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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "A Yumi Afternoon Cordial"  "Well, I didn't ask you out to talk about Lisa," you tell Yumi. She looks at you brightly. "I guess I just asked you out to hang out. I don't ever hang out with you, it seems like," you add, and to your own horror you feel your face turning warm. "What are you working on?" you ask before you can accidentally say anything really unfortunate. "Chemistry," she says. "You're not taking a chemistry class, are you?" You shake your head. "That's too bad. I don't know anyone in there I can study with, except Cindy, and she studies it with Seth, and the 'chemistry' those two have isn't the kind that Mr. Cash teaches." It takes you a moment to untangle what she's saying, and then you nod. "Do you like Seth?" you ask. "Do I like him?" she echoes, looking startled. "I mean, as a friend. As a human being." "Oh," she says, then shrugs. "I'm not going to say anything against him." She opens up her chemistry book. You open up your English textbook and start reading. It's a Greek play, and you're relieved when only a few minutes later, without looking up from her own work, Yumi says, "We were talking about that time capsule assignment." "Oh. Yeah. Screw me, but it's due tomorrow, and I can't come up with an idea." "How long have you had to come up with it?" "Oh ... A week. It's just not interesting, you know? So I can't concentrate on it." You pause. "You said something about Kelsey? What she's putting into it?" "I just said I hope you weren't going to try competing with her and them." She scribbles out some kind of equation into her notebook. "What's she putting in? I'm not trying to compete with her," you add as Yumi looks up. "I hope you're not going to try copying from her, either," she says. "Not unless you have a politician friend or some hundred-year-old mementos." "Fu— I mean, what's she putting in?" "You can say 'fuck' around me, Will," Yumi says. "I say it often enough myself, especially in first period. Some silver spurs, or something like that, that used to belong to Barry Goldwater." "Who was he?" She smiles, briefly. "Love to hear you say that in earshot of Kelsey. He was a Senator, like, fifty years ago. Ran for president." "Oh." "Yeah. Apparently Kelsey's aunt or great-aunt or someone was a friend of the family." "Shit." "Didn't you have any ideas? For the time capsule." You make a face. "One. Sort of. I'll probably go with it," you sigh. "It's why I suggested we meet up here, because it's next door to Arnholms'," you explain when she looks puzzled. "It's book." * * * * * The upshot is that not only do you wind up telling her about the book you bought there, but you haul it out of your bag and show it to her. She seems to be impressed with it. "This seems like a really old book," she says as she carefully turns the cover back and runs her fingers over the end papers. "It looks like it's hand-written!" "That doesn't mean it's old," you point out. "I mean, my homework's hand-written!" She looks at you, and briefly sticks out her tongue. "But you don't write your homework in Latin," she says. "I think it's Latin. Did you translate any of it?" "Just enough to tell it was weird." You reach across the table and flip the page, then stretch to touch the last sentence there with your fingertip. "Right there? It's asking for your blood." "What?" Yumi's eyes go wide. "Uh huh. That mark underneath, I think that's where you're supposed to put a bloody fingerprint." "Oh my God! What kind of book is this?" You shrug with your hands. Yumi looks at the book, looks at her homework, then shoves the latter aside as she takes out her phone. You watch as she taps some of the Latin in the book into it. After a few minutes of silent work and study, she shakes her head. "Yeah, I don't know what this about. Maybe it's a fake," she says. "What did the bookstore say about it?" "Just what I told you, after we found out all the rest of the pages are glued together. So yeah, I think it's a fake too." "Still, they must have thought it was something really valuable, if they were selling it for— What did you say? Two hundred dollars?" "Right around there." She looks at you for a moment. Then she starts shoving her books and papers into her bag. "What's wrong?" you ask. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just— Let's go talk to the bookstore guys," she says. "You know, if Kelsey's putting a really valuable memento into your time capsule, maybe you could outdo her with this thing. If it's valuable." You don't tell her that you don't think it's valuable—not when the bookstore let you have it for two one-dollar bills—but you like that she's interested in your shit, and happily follow her out of the coffee shop and down a door. * * * * * "Oh God, not this thing again," Ted Arnholm groans. He gives you a beady-eyed look. His store is relatively crowded this afternoon. Or maybe it just seems that way because some middle school kids are jabbering loudly at each other in the nearby games-and-collectibles section. There's other foot traffic nearby as well: a couple of college students, by the looks of them, crouching and scanning the books on either side of a nearby shelf. "Yes, I remember it," Arnholm replies in answer to your next question. "Hard to forget something that cost you a couple of hundred dollars." He shifts the book onto its spine, and tries to push a thick and yellowing thumbnail between its pages, to no avail. "And then to find out it cost you a couple of hundred dollars again!" He looks like he's swallowed something very sour. "Again?" Yumi asks. It was she, in fact, who marched up with the book and dropped it on his work station, but it was you that Arnholm gave a double-take to after recognizing the book. "Yes. The former owner of this ... item ... was out here just the day before yesterday, raising all holy hell trying to get it back. Seems he sold it by accident, or somebody sold it by accident on his behalf, and he came rushing in to get it back when he found out." Arnholm shoots you a sidelong glare. "What did I let it go to you for?" "Two dollars." He says a word that you (and Yumi) use pretty frequently, but it sounds a lot nastier—drier and harder, with a serrated edge to the final, hard consonant—when he says it. A red spot shows on his brow between his eyes as he rummages inside some tiny drawers inside the modified lectern that he is working at. "Here," he growls as he hands you over a white card. "This is his business card. He tried to get me to tell him who we sold it to, but I had no idea who you were. If you'd come in a week later, I probably wouldn't have recognized you. But you take this ... thing"—he pushes the book toward you with the tip of his finger—"to him, and he'll buy it off you. For a lot more than two dollars," he adds. You and Yumi look at each other. Numbly, you pick the book back up again. "And when he makes you an offer," Arnholm shouts at your departing back, "you just say 'No' until he reaches two hundred at least! Rather he got screwed than you," you hear him mumble, almost under his breath. * * * * * Yumi, if possible, seems even more excited than you, and she insists on leaving her car behind when you say you're going to go see this former owner immediately. "I told you it was worth something!" she keeps saying. That former owner is a professor—"Aubrey Blackwell"—at the local university, according to his card, and he lives on the outskirts of town, near the river. He lives so much on the outskirts that when you find his house, it is sitting by itself with vacant fields and a small wooded area as its only neighbors. But he has a visitor. An SUV is sitting in front of the high wall that surrounds his house, and Yumi squeals when she sees it. "Turn around!" she yells as you start to park next to it. "Drive back! I wanna see the— Oh God, it is hers!" "Her what?" you ask. "Who?" "Lucy's car! Her SUV! You know, Cindy's sister!" "Lucy—?" It takes you a moment to place the name, and you're embarrassed at the delay when you do. Lucy Vredenburg is the older sister of Cindy Vredenburg, who is a senior at Westside, is also a cheerleader, and is one of Yumi's friends. (She is the "Cindy" who studies non-academic "chemistry" with Seth Javits.) Lucy was two years ahead of you, was also a cheerleader, and was one of the most drop-dead gorgeous girls you have ever seen. "Go around the corner," Yumi orders as she takes out her phone. "What's wrong?" But you do as she asks, even as she sits frowning over her phone with her fingertip poised over the screen. "That's Lucy's SUV," she repeats. "I'm just wondering what it's doing out here." "Some reason it shouldn't be? Doesn't she go to the university?" "Yeah, but they don't have classes out here! I wonder if Cindy knows what's going on." Maybe it is a little strange that Cindy's sister is out here, but there's surely a boring explanation for it. That's all for now. |
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