Work Text:
There is a dusty bookshop in New York City.
It’s well-hidden, for all that it is only bare steps away from Grand Central Station. It’s shadowed by tall concrete-and-glass towers, hidden between elegant but nondescript offices and trendy but soulless restaurants. If people saw it, they would remark on it—a small, Victorian rowhouse, seemingly the only survivor in a storm of modernity, a single glimpse into the New York City that once was and, in some dimensions, might still be. The stone of the bookshop is red, a splash of vibrant colour against black and white streets, while the windows are outlined in dark blue.
There is no name hanging above the double-breasted doors, heavy oak inlaid with silver and reinforced with iron. Iron for the fey, silver for most other creatures. The proprietor of this bookshop knows the power in names, and they’ve avoided naming it anything in particular. It is simply the shop, or the store, or most often, the bookstore.
It is not a bookstore like any other. Inside, rows and rows of books are double stacked on the shelves and piled high on the floors. There is no organization, no handy signs to tell anyone that they’re in Biographies, or Mysteries or even Fantasy and Science Fiction. This isn’t the sort of bookshop where one walks in, examining covers and titles and authors, reading the back of the book blurb to decide whether one is interested in buying the wares on sale. No, this is a bookshop where the book chooses the reader, and not the other way around.
This bookstore is magic, part of a network of hundreds of magical shops hidden in the world. As far as magic goes, it is not one of the most powerful shops—those ignoble honours belong to a cheese shop in California, a wine store in Britain, and a tea shop in Japan. But this bookstore hosts something far more valuable than mere power, mere stored magic waiting to be released.
This bookstore hides knowledge.
Christina lounged against the counter, listening carefully to the three people stampeding up and down the stairs, her brother Christian in the chair beside her with his feet up and a book in hand. She could tell from the steady way that he stared at the page that he wasn’t reading, only listening. He hadn’t turned a page for at least seven minutes.
He didn’t need to listen so hard. Their guests were making no effort to be quiet, their footfalls crashing like thunder against her sensitive ears, and she caught snatches of excited conversation as they picked up books they had seen never before and never would again. Unless they bought them, that was.
“This is the most detailed explanation of nålebinding I’ve ever seen!” a woman crowed, and the stamp of feet suggested that she was practically dancing on the stairs as she came down. “Normally the only texts so detailed are in Danish or Norwegian or something, but with this, my cosplay—”
“I just found a copy of a key historical source I needed for my thesis,” another woman—a young woman, Christina corrected herself—said, sounding stunned. “I mean, I knew it existed, but a copy of my own—Luis, watch your step!”
There was a crash, and Christina winced. The stairs were curved, so there was little risk of anyone actually harming themselves by falling. Indeed, Luis would be the third person this week to fall because their nose was stuck in a book. “But Tori, this bestiary—”
“We can gawk over it later,” the second woman said, and Christina caught sight of the trio as they came into the front of the room. The woman speaking was tall and broad-shouldered, her brown hair thrown up into a ponytail at the back of her head, while she pulled a tall, string-thin man after her. Following behind them was a slight, svelte blonde woman, so pale that she could almost be a cousin to Christina and Christian.
Christian made no move to get up, so Christina took the books in hand as the tall woman—Tori, she recalled—put three volumes on the counter. Her nostrils flared slightly as she breathed in their scents, salt and seaweed and sandalwood. They smelled of the ocean. “Just these three?”
The bookstore wouldn’t let them buy more than three—it was a protective spell in the walls of the building itself, a minor psychic suggestion that they had found what they had been looking for and did not need more. Those with a great need would find themselves drawn back, but for the most part, people would never be able to return. The route would become obscured in their memories, and even if they tried to find it, they never would again. Christina found, however, that asking was an easy, mindless way to navigate the transaction while keeping track of the important things.
What did they sound like, in their heart of hearts? What did they smell like? What potential magic was she releasing into the world?
Whatever their smiles, these three smelled of sorrow and recent loss. Far below the sound of their voices, Christina heard mixed tears and laughter—joy at survival, but grief for their lost ones. The grief was strongest in the blonde woman, the one whose name she hadn’t heard, but it was there in all three of them.
“Yes,” Luis replied, pulling out his wallet, while Christina checked the books. A book on nålebinding, an old text of siren myths, and a heavily illustrated medieval bestiary. There was magic in all three books, but a surreptitious breath in showed that their hopeful owners could be trusted. These guests had lived harshness, and they had learned through pain that dangerous beasts were best left untested. They would guard these secrets wisely.
“That’ll be $72.91,” she said easily, showing no hint of her decision on her face. One motion of her hand could have Christian executing the security spells behind the bookstore, one that would throw these three onto the street with neither them, or anyone else, the wiser, but she didn’t need it this time. “And it’s cash only here, thanks.”
Mice are always hired to work the bookstore—mice, in their close-knit familial groups of twos and threes. The mundane media portray mice as being sweet, friendly, happy creatures; in truth, mice, being the most heavily hunted of all prey animals, are the most paranoid. Mice scent danger in the air, hear it in every movement, and given the right tools, are primed to react with extreme violence. Mice do not sell magic books to the dangerous, the ill-intentioned, the unworthy.
There can be no better guardian for the secrets of magic.