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The desert, south of Las Vegas
Azaki had taken a room at the Rio Suites in Las Vegas, just passing time for a few days. He had flown straight from New York to Vegas, a journey of five hours. He had landed at Harry Reid International Airport even before the auction had started back in New York. He had settled into his room and was on the bed in his underwear, eating an overpriced room service burger, at the time people were bidding on the Book of Pain. And shortly after that Lund and Cassie’s friend Izzy, and the Book of Illusion, would be on a Greyhound heading west. Azaki knew they wouldn’t arrive in town for another three days yet, but when they did, they would take the cheapest room they could find in Circus Circus, off the Strip, and the following morning they would hire a car and drive south on Interstate 15 for half an hour until they had reached Highway 161. From there they would travel west until they found a dirt track road running north through the desert, parallel with the power lines. Lund would stop at the third power line pole, walk ten paces west into the desert, and bury the book in a plastic bag beneath a shrub using his good arm, the other arm in a sling.
“Your strides are bigger than mine,” Azaki had pointed out, when Lund had described where he’d buried the book, during their conversation back in the bar in Chile.
“Count fifteen, then,” Lund had said. “The shrub is obvious. It was all by itself, directly in a line with the third pole.”
Azaki hoped it was as easy as that.
On the day that Lund buried the book, Azaki was waiting at the Starbucks just off the cloverleaf beneath Interstate 15. He got there early and sat at the window. He was there watching as Lund and Izzy drove past just after ten in the morning, Izzy at the wheel. And he was sittingin his rental car waiting impatiently when they drove back in the other direction half an hour later. He watched them follow the road up onto the interstate and head back north to Las Vegas. They would stay there another couple of nights, debating whether they had done the right thing leaving the book out in the desert. Lund had told him this, as if he had felt guilty for discarding Azaki’s prized possession. Right then, as he raced along the highway to the road by the power lines, Azaki was willing to forgive Lund. Assuming he found it, of course.
He found the road with the power lines.
And he found the third pole and parked the car, seeing the tracks of Lund’s car stop in the same place.
He even saw Lund’s boot prints in the sand, walking away from the car tracks. He followed them and saw the bush Lund had told him about days earlier. He dropped to his knees, the hot sun beating on his back, and dug with his hands until he felt cold plastic.
Through the plastic, the book felt warm. It felt familiar. It felt like home.
He unwrapped the book eagerly, like a child with chocolate, and smiled when he saw the black-and-gold cover.
It was beautiful, as beautiful as it had always been but more so because he had been without it.
He pushed himself up again and stood for a moment, just feeling the book. Then he gazed out into the desert, narrowing his eyes against the glare. The wind blew dust and sand against his cheeks.
He closed his eyes and, holding the Book of Illusion, light and color spilled out between his fingers. Azaki painted pictures in the sky, vast sculptures of sand, swirling and swarming around him, as if he were standing in the eye of a storm. And then the sand became solid shapes, serpentine creatures circling him and hissing and yelling. He felt these beasts, he heard their cries, the illusion absolute.
Sometimes Azaki liked to flex his muscles just for his own entertainment.
He painted the serpentine creatures in colors, red and yellow and blue, and then they changed from sinuous, writhing forms into dancing lights, one of his favorite illusions. Lights in the desert, a rainbowwithout rain. All of this conjured by Azaki, like an athlete testing his muscles after the offseason.
His gift, the gift of the Book of Illusion, was still there.
He let the lights fade in the sky, and the glowing colors around the book faded as well. And then it was just him and the hot, dry sun.
He walked back to his car.
He had to head back north, he knew.
He was needed, to help deal with the woman.
He had told them he would help, he had promised, because they had saved his life by telling him about Barbary.
A voice in his mind—his father’s voice, perhaps?—told him he should run. There was no shame in surviving. It bothered him all the way back to Las Vegas, and it bothered him all the way to the airport.
By the time he was on the plane, the voice had shut up, and Azaki felt oddly at peace.
The Plan, Part Two—The Bookseller
Cassie met the Bookseller for the third time at midnight in Café Du Monde in New Orleans, but this time the Bookseller had not expected her.
Cassie had visited on three different evenings in quick succession, opening a door from a hotel room across the country, and stepping out into Café Du Monde. On the first night it had been warm and wet. Cassie had waited for an hour past midnight, but the Bookseller hadn’t appeared. On the second night it had been warm and dry, and Cassie had waited for longer, but the Bookseller hadn’t appeared again. On the third night in New Orleans—the same evening for Cassie—the Bookseller was already there when Cassie arrived. She was sitting at the same table where Cassie had met her previously, coffee and beignets in front of her and a faraway look in her eyes. The Bookseller didn’t even notice Cassie until she pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.
“Hello,” Cassie said.
The Bookseller regarded her without expression.
“I wondered if I’d see you again,” she said. There was no anger in her words.
