Grimoires and Where to Find Them by Raconteur, Honor (best affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

table. “It seemed such a good idea at the time. I marketed them as singular hex and charm designs by the famous Kerey Radman, and they sold lightning quick. My bank account was healthy again in a week. What I didn’t count on was him.”

“Massimo,” I said neutrally.

“Bastard,” Walcott muttered. “I don’t know what tripped him onto the series, or how he’d come to be obsessed with it. Massimo’s a well-known book thief. He’s a strange one, likes to collect them so that he seems a smarter, more cultured man. But he’s never had two coppers to rub together in his life, so he can’t afford his own habits. He started stealing years back.”

“And no one’s caught this guy?” Jamie looked irritated.

“No. No one really suspects him, at first. Searle Massimo III. Sounds proper, right? And he’ll look you in the eye and sign a bad check, and a broker doesn’t suspect a thing. He’s a normal-looking human, nothing notable about him, and he’s soft-spoken and polite. Not the type to strike people as a thief—or to attack people on a whim,” he added bitterly, but fear lingered in his tone.

I jotted down the description of him, as it would be handy to have later.

“Ah.” Jamie scribbled out notes as well, a frown on her face. “Which means he’s a good thief.”

“Quite good.” Walcott rubbed at his face with both hands, despairing. “I’ve crossed paths with him on several occasions, as we use the same fence to handle our goods. I sometimes run across lower-end wares that I can’t sell at my shop, and fencing them is easier. Massimo has never bothered me before, and we’ve never dealt directly with each other. Still, I saw him from time to time by coincidence.

“He’s slippery, good at disappearing in a crowd, but I never figured him for the violent sort. He seemed almost…unhinged. I almost didn’t escape from him earlier. When I went to my acquaintance, Massimo was there brokering a deal, as he had two volumes to sell. When he spotted me, he demanded to know if I’d bought a grimoire from the Radman family. I didn’t see why it mattered, so I answered yes, I had, but I no longer had it.”

“And he blew up,” Jamie guessed.

“That’s a mild description. He said he’d seen two different pages now, both with the Radman signature on them, knew what I had done to the grimoire. That I was a travesty to the profession and I was to collect everything I’d sold and put the book back to rights. I couldn’t understand it, at first—his anger. Or even the logic. How do you even start putting a grimoire back to its original condition?”

“You don’t,” I agreed flatly. “You can rebind it, reseal it, but you can’t restore it.”

Walcott nodded as if reassured that I agreed with him.

Actually, I was condemning him, but I wasn’t about to say so and dam up this flow of information.

“I assume you said this to him?” Jamie prompted.

“No. No, I didn’t dare. He was so angry. But my acquaintance said something to that effect, and then Massimo truly lost his temper. He came after me in a rage, and I had to run for my life. He kept waving a carving knife and threatening to use it on me. I’d be dead if I hadn’t run. It was almost…insane, the way he acted. And the threats he shouted didn’t even make sense.”

Walcott looked at us both with pleading eyes.

“He’s not like the others who hold volumes of the Reaper’s Set. He’s obsessed with owning it, owning everything Radman ever wrote. He won’t rest until he has the full collection.”

Obsessed people were often the most dangerous. They did the most harm without thinking of the consequences, often without caring what the repercussions were. To them, satisfying their urges was all that mattered. If this man was that type, then Walcott was wise to run from him. He was correct—a police station was the safest place for him to be until this man was caught.

Walcott’s crime was basically forgery, and with the right lawyer, he’d pay a steep fine and receive six months in jail for it. He must have weighed it out and decided six months was a cheap price to pay to live. I certainly would have made the same choice in his shoes.

I made a mental note to follow up with Seaton and get protective wards around the rest of the grimoires. I believed the other owners had already taken the precaution, but in this situation, double-checking seemed appropriate.

Jamie clearly didn’t have much sympathy for Walcott, but she didn’t say so.

“Alright, Mr. Walcott, I understand what’s brought you here. We’re going to do several things. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to sit you down with a sketch artist and have you describe Massimo to them. That’s going to help us find this guy fast, okay? Then I’ll arrange for you to call a lawyer in the morning. No one’s in their offices at this hour. But you can sleep easy tonight here. How’s that sound?”

Walcott nodded jerkily, relieved. “Good. That’s good. I can do that.”

“And if you want to give us an idea of where Massimo lives, works, who his friends are? That will help us track him down.”

At this, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I don’t know much about him. He frequents Blue Rose Street, though, that I do know. He likes to shop for books there and will often trade inventory with the shopkeepers.”

Since Jamie wouldn’t know that section of the city, I leaned in and murmured, “It’s a well-known area for second-hand shops. Some are bookstores, others are places where you can liquidate an estate.”

“Ahhh. It makes perfect sense that he likes that area, then. That’s great, Mr. Walcott, super helpful as it gives me an idea of where to look.”

“One more question,” I tacked on. “Did he seem at all physically changed? Being around unprotected grimoires has an effect