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“If you insist on being here, bring me something that looks like it won’t kill me.”
Izzy found a few vodka bottles that were unopened and a couple of glasses that she dusted clean with her blouse. She opened a bottle, sniffed it experimentally, and then poured a couple of inches of vodka in each glass.
“Straight vodka,” she said, handing the Bookseller one of the drinks. She held out her glass and the Bookseller tapped it with her own, then they both sipped. “Strong,” Izzy said, twisting her face at the taste.
“It’s fine,” the Bookseller said. She swallowed it down like it was water.
They watched in silence and Izzy understood that the Bookseller was assessing her audience, like a performer about to work the crowd. Izzy studied the people as they arrived, the bidders with all of their money. All of them desperate to get hold of the thing that had tortured her only hours before. She remembered those moments of agony, the helplessness, the despair, and her stomach churned. She wondered what the successful bidder would do with the book. Would they inflict that experience on others? Could she take millions of dollars from someone who might use the book in the way it had been used on her? She bit her nails nervously, surprised at how conflicted she felt.
“That’s Okoro,” the Bookseller said, pointing to a large Black man who had just stepped through the door. “Very dangerous. He’s a mercenary and an assassin. Probably runs drug gangs in West Africa as well.”
The man took a book from his pocket and handed it to the Bookkeeper. It disappeared inside the briefcase.
“What’s that?” Izzy asked.
“He has the Book of Matter,” the Bookseller said.
“What does that do?”
“Lets him control matter. Change solids into liquids, liquids into gases, that sort of thing. I am sure he is keen to add the Book of Pain to his collection. The Book of Pain would be very useful to a man like Okoro.”
Izzy sipped the last of the vodka and contemplated returning for a top-up. She wanted to keep a clear head, but she also wanted to drink, to soften the sharp edges of this strange world she now found herself inhabiting.
“Ah, the representatives of the president of Belarus,” the Bookseller said, nodding at two old white men as they entered. They looked like tired office workers at the end of a long day. “What they would do with the Book of Pain.” She clicked her tongue and shook her head once.
“Don’t you care who it goes to?” Izzy asked.
“It’s an auction,” the Bookseller said. “Highest bidder wins.”
“I know how an auction works,” Izzy muttered in annoyance. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“Girl, if I’d known you were going to be so talkative, I would have locked your door.”
Izzy waited.
“No, I don’t really care who it goes to,” the Bookseller admitted, after a moment. “I can’t. Not if I want to conduct an honest auction. I can’t play favorites.”
Izzy waited some more, feeling that the Bookseller’s answer wasn’t yet complete.
“But yes, I suppose I’d much rather the books went to people who won’t use them to make the world a worse place. But at the end of the day I am a businesswoman, I’m here to make money, and the money I’m paid for selling these books, I can use it to make the world a better place. That’s what I can control.”
“And how do you do that?” Izzy asked. “How do you make the world a better place with all of the money you earn?”
The Bookseller gave Izzy a sidelong glance as if reassessing her, and then looked back to the front entrance, not answering.
“Mmm, thought so,” Izzy murmured.
More and more people filed in, most of them flunkeys and supporters of the people with money, and most of the people with money didn’t have their own books to offer up. In total it seemed only three books had been surrendered to Elias. In addition to Okoro’s Book of Matter, a well-dressed middle-aged woman had surrendered the Book of Health (“That’s Elizabeth Fraser. She’s English. And she’s over a hundred and twenty,” the Bookseller said. “That book keeps her young. Doesn’t stop her being a complete bitch, though.”) and a middle-aged Hispanic man in a gray suit and turquoise shirt surrendered the Book of Faces. “That’s Diego,” the Bookseller said. “Spanish or Portuguese, I think. He specializes in industrial espionage, as far as I know, but straightforward assassinations are not beneath him. He lives in California like a film star. The Book of Faces can make him look like anybody, man or woman. Very useful for someone in his line of work.”
“So there are only three books,” Izzy observed. “Three books for all these people?”
“That is the reality of special books,” the Bookseller explained. “Most people who know about them have never even seen one. More people want them than can have them. They are the ultimate rare and precious commodity. The perfect item for sale at auction.” The Bookseller checked her watch. “You should go,” she said to Izzy. “Go find that mountain of a man and bring the Book of Pain to the ballroom downstairs. We’ll start the auction at midnight exactly. I want you both in the room so I can keep my eyes on you.”
“Keep us safe, you mean?”
“Yes,” the Bookseller said, looking into her empty glass. “That’s what I mean, of course.”
Izzy returned to the room where she had spent the afternoon and she found Lund standing at the kitchen counter with the Book of Illusion open in front of him. He looked up in surprise when she arrived, his hand moving quickly to cover the book.
