Skin In The Game

Standing well back from the fierce heat of the blaze, the gaggle of onlookers watching the unexpected conflagration were not surprised the building was burning so furiously. Some even smiled wryly as they pointed out to each other that Three-Bs was, after all, full of books.

The firefighters at the scene had less conviction. When it came to fires, they knew their stuff. And this fire was far too hot.

Later, sifting through the wreckage, they became increasingly perplexed. On inspection, what had at first seemed unusual began to look downright impossible. Their experienced eyes found none of the tell-tale signs that might have explained the sheer intensity of the heat. Even more inexplicable was the perimeter of the fire. It had burned a four-story building to the ground, yet the buildings on either side had not been so much as smoke damaged. In some of the more well-to-do parts of town this would not have been remarkable; those houses all had their own grounds. However, on this particular street it was beyond explanation. The bookshop that had been incinerated so utterly was in the middle of a terrace.

As the most experienced of the fire crew remarked to his captain, “I’ve never seen anything like it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that whatever caused this isn’t natural.”

He laughed. It was a daft thought that belonged at the end of a long shift, so he let it go. However, his boss, who was a more thoughtful man by nature, gazed curiously for a while longer at the debris. Something was not quite right.

*

“Where did you get this?” he snapped at Tiffany with the waspish air of a schoolmaster who suspected her of plagiarism.

She had only needed one look at his sharp, bitter face to decide that she did not like the book dealer. Up close he smelt of mothballs, and the very air about him seemed drier than regular air. Colder too, like being in a desert at night. Putting this strange thought aside, she answered his question with the misleading truth she had worked out earlier.

“Inna house clearance,” she said, exaggerating her East London accent into a twanging, full-blown Cockney.

This was true, in a sense. She did work for a company that did house clearances, although on this occasion it was not business but a personal matter that had led to the discovery. Her mind flickered for the briefest of moments to Gran, her worn body seeing out its days in a care home, her mind drifting in and out of her head and wherever else it went when the old lady could not be reached by Tiffany, nor anyone else.

It was in one of her lucid spells that she had given Tiffany instructions to find the trunk in her attic. She had begun to explain something, her eyes piercing her granddaughter with an intensity Tiffany had never seen in them before, her voice hoarse with urgency, but she had succumbed to a savage coughing fit, and when she was able to speak again her eyes had gone dull, her train of thought had chugged away on a track Tiffany could not follow.

“Is it yours to sell? Are you the legal owner of this, er, item?” He spoke with a sour grimace that suggested his words had a bad taste.

Tiffany would have smiled at the ridiculousness of a book dealer standing in his own dusty bookshop who had such aversion to saying the word book, but there was an unflinching severity about him that seemed to prohibit all expressions of amusement in his presence. Even his question had sounded like an accusation.

“Yeah. It’s mine. I got papers to prove it, only I didn’t bring ‘em wiv me. Gimme it back and I’ll come back wiv ‘em another time.”

Still laying on the accent as thick as she could she reached out for the book and saw that she had calculated this move correctly. He physically recoiled from her at the suggestion that she might leave his lair before he had acquired her treasure.

She had seen his features spasm when she had first drawn out the “er, item” for him to look at. Perhaps it was not a conventional expression of surprise, but his face looked as though it had forgotten how to show any emotion that was not closely related to ‘extreme disapproval’. In truth, she had been studying his reaction carefully and it had only confirmed her suspicion that she had something valuable in her hands.

He had then taken minutes poring over it, holding it with the deference archaeologists show to particularly ancient artifacts. He turned it over in his bony, desiccated hands. Its black surface caught the light like a magpie’s wing, only with the unsettling sensation that it passed beyond the usual colour spectrum and reflected something else, something felt, something that was not quite of this world. It was magnificent but strangely terrible. Tiffany tried to conceal a shudder looking at it, although his voracious eyes showed no unease, only an avaricious glint as though they wanted to absorb it with the intensity of their gaze.

She had been glad when he laid it open, hiding its strange cover from view, and began peering at the exquisite lettering and the subtle, complicated illustrations with a magnifying glass that he had retrieved like a magic trick from somewhere inside the funereal suit that clung tightly to him like a snake’s skin.

She wondered if he understood the meaning of the strange language, the beautiful symbols, any more than she did? They drew her eyes like they were possessed of some arcane sorcery that had been lost to the world. She had never seen anything like this book, and she could not imagine the skill of the hand that had crafted such an object. She doubted anyone alive could still have mastery of whatever esoteric lineage had committed these secrets to paper, but perhaps the book dealer had some knowledge of what he held?

“No, no, no!” he cried, in reply to her suggestion of taking back the book, strangling the last negative as it left his lips, realising too late that this involuntary reaction had not been prudent. It might alert the grubby girl with the British accent how desperately he wished to acquire it. Though she did look a dull creature and certainly had no idea of its true value. This pleased him greatly, although he made no sign of it.

It was a mark of his greedy nature that his next instinct was to consider how little money he could get her to accept for it.

“Well then, my dear,” he began, and even to him the words sounded as hollow as though he had never said them before. Which, of course, he had not, but these were the most special of special circumstances, and so Bellingham, of Brooks and Bellingham Books, decided to alter the policy of a lifetime and to be nice to someone. Well, perhaps that is going too far, but he did, in what was still a marked shift from his previous seventy-four years of existence, try to give the appearance of being nice to someone. All in the name of swindling her, of course.

“This is indeed an interesting item,” he continued diffidently. “Certainly, I have seen many like it down the years,” the lie rolled smoothly off his tongue, “but I will grant you it is not without rarity value. Would you care to listen to a financial offer for it?”

He thought he had judged this well. She must know it was valuable so he could hardly pretend it was worthless, could he? And, even though she gave the appearance of being somewhat slow-witted, her eyes moved too fast, watched him too closely for him to believe she was as ignorant as she seemed.

She nodded at him, even as he whetted his lips and wondered how much she expected to get for it.

“Then perhaps we can make a quick deal? I assume a young lady like you would appreciate cash?”

The grimy face did not even flicker in response, so he ploughed on.

“What would you say to a thousand dollars, in cash, my dear?”

He thought it was a large offer, but he wanted the book more than anything in his life, so decided it was easiest to start high and get the deal done swiftly.

To his great surprise, she let out a guffaw of laughter.

“Don’t be daft mate!” she howled in derision. “Not on your nelly! Hand it over. And I won’t be coming to see you again with the next one neither.” She shook her head in feigned exasperation that Bellingham barely registered as he took in her last sentence.

At the mention of another volume his eyebrows raised, his chest contracted in surprise. Just as Tiffany had known they would.

“You have another one?” he hissed, almost breathless.

“Never you mind about that. Do you want this one?”

Losing his cool for the first time in decades the bookseller, whose head was fairly spinning, blurted out that he did.

“Then make me a proper offer…”

They haggled for a while. On his side was the fact that she wanted a quick sale. The longer she was in possession of the book the more uncomfortable Tiffany became. If it had not seemed completely over the top, she might have described her mood as one of mounting dread. She realised she was absolutely petrified of the little black book. It seemed somehow dangerous. She had to hold her nerve just to stop herself running right out of his dusty sanctum so long as he promised to take it from her. Although, fortunately for her, Bellingham did not realise this.

They settled on $20,000, payable immediately via online banking. They were both happy with this sum, although both pretended not to be.

The old man was not pleased about the financial record this would leave but he had fudged the books before for situations far less deserving. Unbeknownst to Tiffany, he was contemplating the last deal he would ever need to make. He had conservatively estimated that a man with the right black-market contacts and lack of scruples could sell the book for a thousand times what he was paying for it. And he was just such a man.

He got her to sign over ownership more out of habit than necessity, as there would be no paper trail for this sale. Only once he had impressed upon her that he might pay even more for her second manuscript did he make the transfer.

Tiffany listened distractedly to the greedy voice as it rasped at her, sounding like it needed to be oiled. Unlike Bellingham, she knew that she had invented a second edition and so there would be no repeat transaction.

He saw that the strange young creature looked distracted and increasingly desperate to leave. Once her phone had confirmed the payment, she fairly flew out of the door.

However, his mind was too occupied to muse on this peculiar slip of a girl. His eyes turned with glee unconfined to his prize. Never in his life had he felt such jubilation.

Brooks materialised at his side. Bellingham had never got used to that trick, merely learned to hide his surprise.

His taciturn partner looked like he might speak but instead he bent silently over the newly acquired volume and began to inspect it.

Bellingham watched him as if in a trance. When Brooks’ eyes finally looked up, they were filled with wonder, excitement and a trace of disbelief. Bellingham’s own contained nothing but ill-fated triumph.

Forgetting the legend that it should never be named, an almost shell-shocked Brooks whispered his last words…

“Dragon skin!”