Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

“And it feels good to talk about it,” she continues, “after so many years of reading, reading, reading.” She pauses and sips her tea. “You will speak of this to no one?”

I shake my head. No one.

“Very well,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I am a novice in a fellowship known as the Unbroken Spine. It is more than five hundred years old.” Then, primly: “As old as books themselves.”

Wow. Lapin, just a novice? She must be eighty years old.

“How did you get started?” I venture.

“I was one of his customers,” she says. “I had been going to the store for, oh, six or seven years. I was paying for a book one day—I remember this so clearly—when Mr. Penumbra looked me in the eye and said, ‘Rosemary’”—she does a good Penumbra impression—“‘Rosemary, why do you love books so much?’

“And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’” She’s animated, almost girlish now: “‘I suppose I love them because they’re quiet, and I can take them to the park.’” She narrows her eyes. “He watched me, and he didn’t say a word. So then I said, ‘Well, actually, I love books because books are my best friends.’ Then he smiled—he has a wonderful smile—and he walked over and got on that ladder, and climbed higher than I’d ever seen him climb.”

Of course. I get it: “He gave you a book from the Waybacklist.”

“What did you call it?”

“Oh, the—you know, the shelves in back. The code books.”

“They are codex vitae,” she says, pronouncing it precisely. “Yes, Mr. Penumbra gave me one, and he gave me the key to decode it. But he said it was the only key he would ever give me. I would have to find the next on my own, and the next after that.” Lapin frowns a little. “He said it wouldn’t take long to become one of the unbound, but it’s been very difficult for me.”

Wait: “The unbound?”

“There are three orders,” Lapin says, and ticks them off on thin fingers: “Novice, unbound, and bound. To become one of the unbound, you solve the Founder’s Puzzle. It’s the store, you see. You go from one book to another, decoding each one, finding the key to the next. They’re all shelved in a particular way. It’s like a tangle of string.”

I get it: “That’s the puzzle I solved.”

She nods once, frowns, and sips her tea. Then, as if suddenly remembering: “You know, I was a computer programmer once.”

No way.

“Back when they were big and gray, like elephants. Oh, it was hard work. We were the first to do it.”

Amazing. “Where was this?”

“Pacific Bell, just down on Sutter Street”—she waves a finger toward downtown—“back when the telephone was still very high-tech.” She grins and flutters her eyelashes theatrically. “I was a very modern young woman, you know.”

Oh, I believe it.

“But it’s been such a long time since I used a machine like that. It never even crossed my mind to do what you did. Oh, even though this”—she waves a hand at the heap of books and papers—“has been such a chore. Struggling from one book to the next. Some of the stories are good, but others…” She sighs.

There’s a clatter of footfalls outside, a bright chorus of squawks, and then a fast knocking at the door. Lapin’s eyes go wide. The knocking doesn’t stop. The door is vibrating.

Lapin pushes herself up out of her chair and turns the knob and there is Tyndall, eyes wide, hair wild, standing with one hand on his head, the other poised in mid-knock.

“He’s gone!” he cries, careening into the room. “Called to the library! How can it be?” He’s pacing in quick circles, repeating himself, a coil of nervous energy coming unspun. His eyes glance over to me, but he doesn’t stop or slow down. “He’s gone! Penumbra is gone!”

“Maurice, Maurice, calm down,” Lapin says. She steers him into her chair, where he collapses, squirming and fidgeting.

“What will we do? What can we do? What must we do? With Penumbra gone…” Tyndall trails off, then cocks his head toward me: “Can you run the store?”

“Wait, hold on,” I say. “He’s not dead. He’s just—didn’t you just say he’s visiting a library?”

The look on Tyndall’s face tells a different tale. “He’s not coming back,” he says, shaking his head. “Not coming back, not coming back.”

That compound—more dread than curiosity now—is spreading into my stomach. It’s a bad feeling.

“Heard it from Imbert, who heard it from Monsef. Corvina is angry. Penumbra will be burned. Burned! This is the end for me! The end for you!” He waves a finger at Rosemary Lapin. Now her cheeks are trembling.

I don’t understand this at all. “What do you mean, Mr. Penumbra will be burned?”

Tyndall says, “Not the man, the book—his book! Just as bad, even worse. Better flesh than page. They will burn his book, just like Saunders, Moffat, Don Alejandro, the enemies of the Unbroken Spine. He, him, Glencoe, the worst—he had a dozen novices! All of them abandoned, lost.” He looks at me with damp, desperate eyes, and blurts, “I was almost finished!”

I really have gotten myself involved in a cult.

“Mr. Tyndall,” I say flatly, “where is it? Where is this library?”