From the outside, Isobel could tell that the building had once been someone’s house, the painted bricks chipping green paint, a crumbling chimney visible on one side of the roof. Inside, the musty air held an antique thickness, and the scent of dust and aging books combined to make breathing a chore.
The front room stretched before her long and narrow, lined with rows of tall, sturdy bookshelves that reached almost to the ceiling. Overhead, the tired light fixtures burned a dull gold, adding little relief to the accumulated shadows.
Isobel inched in. She didn’t see Varen anywhere, but then again she couldn’t see much of anything yet. Carefully she stepped around a mound of ancient-looking tomes gathered near the door. She thought that this place must be in violation of at least ten different fire codes. She moved between two shelves and thought about calling out but for some reason, couldn’t bring herself to break the dead silence.
Isobel’s gaze passed up and over the marked spines of countless books, every item categorized by its own number and date, and it made her feel almost as though she were walking through catacombs.
When she reached the end, she peered around the shelf to see a counter. Well, really, she saw a lot of books piled on top of something that at one time must have been a counter.
Behind it sat an old man with crazy, flyaway white hair sticking out every which way around his head, like he’d caught his breakfast fork in a wall socket that morning.
He scowled at her with one large, piercing gray eye, the other eye pinched shut. In his lap was an enormous leather-bound book, open to a page somewhere in the middle.
“Oh, ah . . . ,” she said, and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, as though he’d need to know she’d come in through the front door. “I’m just looking for someone.”
He kept staring at her with that one eye, and it made her think of how a bird eyes a worm.
“Uh. You don’t . . . happen to know . . .” She trailed off, transfixed by that eye.
Creepy much? He didn’t even blink.
Isobel took a step back and pointed over her shoulder again. “I’ll just let myself—”
He snorted, loud and abrupt. She jumped, ready to turn tail and scuttle outside to wait for Varen on the street. They could just go to Starbucks and study, because this was too freaky for her. Before she could take so much as a single backward step, though, the man’s pinched eye flew open. He stirred in his seat, blinking rapidly, sniffing.
“Oh, oh,” he grunted. He straightened in his armchair and squinted at her with both eyes, one of which she saw was a dark muddy brown, though it looked almost black in the dim lighting. “Where did you come from, young lady?”
Isobel stared at him, having to break her gaze away to glance back at the front door—to the sunlight and the sidewalk and the sane people walking their dogs.
“Oh, don’t let this get to you,” he said, aiming the tip of one finger at the large gray eye. “It’s glass.” He wheezed out a haggard laugh. “Glad you came along.” His laugh dissolved into a loose cough. “Or I’d have slept the day away,” he added.
“I’m—I’m supposed to meet someone here,” Isobel murmured, and then was sorry she’d opened her mouth. All she really wanted to do was go back outside and stand on the sidewalk.
She’d passed a nice café on the way that would maybe work as a compromise, and they could work there instead. She didn’t even see anywhere to sit down in this place.
“Oh, yeah?” He coughed again, though he might have been laughing. She couldn’t be sure. She watched him coil one wrinkled fist against his mouth. His shoulders shook as he wheezed into his hand, his cheeks puffing like a blowfish.
When he stopped coughing, he let out a relieved sigh. “He’s upstairs,” the man grunted, and pointed one knotted finger toward an archway, which led into a back room that Isobel could see was (surprise, surprise) filled with still more books. “All the way to the back and up the stairs. Ignore the sign on the door.”
“Uh, thanks,” she said, but he’d already bent his head and gone back to reading. Or sleeping. It was hard to tell.
Turning, Isobel passed through the archway and into the back part of the store. She found the door he’d told her about against the back wall. Tall and narrow, it looked like the lid of a coffin. Her first thought was that it must be a broom closet, but she didn’t see any other doors around, and this one did have a sign on it. Actually, it had two.
DO NOT ENTER
That was the first one. The second sign, written by hand on a yellowing slip of coarse paper, bore another warning.
