Burning Books Page 3

  So she’d come to the wrong warehouse on Beemer Lane, that was all. Magnus had the address written down somewhere, but Molly had never bothered, since he’d come with her on their first trip. She must have misremembered the location. Old brick warehouses like these resembled one another to a baffling degree.

  Molly escaped the store with her purchase, tucking it into her coat before venturing into the rain. As she turned to give the shop one last look, she saw what she had missed before: a modern metal sign, bolted to the side of the building beside the door: BEEMER LANE BOOKSELLERS ~ 721 Beemer Lane.

  No, the address was the same, she was certain of it. The wind whipped around her, flapping her scarf over her face. She dragged it off, half expecting the shop sign to have vanished while her eyes were covered.

  But it was still there, in all its ugly modern glory. And despite a niggling suspicion that the CliffsNotes would have vanished from the inside pocket of her coat, when she slid into the car and checked, they, too, remained.

  A shop of rare books that morphed overnight into a modern bookseller. Books telling the story of a possibly mad woman falling in love with her unseen stalker, bearing Molly’s own name on the back endpaper. Magnus staving off an epic fit of depression and temper with, apparently, just a cup of peppermint tea.

  If she didn’t know better, Molly almost could believe in magic.

  ∞

  Drizzling rain gave way to a downpour by midafternoon. The raw, wild beauty of a March rainstorm always drew her, defying explanation for the way the rioting elements seduced her senses. A cup of coffee in hand, a thick, handcrafted blanket textured with cables and bobbles across her lap, and a low fire burning in the gas fireplace, Molly settled into her chair and did her best to familiarize herself with the tormented Compson clan and their tragic destruction. The Sound and the Fury CliffsNotes couldn’t compete with the lure of the strange green book and its tale of twisted courtship.

  Did Idiot Woman ever meet her unseen suitor? Molly could imagine the scene. He would come upon her in her beloved cottage garden, and she would mistake him for a passing traveler seeking directions, until his hand, held behind his back until now, presented her with a rose-hued painted daisy from her own yard. She would be shocked and flustered. He would be handsome and shy. She would offer coffee. He would accept.

  They would drink it at the tiny table in the kitchen alcove, the windows cranked open to let in the fresh breeze and scent of the flowers just outside the panes, looking out into the garden and nibbling on shortbread cookies while they desperately summoned profound conversation and ended up talking about the weather. Both would mentally kick themselves, and desperation would turn to despondency as even small talk failed them, until he stopped trying to speak altogether.

  Oh no, how had it all gone so wrong? No amount of coaxing would bring even a witticism to her lips. He thrust his hand across the table, sloshing his coffee onto the tablecloth, and clutched her hand with a strange tenderness, as though controlling the impulse to grip her so tightly, her bones would grind together, as rich, brown liquid stained pristine white fabric. His eyes spoke of sweetness, shyness, horror that he was mucking it all up. He lifted her fingers, brushing his lips across them in the barest of kisses.

  I’ve been watching you. The revelation drifted out on a whisper, a breath of confession, of vulnerability, of menace and danger. She tried to withdraw her hand. His grip tightened. His gaze hardened. His face twisted. A demon of hatred and savagery leered across the table at her, the tiny table, the three-foot-in-diameter table, the table that presented no barrier as he half rose from his chair, dragging her from hers, his fingers wrenching hers backward until pain screamed through her flesh. Crippling, stabbing pain. A white wave of unendurable torture, searing through her arm from fingertips to shoulder, until the bones snapped, one by agonizing one—

  Lightning forked across the night, followed by a house-rattling clap of thunder. Molly jumped. Tears of pain rolled down her cheeks: she clutched the green book to her chest with both hands, twisting it as though trying to wrench it in two. The edges cut into her flesh, leaving deep, purple grooves.

  She let go with effort, her hands contorted in the shape of the book even after it fell to the carpet and lay among the forgotten pages of the CliffsNotes. Darkness filled the windows beyond the drapes, the only light in the room coming from the fire behind her.

  How long had she sat, clutching the book, lost in make-believe? She didn’t remember dropping the CliffsNotes or picking up the green book. And how long had the eyes of the night caressed her while she sat unaware, trapped in her imagination? Her skin tingled, as though his gaze held the weight of fingers. He was out there in the storm, watching her, his eyes pressing upon her the burden of his longing, his covetousness. Tomorrow, there would be a shower of white peony petals across her porch, a fragile background for five perfect eelgrass limpet shells. She would vow to catch him, going so far as to sleep in her car because she yearned for those fingers to touch her for real and feared the way she craved the caress of a man she had never met, had never even seen.

  She stood abruptly, reaching to turn on the lamp beside her chair, and just as quickly let her hand fall away. Better to close the drapes while the room was dark rather than spotlight herself for her unseen observer.

  It occurred to her only after she had settled back in her chair, the curtains closed and free from the scrutiny of the night, that she had no stalker, no unseen admirer. That was the girl in the book.

  Frowning uneasily, she picked up the book, set it on the stack with its fellows, and retired to her room, taking with her the CliffsNotes and leaving the lamp burning against the darkness.

  ∞3∞

  Magnus didn’t come home until midmorning. Molly had been certain she’d heard the front door and the tread of his footsteps in the hallway as he went to his room long after midnight, but she must have dreamed it, for when she opened his door a crack and peeked in, his bed was empty and showed no signs of having been slept in. Dread had bloomed instantly until she checked her phone. He’d texted at 12:45 a.m. to tell her he was staying overnight with a friend from group so they could finish their daylong movie marathon.

  Annoyance replaced the dread. Saturday was Annis’s day off, and Magnus and Molly traded off making breakfast every other week. This was his week—and it was the third or fourth time he’d missed it in as many months.

  When the front door opened just after ten and he sauntered in with a gust of wind and rain, looking tired but in good spirits, Molly did her best to hide her irritation, not wanting to ruin what promised to be a good day. She nibbled her toast and drank her tea and thumbed through the pages of The Sound and the Fury, reading passages she’d marked on the CliffsNotes that would require more thorough reading before the book club descended on her home after dinner. He hung his coat in the entry-hall closet and swapped out his sneakers for a pair he only wore inside. Molly took this as a sign of contrition, as he frequently forgot and wore his outdoor shoes through the house.

  “Sorry I’m so late. I missed an earlier bus and had to wait an hour for the next one.” He eyed her toast with disappointment. “Did you already eat?”

  “Just a slice of toast and a cup of tea. I wanted to wait to have breakfast with you—though if you’d have been an hour later . . .”

  He retreated to the kitchen without further apology—indeed, she was lucky to have gotten the first one—and she waited a respectable time to allow him to get under way before going in to offer her help.

  “Waffles. Good choice.” Prudently, she took a stick of butter from the refrigerator, dumped it into a dish, and melted it in the microwave. He invariably forgot to grease the plates of the waffle iron and became frustrated and angry when the waffles stuck. She would end up cleaning it because he would storm off, cursing everything from the crusty mess to the universe in general.

  A scowl rippled his forehead. “You don’t have to help, Mol. It’s my turn.”

  S
he smiled. “Nonsense. I can at least make coffee and juice, can’t I? One less thing for you to worry about. Besides, I missed you. How was your movie marathon?”

  He sent her a slightly suspicious look, as though wondering why she wasn’t angry that he was late or hadn’t come home. “We watched the Hostel movies.”

  “Blech.” She’d tried watching the first one a few months ago and had turned it off partway through, not liking how it made her feel anxious and traumatized. Awful things, those twisted, torture movies. She preferred romantic comedies and the occasional Gothic suspense.

  Magnus buttered the waffle iron and poured in the batter, closing the lid and spinning it over. “They’re so stupid. We make fun of them—you know, add in our own dialogue, berate the characters for being stupid. I mean, in this day and age, who goes off alone with people they don’t know just to party?”

  “Probably a lot more than you’d believe.”

  While he told her the plot and the various idiotic things the characters did, Molly sliced oranges in half and ground them on the juicer. Idiot Woman was as stupid as the movie characters her brother described. Who could be so lonely, so desperate for affection, that she would convince herself to have feelings for her stalker? That spoke of some serious mental issues, way beyond Magnus’s temper-control problems.

  He snapped his fingers. “Where’d you go?”

  Molly stared at him blankly for a moment, watching him take the waffle out. She’d been off in her own little world for a few minutes. He put the waffle on top of two others. Two waffles she didn’t remember him cooking.

  “Just thinking about the stupid book-club meeting tonight.”

  “Cancel it.”

  “It’s too late. Besides, I’ve already read the CliffsNotes and certain parts of the book. Speaking of stupid people . . .”

  He poured the last of the batter into the iron and peered at it. “This won’t be a full one.” He closed the lid and spun it over. “I told Cecily about the books you found.”

  “Who is Cecily?”

  “My friend from group, the one I stayed with last night.”

  “I see.” Molly did, more than she wanted to. Relationships between group members were strongly discouraged. And Magnus had a long way to go in controlling his emotions before a romantic relationship would be sensible or safe.

  “Don’t read anything into it. I crashed on her couch.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, Cess said that you might have found some magic books.”

  She chuckled. “I don’t believe in magic, Magnus.”

  While he extracted the last waffle from the iron—with minimal sticking, she noted smugly—she set the table and fried a couple of eggs for each of them. Once they were seated, he continued.

  “She said that your name printed in them might be glyphs. The magic is in the glyph, and it’s triggered when you read it. They could be spells, Molly.”

  “Spells? Like voodoo?”

  “Cess knows a lot about it. She said your books are probably traps, and the traps are set when you read the glyphs—which is most likely your name printed in the back.”

  She laid down her fork and reached for her coffee, surprised to find only juice.

  “You forgot to make coffee,” he said helpfully.

  “Oh.” Her brow scrunched. “Sorry. Well, I don’t see why anyone would devise spells to trap me. I don’t have any enemies.”

  “Everyone has enemies.”

  He stabbed a chunk of waffle with his fork and motioned at her with it, dripping syrup and egg yolk on the tablecloth. Molly watched the stain spread through the white fabric, dark like rich earth. Her heart pounded. I’ve been watching you.

  “You might not even realize it. Maybe there’s some fellow who likes you, so some girl who likes him in vain is sitting somewhere, hating your guts and making magic spells to mess up your life.”

  She blinked. The dark stain disappeared, as did the white tablecloth. Magnus was wiping up the syrup and egg yolk with a paper napkin, leaving behind a dull smudge on the bare-wood tabletop. He chattered on, not noticing her faze out briefly.

  “She gives the books to a rare bookshop, or perhaps she just leaves them there with no one noticing, and they get shelved as part of the shop’s stock, because she knows you like old books and eventually, you’ll find them. Or you’ll hear about them from another collector and want to see them. When you read your name out loud—or maybe you just have to touch your name to trigger the spell—then voila! Suddenly, your life becomes a nightmare.”

  “I’ve already touched my name in at least one of them and nothing happened.”

  “You probably haven’t hit the trigger. Cess said that sometimes you have to read the whole book before the trigger will actually work. Or sometimes the trigger is attached to some other action.”

  “I think you and Cess watch too many movies.”

  “You should take the books back. Sell them. Whatever. You shouldn’t read them. You shouldn’t burn them, either. Cecily says they either won’t burn, or the spells will explode from them and cause all kinds of trouble.”

  For some reason, she didn’t want to tell him about going back to the bookshop and finding not a rare bookstore but a regular modern bookseller. She drained her juice and took her plate to the garbage, suddenly not hungry anymore. “You’ve been watching those horror movies again, haven’t you?”

  “Only the Hostel movies. And maybe one about a Ouija board.” He offered the last admission grudgingly.

  “Silly boy.” She ruffled his hair and kissed the top of his head. He squirmed uncomfortably. “I’ll be in the sitting room, reading.”

  “Those books?” he asked pointedly.

  “No. William Faulkner, which is much worse than anything those books can conjure.”

  She left him with the cleanup, as was their custom—whoever cooked cleaned it up, giving the other a free day. Later, she’d pop an enchilada casserole, thoughtfully prepared by Annis yesterday, into the oven for an early supper, and then prepare some hors d’oeuvres for the book club. Her group expected snacks, and they were a particular bunch.

  While the Faulkner didn’t precisely keep her attention, her desire to keep up with the conversation tonight kept her reading. It was with relief she set the book aside to change into slacks and a silk blouse, leaving the top button undone to show off the gold infinity knot that hung from a delicate chain around her neck. She didn’t know who had given it to her—that knowledge was lost in the year of memories the superstorm had stolen—but she wore it always. She spared fifteen minutes to vacuum the sitting room and arrange the furniture in a cozy circle that made her chair the focal point. Then she retreated to the kitchen to make the refreshments, leaving her blanket artfully draped over the back of the chair and her copy of the book and her reading glass on the seat to ensure Genevieve wouldn’t try to claim her chair.

  Lynda, as always, was the first to arrive, early enough to help Molly finish preparing the hors d’oeuvres. Tall and leggy and built like a reed, she’d come in a gold jewel-tone tunic sweater over black leggings, her black-leather equestrian boots and expensive multicolored silk scarf providing a touch of class to her otherwise casual attire—as well as a poke in the eye at Genevieve, who kept trying to impose a dress code on their meetings.

  “I see you’re pushing the envelope.”

  “What envelope?” Lynda left her book and purse on the seat of the chair to Molly’s left. “Viv doesn’t make the rules, and she can stop trying or find another book club to haunt. We started this group, and if we want to sit around in sweatpants and no makeup and talk about what a downer Faulkner’s books usually are, then that’s what we should do.”

  “So, you didn’t like the book, either.”

  “God, no. I felt like swallowing a bucket of Prozac by the time I finished. She only picked it because of that disagreement you had a few months ago over his writing.”

  “Oh, where she said he was brilliant, and I said he
needed a psychiatrist?”

  “That would be the one. Maybe the weather’s bad enough, she won’t come. Brenda’s not so bad when she’s not feeding off the pack mentality Viv inspires.” Lynda peered out the kitchen window, where the rainy day had turned into a stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night, Molly thought randomly and chuckled inside at the thought of literary snob Genevieve ever reading a book containing those words.

  Lynda drizzled pancetta-wrapped peaches with balsamic glaze, speared them with fancy sandwich picks, and loaded them onto a china serving platter. “What’s that you’re making?”

  “Green-olive tapenade.” Molly spread the last of the mixture onto a toast point and loaded up a three-tiered server.

  “That sounds suitably snooty, which should keep Viv happy.”

  “I was thinking more about Viv’s friend, Brenda. Last time I hosted, she made some snarky remark about the deviled-egg toast points I served, so I’ve spent the intervening months scouring Pinterest for some higher-class ideas.”

  “I liked the deviled-egg toast points,” Lynda protested.

  “Brenda said they gave her wind.”

  “I’m more concerned with the wind coming out of her mouth than I am of the wind coming out her other end. What do you want me to do with these?” She gestured to the bacon-wrapped asparagus spears.

  “Hmmm. I have a small platter. We can stack them like logs and throw on a pair of small tongs.”

  “I hope you have cocktail forks. No way Miss Priss and her friend are touching those with their fingers.”

  “Good. That will leave more for us.” But Molly retrieved a handful of cocktail forks and stuffed them tine-first into a cut-glass tumbler.

  “That looks nice. Got any ribbon? I’ll dress it up.”

  “What for? I thought we weren’t catering to them.”

  “We aren’t. I’m catering to my creative side.”