“I called every rare book dealer in town. Not for the first time, but this is the first time someone’s actually had it.”
“I hope you like weird Scandinavian health toast,” David said, placing a plate of coarse brown rectangles in front of us, “because that’s all we have.”
I was too keyed up to eat, which made me drink more coffee than I should have, which made me even more jangled. But I didn’t care, because I was about to get my hands on the book that was haunting me. Possibly literally.
And drinking coffee was a good distraction from the sinking suspicion that this was a little too easy. That our sudden good fortune could be a trap.
I was rinsing my mug in the big farmhouse sink when something dark slammed against the window. I flinched away as a massive, raggedy blackbird flapped backward, then threw itself against the glass a second time.
“Whoa!” David hustled to the window. The bird was beating against it, a flurry of wings. “Hey! You’re hurting yourself, buddy!” He slapped his palm on the glass, jerking back when the bird’s motions became more frenzied.
There was something in its beak. I recognized its shape, an industrial rectangle that made my stomach lurch.
“Shit, man.” David looked back at us, his face troubled. “Do you think it’s blind or something? Should I—should I let it inside?”
“Don’t,” I said, my voice hard and quick. “Please.” David frowned at me but didn’t move. We watched silently as the bird charged the window with the last of its strength, before dropping out of view. The thing it had been holding snagged into a corner of the frame. I moved to the blood-smeared window and eased it open, carefully, snatching the envelope before it could come loose. My name was written across the back in a hasty scrawl.
The envelope held another soft, worn page with a freshly ripped edge. I lifted it enough to read the top.
The Door That Wasn’t There
Hansa the Traveler
The Clockwork Bride
“What the hell?” breathed David over my shoulder. “That’s your name on the envelope, right? Is that for you?”
The coffee tasted gritty and burnt on my tongue. Finch tried to meet my eyes, but I couldn’t look back.
* * *
We didn’t talk on the way to the subway. I felt stunned and flayed, a nerve ending exposed to cold sun. I refused to let Finch hail a cab, fearing whoever might be behind the wheel. The bookshop was a straight shot up to Harlem, but it was the kind of slow and halting train ride that makes you think something evil is set against you getting where you’re going, even on days when you don’t have a really, really good reason to believe that anyway.
The shop was at the end of a homey stretch of brownstones, tucked into a bottom story. The lettering on its sign reminded me of an old-fashioned candy store: Wm. Perks’ Antiq. Books &c., in a looping font.
“Do you think he paid his sign maker by the letter?”
They were the first words Finch had spoken since he’d touched my elbow and said, “This way,” when we got off the subway. I mustered a close-lipped smile. I kept seeing the bird’s flat black eyes.
Finch rang the bell beside the wrought-iron door. Half a minute later, we heard someone undoing a series of locks on the other side.
The man who opened the door looked less like an antiquarian bookseller and more like a bookie. His tie was a loud yellow, his suit an exhausted brown. He had a napkin tucked into his collar that appeared to be covered in barbecue sauce.
He squinted suspiciously at Finch—all wild hair, unzipped jacket, one restless hand stuck out for a shake. “You Ellery Finch?” he said out the side of his mouth, like he was trying to sell us drugs in Tompkins Square Park.
“I am. William Perks?” The guy agreed and finally took Finch’s hand, giving it two good pumps. I held mine out, but he kissed it instead. I resisted the urge to wipe it on my wrinkled uniform skirt.
“Come in, come in. Would you believe I just got the book you’re looking for this morning? I knew it wouldn’t be long before the collectors started sniffing me out—it’s the first one I’ve ever had in stock, and only the second I’ve seen. I’ll be damned if the quality on this one isn’t high, high, high.”
His patter made him sound like a county-fair auctioneer, but at least he wasn’t treating us like children. I’d anticipated a tidy little bookshop, lined with leather volumes and looking a bit like Finch’s library, but what I got was a mind-boggling riot of bookshelves that started a few yards from the door, standing at all angles and punctuated by free-range stacks rising from the ground, in a room that smelled like paste and paper and the animal tang of vellum. And barbecue. Perks led us to a glass case in the back, full of books lying open like butterflies. Finch frowned. “Bad for the spines,” he muttered.
“So I’m gonna wash my hands real good, then I’m gonna bring you what you seek.” Perks put his palms together, bowed to us, and exited the room.
“Do you think he really got it this morning?” I asked Finch, low.
He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Like, recently.”
Perks zoomed back in before I could reply. I had the idea he was as eager to sell as we were to buy.
I was right, but not for the reason I thought.
“Here she is,” he said softly, slipping the book from a paper sleeve.
The sight of its embossed leather cover, dull gold on green, made my breath catch. It was the book at last, soft and inviting and perfectly sized for holding.
Perks saw my expression and laughed. “I thought you were just along for the ride. But it looks like you’re the one who’s buying.”
“Are there any missing pages?”
The bookseller made a show of looking horrified. “Not on your life.”
I relaxed, a little. “Did you really get it today?”
“I did indeed, and within the hour you all called me looking for it. You might think it’s strange, but you get used to those karmic moments in the book business. Books want to be read, and by the right people. There’s nothing surprising in it, not to me.”
“Who sold it to you?”
“Someone who said he bought it at an estate sale. But I can’t double-check everyone’s story.”
“What did he look like?” Ellery asked.
Say he had red hair.
Perks mulled it over. “He was young, almost as young as you. White kid, dark hair, mug on him like he’d sell you your own mother. And he was…” He hesitated, his eyes flicking between us.
“He was what?”
“An odd bird. A little shifty. He had that air to him, like a man out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
My voice must’ve had a warning note in it, because Perks threw up his hands and smiled disarmingly. “It’s the look these days—the train jumper look. That Brooklyn thing, girls your age must like it.” He beckoned our attention back to the book. “Want to take a look?”
What I wanted was to know for sure if the boy who’d sold him the book was the same one I’d seen outside of Whitechapel, and again in the diner. And whether it was a different copy from the one I’d seen at my café, in the hands of the red-haired man.
Perks slipped on white gloves that made him look like an off-brand Mickey Mouse. “The binding is in near mint condition.” He deftly flipped the book over and back again. “No foxing on the pages. Some discoloration, of course, but that’s to be expected.”