know about the fallen angel yet except Coyote and the Virgin Mary, and I hardly thought either of them would stop to chat with these guys.
I shook my head. “I don’t even know where that is. Been here all day.”
“I see,” Father Gregory said, clearly disappointed. Rabbi Yosef was seething silently and turning a bit red. He knew I was shoveling shit on their boots. The priest decided to change the subject. “I’ve heard you have quite the rare-book collection. May I see it?”
“Of course. North wall, over there,” I pointed to a group of large china cabinets full of books, all locked away and lacking any recognizable organization.
The rare-book trade is another part of my business Perry can’t handle, but there’s so little commerce in that area that no one complains when I’m not around to handle it. The books I have are extraordinarily rare-as in there are only one to ten copies in existence, because they’re handwritten grimoires and scrolls full of real, honest-to- Dagda spells and rituals for magical masters only.
I also keep many historical secrets in there-secrets that would be a bugle call for Indiana Jones and his ilk, like the supposedly lost Sotomayor manuscript. I nearly geeked out just thinking about it being there. Pedro de Sotomayor was the scribe for Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, a lieutenant of Coronado’s who took eighty days to make a two-week trip to the Grand Canyon. Garcia is famous today for being the first European to see the Grand Canyon, but, according to Sotomayor, they found a gigantic hoard of Aztec gold that the Tusayans (now known as the Hopi tribe) were keeping in trust for their southern friends under assault by Cortes. Garcia and his dirty dozen took the hoard and hid it, and Sotomayor wrote it all down because they planned to come back and get it later, cutting Coronado out of the deal. None of them ever made it back to the New World, however, and Sotomayor’s manuscript “didn’t survive,” so history only has the word of Castaneda-a guy who didn’t go with Garcia and knew nothing about what really happened-that they found nothing but a geological wonder after nearly three months. The gold is still there, on the Hopi reservation, and nobody’s looking for it. I like knowing secrets like that, and I admit that when I’m all alone in the shop sometimes, I rub my hands together greedily and laugh like a one-eyed, black- mustached pirate to think that I have a bona fide treasure map locked up in my cabinet.
The cabinet looked fragile, but it was a customized job: Behind the wood veneer there was steel plate, and the glass was bulletproof; it was vacuum-sealed to prevent the further decay of the paper and bindings, and the locks opened by magic only. Around the entire thing I had set my strongest protective wards, and of course there were more wards around my entire shop.
The priest and rabbi strolled over there, hands clasped behind their backs, to peruse what I had on display. They would most likely be disappointed. Writers of spell books do not emblazon the spines with easy-to-read titles. Granuaile caught my eye as I moved to follow them, and I put a finger to my lips and then mouthed at her, “Later.”
Perry had already lost interest and was back to restocking the shelves.
“What sorts of books do you have here, Mr. O’Sullivan?” Father Gregory asked when I came to a stop beside him, regarding the cabinet.
“Oh, all sorts,” I said.
“Can you give me an example of what I might be looking at?” the priest asked, gesturing toward a volume bound in the gray skin of cats. It was an Egyptian text written by Bast cultists, which I’d saved from Alexandria. If I waved that in front of a museum curator, he’d promptly lose control of his salivary glands.
“It’s really not a section open for browsing,” I replied.
“My dear boy,” the priest chortled in an avuncular manner, “how do you expect to sell any of it if you won’t let customers peruse your catalog?”
I shrugged. “Most of it’s not for sale.” I sold one purely historical work per year at auction, and that gave Third Eye a healthy balance sheet even if I lost money on the bulk of the store’s business. “I look at myself as more of a caretaker.”
“I see. And how did you come to take care of such a collection?”
“Inherited it from my family,” I said. “If there’s a certain title you’re looking for, I can see if I have it, or maybe I can get it for you.”
The priest looked at the rabbi and the rabbi shook his head briefly. I could see they were getting ready to make excuses and leave, but I wanted to know a little more about them. I slipped in between them and the cabinet, uncomfortably close. They took a step back and I crossed my arms in front of my chest.
“Why did you come here today, gentlemen?” I said, a challenge in my tone. I let the vapid college kid slough away just a wee bit, and they noticed.
Father Gregory looked flustered and began to stammer. The rabbi was not so easily rattled. He glared at me and said coolly in English with a telltale Russian accent, “You can hardly expect us to be candid with you when you have not been candid with us.”
“You haven’t earned it. You’re strangers and you refuse to answer my questions.”
“You answer ours with lies,” the rabbi hissed. Such an affable fellow.
“Perhaps I’d tell you what you want to hear if I knew you didn’t mean me any harm.”
Father Gregory tried to be avuncular again. “My dear boy, we are both men of the cloth-”
“Who have wandered into a New Age bookstore asking strange personal questions,” I interrupted. “And look, you could’ve gotten those costumes anywhere right after Halloween.”
Both of them registered shock at the suggestion they were not truly clergymen-so that was one question answered. I should be able to find them on the Internet somewhere if they were legit.
Father Gregory clasped his hands together in a prayerful attitude. “I do apologize, Mr. O’Sullivan. It appears we have started off on the wrong foot. My colleague and I represent certain interests who believe you may be able to advance their agenda.”
I crinkled my brow in confusion. “Advance their agenda? Well, I have a website. I could put up a banner or something, if they’re looking for publicity.”
“No, no, you misunderstand-”
“Purposely misunderstand, you mean,” the rabbi spat. “Come on, Gregory, this is a waste of time.” He pulled at the priest’s arm and stalked off toward the exit. Father Gregory shot me an apologetic look and followed the rabbi, looking defeated. I let them go, because I had research to do. They clearly knew more about me than I knew about them, and that’s an extremely uncomfortable feeling for an old Druid.
“What was that all about?” Granuaile asked as I rejoined her behind the apothecary counter.
“Don’t know.” I shook my head. “But I’m going to find out soon.”
I brooded and busied myself with preparing tea blends until it was time for interviews. The first two candidates were semi-sentient boys who stared at me with their mouths open whenever I was talking. Their eyes were dead and never lit up until I asked them if they liked video games. They’d probably have difficulty alphabetizing.
Rebecca Dane, the third candidate, was refreshing. She had a strong chin and large eyes that she had seen fit to accentuate with Betty Boop eyelashes. Her blond hair fell to her shoulders, was pulled back and clipped with silver butterflies, and her bangs stopped just above her eyebrows. Her wardrobe was a black pantsuit with a shimmery blue scarf that she let fall straight down her torso, and an impressive tinkling of silver jewelry about her neck proclaimed her to be a member of practically every known world religion. Alongside the cross I saw so often in America, there was the Star of David, Islam’s crescent moon, the Zuni bear fetish, and an ankh. When I asked her about them, she fingered the ankh sheepishly and grinned.
“Oh, I tend to vacillate between belief systems,” she said with a touch of Wisconsin in her voice. “Right now I’m kind of checking out the whole buffet, you know, and maybe in a little while I’ll decide on what I want to put on my plate and chow down on.”
I smiled reassuringly at her. “Belly up to the religion smorgasbord, eh? That’s good, may harmony find you. But how do you feel about people who are looking for a specific book, maybe about a religion you disagree with?”
“Oh, I have kind of a laissez-faire attitude-you know, live and let live. Doesn’t bother me if someone wants to worship the Goddess or Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster; they’re all seeking the divine within and without.”
I would have hired her based solely on her healthy attitude and self-awareness, but she proved to be something of an amateur herbalist-enough to be dangerous, to be sure, but also enough to train properly. I had
