I looked at Seth, who looked back at me expectantly. It was our first direct eye contact all day.
"Are there places to live around here?"
"Sure. If you want to share a house with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds." I paused, thinking that option might not be so unappealing for a guy. "If you want something more substantial in this area, it'll cost you. I guess Cady and O'Neill ensure that's not really an issue, huh? We can drive around and look, if you want."
"Maybe. I'd honestly rather go there first." He pointed across the street, to one of the used bookstores. His eyes flicked back to me uncertainly. "If that's okay with you."
"Let's go."
I loved used bookstores but always felt a little guilty walking into them. Like I was cheating. After all, I worked around bright, crisp books all the time. I could obtain a reprint of almost anything I wanted, brand new. It seemed wrong to take such visceral pleasure from being around old books, from the smell of aged paper, mildew, and dust. Such collections of knowledge, some quite old, always reminded me of times long past and places I'd seen, triggering a tidal wave of nostalgia. These emotions made me feel both old and young. The books aged while I did not.
A gray tabby cat stretched and blinked at us from her spot on the counter as we entered. I stroked her back and said hello to the old man near her. He glanced up briefly from the books he sorted, smiled at us, and returned to his work. Seth stared around at the towering shelves before us, an expression of bliss on his face, and promptly disappeared into them.
I wandered over to nonfiction, wanting to peruse the cookbooks. I had grown up preparing food without microwaves and food processors and decided it was high time to let my culinary knowledge expand into this century.
Finally settling on a Greek cookbook with lots of colored pictures, I dragged myself away a half hour later and looked for Seth. I found him in the children's section, kneeling next to a stack of books, completely absorbed.
I crouched down beside him. "What are you looking at?"
He flinched slightly, startled by my proximity, and tore his gaze away from his find to look at me. This close, I could see that his eyes were actually more of a golden-amber brown, his lashes long enough to make any girl jealous.
"Andrew Lang's fairy books." He held a paperback entitled The Blue Fairy Book. On top of the stack near him sat another called The Orange Fairy Book, and I could only assume the rest followed color-coded suit. Seth glowed with literary rapture, forgetting his reticence around me. "The 1960s reprints. Not as valuable as, say, editions from the 1800s, but these are the ones my dad had, the ones he used to read to us from. He only had a couple, though; this is the whole set. I'm going to get them and read them to my nieces."
Flipping through the pages of The Red Fairy Book, I recognized the titles of many familiar stories, some I hadn't even known were still around. I turned the book over and looked inside the cover but found no price. "How much are they?"
Seth pointed to a small sign near the shelf he'd obtained them from.
"Is that reasonable for these?" I asked.
"It's a little high, but it's worth it to me to get them all in one go."
"No way." I gathered up part of the books, rising. "We'll talk him down."
"Talk him down how?"
My lips turned up in a smile. "With words."
Seth seemed dubious, but the clerk proved an easy target. Most men would eventually cave before an attractive, charismatic woman - let alone a succubus who still sported a residual life force glow. Besides, I had learned bartering at my mother's knee. The guy behind the counter didn't stand a chance. By the time I finished with him, he had happily lowered the price by 25 percent and thrown in my cookbook for free.
Walking back to my car, arms laden with books, Seth kept glancing at me wonderingly. "How did you do that? I've never seen anything like it."
"Lots of practice." A vague answer worthy of one of his.
"Thanks. I wish I could repay the favor."
"Don't worry - hey, you can actually. Would you mind running an errand with me? It's to a bookstore, but it's a scary bookstore."
"Scary how?"
Five minutes later, we were on our way to see my old friend Erik Lancaster. Erik had been ensconced in the Seattle area long before me, and he was a well-known figure to almost every immortal entity around. Versed in mythology and supernatural lore, he regularly proved to be an excellent resource for all things paranormal. If he had noticed that some of his best patrons never aged, he wisely refrained from pointing that out.
The only annoying thing about seeing Erik was that it required a visit to Krystal Starz - a stunning example of New Age spirituality gone wrong. I didn't doubt the place might have had good intentions back when it opened in the 1980s, but the bookstore now touted a barrage of colorful, highly commercial merchandise more weighted in price than any sort of mystical value. Erik, by my estimation, was the only employee with legitimate concern and knowledge of esoteric matters. The best of his coworkers were simply apathetic; the worst were zealots and scam artists.
Pulling up into the store's parking lot, I immediately felt surprise at the number of cars there. This many people at Emerald City would have constituted a signing, but that sort of event seemed odd in the middle of the workday.
A heavy wave of incense poured over us as we entered, and Seth appeared just as surprised as me by all the people and stimuli. "I might be a minute," I told him. "Feel free to look around. Not that there's much here worth seeing."
He melted away, and I turned my attention to a bright-eyed young man standing near the door and directing the crowd around. "Are you here for the Gathering?"
"Urn, no," I told him. "I'm looking for Erik."
"Erik who?"
"Lancaster? Older guy? African-American? He works here."
The young lackey shook his head. "There's no Erik here. Not as long as I've been working here." He spoke like he'd founded the store.
"How long has that been?"
"Two months."
I rolled my eyes. A veritable veteran. "Is there a manager around here I can talk to?"
"Well, Helena's here, but she's going to be - ah, there she is." He gestured to the far side of the store where the woman in question appeared as though summoned.
Ah yes, Helena. She and I had tangled before. Pale-haired, her neck bestrewn with crystals and other arcane symbols, she stood in a doorway marked meeting room. A teal shawl covered her slim shoulders, and like always, I wondered how old she was. She looked to be in her lower to mid-thirties, but something about her demeanor always made me think she was older. Maybe she'd had a lot of plastic surgery. It would be fitting, really, considering the rest of her trumped-up, artificial persona.
"Everyone? Everyone?" She spoke in this obviously faked, high-pitched voice, meant to sound like a whisper, albeit one that could reach loud volumes. So mostly it came out raspy, like she had a cold. "It's time to start."
The masses - thirty or so, I'd say - moved toward the meeting room, and I followed, blending into the crowd. Some of the people around me looked like Helena: theme-dressed, in either all-black or too-vibrant shades, with a plethora of pentagrams, crystals, and ohms in attendance. Others looked like average people, dressed much like me in my work clothes, trailing along in excited curiosity.
With a frozen, fake smile plastered across her face, Helena beckoned us into the room murmuring, "Welcome, welcome. Feel the energy." When I passed by her, the smile faltered. "I know you."
"Yes."
The smile diminished further. "You're that woman who works at that big bookstore - that big, commercial bookstore." A few people stopped and listened to our exchange, no doubt the reason she refrained from pointing out the last time I was in here, I had called her a hypocrite pushing marked-up crap merchandise.
Compared to certain national chains, I hardly considered Emerald City commercial. Still, I shrugged in acknowledgment. "Yeah, what can I say, we're part of the problem in corporate America. However, we do sell all the books and tarot cards that you do, often at a discount if you're a member of Emerald City's Frequent Readers Program." I mentioned this last part loudly. Extra advertising never hurt.
Helena's weakening smile disappeared altogether, as did some of her raspy voice. "Is there something I can help you with?"