Private Finished In Which The Book Can And Will Stare Back At You

Madison slid up the sleeve of her jacket to check her watch.

But then she remembered that it's 2018: Only old farts, the incredibly rich, the technologically impaired, and time travelers wear them anymore. As she was none of those things, her wrist remained completely naked.

And so, she slid her phone out of her pocket and check that instead.

"It's past my bedtime," Madison grumbled as the *9:47* shone soulless and bright on the lock screen. "I'll give this asshole until ten. And them I'm bouncing."

It wasn't her favorite dive in the Underground--let's be honest here, none of them were--but it was close to her shop, and the client in question absolutely insisted on it. It was rather worn down, maybe a level or two above "shabby", the kind of place where you'd expect shady characters to hang around. The booths were cramped, the cushions flat in some places and torn in others, she was *certain* a spring was poking her in the butt, and half the light in the joint were burned out.

At least the booze was real.

Maddy took another sip of her room-temp swill as the seconds bled away into minutes. Around her, the evening crowd of ruffians was starting to stumble in from their adventures in protection collection or whatever. She paid them no mind, but kept a hex ready on the tip of her tongue just in case. She was only here to take what was described as an incredibly unique book off the hands of an incredibly unhinged individual, based upon the incredibly broken English the person used in their hand-written notes that got stuffed through the mail slot in her store's door.

@Emy

The book didn't thunk when it hit the table. It was more like a schlorp.

Madison's eyebrow immediately arched in suspicion as the skittish figure across from her shoved it across the table. Something doesn't seem right. Oh, sure; the necromancer remembered clearly the broken English in the posting for the sale, and the correspondence with the yellow-eyed creature that followed.

She just wasn't expecting this... this horrible air about the book. Her soul magic wasn't powerful enough to pick up auras around inanimate objects, let alone other lifeforms--but as she sat there, hands flat on the table, her client looking ready to scream in gibberish and bolt at any moment, and the object wrapped in gauze between them, Madison couldn't shake this feeling that something awful hid underneath the wrapping.

"I'm going to inspect it first, if you don't mind," she said, the corner of her lip involuntarily twisted into a sneer. Madison gingerly lifted her hands off the table, placed them on the book--

--and it was like sticking her hands in a vat of bubble tea.

Madison let out a very un-Maddylike yelp and dropped the book, which definitely hit the table with a schlorp. Books aren't supposed to schlorp, or plop, or squish. They're supposed to thud. She rose from her chair, wiping her hands off on her black vest despite them being bone-dry to begin with. "What the hell is this, some kind of sick joke?"

"Magic."

The word rolled off Madison's tongue like a glob of extra-thick molasses, and about as easily.

"Magic, you say."

Looking down, Maddy's sapphire gaze was met by a number of creepy, squishy, incredibly and frighteningly real-looking eyes that seemed to simultaneously fixate on her and nothing at all at the same time. In the pit of her stomach, a heavy weight of apprehension grew and grew until it was almost unbearable.

There was... something about this book that seemed incredibly off. "It wants, you said? What does it want?"

It's an effing book. It doesn't want. Or it shouldn't, anyway.

The necromancer glanced down again at the book, locking eyes with the front cover. Her lip curled involuntarily as her fingers began to hover in the air above the book. Wisps of dark energy like she had rarely tasted before tickled her skin, sending a chill down her arm. She hesitated for a moment, breath caught in her throat. With a thought, she could reach out, wrap her hand around the threads of overwhelming dread emanating from the book, and immediately learn all of the secrets it held within its pages.

Madison forced herself to inch closer and closer to the mysterious book. She reached out, touched a stray strip of the gauze--

--and slid it back into place, covering the exposed eyes on the cover.

She leaned back in her chair again, suppressing a case of the jibblies that threatened to shake her. Madison tore her attention from the book and focused as hard as she could on the gray-skinned person in front of her. "And what kind of 'magic' would this... this thing give someone?"

Anything and everything, eh?

Skeptical as she was, Madison had to admit that a book of endless possibilities was quite an interesting prospect. For a brief moment, her thoughts turned to her own learnings, and how... "lacking" was a word that bruised the necromancer's ego just a little too much, so let's go with how "unrefined" her abilities to raise the dead happened to be. Hey, maybe this horrible little grimoire could teach her a thing or two about that. Maybe just a wee bit. Despite the client's broken ramblings, an inexplicable thought began to squirm in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind, whispering to her in a voice that was not her own.

A thousand dollars wasn't much, she thought to herself. Not for something like this. If this twitchy, neurotic person was correct, then the book could be worth ten, fifteen, even fifty times that. If it was all lies and glamours, then she could probably turn it around for a small profit to some sick bastard who loved weird shit like this decorating their bookcase and pushing up their reputation with the locals from "eccentric" to "maybe we should call the cops".

Madison reached for her jacket and produced a checkbook and a pen. "One grand for a book decorated in eyeballs. You have yourself a deal, friend."

As the gray-skinned man barely held back his glee in having sold the book, Madison wondered what he'd do with the money.

Drugs.

Probably drugs.

Just look at him. Listen to him. Carrying about with his more than the recommended number of arms protruding from his torso, his ashen skin, hazy eyes, and twitchy, tweaky mannerisms. And that broken English!

Yeah, definitely drugs.

...Maybe he's one of Fennick's clients.

Just as Madison was starting to second-guess the purchase, her mind was assaulted with visions. Memories of another time, another place--in which she didn't have to worry about hiding from the Narrow World, where she could practice her magic freely. Memories of flickering flames dancing on her fingertips before exploding into an inferno. Waves of water at her command, crashing against her enemies with a swipe of her hand. Even more tantalizingly, she saw herself walking through the dreams of others, spying on their deepest desires and fears.

Memories that she knew weren't real, but there they were all the same, as if she'd lived them a thousand times over.

Not memories... Promises?

The necromancer bolted out of her seat, nearly knocking it over. A cold sweat formed on her brow, her mouth opened to speak but the words failing to come to her. She blinked. Once, twice. Closed her trap, looked up and around to try and find the gray-skinned man--but he was gone.

What in the seven hells is this thing?

Madison hesitated for a moment before picking up the book and holding it tightly, a pulsating warmth seeping through her vest and into her skin. She had to find a place. A safe place. One away from prying eyes. One where she could be alone with the book, where she could work her magic, weaving her digits around the wispy remnants of the author's soul as it was bound to the horrible thing.

The bathroom! She swiftly made her way across the restaurant, pushing past an air-headed waitress, shouldering the door, and kicking open one of the stalls. Madison realized that she'd held her breath the entire time, since receiving the visions, and exhaled deeply.

Her fingers danced above the cover as she undid the wrapping, beholding the dozens of eyes that all seemed to be staring through her. "Let's see what secrets you hold," she whispered softly as she reached for any remnant of the being that authored the tome.