Standing on the library stairs a few steps above him there is a man wearing a peacoat, the collar turned up around a heavy wool scarf. His dark hair is greying at the temples, framing a face that would be called handsome if the word rugged or unconventionally were attached to it. He wears black dress pants and shiny shoes but Zachary cannot remember seeing him at the party.
In one of his black-gloved hands he holds Sweet Sorrows.
“You took that from me,” Zachary says.
“No, someone else took it from you and I took it from them,” the man explains, walking down the stairs and stopping next to Zachary. “You’re welcome.”
The hairs on the back of Zachary’s neck recognize the voice before the rest of him does. This man is his storyteller.
“There are people following you who want this book,” the man continues. “They currently believe they have this book. What we have now is a window of time where they will not follow you, a window that will close in approximately half an hour when they realize that this has gone missing. Again. Come with me.”
The man puts Sweet Sorrows in his coat and starts walking, passing by Patience and turning south. He doesn’t look back. Zachary hesitates and then follows.
“Who are you?” Zachary asks when he catches up with the man at the street corner.
“You can call me Dorian,” the man says.
“Is that your name?”
“Does it matter?”
They cross the street in silence.
“So what’s the flower for?” Zachary asks, holding up the paper-petaled blossom between fingers near-numb from the cold.
“I wanted to see if you’d follow instructions,” Dorian answers. “Passable, though that’s not an actual flower. At least you’re good at improvising.”
Dorian takes the flower from Zachary, gives it a little twirl, and tucks it in a buttonhole on his coat.
Zachary shoves his freezing hands into his pockets.
“You haven’t even asked who I am,” he notes, confused as to how someone can be so intriguing and yet annoying at the same time.
“You are Zachary Ezra Rawlins. Zachary, never Zack. Born March eleventh, nineteen ninety, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Relocated to upstate New York in two thousand four with your mother shortly after your parents divorced. You’ve been attending university in Vermont for the last five-and-a-half years, currently working on a thesis on gender and narrative in modern gaming. You have a very high GPA. You’re an introvert with minor anxiety issues, there are several people you are friendly with but no truly close friends. You’ve been in two serious romantic relationships and both ended badly. Earlier this week you checked a book out of a library and subsequently the book in question was indexed in a computer system making it traceable and since then the book, and you along with it, have been followed. You aren’t that difficult to follow but additionally they’re mapping your phone and they planted a tracking device on you that you fortunately left at your hotel. You like well-crafted cocktails and fair-trade cocoa and you probably should have worn a scarf. I know who you are.”
“You forgot I’m a Pisces,” Zachary says through gritted teeth.
“I thought that was implied with the inclusion of your birth date,” Dorian says with a small shrug. “I’m a Taurus, if we get through this I should ask your mother to do my chart.”
“What do you know about my mother?” Zachary asks, exasperated. He rushes to keep up with Dorian’s pace and each intersection they reach brings a fresh blast of freezing air that cuts through his coat. He has stopped checking street signs but believes they are moving southeast.
“Madame Love Rawlins, spiritual adviser,” Dorian says as they turn again. “Only lived in Haiti until she was four but affects the accent sometimes because the customers tend to like it. Specializes in psychometry and dabbles in tarot and tea leaves. You lived above her store in New Orleans. That’s where the door that you didn’t open was, right?”
Zachary wonders how he could possibly know about the door but then the simple answer dawns on him.
“You’ve read the book.”
“I skimmed the first few chapters, if you can call them chapters. I wondered why you seemed so attached to it, now I understand. They must not know that you’re in it, otherwise they would be much more interested in you and they’re very book-focused at the moment.”
“Who are they?” Zachary asks as they turn down a wider street that he recognizes as Park Avenue.
“A bunch of cranky bastards who think they’re doing the right thing when right in this case is subjective,” Dorian says, bristling in such a fashion that Zachary guesses the crankiness might be personal and probably goes both ways. “I can give you the history lesson but not now, we don’t have time.”
“Where are we going, then?”
“We are going to their U.S. headquarters which is fortunately a few blocks from here,” Dorian explains.
“Wait, we’re going to them?” Zachary asks. “I don’t—”