Chapter One #2
I pulled back my right sleeve and held up my forearm to display the burn scar from my mission into Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, when I pulled a copy of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath from a book fire.
Inside the world of the story, it was the last copy of the book left on earth.
The act had left my right forearm scarred, but I never regretted it for a second.
“Watching you dive for that book,” Pops said, “was the most scared I’ve ever been. And the proudest.”
“Let me make you proud again.” I pulled my sleeve back down.
He sighed heavily, and I knew I’d already won even if he didn’t quite realize it yet. “They have tommy guns in there.” He nodded at the book. “I lost my Mary. I can’t lose you too.”
Mary, his wife and my grandmother, had been a retired high school English teacher.
Grandma had been very ill and suffering for several years, and her death, though heartbreaking, was a peaceful release for her.
Unspoken was the fact that Pops had already lost his daughter— my mother—and therefore losing me too would be one tragedy too many for his heart.
I could’ve reminded him he was the only family I had left as well. I would have bet my entire book collection that I would miss him more than he would miss me, should something happen to him on a mission.
But I didn’t.
“If I can handle Cthulhu, I can handle Chicago.”
“I know, I know, but—”
“What’s this about, Pops? I’m twenty-five years old, remember? Twenty-five,” I repeated. “Not five. Not fifteen. I’ve been doing this job for a decade.”
Most Book Witches begin apprenticing at age sixteen, but I had shown magical promise from childhood.
Plus, I’d been so determined to follow in my mother’s footsteps that I’d begun my formal training a year early.
For ten years now, I’d worked as a fully licensed practitioner of storycraft.
In other words, I knew what I was doing.
“Hard to believe,” Pops said wistfully.
Time toyed with us like a funhouse mirror.
When I looked at Pops, I saw the robust sixty-year-old man who’d walked me to school the first day of kindergarten, not an eighty-year-old with a broken heart and a bad hip.
When he looked at me, he saw a girl with pigtails and a My Little Pony lunchbox.
Time passes like the pages of a favorite story, drawing ever nearer the end whether we like it or not.
“You know you still love him,” Pops finally said. “Nobody really outgrows their first fictional love.”
“I can still do my job.”
“What if he disappoints you? You should never meet your heroes, they say, and they say it for a reason.”
“Either the Duke is as wonderful as he is in the books or he’s not. If he is, I’ll be a very happy witch. If he’s not? I’ll find a new book boyfriend. Poirot’s single, right?”
I put my hands on Pops’s shoulders—he was still strong for a man of eighty—and grinned. “Follow me,” he said.
We returned to the library, and Pops made the call, putting it on speakerphone. “I’m sending Rainy,” he told Dr. Fanshawe. “She knows this series inside and out. Any objections?”
There was a long heavy pause before Dr. Fanshawe replied.
“Rainy?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Your late mother was the best Book Witch I’ve ever had the honor of serving with,” Dr. Fanshawe said. “I hold out hope that in time I’ll start to see the resemblance.”
“So do I,” I said, my voice smaller than usual. No matter how many cases I cracked, I would never measure up to my mother in Dr. Fanshawe’s eyes. I was good, very good, but even very good was nothing compared to perfection.
“Recite the Eight Black and Whites, please,” Dr. Fanshawe ordered. It was the Book Witch equivalent of saying the Pledge of Allegiance, something only apprentices were asked to do.
“Are you—” I was about to say “serious” when Pops shot me a warning look. “—listening?”
“Go on,” she said, her tone stern.
“Of course,” I said, running through them quickly in my head to make sure I had the order right.
Our rules are called the Black and Whites for two reasons.
One, books are printed in black and white, so the name fits our aesthetic.
But the main reason, so I’d been told many thousands of times, is that when you are a Book Witch, there are absolutely no shades of gray.
The Black and Whites are to be obeyed to the letter.
“Black and White Number One,” I began, “is to protect all stories without judgment, be they true classic or cult classic, bore or bestseller, fan favorite or forgotten flop.
“Number Two: When a fictional character escapes the story world, they must be returned as soon as feasibly possible, and their memory of our world erased.
“Number Three: The author’s intention for the story must be preserved at all costs, no matter how much a fictional character may object.”
Pops succinctly paraphrased Black and Whites Two and Three as Never let the inmates run the asylum.
“Number Four: Take no weapons into the stories, for the pen is mightier than the sword.
“Number Five: Never use the powers of a fictional character for personal gain.”
In other words, don’t go dragging the Owens sisters out of Practical Magic to fix your love life. For many reasons, come to think of it.
“Number Six: Never eat, drink, sleep, or take up residence in any way in a story, lest you become part of it.”
Sleeping is especially dangerous. Many a Book Witch has fallen asleep in a story only to wake up certain the story world is their world.
They are like the dreamers who can’t be convinced they’re only dreaming.
Waking them is cosmic agony. Imagine someone telling you the world you live in is only a story in someone else’s imagination… would you ever believe them?
I continued. “Number Seven: Real people belong in the real world. Fictional characters belong in works of fiction. Rare the twain shall meet.”
Rules six and seven translate to “Get in fast, get out fast, and leave no trace.” Just as fictional characters are not allowed to take up residence in the real world, real people are not allowed to live in story worlds.
We can only hop into a book when work requires it, leaving the second the job is done.
Imagine the discipline and self-control it takes a Book Witch to not jump into their favorite stories willy-nilly.
I’d never once snuck into the Duke of Chicago’s books before, and quite frankly, I think I deserved a medal.
“And Number Eight?” Dr. Fanshawe prompted.
“Never fall in love with a fictional character,” I said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s all eight. Can I go now?”
Even over the phone I could tell Dr. Fanshawe was wincing, already regretting what she was about to say.
“Very well, if only because we’re running out of time. But take no chances. Don’t do anything that will blow your cover,” she said firmly.
“Thank you, I won’t let you down.”
Without missing a beat, she launched right into the mission. “Page eighty-seven has gone blank. We have reason to believe the Duke is being held captive in a speakeasy on Damen Avenue.”
I turned to page eighty-seven. Sure enough, the page had turned white. I flipped to the next page, only to see that eighty-eight was starting to fade as well.
“The Bathtub?” I said. “Yes, I know it. The Duke meets his contacts there.”
“Get him out and back on the plot at once.”
“On it, boss.”
“And be quick about it.”
After Dr. Fanshawe hung up, I looked Pops in the eyes.
“I won’t let you down either,” I told him.
He smiled. “I know you won’t. Be safe, Raindrop.”
“Koshka!” I called as I ran from the library and up the stairs. “Come on. We’re going to Chicago!”
My usual uniform of black leggings and a black-and-white striped sweater was not proper attire for Depression-era Chicago.
No worries. Up in the attic, Pops and I kept a large wardrobe to blend into any story, any genre, any setting: A space suit for sci-fi.
An elf costume for fantasy. Black cloaks and ball gowns galore for Gothics.
For this mission, I was thinking my Hennie Fox silver cocktail dress?
No, too impractical. Then I spotted the tailored wool men’s suit I’d worn for Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The suit was a decade out of date in the Duke’s world, but better than trying to fight off gangsters in an evening gown.
I dressed quickly and tucked my hair up under a newsboy cap. If Pops didn’t think Gangland Chicago was safe for women, I’d simply go as a man.
In the cheval mirror, I gave myself a onceover.
My long dark hair remained firmly hidden under the hat.
I’m about average height and a little too skinny (by Mrs. Turner’s standards anyway), so in my suit I fully resembled a pale and slightly freckled teenage boy who just happened to have unusually long eyelashes.
“Ready?” I asked Koshka, who’d been impatiently pacing while I’d gotten dressed.
He meowed loudly in reply.
We returned to the library, where Pops had already taken my magic umbrella out of the wall safe and laid the damaged copy of Empty Graves open on the reading table, an onyx paperweight on each corner.
It’s much easier to escape an open book than a closed one.
While you can get out of a closed book, it feels like taking off a scuba suit in a tight sleeping bag.
And it’s not much fun for the book either.
In this particular novel, the Duke of Chicago is tasked with rescuing a socialite who’s supposedly been kidnapped by gangsters, only to discover a far more complicated and tragic truth.
The book, originally published in 1948, had a deliciously campy cover with a beautiful redheaded femme fatale in a painted-on scarlet red dress holding a shovel.
“I’m going to try to land us in the alley next to the speakeasy,” I told Pops. “Wish us luck.”
“Good luck,” he said. “And be home in time for dinner or Mrs. Turner will have a fit.”
“Promise.” I rose up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek.
“Koshka?” Pops said, addressing my cat. “If the Duke gets fresh with her, bite him.”
“He won’t even look twice at me,” I said, scooping up Koshka.
“Don’t listen to old Fanshawe,” Pops said. “If your mother were here right now, she’d be as proud of you as I am.”
But she’s not here, I thought but didn’t say.
“Thanks, Pops,” I said. “Now excuse me, we have a story to save.”
Pops passed me my umbrella and stepped back.
When performing an immersion, you always want to enter a story at the last possible moment before the damaged section.
Never begin on page one, otherwise you could be wandering the story world for weeks or months—years even if you’re in a multigenerational family saga.
Dangerous business. The longer a real person lives inside a story, the more likely they are to forget who they are and where they come from.
A Book Witch from a neighboring coven got himself stuck for two weeks in Treasure Island.
Apparently, he talked like a pirate for a month after that.
Not kidding, the poor man had to see a speech therapist.
With my cat in one arm and my umbrella in hand, I read aloud from page eighty-six, willing us to become one with the story. It was the scene where the Duke of Chicago spots the socialite dancing with an infamous gangster.
She was a beautiful girl, I read, but so was Helen of Troy, and look what happened to the Trojans.
With a flick of my thumb, I opened my umbrella.
All Book Witches use black umbrellas instead of wands.
Seen from above, an open black umbrella looks like the dot atop a lowercase letter “i.” With my umbrella, I could make a portal through that tiny dot on the page and hide our presence at the same time.
And with the magic of storycraft, that’s precisely what happened. Koshka and I vanished from the real world into the story world, slipping through the miniature black hole made by the dot on the lowercase “i” in the word “girl.”
As we disappeared, I closed my eyes on a soft, warm September evening in Fort Meriwether, Oregon. When I opened them again, I was breathing the bitter cold and sinister air of Gangland Chicago.