Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rainy stepped through the mirror into a women’s restroom and immediately slipped on the recently mopped floor, landing hard on her hands and knees.
“Shit,” she said, then slapped her hand over her mouth. Had she sworn out loud? Why did that feel so strange to her? Surely she’d cursed before. Or had she? Had Maxine simply written “Rainy swore” in her books without ever actually letting her say the words?
“Shit,” she said again, marveling at the feeling of relief that washed over her. “Curses! Damn the torpedoes! What the hecking hell? Oh, this is fun.”
She got to her feet before someone walked in and found her on the floor swearing at nothing and cackling.
Luckily, no bones were broken, but the palms of her hands stung like fire, and her knees were definitely bruised.
She waited for the pain to disappear, but it didn’t.
It subsided to a dull ache, but even after she washed her hands in soothing cold water, the pain wasn’t quite gone.
What had Duke said the first time they’d met? When he learned he was fictional?
If I get shot—which I do more than I should, I think—I tend to heal completely by my next case.
She’d been thrown from runaway carriages, stabbed in sword fights, blasted by alien lasers, and had gone back to work the very next day. Other than her burn scar that she wore like a badge of honor, all her other injuries healed almost immediately.
But not here.
Life, she was quickly learning, hurt.
Her poor umbrella was already broken. Well, not broken but bent. Rainy had landed on it hard enough that two of its metal ribs were twisted sideways. That had also never happened before.
Actions had consequences here.
“Well, damn, darn, and blast,” she said, “I don’t like this at all. ”
Bruised knees and a broken umbrella aside, Rainy had a mission, and she needed to complete it before she got herself killed.
After a steadying breath, she peered deep into the mirror, first to see if she could see the Hall of Mirrors behind the glass—she couldn’t—and then to see if she looked like herself—she did.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Maybe if she were real, she’d look different. More vibrant somehow? Taller? Stronger? But no, her own face and body greeted her.
Same dark hair. Same gray eyes. Same nose and lips. And her clothes, too, were her usual uniform of black leggings, black-and-white striped sweater, and rain boots.
She straightened her sweater and squared her shoulders. She had a mystery writer to find.
“Let’s get to it, March,” she told herself. “Self-awareness is no excuse for not getting the job done.”
First, she took stock of her surroundings.
Even on the other side of the glass, she’d recognized this place as a library bathroom.
Posters on the beige, green, and brown tile walls advertised book drives, clothing drives, and reminders about upcoming classes, clubs, and events.
No posters recruiting new Book Witches or selling gently used tractor tires, of course.
In this world, there were no Book Witches.
Maxine had said there wasn’t even magic, at least not like the storycraft she was used to.
She examined the logo at the bottom of one of the posters.
The Santa Barbara Public Library. California, if it was the same Santa Barbara as in her world.
So what was happening here that Maxine’s imagination had created a portal into it?
A woman entered the bathroom and stopped in her tracks. She looked older than Rainy, maybe thirtysomething, and was dressed all in black. It was clear from the streak of eyeliner and the redness in her eyes that she’d been crying, but her face brightened at the sight of Rainy.
“Oh my gosh,” the woman in black said, then laughed. “You look amazing. Just like her.”
“Who?” Rainy asked.
“Rainy March?” she said, her voice teasing as if Rainy should’ve known. “Incredible cosplay.”
“Oh, this is how I always—” Rainy began, then realized what the woman was saying. “My…costume. Thank you.” Then, not knowing what else to do, she curtsied.
Luckily, the woman in black didn’t notice the curtsy. She was busy rummaging through her handbag at the sink. She pulled a concealer stick out and began to repair her makeup.
“Are you all right?” Rainy asked. She’d cried in library bathrooms before, but only when she’d snuck into mystery sections to visit the Duke of Chicago books after hers had been confiscated. Was this woman also carrying a torch for a fictional character? Seemed the most logical explanation.
“Oh, guess I got a little weepy looking at the books and the memorabilia out there. With Maxine Blake gone, it feels like a part of my childhood died too. I was reading those books long after my friends switched to romances.”
“All stories are love stories if you love stories.”
The woman looked at her. “Good point.”
“Do you have an umbrella tattooed on your arm?” Rainy asked.
The woman held out her right arm, palm up. An umbrella was indeed tattooed inside her wrist. “Reminds me that when the going gets tough, it’s probably time to escape into a book.”
Rainy laughed.
“We better get out there,” the woman said. “It’s already standing room only. But if you prefer to sit, they have a big screen up in the gallery next door.”
“I…I’ll stand?”
“Are you all right?” the woman asked.
“I’m fine, great. A little nervous. To go out there.” Rainy hoped this was a reasonable response.
“Introvert? Same. Crowds are not my favorite either. You take your time. I’ll save you a spot.”
“Great, great. Which way do I go?”
“By the fireplace. The big windows. Can’t miss it.”
“I’ll be right out,” Rainy said. “I, um…I need to fix my umbrella.”
The woman glanced at it and saw the bent ribs. “How did that happen?”
“I tripped over the mirror.”
The woman narrowed her eyes in confusion.
“Over by the mirror,” Rainy corrected.
“Here, I can fix it.” The woman held out her hand and Rainy passed her the umbrella. “I used to live in Boston, and once a year at least, those winds would try to blow me to Oz.”
Quickly but carefully, the woman bent the metal ribs back into place, then opened and closed the umbrella, testing it out. “That should work. If not, steal somebody else’s. There’re a million out there.” The woman winked at her, then headed out of the bathroom.
Rainy stared at the now-repaired umbrella in her hands. Hot tears of gratitude filled her eyes as she clutched her umbrella to her chest.
Was this the magic of the real world Maxine had told her about? This subtle, quiet magic of a stranger helping another stranger fix her broken umbrella in a public bathroom?
She almost liked this magic better than her own.
—
Exiting the bathroom, Rainy found herself in a lobby area filled with large posters on easels.
The first poster made her breath hitch.
Maxine. Rainy knew her like she knew her own face in the mirror.
Maxine looked thirty or forty years old.
She wore slim jeans and a chunky white sweater.
Her hair was in a soft bob, and the large tabby cat in her arms looked magnificently grumpy yet blissfully content in that way only well-loved and terribly spoiled cats do.
Rainy tore herself away from the poster and went to the next one.
She also recognized it—the very Gothic cover of the first Rainy March novel. Under it, a caption read,
Published January 21, 1975, Lion House Books.
While commonplace now, the Book Witch series was one of the first cozy mystery series to utilize paranormal elements.
Since 1975, the Book Witch series has sold forty million copies and has been translated into over thirty-five languages.
Publishers coined the term “Book Witch effect” to describe the surge in sales of older classic titles that accompanied every new Rainy March novel.
After the release of book nine, for example, Dead Men Don’t Bite , sales of Treasure Island surged, and the book briefly appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Manhattan bookseller Petra Locke recalls, “I remember the month we couldn’t keep Beowulf in stock.
Beowulf! And it wasn’t students buying it for a class.
It wasn’t even homework. Rainy March had one of her adventures in the epic poem, aiding Beowulf in his hour of need after another character has deserted him.
We sold a hundred copies or more in one week.
That’s bestseller numbers for a book that was written in the tenth century.
That’s the Book Witch effect in action.”
“Good for me,” Rainy said and would’ve patted herself on the back if she’d been alone.
The next poster displayed a timeline of the series from the first book in 1975 to the final book, published five years ago.
Thirty-six books in total before Maxine was forced to retire from writing because of ill health.
The last book, it said, was called The World Was Being Watched.
It was set inside H. G. Wells’s classic science fiction thriller, The War of the Worlds.
Rainy remembered this case well, because in her mind it had happened only a year ago.
The main character had been captured by aliens, thus altering the ending of the story.
It had been up to Rainy to rescue him. How could that have been five years ago?
Book time, of course. Book time passed very differently than real time.
One date in particular stood out from the rest. October 1999.
As the poster explained, In The Book Case Files of Rainy March, Book Witch #21, An Unreasonable Amount of Trouble, Maxine Blake introduced a love interest for Rainy in the form of the fictional Duke of Chicago.
Sales, which had been lagging in the late nineties, rebounded, and the Duke soon became a regularly occurring character in the Book Witch series.
Rainy’s heart gave a little jump against her rib cage when she read Duke’s name. But the date? 1999?
“We’ve been in love for over twenty-five years? Well, it’s about time we got engaged, I guess.” She touched her ring, glad to find it had survived its trip into reality.
A young librarian in a polo shirt and khakis passed by pushing a book cart, then stopped to whisper, “They’re about to start, by the way.”
Rainy pointed to the poster. “Do you have any Duke of Chicago books?” She lowered her voice and whispered, “I’m a Ducky.”
“Oh…um…well, we carry all the Book Witch books. They’re checked out right now, though—”
“No, I mean the mystery series. The Duke of Chicago series.”
Understanding dawned on the young librarian’s face. “Ah, no. The Duke of Chicago is fictional. Maxine Blake made him up for the Book Witch series. There are no actual Duke of Chicago books.”
Rainy met her eyes. “Are you serious?”
“Sorry.”
“If Maxine Blake weren’t dead, I’d kill her.”
The librarian blinked at her.
“I didn’t mean that literally,” Rainy said.
“It’s okay,” the librarian said. “I feel your pain. It should be a felony to introduce fictional books in novels and then not let readers read them.”
The librarian pushed their cart along to the next room, and Rainy jogged down past more posters detailing her own life, ignoring the temptation to stop and read them all.
But one caught her eye and she paused to look at it.
It was a single-panel cartoon in black and white, like the ones in The New Yorker.
A figure who was very clearly supposed to be her stood on a small hill by a single tombstone with the name Maxine Blake carved on it.
The cartoon Rainy’s black umbrella was open and rested on her shoulder.
Her head was bowed in mourning. A bundle of forget-me-nots lay atop the gravestone.
The caption simply read, No words.
Rainy swallowed a lump in her throat as she read the description above the cartoon: “A tribute from children’s book illustrator and Clock Island cover artist Hugo Rees ran in over five hundred newspapers two days after the death of Maxine Blake.”
No words? She still had plenty of words. Three of them for that recalcitrant redheaded mystery writer, whoever she was.