“You certainly have a beautiful catalogue. How could you ever part with any of these?”
“Part? This is a library. We’re all so concerned with hoarding our ancient volumes, we never correlate what we know. I’m trying, here, with what I’m doing, to get a little cooperation out of you misers. I open my library if you open yours. End result, if I can get this off the ground, any student of the old ways who doesn’t share his knowledge with the rest of us will find himself comparatively ignorant. You’re fairly young to be interested.”
“My sire made sure I was. Reason he turned me, I think.”
“Your sire?”
“A rather unpleasant fellow, to be sure,” I said, “but he left me a rare collection when he left this world.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making it available? So many of our kind seem alien to me. There’s no continuation. The history, the secrets, they don’t care, and why? I don’t think they even know that they don’t know. They vaguely understand they have to avoid crosses. They learn by trial and error what constitutes a home or an invitation, what lines they can and can’t cross. Half of them have no connection to any house, just bastards left out in the cold. They have no buy in, but maybe they could, if those who know, those like you, would share.”
“Knowledge is power,” I said. Tossing the catalogue back on his table, I thought it through. Biting my lip, I made my offer: “But some of these, a copy would certainly help complete a few missing points. Thing is, your list, I’m afraid I don’t have any of the titles you’d accept for a buy in.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Blood’s truth, mon ami. I’ve been hunting for The Canticles myself. Fact is, I only know about a third of the titles on your wish list there. Like you said, I’m fairly young, at least by the standard of you lore keepers. I doubt I have anything you’d call rare. Fact is, I want you to succeed ’cause it’s about the only hope I’d have of getting to read any of these without killing anyone or leastways getting some powerful vampires in my debt, somehow. But, you see, I was in a situation, recently, where I was allowed to, as a favor, to make a hand copy of . . . ” I looked around, but dawn was coming and the floor was near empty. With a lowered voice, I said, “The Blood Rites of Oakenhelm.”
His dark eyes lit up.
“Like I said. I copied it out, but I was pressed. I only had time to grab the passages I needed for—well that’s its own story. The whole thing was a friend of a friend sort of situation, and the guy who owned it didn’t know he was loaning his book, if you understand me. A few years later cameras became really good. I might have had a perfect copy had things worked out differently.” He was nodding vigorously at my tale. “I can share my notes. I worked the black rose ritual afterwards off of them just fine.”
“Yes,” he smiled with a cat-like grin, “I might accept that as the better part of the entry fee. That, and the name, if you will, of the owner.”
I returned the smile.
“Well, that seems fair, just, tit for tat. Let me have that loan of The Canticles. I’ll write down the name. He’s here at the fair, you see, and if you’re going to touch him for his books, he might start tracing things back. I think you’ll be surprised when you find out whose copy it was.”
I watched his beady little eyes as he thought my offer over.
“You have a deal, Marqui,” he said, extending his hand.
I grasped it. Fat, it felt boneless as I squeezed.
We settled the details of the transaction, and I went away smiling. I’d get The Canticles for a few useless scribbles, and I’d set that pear shaped loon on old Gregory. I wondered if the crazy librarian would get any books from him. Unlikely, but then again, I’d been able to steel his copy of The Blood Rites. Where there’s a will . . .
Tale Told 