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All the while Barbary advanced toward Lund.
“I am going to kill you first,” Barbary muttered. “Just to put me in a good mood.”
Lund gazed at the advancing figure without expression and the Bookseller wondered why he wasn’t more scared.
Before Barbary could reach the far side of the room Okoro charged him, his head low, but Barbary spotted the movement in one of the mirrors and pivoted awkwardly away.
Okoro connected with Barbary and the two men collapsed to the floor in a knot of limbs and fury. The gun fired once, the bullet going wide and shattering one of the mirrors on the left-hand wall, creating a shower of glass. Lottie glanced over to Lund.
“You,” she said. “Pull him off.”
Lund blinked once and then looked at the wrestling men. He took a few steps and then heaved Okoro off the older man.
“Get off me, you fool!” Okoro shouted at Lund, brushing downhis expensive suit once he was on his feet. Lund turned his attention to Barbary and gripped the old man’s wrist, pulling his gun from his fingers as he pulled the man to his feet.
The Bookseller stepped down from the platform and approached them. Barbary looked up at her defiantly, his face wrinkled, gray stubble dotting his cheeks.
“What happened to you?” she asked, genuinely interested.
“You have my book,” he spat. “They stole it.” He jerked his chin toward Lund. “Is this what you do now, Bookseller?” he asked. “Steal books to order and then sell them at a profit?”
“I am not going to dignify that with an answer,” Lottie said, but she could feel people considering the question, her customers watching her with narrowed eyes. “And frankly, you must have lost your mind to think you can come here and disrupt one of my auctions like this, all by yourself with a handgun.” She took his gun from Lund and inspected it like it was a joke. “With this? You didn’t think I could handle an old man with a gun?”
Barbary grinned as he looked at her from beneath his brows.
“What?” the Bookseller asked. “Why are you smiling?”
“You’re right. I would have lost my mind to do that. But I have been waiting for a very long time for this moment. I have had years and years to prepare, Madame Bookseller. Years and years to plan what I would do.”
Barbary waited a moment, making sure what he was about to say would be heard.
“I’ve had time to know where to look for your bookkeeper during the auctions. Time to know how to get all the books he was carrying.”
For Lottie, the ballroom tilted for a moment, and Barbary showed his teeth in a sneer.
Barbary dropped down suddenly, as if losing the strength in his legs, and Lottie watched Lund release him. But the man didn’t collapse to the floor. Instead, he touched the dance floor with one hand, as his other hand reached into the large pocket of his overcoat. Almost immediately Lottie felt the floor beneath her feet soften. She glanced down in shock and hurriedly backed away a few steps, seeing Lund do the same. As shewatched, the wooden dance floor rippled like the surface of a swimming pool around Barbary. The man appeared to be crouching on a circle of solidity, as if he were standing on a column just submerged below the surface. Other people similarly backed away, creating a wide circle around the old man.
“Mr. Okoro,” Barbary shouted, pulling the Book of Matter from his pocket, throwing sparks and color into the air as it pulsed. “Your book is fabulous fun!”
Before Okoro could reply, before he could run to attack once again, Barbary lifted and dropped his hand rapidly, and the liquid floor bulged up six feet and rushed to the ballroom door, a wave racing to shore, and all of the people standing there, and Merlin Gillette’s body, were tossed up and thrown roughly against the ceiling. As the floor dropped away beneath them as quickly as it had risen, becoming solid once again, people and plaster crashed back down in a tumult of groans and clatter.
In the bedlam, Barbary dashed forward and snatched his gun back out of Lottie’s hand. “I’ll take that.”
Lottie offered no resistance, her thoughts slow with shock and surprise.
“You know, I am much, much older,” Barbary was saying. “I’ve had a holiday in the past, courtesy of that bitch with the Book of Doors, and I am fifty years older than when you stole my book.”
“Cassie?” Izzy asked.
“Shut up,” Barbary snapped. He turned his eyes back to Lottie. “I am ninety-four years old, but I am starting to feel much like my old self. It must be one of these other books I took off your man. The Book of Health, is it? The Book of Vim and Vigor?” He barked a laugh, delighted and triumphant. “I probably couldn’t even have shot those men without the benefit of this book! I feel like I haven’t felt for years!”
He pointed the gun without much care and fired jubilantly, the shot ricocheting off the walls.
“Fine,” Lottie said suddenly, and Barbary’s expression dropped in surprise. “You want this?” she said, showing him the Book of Pain. She saw how his eyes caught on it, like clothing on a barb. She watched hisexpression fall away to leave only naked hunger, all of the anger gone, all of the fury.
All of the pain, she thought, and then she remembered what Elizabeth Fraser had said a few minutes earlier.
“You can take it,” Lottie said, extending her hand and the book toward Barbary. The book that was full of dense and angry text, scribbled images of screaming faces and sharp weapons.
