Chapter 3. Burning a Hole in Blackburne
I closed the shop and spread the money out on my reading table. Ten whole dollars—over three times my usual daily earnings.
The money went quickly.
Half went to the roof thatcher, as the tiles had been rotting for years, and he required a “hazard” charge due to the patch of black mold growing on the shingles.
I paid another dollar to replace the waterlogged window panels and re-board the doors (luckily, no hazard fee was required).
I also spent a bit on a new glass case for some of my rarer tomes, something I should’ve done years ago.
Some of the pages had already crinkled from the summer’s humidity.
I had enough left over to buy goods from the market and prepare a lavish meal for myself and my mother—a fatty leg of lamb to roast, two pounds of golden potatoes, a pound of lard, two loaves of sourdough bread, and a sack of cabbage and carrots to make a stew from the leftovers.
With my future research stipend, I could repair the bookstore and buy a meal like this every week. And that wasn’t even counting the bounty the Meister offered for finding the Conservatory killer.
“He gave you how much?” Gabriel’s chestnut eyes widened as I recounted the story over a pile of books at our usual picnic spot outside of Greenwich Library.
I found him on his lunch break at our rendezvous point.
He’d been working at the library ever since he could read.
While I was tagging along with my father during his investigations, Gabriel was here, reading and caretaking for books.
At his core, he was a guardian of the written word—far better than I would ever be.
I envied him in some ways. He lived contentedly among bookstacks, never desiring to reenact their adventures.
“Ten dollars in silver,” I said between bites of my apple.
My satchel was heavy from the trip to the market, and I sighed as I set it down on the grass.
“And he offered me a job. Well, a stipend, technically.” I passed him my acceptance letter.
“But listen to this—the whole scholarship is a ruse. He really wants to hire me as a detective. There was a death there last year, and he suspects one of the students.”
There was a dark part of me that delighted in the prospect of a murder—of a puzzle to solve.
Maybe that was the reason I had become a Tarot reader—it was the closest I got to uncovering humanity’s dark truths like my father had.
But there was another part that remembered my father’s scowl and the sallow pockets under his eyes caused by the sleepless nights he worked on a case.
Before he died, he made me promise that I’d stay far away from his line of work.
Keep to the library. Books can’t hurt you like people can, he had said. I swallowed the bite of apple, some of it sticking in my throat.
“You’re not seriously considering it, are you, Dahl? That amount seems a bit high for a scholarship,” Gabriel said, studying the letter as though it were a sacred manuscript with his fingers at the outermost edges.
“It’s not just a scholarship. Like I said, it’s a job offer,” I said, chewing my next bite more slowly.
This wasn’t the time for my pride to get in the way.
“I was hoping you could look into the Meister of the school. His name is Christopher Renate. He could be in his fifties, maybe sixties. His accent seems English. He came into my shop knowing too much about me, and I don’t like that imbalance of knowledge. ”
“Sure, I’ll have a look in the archives,” Gabriel said, biting his bottom lip in thought.
“Thank you, Gabriel. There’s nothing you can’t find in a book,” I said, smiling. But it quickly fell when he didn’t return it.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this. This is exactly the kind of work your father meddled in, and you swore off it a year ago.” A year ago, when my father died by his own hand, was what he meant to say.
My eyes fell to my half-eaten apple. It suddenly tasted sour. He was right—I had sworn off detective work when my father died, anchoring my fate at the bookstore.
“I know, but I can’t shake the nagging feeling that Renate knows something about my father. He’s not like anyone I’ve met in Greenwich, Gabriel. He knows things. He’s an actual scholar—besides you, of course,” I quickly added when Gabriel grimaced.
“You know better than I do what it’s like in Greenwich,” I said, leaning in to whisper. “What are people reading these days?” He looked away, but not before his eyes flickered to my lips. I ignored it.
“Exactly. They’re not reading. Maybe two or three people a day borrow a book, and I get even fewer patrons at the shop.
Forget about anyone being interested in the old archives; it’s being wasted on this agrarian town.
” The library’s archives housed some of the oldest books in the collection—gorgeous tomes on alchemy and primordial chemistry, the origins of the scientific method.
As far as Gabriel and I knew, we were the only ones in Greenwich who had read them in the last fifty years.
Gabriel’s face softened, his boyish roundness becoming more pronounced. “I’ve known you a long time, Dahl. I know how your heart soars in mystery and legends, and I know how much you love a good ghost story. I just don’t want you getting lost in all of this.”
Like your father did, said the silence.
“What would be worse is me not getting lost at all. Staying put, always knowing where I am, never figuring out who I am.”
I know who you are, his expression seemed to plead.
There was a sadness in his eyes that I couldn’t place.
Was he grieving the potential loss of a friend, or was he, like me, longing for a life outside of Greenwich?
At least his parents had afforded to send him to Sawyer Academy, even if they expected him to stay in Greenwich afterward.
My eyes darted to his hands—dry and ashy from handling so many books, yet delicate and refined. I knew he wasn’t one for getting his hands dirty, not the way I was. He was satisfied living in books, but I was not.
A bell chimed in the distance, and he stood, dusting off his clothes.
“I have to go, but I’ll look into this Christopher Renate.
Promise me you won’t leave without saying goodbye?
” A small smile crept onto his lips, and it made me want to throw my arms around him in a hug, despite how improper it would seem.
Despite the fact he might get the wrong idea.
“I promise.” I smiled back.
*
Accepting the Meister’s offer would be dangerous—fatal, even. But he was right. I did feel like a fraud in Greenwich.
My patrons trusted me with their most intimate affairs, their fears, and their dreams. But I had no real counsel to offer.
What could a twenty-five-year-old girl trapped in a bookstore possibly know?
I’d never left Greenwich, save for a few trips with my father as a child.
The shop was never my dream. It was my mother’s.
And the readings—well, those were just to pay the dues.
I had become reliant on the readings to feed myself and my mother.
A slave to a trade I scarcely believed in.
I could memorize the meanings of the cards and study numerology, but what did I know of the future when I did so little to determine my own life?
In that regard, I was no better than my patrons.
The Meister’s offer was a golden ticket to escape the shop. Maybe even to place my mother in a proper medical center, where she could receive proper treatment for her ailment.
I was the daughter of Detective Daniel Blackburne.
I had stood by my father’s side countless times while he unraveled case after case, and I had picked up a few tricks along the way.
I could detect the slightest lie and see through the illusions people cast over themselves and others.
It was time for me to take control of my own future—my own Fate.
I was going to accept the Meister’s offer.
Now came the tricky part: convincing my mother.
*
I was fiddling with a broken music box when I decided to finally confront her.
Repair work was a habit I’d picked up from my father.
When my mind was too restless to focus on reading, working on a mechanical trinket seemed to help.
But this particular music box was missing a gear, and I didn’t have the right size, so it was a fruitless effort.
I sighed and tossed it into my satchel for later.
I made my way up the stairwell slowly, savoring each creaking floorboard.
Some part of me would miss it: the smell of old parchment, leather-cracked spines, and dust-pillowed antiques.
Though the promise of financial relief brightened my outlook, the weight of the decision I had to make overshadowed any sense of ease.
I found my mother in her room, sunk into her favorite armchair.
She had mustered the strength to leave her bed today.
Sunlight streamed through the lace curtains, casting a warm glow over the room.
“Estelle,” I began, the words hanging in the air as I gauged her reaction.
If my father was the moon, then my mother was the sun—nothing had ever dimmed her internal light.
She was all starry eyes and fair complexion.
Until my father died, that is. Now she lay as a husk of herself, greying, and a glimmer of who she once was.
She looked up from the book she was reading, a smile briefly crossing her face before it dissolved into a grimace of pain. “What is it, my darling?” she asked, adjusting the pillow in the arch of her spine. She started to rock back and forth rhythmically.