Page 1 of The Devouring Time

Part One

1

Hart’s Leap, Massachusetts, 1926

I shouldn’t be here.

James is the one who deals with people. That’s our agreement—he greets customers at Forgotten Folios, he goes to estate auctions, and he travels to assess private libraries of book collectors.

I stay in the back of the shop: preparing the catalogues, organizing the displays, and making sure the numbers in the account books add up. Not interacting with customers, or collectors, or random tourists asking for directions.

Yet here I am, standing on a small train platform in the middle of the God-forsaken Massachusetts coastline. Completely alone, without the car and driver James swore would be waiting for me. Not so much as a shack in sight, let alone the manor I’d been led to expect. Nothing but endless waving marsh grass, sunlight glinting on water the same flat gray as a sniper’s rifle.

The only signs of civilization are the train depot, such as it is, and what passes for a road—actually a pair of ruts in the mud—heading off into the salt marsh. There’s not even a ticket booth or a telegraph office. Just me, and the bag I brought to carry any books interesting enough for immediate purchase.

Damn James’s mother, who picked the worst possible time to trip over her dog and break her leg. While he rushed to nurse her, I tried to call the collector, Zebulon Hart, and reschedule this visit. No one answered the phone. After a dozen failed attempts, I gave up and resigned myself to coming in James’s stead.

We need the money a good find will bring in. The rare book trade runs on thin margins indeed—it’s always a balancing act between how much we can spend to acquire a book versus how much we can actually sell it for. Right now, our margin is about the width of a hair, and the landlord doesn’t take first editions in place of cash.

I should have known something was wrong when the conductor looked surprised at the destination printed on my ticket. “Hart’s Leap? What do you want there?” Then he’d caught himself. “That is, we don’t have many passengers get off at that stop. Certainly not a man of your quality, sir.”

He didn’t specify what quality he meant. My hair, bleached blond and parted to the side, finger-combed into waves? My lavender tie? The dark circles under my eyes, left there when a loud bang from the street outside my apartment sent me scrambling for cover in the middle of the night, certain I was back in France and under fire?

Hart’s Leap. An impressive name for a stretch of absolute nothing.

I check my watch. I’ve wasted a half-hour already, waiting for the car to appear.

I must return here by 6:15 p.m. to catch the train home. Ideally, I’ll be back in New York City before midnight. But if I miss the train, I’ll be stuck in the middle of nowhere until tomorrow. And there’s nothing resembling a hotel in sight.

A cry sounds from somewhere deep in the reeds, startling me. The call of something abandoned and alone, lost in the no-man’s land of this marsh, searching for safety but finding only barbed wire and the craters left behind by shells…

I blink back to reality. The stress, the unfamiliarity of this place, is getting to me.

It’s just a bird calling. Not Emerson.

If I stand here any longer, my thoughts might spiral in dangerous directions. I need to find Mr. Hart’s estate, look over his books, bargain for any I believe we can sell, and get back here in time to catch the train. And as of now, I have only four hours to do it in.

It seems I have a choice to make: either wait for the promised driver and car to finally show up, or take my chances and start walking down the rudimentary road in hopes it will take me to Hart’s Leap.

I didn’t come all this way for nothing. The shop had to be closed for this excursion, meaning we missed out on a day of potential sales. I can’t return empty-handed if we want to make this month’s rent.

Picking up my bag, I step from the platform and onto the ruts winding off into the salt marsh. I’d marched through the shell-blasted forests of France, over mud and up hills and down ravines. A simple jaunt across this flat landscape shouldn’t prove much of an obstacle.

Of course, I’m nowhere near fighting shape anymore. I spend most of my days sitting in a chair, laying out book catalogs or squinting at the ledger. And my waist is a bit wider than it was in my mid-twenties, thanks in part to the Italian restaurant below my apartment. The moment Mrs. Rossi realized I live alone, with no wife to cook for me, she began serving me ridiculously large—and delicious—portions.

This stroll through the marsh could be a nice change of pace—a bit of exercise in the fresh air will surely do me good.

Except the clock is ticking, and I need to find the damned house as soon as possible.

Lumpy tufts of grass stretch toward the ocean, interrupted by patches of reeds and low shrubs with toothy edges to their leaves. The hidden life around me makes itself known in the sudden flutter of wings as startled birds take flight, in the clamor of insects, in the rustles of small things scurrying away under cover of the grass. Wind ripples the foliage, bringing with it the commingled scents of salt and decay.

The same mournful cry I heard earlier rings from somewhere to my left.

It’s a bird. Just a bird.

I focus on the ruts cutting through the marsh. Both cars and wagons pass through here, judging by the marks gouged into the sandy soil. The sunlight reflects off water filling the occasional pothole, dazzling enough to leave an afterimage when I look away.

There’s no shade, at least not for anything too big to shelter beneath one of the serrated-leafed bushes. Sweat runs down my face and dampens my back, my armpits. I stop long enough to take off my suit coat—I’ll put it back on when I find the house. It won’t do to turn up looking like a laborer.