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He hesitated, debating with himself as she pushed herself to her feet, never once moving her eyes from him.
“Can you stop lots of bullets?” she asked. “Or do you think I’ll get one into your guts sooner or later?”
He stared at her venomously, seeing the stalemate. She could see his mind working, trying to find a way out, but she didn’t want to give him the time to come up with a plan.
“Give me my book,” she snapped. “Before I put a bullet through that space in your head where a brain should be.”
He didn’t move and she could see how he didn’t want to give her what she wanted. He was furiously trying to do anything but that.
Out of nowhere, moving with surprising speed, Drummond leapt up from the floor, pushed off from the couch with one foot, and vaulted into Barbary from the side while he was distracted. The two of them crashed into the wall by the door, a tangle of limbs and anger, shouting and grunting, and the Book of Control slid out of Barbary’s grip and flew across the room. They wrestled briefly, collapsing onto the floor with Barbary on top, punching Drummond repeatedly in the face, grunting and muttering as he did so.
“Stop,” Cassie said simply, approaching him from behind and placing the cold mouth of the pistol against the back of his fat neck.
Barbary froze, a fist in the air.
“Get up,” Cassie said, pushing the gun against Barbary’s neck. The man clambered up and Cassie backed away out of his reach, waiting as Drummond pulled himself up off the floor. His face was a mess of blood. He reached over and picked up the Book of Control from where it had landed. It was a dull gray item with a textured surface, like cross-hatching.
“Give us the other books,” Drummond said to Barbary, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “All of them.”
Cassie kept the gun pointed at the bald man as he stared at them from beneath his brows, his lips a sneer.
“Really bad day for you,” Drummond said. “Losing both of your books. None of the books in your pockets can help you now, not against the Book of Control and a gun. Give them back to me and I’ll let you live.”
Barbary exhaled heavily through his nose and then reached into his pockets and removed the books one by one, tossing them across the floor—the Book of Luck, the Book of Memories, the Book of Shadows, and finally the Book of Doors.
“You might as well kill me now,” he said. “Because if I am still alive, I will come for you. And I will keep coming for you.”
“I don’t really want to kill anyone,” Cassie said, bending to pick up the Book of Doors, her heart singing as she held it again for the first time in ten years. “But I don’t really want to be looking over my shoulder for you for the rest of my life either.”
She thought for a moment while Drummond opened the Book of Control and smiled grimly as he looked at the first page. “‘Control,’” he read, turning the book around to show Cassie. The word “control,” block capital letters etched in thick black ink, was the only thing on the otherwise blank page. “Not exactly poetry, is it?”
Cassie grunted and Barbary stared furiously.
Drummond held the book for a moment, his brow knitted in concentration. The book started to glow in his hands and a moment later the couch moved a few inches away from the wall, scraping across the floor.
“Not so hard,” Drummond said to Barbary, as the glow diminished and the air cleared. Then, to Cassie, “What do you want to do?”
“I know what I want to do,” she said. She walked into the hallway and closed her bedroom door. “Put him in here when I open the door.”
Drummond nodded once, understanding, and the Book of Control started to glow once again. Cassie pushed open her bedroom door to reveal a bustling street in New York, traffic streaming by, pedestrians in clothes that came from another time. Drummond moved his hand and Barbary was thrown forward and through the door, tumbling out into the gloom.
Cassie watched through the doorway as he picked himself up.
“Let’s see how much you really like living in the 1970s!” she screamed at him, releasing ten years of anger and pain. She slammed the door on him as he looked around, realization dawning.
Drummond collapsed onto the sofa as if suddenly exhausted. She gave him some paper towels from the kitchen and waited while he tried to mop the blood from his battered face.
“You look different,” he said finally, and she thought he was trying to avoid her eyes. “You seem different.”
She said nothing, standing in front of the window with her arms crossed. It was so strange for her, being back in the old apartment after a decade.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“It’s been ten years,” she said. Her voice was quiet, not angry, not shouting. She was drained of fury.
Drummond stared at her in shock.
“Ten years,” she said again, as if needing to make sure that he heard.
