look for. And you’re a storyteller.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means you have an affinity for our area of interest.”
“Literary charity, right? I didn’t think literary charities had this much of a secret-society vibe.”
“The charitable organization is a front and you knew that,” the lady said. “Do you believe in magic, Miss Hawkins?”
“In an Arthur C. Clarke sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic type magic or actual magic-magic?”
“Do you believe in the mystical, the fantastical, the improbable, or the impossible? Do you believe that things others dismiss as dreams and imagination actually exist? Do you believe in fairy tales?”
I think my stomach fell into my feet because I have literally always been the kid who believes in fairy tales but I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t a kid, I was a twenty-something in a cocktail bar who never feels old enough to drink so I said, “I don’t know.”
“You do,” the lady said, sipping her martini again. “You just don’t know how to admit it.”
I probably made a face at her but I don’t remember.
I asked what she wanted from me.
“I want you to leave this place with me and not return. You will leave your life and your name behind. You will aid me in protecting a place most people would not believe exists. You will have a purpose. And someday I will take you to that place.”
“I’m not really a someday baby, sorry.”
“Aren’t you? Hiding in your academic temples avoiding the real world.”
That, I thought, was a pretty low blow even if it was accurate but at that point she was pissing me off so I said, “Dude, if you have some fairy-tale place to be in why are you in the back of a bar talking to me?”
She gave me this weird look and I don’t know if it was because I called her dude or if it was something else and she stopped and thought about that more than most of the things I’d said, but then she just took a business card out of her pocket and slid it across the table at me.
It said Collector’s Club.
There was a phone number on it.
And a little sword at the bottom.
True confession: I was kind of tempted. I mean, how often does some old lady offer you a fairy-tale law-enforcement job like she’s the wonderland police? But something felt off and I like my name and the fact that she dodged the question about Z rubbed me the wrong way.
“Did Zachary accept your job offer or is he the one who burned down your clubhouse?” I asked, figuring it would be one or the other. From the look on her face it was the latter. The fake smile was back.
“I can tell you a great many things that you would like to know, but first you would have to agree to my terms. There is nothing for you here. Aren’t you curious?”
I was. I was super-duper curious. I was beyond curious. I thought about telling her I’d think about it if she let me talk to Z or if she could prove he was alive but I didn’t get the sense she was the bargaining type. If I didn’t follow her now I was never going to see this lady again.
“I don’t think so,” I told her. She looked legit disappointed and then composed herself again.
“Is there anything I can say that might change your mind?” she asked.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked, even though I knew whatever she said wasn’t going to change anything.
The smile I got for that question was real.
“Once upon a time I sacrificed an eye in exchange for the ability to see,” she said. “I’m sure you know magic requires sacrifices. For years I could see the whole story. It doesn’t work anymore, not here, because I made a decision and it left me with hazy versions of the now. Sometimes I miss the clarity, but again, sacrifices.”
I almost believed her. I stared at her and that cloudy blue eye stared back at me and caught the light from one of those vintage bulbs above us and it wasn’t a cataract at all, it was a swirling stormy sky, clear as anything. A crack of lightning flashed across it.
I downed the rest of my sidecar, grabbed my book and my bag and my coat with my stupid, sticky hands, and stood up, and lifted the book to my forehead, and saluted her.
I left the business card on the