Weird words to hear over rich morning coffee, especially when the speaker, Colin, was wrapped up in a blue fuzzy bathrobe that looked bigger than he was.

  The whole scene felt surreal to Heath. Rain pounding down outside like it was February instead of July. The three of them sitting at the white oak table in Colin’s elegant breakfast nook, each in a Colin-supplied bathrobe while Heath’s and Nariko’s clothes tumbled together in the dryer. Nariko’s robe looked as though it had been sewn out of a silk Welsh flag, complete with big red dragon on the back, while Heath’s was all black flannel, except for a Batman symbol over the heart.

  Breakfast enchiladas heated in the microwave, a much better smell than last night’s asafetida.

  It would have made for a homey scene – or the strangest morning-after of Heath’s life – if Colin weren’t talking about how his homebrewed spirit aides had been destroyed while out searching for information.

  “Does that ever just happen?” asked Nariko.

  “Never. And these had a little extra oomph of unobtrusiveness. But they got spotted and shredded like a heckler at a drag show.”

  “All right,” said Heath, deciding that the bad news merited a little more artificial sweetener in his coffee, “let’s talk about what we do know. My landlord said the Black Book is supposed to have been spotted in six different cities in the past week: New York, Chicago, Saint Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland.”

  Nariko hummed the tune of One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, and Colin snickered.

  “That’s right,” said Heath. “One of them has the actual Black Book of Saint Cyprian moving through it, and the others all have decoys.”

  “Why believe it’s here?” asked Colin.

  Heath dug his wallet out of the front pocket of his robe, opened the cracked black leather, and pulled out a strip of fabric. The main part of it was a royal red, and soft gold fringe ran all the way around the perimeter. Woven through the main body was more gold thread, in the shape of a heptagram, surrounded by tiny Hebrew and Arabic letters.

  The strip of fabric was no more than two inches wide and four inches long.

  Heath spread it flat on the table while the others looked closer.

  “According to my landlord, this was the bookmark of Saint Cyprian.”

  “The bookmark,” said Nariko, as though repeating the punchline of a bad pun.

  “Bookmark?” Colin sounded just as puzzled, but had the decency to not sound amused about it. “I thought those old books had narrow strips of fabric woven into the binding to mark your place. Like some bibles still do.”

  “Apparently old grimoires are the exception,” said Heath with a half-shrug. “Anyway, my landlord said that the first team he sent after the book failed to gain it, but got away with the bookmark—”

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” said Nariko, hands up for an all-stop. “First team? You have five seconds to explain.”

  “Apparently Suit has lots of money and lots of people, but none of them with a scrap of magic. He sent a group to purchase or otherwise acquire the grimoire—”

  “Otherwise acquire?” asked Colin.

  “Only half the team came back, and this is what they recovered.”

  “So you took this job,” said Nariko, “knowing that your landlord is a gangster willing to kill for what he wants. And you still want to give him a big nasty book of black magic?”

  “He’s a businessman, not a gangster.”

  Nariko let her fluttering eyelashes and smirk say her words for her. Dumb in all the wrong ways.

  “I have to say,” said Colin, slowly, “I’m not sure I can go along with this. I mean, I don’t mind risking my life to help you out, but this sounds like offering a fleet of drones to the Mafia.”

  “Two things, if I may,” said Heath, folding his hands on the table and sitting up straight as though at a negotiating table, not a kitchen table. “First, anyone who wants this book has something bad in mind for it. If we get our hands on the book first, we may be able to do something about that.”

  “Which would explain why the book itself might try to avoid us,” said Colin.

  “Second,” said Heath, even louder, “there’s something odd about all this.”

  “Something?” said Nariko, her sculpted eyebrows high.

  “Suit offered me the deal because, in his own words, he knew I wouldn’t want the book for myself.”

  Heath rolled his lips around, trying to figure out how to explain to them an itch he’d been trying to scratch since he agreed to the bargain.

  “No one’s offering to sell the book. But whoever has it can’t be using it, or at least not seriously. Otherwise he … or she … would have shown up to reclaim the bookmark, probably with a host of demons riding shotgun.”

  “So why do they want it?” said Nariko.

  “I’m not sure anyone has it.”

  Colin and Nariko glanced at each other, but Colin spoke first. “Come again?”

  “You guys know about the homing spell I have on my backpack. If it’s separated from me and I need it, the backpack will find its way to me.”

  “I always thought that was neat,” said Colin.

  “Are you saying that the grimoire escaped?” said Nariko. “On its own?”

  “Why not?” Heath sipped from his cooling coffee. Almost too sweet now, but still good. “This thing’s some kind of holy relic, right? Or unholy relic anyway. So maybe it was held by the Vatican and something slipped in the safeguards. The book got out.”

  “Then the book must be going somewhere.” Nariko frowned and fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup. “Or to someone.”

  “Maybe not,” said Heath. “Maybe it sort of … wanders, while waiting for someone it deems worthy to come for it.”

  “Why give up the bookmark?” asked Colin, his own cup of coffee seemingly forgotten in his hands.

  “Test maybe. Suit believes the bookmark can be used to track the grimoire, and from the little time I spent checking it out that night, I think he’s right.”

  “What happened to the rest of the first team?” asked Nariko. “Why didn’t we hear about it on the news?”

  “Didn’t make the news. It was a farmstead in Hillsboro. Details are sketchy, but three members of the team died. The rest … quit his employ.”

  “So the book killed half the team and your landlord killed the rest of them,” said Nariko. “Charming fellow.”

  “I don’t know that.” Heath focused on his coffee so he didn’t have to see her expression.

  “And tracking spells people are using to find the book,” said Colin, “may be finding the bookmark instead.”

  “Would explain how some people are finding us,” said Heath, still looking into cup. “Contagion’s a bitch.”

  “So let me get this straight,” said Nariko. “Your whole plan is to get the book, then figure out what to do with it?”

  “Maybe it can be de-fanged.”

  “The cracks of Mount Saint Helen’s doesn’t have the right ring to it,” said Colin.

  Nariko punched him on the shoulder, hard enough to merit an exaggerated “Ow.”

  “My landlord could never hold onto this thing anyway. He doesn’t know anything about magic. Or maybe he knows enough to talk shit at Croatoan over Pabst Blue Ribbons with the other wannabes. But no way a sentient grimoire – because that’s what we’re talking about whether we want to admit it or not – will settle for tutoring a toddler when it could soar with a post-doc.”

  “Easier to mold the toddler,” said Colin. “If the thing’s sentient, we don’t know its motivations.”

  “If the stories are true,” said Heath, “then Cyprian was the badass of his time, and he shoved all his dark magic into the book. It’ll have plenty to teach anyone who tries to use it, and the experienced practitioner won’t need to waste time on the basics.”

  “Fair enough,” said Colin.

  “But it let go of the bookmark,” said Nariko.

  “Yes,” said Colin, eyes widening. “And now you have it, Heath.”

  Above the stove, the microwave dinged.

  Heath felt icicles trickle their way up his spine and through his bowels. For just one moment he felt like he was thirteen again with his uncle shoveling dirt on top of him.

  The bookmark lay between the three of them on Colin’s kitchen table. Like a tiny, sinister tapestry of occult power. Heath could only stare at it. Was Colin right? Was Suit nothing but a conduit to help the most evil grimoire this side of the Necronomicon find its way to Heath?

  “Colin,” said Nariko, “get those breakfast enchiladas from the microwave. I’ll pour us another round of coffee.”

  Nariko leaned in and whispered in Heath’s ear, “And you pull yourself together.” Then she got up, and the two of them clinked and clicked their way through preparing food and drinks, respectively.

  Heath felt a mad urge to burn the bookmark on Colin’s gas stove. To grab everything crucial from his apartment and start running. New Orleans, maybe. Or Haiti. Didn’t he still have relatives in Haiti? Small island, hard for a book to reach him there…

  Hard to hide there too. Plus, hard to earn money as a hoodoo man when he’d be surrounded by manbos and houngans and bokors.

  No. This didn’t make sense. If the grimoire was so powerful it could get Suit to spend lives chasing it and draw the attention of what seemed to be a growing number of would-be wielders, why wouldn’t it just show up on Heath’s doorstep? It wasn’t as though Heath was in the habit of ignoring books…

  …of course, anything that showed up on his doorstep might be an attack. Heath would have reacted appropriately.

  But there had to be ways. If the grimoire was sentient. And if it planned to come to Heath. Heath leaned down for his backpack, but it wasn’t under the table.

  “Colin,” said Heath, “where’s my backpack?”

  “In the hall closet where it ought to be when you aren’t using it.”

  Heath stepped past his bathrobed friends to the hall closet and dug the contract out of the outer pocket of his backpack. Heath might not have been a contracts attorney, but he’d been working with spirits for most of his life. He’d learned a thing or two about making deals.

  He brought the paperwork back to the kitchen table, where Colin and Nariko were already eating. Heath sipped his coffee and skimmed through the language, past the basics of the definitions, identifications, indemnities and other “standard” clauses to reach the essence of his responsibilities, on page three. He read the clause aloud.

  “In exchange for the considerations listed in five (5) above, Tenant agrees to use any and all available means to locate and secure the Property on behalf of Landlord. Tenant agrees to safeguard the Property to the best of his ability until the first available opportunity to present the Property to Landlord or Landlord’s designee.”

  “So you have to get this thing and hold it for him,” said Nariko.

  “And you have to do whatever it takes,” said Colin.

  “No,” said Heath holding up one finger, “I have to use ‘any and all available means.’ If this is going to stand as a legal contract, then he cannot be contracting me to do anything illegal. So illegal means are off the table.”

  “The point is, you have to give it to him.”

  “No,” said Nariko, “he has to safeguard it until he has a chance to present it. Doesn’t say he has to do it.”

  “So what?” Colin pointed at Heath with a forkful of breakfast enchilada while spiced cheddar cheese dripped onto his plate. Even Colin’s breakfast enchiladas were homemade. “If you don’t give him the book, you don’t get apartment, money, et cetera.”

  “I’m not sure I see the point of worrying about the wording either,” said Nariko.

  “Suit’s a careful, precise guy. I figured that if he wanted me to find the book, but not give him the book, there’d be a clue in the wording.”

  “And?” managed Colin with his mouth full.

  “No idea.” Heath added more sweetener to his coffee and drank a hefty slug. “He may be dealing straight or not.”

  “‘Landlord’s designee’ could turn out to be you, Heath.” Nariko shook her head. “If the grimoire is behind this, then Suit may not know what he intends to do either. I mean, he may think he does, but—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Heath. “If Suit is playing straight, I agreed to get the book and safeguard it for a time. If not, the book will find me anyway. No matter which is true, I’ll still have to deal with everyone else who wants the damned thing.”

  Colin snickered at the inadvertent pun, which got him a glare from Nariko.

  “Especially if we’re right that people trying to find the book may be finding the bookmark.” Heath set his cup down. “So I guess splitting town isn’t much of an option.”

  “I don’t know,” said Colin, “Heidelberg is lovely this time of year.”

  “Until the next Fire Eyes burns it to the ground,” said Nariko. “No, I don’t like the idea of giving your landlord the book, but I agree we do have to find it.”

  “Well,” said Colin, “if your minds are made up…” Colin looked back and forth between Heath and Nariko, eyes raised with momentary hope, but no one stopped him. He sighed. “Finding things may be what I’m best at. Let me see that bookmark.”

  Heath slid the bookmark across the kitchen table to Colin. When he took his fingers away, they felt a little … sticky. Not as though there’d been glue on the bookmark, or spilled whole cream, but as though the bookmark didn’t want to let go. As though the ghost of his fingers were still touching it.

  Colin reached out to touch the bookmark—

  “Stop,” said Heath.

  Colin’s hand froze in place, and Colin raised his eyes to Heath.

  “Its touch … lingers.”

  “Well, yeah.” Colin shrugged, which looked ridiculous in the huge blue bathrobe. “That’s the whole principle of association in action. The bookmark was touching the book for a long time, so bringing them together again—”

  “I don’t think he needs a lecture on magic theory,” said Nariko. “What do you mean, Heath?”

  “I feel like I’m still touching it.”

  “Etherically?” said Colin.

  “If you like,” said Heath. “Point is, this is unusual. I’ve touched the bookmark before and not felt this cling.”

  “But it’s been in your possession for longer than a sunrise and sunset,” said Nariko. “It’s been with you on a hill and near a river. And now you try to pass it to someone else and it resists. You think it’s building a link?”

  “I think I need a cleansing bath, stat.”

  “No,” said Colin. “Wait.”

  Heath felt the jitters all over his skin. He didn’t know what bonding to the bookmark meant, but it couldn’t have been good. And it might have given the Black Book an inroad to him.

  And the last thing Heath wanted this side of facing his uncle again was to find himself under the Black Book’s influence.

  So Heath laid his hands flat on the table and focused on the feel of the flannel Batman bathrobe on his skin. The smell of the untouched breakfast burrito on his plate, and the rumble that smell gave his stomach. Normal things. Physical things.

  “If we need to find the book,” said Colin, “then we may need you connected to the bookmark. In fact, maybe you need to be the one casting the locator spell anyway.”

  “No,” said Heath. “A magical act to bring the book to me sounds like a very bad idea right now.”

  “But we need to find the book.”

  “So find it,” Nariko said to Colin, then turned to Heath. “I agree. Go take one of your cleansing baths.”

  “Look,” said Colin. “I don’t like this either. I wasn’t kidding when I said that Heath here going over to the Dark Side is one of the worst things I can imagine. But, Heath, if you’re serious about keeping a powerful relic out of evil hands, you can’t afford to risk severing this connection. That might open the way for someone else to build a connection.”

  Colin put a hand on Heath’s shoulder.

  “This might be the only edge we have.”

  “Damn it,” said Heath, and Nariko looked away out the window. “All right, but you guys make me a promise. If I lose myself to this grimoire, you’ll kill me.”

  Nariko nodded once, but Colin tilted his head. “If you lose yourself to this grimoire, we might not be able to kill you.”

  “No transition of great power happens without a moment of vulnerability.” Nariko’s voice was soft and distant, her eyes still staring at the heavy rain outside Colin’s kitchen window. “As long as you fight it and don’t seek it out, there’ll be a moment. An eye in the storm. If that happens, I’ll strike the blow.”

  The quiet certainty in Nariko’s voice made him wonder if she had done something like this before. Years he had known this woman, but in that moment he wondered how well he knew her at all.

  “Thank you,” said Heath, wonder under his tone that he just thanked Nariko for promising to do something she had once joked about doing. “No cleansing bath for me, then.”

  “Sorry,” said Colin. “You can take a second shower if you want.”

  “No,” said Heath. “I better get started on using the bookmark to find the book.”

  “Eat first,” said Nariko, eyes still on the horizon. “You never eat enough. In fact, Colin, would you prepare a second burrito for him?”

  Colin stood and went to the freezer without a word, while Heath finally took a bite of his burrito – spicy and cheesy, with enough bacon, egg, and hash-browns to make sure his mouth knew it was eating something substantial.

  The first burrito vanished in a whirl of knife and fork. At some point while he ate, Nariko turned her attention back to her own food and coffee. Colin’s food seemed to just vanish without Heath never noticing him eat.

  The microwave dinged to announce the second burrito’s readiness.

  The dryer chimed out that Heath’s and Nariko’s clothes were ready for a day’s use.

  And someone rang the front doorbell.

  7