Page 56 of Seer
The room smelled of dust and old paper.
I turned to the others. Greg was pale again, staring blankly at the haphazard mountain of books. Well, he and I were on the same page for once.
I told Greg, Edgar, and Bettina, “We need face masks, gloves, and dust cloths before I’m setting foot in there.”
We ended up commandeering the room next door, which was a guest room Delphia had apparently meant for me and Greg to share. There was only one bed, so I was glad we’d dodged that bullet. We’d figure out sleeping arrangements later.
Aileen appeared with my cleaned and repaired backpack. She’d also brought several Wonders, who she efficiently directed to move the furniture out of the guest room and to bring in a couple of tables and some chairs. She took one look inside the book room, then closed her eyes and shook her head before turning her back on it.
While I would’ve preferred to catalog the books as we examined them, we didn’t have that kind of time. We brought a stack of books out of the room, then each of us would grab a book, dust it off, and decide whether it might have information about fog monsters in it. Any books needing a closer look were stacked on one of the tables. The others were put in a corner to eventually be moved back into the book room, though I suspected we’d just created a second book room.
Aileen set us up with a bucket of clean dusting cloths and another bucket to put the dirty ones in. She or someone else came by regularly to switch the dirty cloths out for clean ones.
After two hours we only had five books set aside to look at later, and about 200 stacked in the corner. Some of the books were in other languages, and we’d had to google translations of the titles, which took extra time.
Greg’s phone chimed, and after checking it he said, “Lloyd and Silvia have arrived, and Mom’s got lunch for us in the dining room.”
“Great, I could use a break.” I stood up and stretched. Greg watched my t-shirt ride up my stomach. I pulled it down self-consciously, and he looked away.
We all washed up and went to the kitchen.
A tall Black man with salt and pepper hair and a wolf as his second self was standing next to the kitchen island talking to Delphia. At his side was a short older Hispanic woman with sparkly glasses propped on her head.
Greg greeted these two with hugs, and then he introduced me to them. Bettina and Edgar already knew Lloyd, but they were excited to meet Silvia.
As we walked to the dining room, I ended up next to her. I said, “I just found out about all this a few days ago.”
She smiled and latched onto my arm with an amazingly strong grip. “I’m so glad it’s not only me. Lloyd is everything I ever wanted in a partner, but my poor brain is having trouble absorbing that these Wonders actually exist.”
I patted her hand. “I understand completely.”
After lunch Edgar, Bettina, Greg, and I got back to work. We’d made a decent dent in the books, and we could walk several feet into the room. I looked for anything that wasn’t a book in the hopes it could be the mysterious Elven weapon an old armadillo shifter named Karsha had told Bettina about when she was a teenager.
I managed to reach a small vase with the remains of a desiccated flower inside, but that was it. The rest would have to wait until we got through more books.
When we had ten books to look at, we took turns examining them while the other three continued to go through the stacks in the book room. Most of them were duds. From a fog monster perspective at least.
I itched to read some of the books. We’d found one that claimed to be a history of Elves on Earth. Another was titled “Representation of the Wolf Shifter in Popular Novels”. It’d been published in 1932.
I checked in with Steve in the afternoon, but he said everything was going fine at work. The first draft of the contracts defining our separation from Rogues Gallery as employees but retaining our intellectual property ownership was almost ready. I told Steve I’d be back in Bent Oak hopefully tomorrow but by Thursday at the latest.
We stopped for the day at 6pm. I felt good about the progress we’d made, and I suspected we might finish going through all the books by the end of the day tomorrow.
Greg said, “Let’s find out where Aileen put our bags. There’s time to get a shower before dinner if you’d like.”
“Ugh, yes,” I groaned. I felt like book dust had settled into my pores.
I followed Greg down the hall. Aileen apparently had an office somewhere on the ground floor of the house. The building was silent.
“Where are all the people?” I asked Greg, idly admiring his ass in his jeans as we walked. “Does everyone we saw when we arrived live somewhere else?”
He sort of hunched in on himself. “They live on the property. This building is mostly offices, though my family and a few other people like Aileen live here. Mom asked most of the others to stay away while we’re visiting so my anxiety doesn’t get triggered.”
I decided then and there that Delphia could be as pushy as she wanted to be, and I’d never say a word. I’d kill to have a mother who’d clear out an entire houseful of people to make sure her son wasn’t uncomfortable.
“She’s invited several good friends for dinner, so it’ll be a little more lively than lunch was.”
“Okay. Um, I’m guessing Aileen wasn’t here when you were a kid?” I could not see her leaving two children to fend for themselves if she could help it.
