Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

Moffat: You were brilliant. You saw something that no one else in the whole history of the Unbroken Spine ever saw. You raced through the ranks, you became one of the bound, maybe just to get access to the Reading Room—and then you bound up their secrets in a book of your own. You hid them in plain sight.

It took me hearing them to get it.

It’s late, past midnight. I double-park Neel’s car in front of the apartment and bang the wide button that sets the hazard lights blinking. I jump out, heave the cardboard box from the passenger seat, and dash up the steps. My key scratches the lock—I can’t find it in the darkness, and my hands are full, and I’m vibrating.

“Mat!” I run to the stairs and call up to his room: “Mat! Do you have a microscope?”

There’s a murmuring, a faint voice—Ashley’s—and Mat appears at the top of the stairs, wearing just his boxer shorts, which are printed with a full-color reproduction of a Salvador Dalí painting. He’s waving a giant magnifying glass. It’s huge and he looks like a cartoon detective. “Here, here,” he says softly, scampering down to hand it off. “Best I can do. Welcome back, Jannon. Don’t drop it.” Then he hops back up the stairs and shuts his door with a quiet click.

I take the Gerritszoon originals into the kitchen and turn all the lights on. I feel crazy, but in a good way. Carefully, I lift one of the punches out of the box—the X again. I pull it out of its plastic bag, wipe it down with a towel, and hold it under the glare of the stove’s fluorescent light. Then I steady Mat’s magnifying glass and peer through.

The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father.

THE PILGRIM

IT IS ONE WEEK LATER, and I have got the goods, in more ways than one. I emailed Edgar Deckle and told him he had better come out to California if he wants his punches. I told him he had better come out to Pygmalion on Thursday night.

I invited everyone: my friends, the fellowship, all the people who helped along the way. Oliver Grone convinced his manager to let me use the back of the store, where they have A/V gear set up for book readings and poetry slams. Ashley baked vegan oat cookies, four plates of them. Mat set up the chairs.

Now Tabitha Trudeau sits in the front row. I introduce her to Neel Shah (her new benefactor) and he immediately proposes a Cal Knit exhibit that will have, as its focus, the way boobs look in sweaters.

“It’s very distinct,” he says. “The sexiest of all apparel. It’s true. We ran a focus group.” Tabitha frowns and knits her brows together. Neel goes on: “The exhibit could have classic movie scenes looping, and we could track down the actual sweaters they wore and hang them up…”

Rosemary Lapin sits in the second row, and next to her are Tyndall, Fedorov, Imbert, Muriel, and more—most of the same crowd that came out to Google on a bright morning not so long ago. Fedorov has his arms crossed and his face set in a skeptical mask, as if to say, I’ve been through this once before, but that’s okay. I’m not going to disappoint him.

There are two unbound brothers from Japan, too—a pair of young mop-haired men in skinny indigo jeans. They heard a rumor through the grapevine of the Unbroken Spine and decided it would be worth their while to find a last-minute flight to San Francisco. (They were correct.) Igor is sitting with them, chatting comfortably in Japanese.

There’s a laptop set up in the front row so Cheryl from Con-U can watch. She’s beaming in via video chat, her frizzy black hair taking up the whole screen. I invited Grumble to join in, too, but he’s on a plane tonight—headed for Hong Kong, he says.

Darkness blooms through the bookstore’s front door: Edgar Deckle has arrived, and he’s brought an entourage of New York black-robes with him. They aren’t actually wearing their robes, not here, but their attire still marks them as strange outsiders: suits, ties, a charcoal skirt. They come streaming through the door, a dozen of them—and then, there’s Corvina. His suit is gray and gleaming. He’s still an imposing dude, but here he seems diminished. Without all the pageantry and the backdrop of bedrock, he’s just an old— His dark eyes flash up and find me. Okay, maybe not that diminished.

Pygmalion’s customers turn to watch, eyebrows raised, as the black-robes march through the store. Deckle is wearing a light smile. Corvina is all sharp gravity.

“If you truly have the Gerritszoon punches,” he says flatly, “we will take them.”

I steel my spine and tilt my chin up a little. We’re not in the Reading Room anymore. “I do have them,” I say, “but that’s just the beginning. Have a seat.” Oh, boy. “Please.”

He flicks his eyes across the chattering crowd and frowns, but then he waves his black-robes into place. They all find seats in the last row, a dark bracket at the back of the assembly. Behind them, Corvina stands.

I grab hold of Deckle’s elbow as he passes. “Is he coming?”

“I told him,” he says, nodding. “But he already knew. Word travels fast in the Unbroken Spine.”