Grimoires and Where to Find Them by Raconteur, Honor (ebook reader for laptop .txt) 📕

a little farther, to a spot on the street designated as a taxi service, with several taxies lined up and ready for passengers. Only then did she stop and turn with an expectant look.

“Eddy?”

It was a relief on my part to turn as well, looking for him as I’d been itching to do this entire time. I spied him several feet back, far away from the group, and no one had to ask if he had been successful. The wide grin on his face, stretching from ear to ear, said it all.

He held up his prize and waggled it over his head. “Easy.”

I growled in vexation. Great. That meant I’d somehow have to alter the wards with Seaton in order to plug that hole. How, I did not know. I’m currently open to suggestions, as Jamie liked to put it.

Jamie sighed as well. “That answers that question. Even if he didn’t do it exactly the same, our thief likely probably used something similar to this tactic. Eddy, you’re worth your weight in gold. I owe you ten books.”

To my surprise, he shook his head.

“No, Detective. I’m right glad you called me in for this. It’s my job, too, to keep things like this from happening. I should have warned someone this was a possibility. I won’t take the payment.” Eddy turned and looked me dead in the eye. “I’ll help you, Doctor. Let’s make sure this can’t happen again.”

Well. Someone had matured more than physically since I’d seen him last. I was pleasantly surprised at the change. And if that was his attitude, then I might be willing to accept the help. Heaven knew, I hadn’t seen or heard a thing while he was switching the book in and out of multiple places. This wasn’t something I could have easily tested on my own.

For the first time in our acquaintance, I returned his smile. “I’ll need your help, Mr. Jameson. And am thankful for it.”

Because I was afraid Henri really was going to lose hair at this rate, I offered to cook him dinner that night, with a movie afterwards. He took me up on it readily, and I managed to put a call in to my grocer’s and get all the ingredients for curry delivered to my apartment at the right time.

It was something of a trick, as I had to swing by the book broker’s first and close the scene down, then release Foster, Gerring, and Niamh for the day. Collect cats, all that fun stuff. Going back and forth like that cost me a lot of time. Niamh kept hassling the taxi drivers, too, trying to find out who had picked up Walcott, but at this hour, it was impossible. People were scurrying all over the city. It was better to leave a note with the supervisor at the taxi station, talk with people tomorrow when they got in from their shifts. I told her it was a fool’s errand to try and pursue it today, but she didn’t like being thwarted.

She promised to follow up tomorrow before finally going off. With that settled, I raced back to my apartment. I’m using the word “raced” with full sarcasm because there was no way you could cross the city quickly at that hour. Even sacrifices to the traffic gods got you nowhere.

Henri had swung by our favorite sweets shop and picked up a chocolate cake (which tells you something about his stress level). After a full plate of curry, we dove into the cake with relish.

I’d fully intended to put the movie on after we ate dinner, but instead we ended up on the couch, my legs draped over his, with his hand in my lap as I gently massaged his palm. He was steadily relaxing, and every now and then he would breathe in deeply, a little murmur of contentment escaping him.

He was really cute like this. I wanted to pinch his cheeks.

“Where is the trio?” he asked, as if only now realizing we had an absence of furballs.

“We got home to reports of a rat somewhere in the building next door,” I answered, still focused on his hand. He’d rolled his sleeves up, and I was thinking his wrist and forearm needed to be next.

“You mean to tell me they worked a full day and still had the energy to go chase a rat?”

“Are you kidding? Hunting is the best game ever for them. They lit up and were all sparkly even as they dashed off. I’m pretty sure it’s become a competition at this point to see who gets to the rat first.”

“Ah. Of course.” He settled back another inch, eyes drooping. “I meant to ask. Are you still pursuing your goal?”

“Of…?”

“Sending another journal to your family.”

“That? Yeah, you bet. I haven’t written anything the past three days, but I can catch up.”

I glanced at the laptop, where it was sitting on the coffee table. The solar-powered battery still sat in the window, a silent testament to the fact that I’d not used the laptop today. Sunlight was the only way to charge it.

When my family had first gathered up the laptop, Kindles, and external hard drives full of goodies, I’d vowed to do something in return. And I knew the thing they wanted most was to hear how I was doing over here. It wasn’t possible to tell them everything during our quarterly calls to each other. We didn’t have enough time. So, I hit upon the idea of keeping an electronic journal and saving it all to a thumb drive. It was easy to send to Earth since it was light, and it would help catch them up in detail.

I was also translating over all the cases Henri had written down already. He’d started when he first met me, and it gave my family a good idea of what he was like, since he didn’t participate much during the calls.

My mother was tickled I was dating a gentleman. I