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Hugo squinted into the storm, his mouth a tight line of annoyance.
“I know you’re here,” he said loudly. “You’ve shown your face now. I’ll find you, Librarian. Be sure of that.”
Drummond said nothing, refusing to move even as Barbary waited, even as the cold gnawed at his bones. The larger man lost his patience first, muttering under his breath after a few minutes and turning away. The storm swallowed his huge shape almost immediately.
Drummond waited for a while longer, just to make sure that Hugo really had gone, then he headed north out of the park, keeping himself hidden in the shadows until he was on the street again. Once he was there, he opened his palm to reveal the scrap of dark paper with its rainbow aura. The wind lifted the paper as it grew lighter, as the rainbow aura died, and the scrap fluttered away on the breeze. Drummond emerged from the shadows, substantial once more.
He struggled through the weather along Fifth Avenue toward Midtown, leaving footprints in the snow behind him.
That night Drummond stayed at the Library Hotel in Midtown, knowing it was a risk to stay somewhere so on the nose but not caring. He had been to Washington Square Park to remember, and now he just wanted to drink and sleep and forget.
He paid for a room, ignored the haunted eyes of the gaunt, dark-haired man in the mirror in the bathroom as he washed his face, and then took himself to the rooftop bar. He ordered whisky and looked for a seat, but the room was full of the sort of people who made him feel out of place—rich, or pretending to be, overly confident and carelessly callous about their wealth—so he took himself out to the roof terrace. He sat in a corner, under an umbrella, and nursed his drink. There was open sky high above him and towering walls of windows all around, the buildings of Midtown forming an enclosure of concrete. The snow was still heavy, big soft flakes turning the world white and hazy.
Drummond sipped his whisky and lifted the glass in a silent toast to the friends he had lost a little over a decade ago. To Lily and the food she would cook for him whenever she visited from Hong Kong. To Yasmin and her patience with his lack of historical knowledge and the stupid questions he bothered her with. And to Wagner and his regular phone calls from Europe just to check in on how Drummond was doing, making sure he spoke to another human being at least once a week. Drummond missed his friends still, and he had carried their memories with him as ghosts, constant companions on all of his wanderings over the years.
He was growing old and growing tired and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep wandering, but he didn’t know how to stop, and he had nowhere to be. For ten years he had been on the move, using the books in his possession to protect him—the Book of Shadows to pass unseen; the Book of Memories to make people forget about him when he needed them to; and the Book of Luck to bring him good fortune. The books had helped him during that time, and he had existed untroubled other than by his own thoughts. He didn’t mind the loneliness, he had been solitary for most of his life, but the constant need to move had become tiring. More than anything, he missed his home.
But now Hugo Barbary had seen him, and Drummond wondered how that could have been possible when he carried the Book of Luck with him. It seemed like the very opposite of good luck. But Drummond knew luck wasn’t a straight path—he had learned over the years that it was a curving road with detours and hidden exits. Maybe the luck of having been seen by Barbary wasn’t obvious to him yet.
Drummond sipped his whisky, realizing that his mind was enjoyably unfocused. He returned to the bar for another drink and then came back to his spot on the roof terrace.
He thought about Barbary then, one of the worst men he had ever known, a monster dressed up like a gentleman. He wondered if perhaps he should have let Hugo take him. It would have been poetic, in a way, dying ten years after the massacre, in the same spot. It might actually have been a relief, a release from the burdens of his life and the fear of the woman.
The sudden sound of laughter punctured the white noise of the storm, pulling his attention from his thoughts. Two women stumbled through the doorway from the bar onto the terrace, both of them squinting and lifting their hands against the snow. The women looked toward him and then turned away to find another seat at the far end of the roof, away from Drummond.
Drummond looked elsewhere, but his heart was suddenly racing, as if a nightmare had just woken him in the middle of the night.
He had seen something, a burst of fireworks light up the darkness.
He told himself it was impossible. On this night, of all nights, and in this place.
But he had the Book of Luck in his possession, and such things happened to lucky people.
He waited, knowing he had to be sure before he did anything. He was aware of the women dancing drunkenly in the snow, and then returning to their seat and chatting to each other for a few minutes. And then they got up again and headed back toward the door to the bar.
He watched, studying them, memorizing them. A tall blond woman, a shorter dark-haired woman. He met their eyes, one after the other, and then turned away again as if not interested in them.
When they stepped through the door to the bar, he saw telltale rainbow light reflected on their faces for a brief moment, colors he knew so well. And when he craned his neck to look, Drummond didn’t see the women appear on the other side of the glass.
“Fuck,” he muttered, knowing then that the women had the Book of Doors, as impossible as that seemed.
“Book of Doors,” Drummond muttered. A book that his family and other book hunters had been seeking for over a century. A book many people doubted even existed. Just his luck to stumble upon it.
He had to find the two women.
They were in immense danger, the like of which they couldn’t possibly comprehend.
The Illusion in the Desert
In a luxurious house between the ocean and the desert, Hjaelmer Lund stood at the window and stared out at the darkness. There was nothing to see now that night had fallen, but the previous morning, when they had first arrived, the floor-to-ceiling windows had provided a breathtaking view out over the Pacific Ocean. Now all Lund could see was his own reflection in the glass.
The house was a grand, modern single-story complex, with big rooms and wide corridors, lots of sandstone and marble and the minimalist feel of an expensive hotel. It sat on a bluff to the north of Antofagasta, down a private road off Route 1, in between the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama Desert. The house had been built so that it faced away from the city, with a view that would make you think you were alone in the world.
“Sit down, Lund,” Azaki muttered behind him, from the sofa in the center of the room. “Nobody wants to come into a room and see you standing there.”
Lund was a giant by any measure, six feet eight inches tall, so large that he was impossible to miss and intimidating without intending to be. He understood the point Azaki was making and moved away from the window to sit on the couch.
“Here they come,” Azaki said, smoothing down his tie. “Let me do the talking.”
