The lobby of the bookstore was silent, but for one noise - a whine Sofya knew could blow the entire operation, and dreaded every time she heard it. She took a deep, cleansing breath, letting it out slowly as she fought to maintain calm in the presence of this danger to the mission. It was up to her to stop the noise from happening, and if she didn’t, the consequences would be unthinkable.
“But why do we have to go to another chain bookstore?” The young man next to her had the kind of voice that would pierce through walls at the best of times. When he was being a big whiny baby? It piereced eardrums. “I’m just saying that once, just once, I want to go to a nice independent bookshop, with an eclectic mix of decor and maybe a specialized collection of books for sale, and staffed by-“
“By a raven-haired, kind, gentle-eyed soul who would meet your gaze with a look that conveyed both hope and recognition?” Sofya kept her voice low, which helped her keep the sarcasm toned down as well. “Beale, I’ve read your book. I know what you want. You know why we have to go to the big bookstores sometimes. Now shut it and put your mask on. We have to blend in.”
With the huff only the young and privileged can pull off with such aplomb, Beale took his hands out of his pockets and pulled out the face mask he’d chosen for this particular escapade. Fortunately, face masks had become enough of a fashion statement that the bright geometric pattern with “artistic” paint splotches didn’t mark him as particularly unique. Sofya secured her own, more muted face mask, adjusting the top edge so she wouldn’t fog up her glasses and letting her fingers drift over the embroidery of the fabric. The masks were a new wrinkle in the missions that took her team into Prime, but she had to admit that the people had done a marvelous job of creating art out of necessity. With a final glance at Beale that held both confirmation of readiness and warning, she opened the door into the main bookstore.
Sofya and Beale were generally the members of their team sent for the Prime-side portion of the missions, because their universes were the closest to the current state of Prime. However, nothing ever truly prepared them for the overwhelming power of Prime, particularly when it had been a while. The smells were the thing that always hit Sofya first, because they were the thing that so rarely came up in her universe. It was disorienting to be in a place that was suffused with something that impacted a sense she so rarely used at home that she almost forgot she had it. She saw Beale take a deep, appreciative breath and start drifting toward the cafe, and she snagged his sleeve before he let himself be taken by the coffee and pastries. “Job first. Then cookies.”
Beale shook himself, as if from a daze, and made eye contact with Sofya. “I smelled oatmeal raisin. I will be holding you to that promise.” The corners of his eyes crinkled with the unseen smile, and Sofya felt herself relax into a responding smile. Regardless of how irritating he was, the man could be charming when he wanted to be. One would hope, as it was his entire point of being, but he was one of the better-written Roms she’d met.
She pulled the list out of the pocket of her long, broomstick-style skirt, and consulted the information scrawled upon it. “OK, we have two we need to pick up - one in YA UrbFan, and one in ‘Fiction.’” She rolled her eyes as she handed over the list. “‘Fiction’ is such a useful genre here, isn’t it? Like it’s all one universe.”
“Well, as far as some of these people are concerned, everything’s all one universe,” Beale remarked matter-of-factly. “They don’t know any better, poor things. I recognize the ‘Fiction’ - it’s a thinly-veiled Revenge Memoir. I’ll grab that one, so you can go amongst your people.” He handed her the paper again, and with a wink, strode off in the direction of the largest section of the bookstore. Sofya double-checked the title then made her way to the second-largest section, Young Adult.
Sofya didn’t come from a YA universe herself, but UrbFan was her home, so she knew her way around the younger stuff. She followed the telltale signs of disturbance in the universe - books shelved in the wrong section, series out of order - to the center of the problem.
Unfortunately, that proved to be a bigger issue than she anticipated. She checked the title on the list once again, though she was certain she had the right book, and her heart sank. The book she was assigned to pick up and bring back to the Library for observation - the one that was no longer stable in the universe due to some kind of internal problem - happened to be one of the more popular YA publications of the last few months. As such, she was looking at a display of at least ten copies of the same book. Somehow, she was going to have to find the one copy that contained the other half of her team among all of these best-sellers. With a sigh, she picked up the nearest copy and started flipping through the first few pages.
With luck, Niles and Veronica would remember the best ways to keep everyone together and let the Prime-side team know where they were. The first few chapters of the book showed nothing more than a standard YA UrbFan, apparently a later book in a series that had already established the existence of werewolf baristas in a small town in the Northeast United States. One of the werewolves was running for mayor at the beginning of this book. Sofya started to read more intently, before remembering why she was there. She set the first copy down and looked at the rest of the display, trying to suss out some kind of sign that would point her to the right book.
Fortunately, the bookstore was fairly empty, and there was no one around in this aisle of YA. Sofya would never have tried this if there had been people were around, but she was worried - the fact that signs of distress had been visible all the way down the shelf meant that whatever incongruity was happening had been there for long enough to cause damage that might take ages to repair, if ever. She needed to find the right book, and fast.
Just as she pulled her implements out of her pocket, she heard footsteps behind her. Trying not to look too suspicious, Sofya turned and saw Beale sauntering over to her, the Revenge Memoir under his arm. “I took care of mine, what’s taking you so long?” he remarked, before seeing the display. His face sobered. “Oh. I see. What do you need?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“A little space and privacy,” Sofya responded as she set her supplies out on the shelf in front of the book in question. She didn’t even look up when she heard Beale walking toward the end of the aisle, but she could see him looking at the books at the end of the aisle, putting him in a good location to stop people from coming much further and getting closer to her. As much of a pretty-boy Rom as he was, he had potential to be useful when the chips were down, Sofya thought to herself.
Quickly, she took the string and two small quartz crystals from the pile on the shelf and looped them together to make a very loose web. Delicately placing the web on the shelf directly in front of the book copies, she held a button made of amethyst over the web and moved it over the string, following the loops and whirls it made around the crystals. As she did so, she muttered under her breath, letting the language flow through her and use her lips, tongue, and breath to come to life. Sofya always felt a bit drained after channeling magic in this way, but it was the most precise way of getting the information she needed quickly.
Once she had completed the circuit with the button, she let go of it, still muttering. The button hovered in the air, spinning slowly, until it moved to the right and landed on top of the copy at the far end of the group. Sofya used a small pencil from her pocket to push the button onto a different copy, and watched it move back to the same one again. Satisfied, Sofya swept all of her things back into her pocket, leaving just the button. Once she’d put away everything, she gently slid the book out of the shelf, and she caught the button as it fell from the top of the book. Once she touched the button again, it fell inert, the magic that had been powering it spent. Sofya tucked the button back into the same pocket as the rest of her implements, and walked over to Beale, holding the book in question.
“Shall we?” she said, nodding toward the cash register. Whenever possible, the teams would purchase the books they needed, rather than stealing them. Prime bookstores were in enough danger of becoming obsolete as it was; the Library didn’t want to speed that obsolescence along any further than was absolutely necessary. Beale’s eyes crinkled again as he followed her line of sight, and he grandly took the book from her and added it to both the Revenge Memoir and another book Sofya didn’t recognize. When she gave him a questioning look, he shrugged, nonchalant. “You left me alone in a bookstore for a minute. Be happy I’m only walking out with one extra book. Now, books, then cookies, then Library?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sofya agreed, and together they made their way to the front of the store, allowing the smells of hot coffee and fresh baked goods to wash over them all over again.
Meanwhile, in the wilds of the Northeastern United States, Niles and Veronica were working to keep Nuereddin from falling into the clutches of the trees nearby. “Seriously, how are you considered some kind of druid when you can’t handle being around trees?” Veronica groused as she kept one arm around Nuereddin’s waist, forcing him to walk into the shadows of a great oak.
“Verily, what milady says is true,” Niles intoned from behind the two of them. His large hand was resting on Nuereddin’s shoulder, a weight that made it clear that, while it wasn’t gripping and throwing him now, that could all change very quickly if need be. “You are meant to be a man of nature, and yet the mighty trees of the forest, those great bastions of nature, cause you such fear? It does not make sense.”
“I know it doesn’t, and I don’t care,” Nuereddin grumbled, fighting the urge to push away from his team members and go running in the opposite direction. “I had a bad experience, OK? Trees freak me out, and they always have, and they probably always will. Why are we even going into this godsforsaken place, anyway? I thought we were here to find an anomaly in the main story.”
“We are, we are,” Veronica sighed. “Like I told you before, we needed to find the thing, which we did.” With her free hand, she gestured to her bag, which had an oddly-shaped lump in it. “But we also need to make sure Sofya and Beale can find us. The book’s more popular than we thought, so the connections are stronger here, and that means it’s going to take longer for anomalies to cause a ton of damage. We’ve got a little time, so we need to find a place to regroup and wait for the rest of the team. Once Sofya brings the book back to the Library, they can start researching and find out how to fix whatever’s happening.” With a squeeze around his waist, she moved Nuereddin further into the trees. “Now let’s move before we get found by one of those werewolf coffee maker things.”
“Such a specific type of monster, that,” Niles mused behind them. “But they do seem to be well-versed in the art of coffee-making. I still relish the taste of the hazelnut latte the young werewoman made for us earlier.”
“Pretty sure you’re relishing the way she was looking at you more than the coffee,” Nuereddin grumbled. “She was giving you the eye so much, I fully expected her to start flinging her clothes at you.” He rolled his eyes. Nuereddin didn’t come from a universe that was always on the verge of having a romance break out, so it didn’t make sense to him how often people flung themselves at Niles and Beale. He tried to believe it wasn’t that he was jealous, but that was not an easy pill to swallow.
Still bickering, they found a clearing in the forest with a few convenient tree stumps set up in a seating area. Veronica was somewhat concerned by this, as it generally tended to indicate that a place would be a setting in the book itself, but the fact that this was a book in a series meant that the clearing could have been used in an earlier book, and remained in place with each subsequent novel. Either way, she sat at one of the stumps closest to the edge of the forest, keeping her sight lines open as best as she could. Niles took a similar stance on the other side of Nuereddin, set up so he could see over Veronica’s shoulder and vice versa. Veronica felt herself relax a bit, knowing that someone like Niles was watching out with her. Nuereddin, meanwhile, sat on the stump between the two, head slumped forward and eyes focused on the grass at his feet.
They weren’t sitting for very long before they saw a shaft of light shine down on them from above. The light wasn’t natural - it didn’t feel like a moonbeam or any of the kind of light one would expect from a fantasy universe, even if it were UrbFan. Instead, this was like a searchlight, pointed down at the ground from above. It drifted past the trees around the clearing before centering on the three team members, who were now on their feet and waving at the sky. We probably look like we’re trying to flag down aliens, Veronica thought, the idea sending a small chill down her spine. Nevertheless, when the rope ladder dropped in front of her, she gripped the rungs with hands steady with a confidence she didn’t entirely feel, and she began climbing. Sofya and Beale had found them, and they were heading back to the Library to figure out why the werewolf candidate for mayor was routinely seen carrying a laser gun.