on the right. I followed it for several minutes, bumping along, and slowed as I came to a gate. It was open, but it was the cattle guard across the drive that had me slowing. They were ingenious devices. Cattle and horses didn’t like to walk across it, seeing the gaps between the rounded steel sections welded together. A car or truck would have no problem driving across it, but the gaps prevented livestock from wanting to try to cross it.
I went slowly, so my Jeep’s wheels wouldn’t drag gravel and larger rocks in the guard and also to keep Rose from splattering on the Jeep interior as I bounced across. She’d been quiet much of the trip, but it really wasn’t like going into the bigger city to shop. Isakson’s was really out of the way. I followed the barbed wire fence on the right and down his drive, noticing the hay wasn’t all down yet, and a few heads of cattle grazed beyond the wheeled irrigation systems that s
eemingly broke up each section of pastureland.
“This looks like some dude’s house,” Rose said after a minute.
“It sort of is,” I told her, downshifting as the grade went downhill, and I used my engine to brake my speed as I wound my way down.
“Oh…” Rose said as we rounded a turn, Isakson’s house coming into view.
It was a ranch style house clad in old aluminum siding and red metal roofing. The porch was a wrap around, and the garage looked like half of it had been converted into a guest house. Off to the side was what looked like an Amish style cabin shed, twelve by twenty feet. Like the house, it had a roof that extended over the porch. An old wooden sign hung on the front that simply said ‘Books.’
“Oh… so I’m guessing he does a lot of online business?” Rose asked after I pulled in front of it.
“Usually, or he has clients like me who pay him good money to track things down and go to auctions to find it. He said it cost him $25,000, but I’m willing to bet it was more like $20,000. Regardless, it’s worth it because he’s been in the business so long everyone knows him. He gets first look at a lot of stuff, and the auctions will hold something on his say so from bidding and a little bit of greasing of the wheels.”
“So basically he’s ‘Big Pimping’ in the book world?”
“I guess so…”
“His pimp hand be strong when it comes to nerd-dom.”
“Don’t say that out loud,” I told her. “In fact, he’s mundane and might be looking out his window.”
“Already ghosted, boss,” Rose said, tugging on my collar.
“Good. On your best behavior,” I told her and shut the Jeep off and then got out.
I was wearing my usual: Jeans with a plain white t-shirt tucked in, flannel shirt untucked to cover both of my pistols and my usual Gerber. I had debated walking around a little heavier armed, all things considered, but that would require me to either be obvious about it or wear a coat, and I was already a little warm, even though in the mountains here it was usually cooler than the flat landers were used to.
“Tom, how you doing?” Isakson said, cracking the door open to the improvised bookstore.
“Great! Sorry about taking so long,” I told him.
“I can see your bumper and you ain’t pulled all the hairs off the edge of your windshield. How big a deer was it?”
“Two of them. One went under, one went over,” I half-lied, but noticed he had good eyes and had caught sight of a few hairs that had gotten stuck on the molding where the second deer had flipped over the top of the jeep when Vassago had shot at me.
I was glad it wasn’t too cold, I still needed to replace both side windows.
“Oh yeah. They’re like ticks around these parts,” he said and offered me his hand.
We shook, and I followed him inside. He held the door, then grabbed his walker and started moving quickly to a recliner set off to the right side behind a lower than normal height counter. The ‘bookstore’ had about two dozen shelves and one big glass display case in the middle of the floor. It was cramped, and I could smell the pulpy scent of the books over wood odor from everything inside being finished in uncut timber. The counter Isakson was at had a laptop, a printer, and an old cash box that was once gray but now was multi-colored from random markers, what looked like white out, and streaks of rust that had formed in spots where the metal container had been scratched. Next to that…
“Ahhhh,” I said, picking up the old leather-bound book with raised metal inlays on the cover.
“Yes, it caused quite a stir at the auction. There was a gentleman there who was quite perturbed that they would only take cash. He hadn’t gone to the trouble of ensuring he understood the rules of the auction.”
“I see,” I said, and pulled the stacks of cash out of my pockets.
The raised metal inlays were runes. I could see that the book itself was a magical object. I had no idea that this was what I was getting, just that it was a book on runes and I’d had Isakson on the lookout for all kinds of stuff. Most of it was related to obscure magic and runology, but I threw in enough occult stuff to make him think I was a collector of weird books. I mean, I was, and I kept every single one of them, but the rare finds like this were the reason I kept him on a monthly retainer to keep an eye out for me. Plus, I paid him well when he ran across something good. I opened the book and flipped through it, feeling like a jolt of electricity had gone through my body.
“Tell me about the guy making the ruckus at the auction?” I asked, closing the book quickly.
“Well, like I said, he had some kind of credit card, a black one. He didn’t realize that the estate auction wasn’t taking no plastic as the family wanted a quick sale. I mean, if I had to fly to Massachusetts to the auction, I damned well made sure I knew how they wanted to pay for things. This dude? He blew a gasket. Sounded like he was off the plane from that Brexit place.”
“He was British?” I asked him, fighting the urge to shiver.
“Yeah, a little bit older than you, by a decade or two if I had to guess, but he dressed up like one of those old rockers. Not the Ozzy guy, the guy who made the really bad Muppet movie—”
“He looked like David Bowie? Wore all black, usually leather?”
“Yeah, that’s him. I’m guessing you know who he is?” Isakson asked.
Oh, I know him.
“Rival collector,” I told him. “Did he stick around?”
“No,” he said simply. “He threw a fit when he tried to get the auction to just sell it outright as if his black card could buy anything—”
“They can,” I said softly, my body finally shivering as my skin broke out into goosebumps.
I had heard Rose’s soft but sharp intake of breath a few moments ago, but she was holding very still and being very quiet.
“Well, he couldn’t buy the book. Stormed off cursing us and trying to find out where the nearest bank was. I told him I saw one on the way into town, and he headed that way.”
“Is that all?” I asked him.
“Naw, I forgot to tell him that banks are closed on Sundays. That guy had an attitude problem. So you gonna pay up?”
“You take cash?” I asked him, smiling.
“I prefer cash, keeps the IRS man looking hard if a fella suddenly has a windfall like this, and I don’t need no government intervention in personal affairs of an old man and his books.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if Vassago had tagged him magically somehow. “This was a good find,” I told him, pulling six bundles of cash out of my pocket.
I tossed five stacks down and fanned the last stack a moment or two thinking, then dropped that on the table as well. He looked up at me with an arched eyebrow.
“That’s thirty. Keep the change.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah. If you remember any more about the other buyer, call me.”
“Looking for tips on the next great find?” he asked me, pulling the money to his chest the way a poker player will pull the chips in after winning a big hand.
“Exactly. We collect… the same kind of literature,” I told him.
“You two should sit down sometime then. Instead of running prices up on each other, or trying to get items first… have a confab and do some horse swapping.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I told him, not meaning it.
“You in a hurry?” he asked, noticing me turning for the door.
“Sort of. Can you let me know if you hear of anything else?”
“Sure thing. I take it… you want me to keep an eye out for more books like that?” he asked me.
“Oh yeah, especially stuff like this.”
“It’s just old symbols and some old language. You can read the words?”
“Sort of. It’s in old Gaelic.”
“Gaelic, like the old Irish language?”
Exactly.
“You got it. I have to run. Thank you!” I faked a smile and a wave and headed for the door.<
br />
He gave me a wave and mumbled something, but he was busy looking at the cash and stacking it up. I had a pretty good idea he had a lot of cash stacks like that. He traded in some pretty rare books, and I was honestly surprised he’d won the auction, let alone got it for so cheap. Once the Jeep was fired up and I was back on the road, Rose appeared and landed on the passenger seat, next to the book.
“What kind of runes are these?” she asked me.
“Old Gaelic runes, some of those are basic warding runes, protecting the book from wear and decay. It’s what’s on the inside that scares the crap out of me.”
“You mean even more than Vassago trying to buy it?” she asked, opening the book, an amazing feat since it was twice as big and about ten times heavier than she was.
“Flip ahead some, page by page. You’ll find it,” I said, forcing myself not to accidentally trigger my sight while I worked my way carefully back to the bunker.
Rose did, and I heard her give a sharp intake of breath when she’d gotten five pages in.
“Boss, you can’t give up that athame,” she said after a moment.
“I know,” I told her. “I’m not sure if I want Vivian even knowing I have it any more.”
“Wait, you know what it is now?”
I looked down and saw Rose had the book open to the page that had freaked me out.
“I think so, I read some of the pages, but I don’t know Gaelic enough to be sure. I need my books at home. Hey, as obsessed as you are with the Irish Fae, you know some Gaelic?”
“I know enough to know that your athame is supposed to shield the user from death magic, according to this page.”
“I saw that part, that’s why the guy holding the portal open for the necromancer wasn’t molested,” I told her. “But there’s more, and I can’t make it out.”
“I can’t either. It’s old, old Gaelic, like the kind not spoken in thousands of years,” Rose said and then snickered, “you said molested.”
“Yes. If I can figure out the runes on the athame…”
“You can recreate them onto another item and return that one?” Rose asked.
Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 8