A spell you can touch

Google was right. The Barrow Street Bookstore was permanently closed. Anyone who somehow heard about an underground book shop would show up to find the place empty, covered in dust, and almost certainly wouldn’t keep looking. Sort of like wearing your camouflage in plain sight.

Irfan walked to an old door, complete with old fashioned knocker, set to one side of the shop. I think it had been painted a deep violet once upon a time, or perhaps midnight purple, but now it was more dark brown than anything, and badly stained and scuffed. It had a Victorian topper over the frame, at the center of which someone had nailed a brass number one, despite that the vacant shop to the right was number 39 and the brick four-story to the left was number 43. Past the brick four-story was a churchyard bounded in a wrought iron fence. The church itself was on the corner further down — all neat and geometric, like something Thomas Jefferson would’ve attended. The grounds of the yard rose several feet over the sidewalk and undulated with four neatly mowed grassy mounds, between which were set paving stones. It looked like the kind of place you might stroll with a parasol and a hoop skirt while starving street urchins peered at you through the bars of the fence with dirty faces.

Irfan banged the knocker three times, then opened the door and stepped in and waited for me on the other side. She shut it firmly behind us. The hall inside was floored in checker-print vinyl. The only light came from the long window over the door, and the slant beam faded to darkness at the back, where the hall turned sharply to the right. That meant it had to pass behind the brick four-story next door. I caught a faint whiff of turpentine.

I followed her around the corner and down a staircase lined in faded brown wallpaper. I heard something bump into something else above me and looked up instinctively, but there wasn’t much room to see between the railing that curved to the top floor, where it seemed there was an opaque skylight.

“Don’t worry,” Irfan said, stepping to the basement. “That’s just Charles.”

“Charles?”

“The Fifth. He comes for the books.”

At the bottom, we turned again and headed back in the direction of the churchyard.

“Where is this place?” I asked.

“There.” She pointed.

At the back of the hall was another heavy wood door painted like the one up front. The top of the frame was a stone block. Pressed into the middle of it was a horseshoe. I saw a solid brass plaque, badly tarnished, set into the wall near the handle. At the top it said:

THE BARROWS

        Est. 1676 (A.D.)

The letters A.D. were off-center in parentheses, as someone saw the original version and got worried people might get confused as to which 1676 they meant.

Below that was a dedication:

REINTERRED 1848

at this location with

Generous Donations from

THE ROEBLING FAMILY

& H. Morton Ramsay & Sons

& Eleanor Peas

A second, smaller plaque was affixed to the wall just underneath the first:

REDEDICATED 1931

with special dispensation from

The Archdiocese of New York

“After you,” I said.

“I can’t.” She nodded to the horseshoe.

I looked at it. “Um. Whatever.”

She pulled a Fiji water bottle from her expensive handbag and took a drink.

“Fine. Then wait here.”

She gasped a little, like I’d just stiffed her out of a tip.

“I’ll be outside,” she said and walked away.

I tried the door, but it didn’t budge. It was solid, more like an exterior door than an interior one.

“It sticks,” she said as she climbed the stairs.

I pushed hard once, twice, three times and it popped free with a shudder. Beyond was a narrow space. I wouldn’t call it a foyer because it was irregularly formed and barely bigger than my closet. There was a brick ceiling above and a foot-and-a-half drop to an uneven cobblestone floor below. I was sure then that the door I just passed was the far wall of the building and that I had just stepped out of it. To my right and left were archways that had been completely bricked over. The cobblestones disappearing into the mortar at the bottom, which made it seem that an alley or pedestrian walkway had once run along where the building now stood. Across the gap was a step up and another door whose single glass pane revealed a well-lit shop on the other side. The glass was nearly filled with painted letters:

THE BARROWS

Since 1676

Anson Verhoeven,

Proprietor

No soliciting

All sales are final

The door creaked loudly, as if by design, and right away I got that unmistakable sweet smell of must and old books. The interior looked like a Victorian library. The space was much longer than it was wide and bookshelves covered the walls on either side. The ceiling was a little higher than in a normal shop, as they were in the old days, and there were a pair of very narrow metal staircases attached to tracks in the shelving so that people could peruse the higher shelves. To my right was an old leather chair, pulled back from the corner just enough to let someone browse snugly behind it. It was stacked with books. To my right was an old brass telescope. A curved brace marked degrees horizontal while a perpendicular one marked degrees vertical in precise ticks. The worn slats of the hardwood floor were the color of rich chocolate. Light came from a simple chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. The loops and arms were brass. I was sure it had burned gas at one point but had since been fitted with electricity. Black wires wound around the arms on their way to the lightbulbs at the end, which poked from fluted glass fittings.

The top shelves of the wall to my left held the oldest books and were locked behind glass-paneled cabinets whose polished brass fixtures were scuffed at the margins and around the keyholes. At the back was a high wood counter and an oak door, maybe to a stock room. There was a pendulum clock, ticking softly, and a long display shelf full of oddities and antiques. Hanging over them in the last bit of open space under the ceiling was a line of various ornate frames — some small, some quite large. All of them had tasteful little museum lights to illuminate their contents, but all of them were empty. I could see straight through to the brick.

In the very middle of the floor was a kind of circular podium made of polished walnut that displayed books in 360 degrees — some open, some closed. The book facing the door was large and hardbound and opened to colorful illuminated pages. But it wasn’t old. The pages were white and the corners crisp. The copyright at the front said 2009. I looked at the cover. The Red Book (Liber Novus) by Carl Jung. Signed by the author.

“Are you sure you have the right place?”

The door to the stock room had been opened and an old man with an Amish beard stood scowling at me. He wore denim coveralls on top of a simple short-sleeved collared shirt and had wire spectacles resting on top of his head, like he’d been tinkering with a clock or something and stopped to see who was at the door.

He took one look at me and asked “Is it Wednesday again? Already?”

He turned about as if looking for a wall calendar.

“Excuse me?”

“Ah, wonderful. You are excused,” he said with relief, raising his hand to the door, as if he expected me to turn around and leave at that exact moment.

I took Kell’s book from her purse and held it up.

“I’m Sorry, but I think my friend stole this the other day.”

His face was so old, his wrinkles magnified every expression, which in this case seemed to be confusion. And disgust. He shuffled forward.

“Yes. She did.” He had a faint European accent.

“Well, I’d like to return it.”

He took out a pocket watch. “Took long enough.”

“I just found it.”

“Not you. The spell.” He put the watch away. “This isn’t a library,” he said with a snap, pointing to a small sign above the punch-key register at the back:

THIS IS NOT A LIBRARY

It hung above another small sign that said:

CASH ONLY

Both signs were next to a much larger one that said in very clear letters:

BEWARE OF TROLLS

“You take the books,” he said, “you buy them.”

“But I didn’t take — ” I sighed at his indignant eyebrow-raise. Those suckers looked like brooms. “Fine. How much is it?”

He walked to the counter and tossed his glasses on it. He pressed the heavy levered keys of the antique register until a bell chimed.

“Two hundred and five dollars and nineteen cents.”

Leave it to Kell to steal the most expensive damned book in the store.

It wasn’t really. But that’s what it felt like.

I set the book on the counter and dug in my purse.

“Your friend was clever,” he said. “She came with one of my best customers so as to avoid suspicion later.”

“I really doubt she had some kind of master plan to steal a book, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” I handed him two hundred and ten. “You know Lyman?”

“I don’t have change,” he said.

“What?” I started to object. Then I took a breath. “Fine. Whatever.”

I called it a theft tax. The register dinged loudly and the drawer slid open. He put the money inside. He totally had change.

He eyed me eying the drawer, like I was a thief as well. He shut it hard.

“No,” he answered my question. “Thank you for your business.” He raised an arm toward the door. “Good day.”

“I don’t suppose you could help me,” I asked.

“Probably not.”

“Dude. Can you at least pretend to be helpful?”

“It wouldn’t be very convincing.”

I held up The Sacred Marriage. “This is, like, a history book.”

“It’s not ‘like’ a history book,” he said. “It is a history book.”

“Yeah. Fine. That’s what I said. Do you have any books on alchemy? And — ” I stopped. I was going to say ‘like’ again. “The sacred marriage that aren’t history? More like . . . I dunno, a how-to guide or something.”

“Alchemy isn’t a programming language,” he chided. “There are treatises. Monographs. There are not, as far as I know, any ‘how-to’ guides.”

I waited. I hate people like that.

He pointed to the books.

I looked around the rectangular room. I turned my palms up.

“Ah. Of course.” He scowled, deeply, and shuffled toward the back door. “With the exception of the volumes under glass, which will be beyond you, the books are shelved alphabetically by author. Where an author isn’t known, by subject. Where several subjects are covered, by the Erskine Codex reference number. If you are not going to make a purchase, I will kindly ask you to show yourself out. Good day.”

He shut the door hard to emphasize the point.

Jerk.

I spun slowly in a circle. It was books all around. I had no idea what I was looking for and just started opening volumes at random. Most were giant walls of text that went on for hundreds of pages. Half of them weren’t even in English. It wasn’t long before I started appreciating those. They at least gave me a reason to rule them out swiftly. After a while, I heard the door to the back open again and the old man stop with a start. I’m pretty sure he thought I had left a half hour ago. I was squatting in front of the bottom shelf holding a very heavy book I hoped was some kind of encyclopedia. It wasn’t. I’m not sure what it was, actually. A bestiary, I guess.

He cleared his throat. “This is a bookstore. NOT a library.”

“You said that. Can’t I just — ”

I was turning my head to argue my case when my eye caught the title, in between all the others. I replaced the big book in my hand and pulled out the thin hardbound volume one shelf up.

The Long Vacant Cupboard.

“Hmpf. Should have done that the first time,” he said.

“Done what?”

He squinted at me for some sign of recognition.

“You really don’t know anything? You’re not even a Wiccan or one of those girls who cut themselves to feed the vamps?”

I shook my head.

“How did you — ” He stopped himself. He harumphed again. “A book, young lady, is the most magical thing there is. It is the only spell” — he lifted a faded leather-bound from the shelf — “that’s patent.”

He slapped the cover as if to show it was real. “A spell you can touch.”

He shook it at me.

“A spell?”

“Yes. A spell. You know what that is, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Words,” he said, “that make magic.”

“I know what a spell is.”

“They’re about the only magic left. That regular folks can touch anyway.” He looked at the shelves. “But even they’re going away.”

He re-shelved the tome in his hand.

“If a book is magic, then how is magic different than anything?”

“Who said it was?” he asked, as if I’d just told him people were spreading nasty rumors about him.

He started to speak again but I interrupted him. “She stole the book when you were giving the speech, didn’t she?”

He shuffled over and snatched The Long Vacant Cupboard from my hands.

“The books are for sale.”

He turned to put it back on the shelf.

“Fine. How much is it?”

He checked. “You’re in luck. This is the third edition with the rambling introduction by Sprague that no one ever reads. Eighty-nine ninety-nine. Plus tax.” Then he shelved it.

“Jeez, dude. I need to eat.”

“So do I,” he objected. “We buy books as well.”

I looked at the one by my feet. The Sacred Marriage. The one I’d just bought. I handed it to him.

He took it and examined it thoroughly. Like he’d never seen it before.

“I’ll give you forty dollars for it.”

“WHAT? I just gave you two hundred!”

“Depreciation,” he said.

What. An. Asshole. “A hundred,” I replied.

“No.”

I held out my hand. “Then give it back.”

He looked at it in his. “Fifty.”

“Eighty or I walk.”

He scowled. Then he turned for the back. “Criminal,” he muttered.

“Dude, I’m not the only one.”

I took money out of my purse, added it to what he handed me, and grabbed The Long Vacant Cupboard from the shelf.

“I’d like to buy this book,” I said all innocently.

He shuffled to the counter and retrieved a calculator with fat buttons. He tapped. “That will be ninety-seven dollars and twenty cents, please.”

I counted out a hundred dollars in fives and twenties and handed it to him. We walked to the register where he recounted them in front of me.

“I don’t have change,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever. Just give me the damned book.”

He scowled again. “Language.” He handed it to me.

“Manners,” I retorted with bug eyes. “Can I sit? Or are you gonna charge me for that, too?”

“It would seem so.”

“Can I move — ” I stopped.

The chair had been cleared. The books had been set on the floor.

I looked around. I didn’t see or hear anyone.

“Thank you, Charles,” the old man called sarcastically. “Always did have a thing for young girls,” he muttered. He turned for his workshop, then snapped back to me. “We close promptly at 5:00.”

“Five? Who the hell closes that early?”

He looked at his watch. “That’s one hour and forty-seven minutes.”

I flashed the clock on my phone. I waggled it and pursed my lips like ‘Oooooooo, a magic lighted timepiece!’ He squinted in disgust and retreated back to his work room.

So, the book pretty much said the same thing the old man did — that there was a time when magic was part of the world, same as anything else, which is why everyone in every pre-modern culture everywhere believed in it, but that there are only bits and pieces left, that everything else has been obscured by The Masters, also sometimes called the High Arcane, who were like a council I guess, made of the most powerful practitioners of every age. They’re the ones who said no one could talk about magic and stuff directly. Like, it was forbidden. Some really talented people were allowed to write about it, but they had to use ‘keys and ciphers’ to keep everything esoteric. Alchemy, for example, wasn’t actually about turning lead into gold, even though that’s what everyone thinks. It’s really about the deep structure of creation. Not like atoms and stuff, but below that. Resolving the conundrums of existence. The whole thing with lead and gold was a cipher, a riddle to throw off the greedy and foolish. Those who were too stupid to realize it, who got bewitched by the lure of wealth, got hung up there and wasted their lives chasing after a fiction.

The truth was much simpler. As it usually is. Gold is bright, like sunshine. It’s a light metal that’s easily made into different things. Lead is heavy. Dull. Dark. Impenetrable. Not even Superman could see through it. In the symbolism of turning lead into gold, gold represents wealth of knowledge and all that. And lead is ignorance. So, alchemy is the transmutation of ignorance into knowledge — ultimate knowledge. That’s what it was all about, the search for Truth. But that wasn’t what they were trying to do, not the real alchemists anyway. There were lots of different alchemical “investigations,” but the big thing everyone wanted to produce was the lapis philosophorum, the ‘stone of truth’ or something like that. But not like a rock — more like an opal or a gem, like how all the old sutras refer to the teachings of the Buddha as a jewel. That’s what the lapis is, the “jewel” of ultimate knowledge — namely, how to be like God, a return to the divine state pretty much every religion says existed way back at the beginning.

Sounds like heresy, right? And it is. Which is why these guys ‘The Masters’ have been working for hundreds of years to suppress any investigation into the “sacred marriage,” which I gathered was a bit like combining matter and antimatter. To keep the knowledge from falling into the wrong hands, the steps and ingredients — the recipe, I guess — for combining the male and female principles were encoded in alchemical ciphers, like the athame and the chalice. The old Taoist sorcerers were apparently the real masters — mixing yin and yang and all that. Chinese mythology is definitely full of xian, long-lived sages like the famous Eight Immortals, each of whom rode a dragon and who could transfer their power to a relic or tool that could be gifted to ordinary men.

Only nobody knows how to do it anymore.

Supposedly.

I heard the shuffle of the old man’s feet on the floor. At first I thought he was coming to shoo me out. But when I lifted my head to defend myself, I saw he had a teacup and saucer in his hand. He set it carefully on the broad arm of the chair.

“Charles thought you might like some tea.”

I looked at the time on my phone. It was almost 5:30. And no messages from Kell. Go figure.

I looked at the tea. It was hot.

“Ceylon,” he said, turning toward the back. “I’m afraid it’s all I have.”

“I thought you closed at five.”

“We do.” He nodded to the front door.

It was shut and the open sign was turned inward.

I scrunched my brow. I hadn’t even noticed.

“It seemed a shame to break the spell,” he said without facing me.

I looked at the tea. It was steaming. I took a sip. It was warm, and I realized how safe I felt there, curled up in an old chair with a dust-and-vanilla scented book. But my eyes were getting tired. I’d been reading for a couple hours and I was losing concentration. I thumbed to the back, where there were a bunch of text-heavy tables that looked like they’d been assembled in old movable type, with strong lines and a highly serifed font, and I turned from one to the next: Schools of Magic, Classical Symbology, Mystical Doctrines, the basic six circular summoning diagrams, several timelines, including a list of all reigning Masters “From the Fall of the Templars to the Destruction of the Eye of Annemundu,” and so on.

I stopped at The Orders of Practice. It had script titles in the first column and block descriptions in the second, with a third reserved for notable examples, not all of which were filled. A Magician, it said, is any practitioner of magic. That term, however, tended to be avoided because it didn’t distinguish from the stage magician, who offers nothing but mechanical sleight-of-hand. For that reason, the title Illusionist was similarly shunned.

A Conjurer is anyone who brings forth that which was not there. A Summoner, then, is a Conjurer that brings forth a creature from another realm, such as a demon or evil spirit. Diviner is the formal name for fortune teller. This includes the ‘low’ variety like palmists and tarot card readers as well as the more specialized schools: anything with the suffix ‘-mancy’ in the title. Most of what historians know about the ancient Shang dynasty, for example, comes from their widespread practice of plastromancy, where they inscribed questions on turtle shells before piercing them them with hot irons and interpreting the cracks that ran through the characters.

A Seer is anyone who has visions, which don’t always have to be of the future. Most of your run-of-the-mill psychics fall into this category. Similarly, a Medium is anyone who carries messages from one place to another, such as between the dead and the living. The table also noted that Mediums, also called ‘Sensitives,’ were also particularly prone to possession.

A Witch is any practitioner of witchcraft, which can be of the light or dark variety. Despite the common misconception, though, a witch isn’t necessarily female. Rather, it’s simply that ‘earth magic’ attracted more women than men because, first, women were historically excluded from the more arcane schools, and second, the Druids, the founders of the art, had no such chauvinist proscriptions.

A Warlock, on the other hand, is specifically a ‘master of the dark arts’ and includes both men and women. Here there was an asterisk pointing to a footnote at the bottom of the page where the author admitted to omitting ‘the Shamanists and Witch-doctors.’ As practitioners of the most ancient form of magic, he said, there was no agreed-upon definition, nor did the shamans themselves adhere to one or another school but preferred instead to ‘salt and pepper their practice’ with bits from every tradition ‘like leeches.’ It sounded a lot like how the learned men of the British Empire used to write about the culture of the Far East.

On and on it went: Wizard, Sorcerer, Thaumaturge, Alchemist, Magus, Malefactor . . . And on to the second-to-last entry: Enchanter/Enchantress. I read it aloud.

“A master of mind-magic; a caster of spells over others, often with the help of sprites and spirits whom they keep as familiars.”

Familiars.

I packed up and set the empty tea cup on the counter and called “Thank you.” When I didn’t hear a response, I walked out the door and back up the stairs. Irfan was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside. She was leaning against the door frame thumbing her phone the way people do to pass the time — not particularly interested in what the screen was showing her but rapt with attention for lack of a better diversion. I had the sense she’d been like that for the duration, a bit like a dog tied to a bike rack, endlessly expecting its master’s immediate return with no sense of the moments that passed. She saw me and put her phone in the pocket of her camo-print jacket. She’d rolled up the sleeves while I was gone. She didn’t ask if I’d gotten what I needed or how it went inside.

“I’m hungry,” she said and started walking.

“Um. Okay.”

I followed several steps back, trying to digest everything I’d just seen and read. After sitting still for so long, getting up and waking felt good and stirred my thoughts. I wouldn’t have minded a walk along the river, which is where we were headed, but Irfan stopped instead at a small pizza joint. The menu on the wall suggested they mostly sold by the slice. I guessed most of the customers were local as well since the only seating was at three high tables along the front window. Each was barely two feet across and had a pair of matching bar stools — save the one with the blue rather than orange cushion.

We ordered from an older man in a white T-shirt and matching apron with stocky shoulders, a wide head, and a permanent sneer, like the left side of his upper lip had been damaged or something and couldn’t fall all the way over his teeth. Even in his elevated shoes, he was barely taller than me. Irfan got cheese. I got pepperoni. She paid and I sat at the table in the corner, near the stock room door labeled NO ADMITTANCE. When she joined me, I had my eyes closed.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking,” I said.

“You have to close your eyes to think?”

“Shut up.”

She sighed and took out her phone, or so it seemed from the sound. I was trying to tune it all out, but another customer came and went, and then our slices came out of the oven. The old man called and Irfan got up to get them.

“This is about the only thing you all do well,” she said.

Mine came with pools of red-orange grease in the cheese, like meltwater on top of a glacier, and I pulled a couple napkins from the holder on the table and dabbed them over it.

Irfan stopped mid-bite to look at me in confusion. “That’s sacrilege.”

The orange-and-purple light from the long neon NERO’S PIZZA sign hanging above us reflected off the glass and hit her eyes.

“Sue me.”

“Nero will do you worse than that.”

I glanced to the kitchen. The man with the grizzled face was sweeping the floor. I caught him just as he turned back from a healthy glower.

“I don’t get why he’s so infatuated with you,” she said with a mouthful.

“Meaning what?”

“Your attitude is shit, for one. You have a nice body, I guess, but your clothes look like you left them to dry in a pile on the floor.”

I shifted a little on the stool.

“And you reek of death.” She scrunched her nose. “It’s like he marked you as his property or something, like a dog pissing on a tree.”

“If you say so.”

I tore into my pizza and we ate in silence.

“How do you know what death smells like?” I asked finally.

It took her a moment to answer.

“I saw him once,” she said. “A long time ago. In the desert. There was that sweet stench of dried dung on top of the dust of ages. That’s what you smell like.” She took another bite. “Dung and dust. I don’t know how he can stand it.”

I held up my middle finger. “I hate to break it to you, but Bastien couldn’t care less about me. He only pretends to because he hasn’t ‘had’ me yet.”

“That old bit? Seriously?” She rolled her eyes and took another bite. “Okay, whatever.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“For the record,” she said after a moment, “I don’t think he’s pretending. I think he thinks you’re a challenge or something. Like, none of his charms have any effect. I saw it the other day. For a moment, it seemed like he had you, just like all the others. But then your soul sparked and threw it off.”

“My soul sparks?”

She nodded. “Like it was ripped in half.”

I set my thrice-bitten slice down on the grease-stained paper plate. Irfan had already eaten hers halfway to the crust. I grabbed a napkin and wiped my fingers.

I ran my thumb over the symbol on the back of my hand.

Lots of Westerners don’t realize this, but those red characters you see collected on the sides of Asian painting aren’t part of the work. They’re legal seals, either the artist’s or whoever he sold it to, plus whoever they sold it to, and so on — stamps of ownership on a masterpiece, put there by rich men who wanted to make sure everyone knew it was their property.

Dung and dust.

I tossed my crumpled napkins onto my pizza.

“My mom freaked when I wouldn’t go pray for safe travels before I left,” I said, staring at my hand, “I’m pretty sure she went on my behalf. She definitely went to the fortune teller then. She goes every new year. Chinese new year,” I added quickly. “And any time there’s a big change. Lots of people do. The woman apparently told her I was going to die here. In the US. So now, every time there’s a shooting or whatever, I get a panicked call from home. That kind of thing is the only news that makes it over there. So even if it’s way out West or whatever, a thousand miles from New York, Mom’s always sure I was one of the victims. I get an earful if I don’t answer right away.”

A car honked incessantly on the street outside. When it finally stopped, two men yelled angrily at each other for several seconds. The sun had gone down and it was dark and I tried to see through the window but the glare from the neon made it hard. I could see motion but no detail. I leaned and looked up at the sign. It hung half an inch from the glass. There was a metal rim around it, presumably to focus the light toward the window, but that meant I couldn’t actually see the bulbs, just their reflection.

It seemed to me there was a lesson in there. But when I glanced back to Irfan, she was looking at me from under her brow. It wasn’t pleasant.

“Your heart is starting to believe. But your head is still holding on.”

A young couple walked into the pizza shop speaking hushed and silly to each other, as if laughing at the entire rest of the world.

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re not afraid. Not yet. But when you finally accept the truth, you’ll see the world as it is, and you’ll be terrified.”

For a moment her eyes flashed as if they were on fire. But when I blinked to clear my eyes, it seemed like it was just the purple-orange glare from the neon.

I looked to the couple ordering at the register. He had one arm around her back, and she twisted hers around to meet it. Their fingers intertwined. He was jokingly trying to get her to order something with anchovies, much to the annoyance of the old man, who looked at me looking at him.

He knew, too.

I looked around at his humble little pizza shop, at the menu placard on the wall, at the white ceiling tiles, at the big stainless steel oven behind the display rack. He was doing what he needed to survive, same as anyone.

“So why don’t more people believe?” I asked.

“HA!”

Irfan laughed so loud the couple stopped their joking and turned. But she didn’t care. She leaned forward again and started speaking faster.

“There’s a university down the road. Go ask the professors what they think of the priests. There’s a church on the corner. Methodists, I think. Go ask the priests what they think of the politicians. Go to Washington and ask the politicians of one party what they think of the other. All of you cretins are utterly convinced that billions — literally, billions of other humans live every day of their lives in utter delusion and that only you and those few like you have somehow managed to escape.”

The more she spoke, the faster the words came and the more her accent changed. She didn’t sound English anymore. She didn’t sound female either.

“And all those others huddle in their groups and chuckle at yours and say the same thing. This is what you all believe. And then somehow you’re shocked to learn you might’ve had it wrong, as if such a thing weren’t physically possible, as if gravity would sooner reverse than any any earnest group of humans be wrong about anything, despite that you believed every day of your life that almost all of them are!”

She stood from the stool.

“Monkey brains. All of you. You’ve always been like this. Always. You’re only a few generations removed from the trees and yet you act like you’re the — ”

She choked and grabbed at her throat, at her collar. She bent and coughed toward the floor. Once. Twice. Then she grabbed her bag with a growl and stormed out.

I ran after.

“HEY!” The old man slapped the counter so hard it shook. “Clear your damned table!”

I ran back, scooped up our plates and napkins, and dumped them in the trash. By the time I hit the sidewalk, Irfan had already crossed the side street at the end of the block and was approaching the main road just past the large building on the corner.

“Wait!” I called. But she was way too far to hear.

I ran down the sidewalk, dodged a man on a bike, and made it across the side street just in time to avoid being hit by a car. But by the time I passed the alley that ran behind the big building, Irfan was long gone.

“Shit!” I stomped.

“I have to,” she said.

I spun. She was leaning against the corner of the wall with one foot resting on it, as if in a moment, she’d gone completely around the building and down the alley behind. Or else something had picked her up and returned her.

“I have to wait,” she said back in her English accent. “I don’t have a choice.”

Her purple lip quivered. But it didn’t really hit me until she swallowed hard, like her collar was too tight. I realized then that she hadn’t appeared that day at Bastien’s until after I had touched the lamp, and that he had told me not to, and that Bastien had insisted she was just a friend, and that he had stumbled over the word. I thought that was because they were sleeping together. I thought the dog collar was some kind of sexual thing. It was vaguely arousing, to be honest, and I more than a little wanted him to put it on me.

But just then I wondered if Bastien hadn’t stumbled over the word for a different reason.

“He sent you,” I accused.

She nodded. “I was supposed to keep you out of trouble.”

“So you took me to a bookstore?”

“No one ever gets into any real trouble in a bookstore. They only get into trouble when they get out.” She looked up at the night sky. She stood from her lean and started walking. “Come on. I’m supposed to bring you.”

“Bring me where?”

“He wants to see you. Don’t worry. You’ll love it. They aaall do.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.

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The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

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