Is Your Dad Evil?

"Nah," Chloe said. "I'd just get in the way of your fun. Have fun committing crimes though," she smirked.

Chloe's book started to rattle around on top of the little coffee table. The whispers started up again. Chloe shifted her foot so that it was resting on top of the book, forcefully patting it down a few times with her toes, nearly kicking it. "Shut up," she said, looking at the book. "Nobody asked you." With that, the whispers died down into a mild grumbling, then silence.

"I'm really sorry about that," Chloe said. "I also hope you can't understand them, because that was one of the most... uh, completely disgusting things I've heard all month." She was blushing with embarrassment.

"It's a cursed book with a mind of its own," Chloe said. "It carries a lot of interesting arcane knowledge, but... it also has a lot of opinions about what I should be doing with my sex life. I was able to talk it into telling me what it knows without it, you know, taking control of my mind and stuff."

Chloe wasn't going to tell Max about the book's recommendations. They were vile. And maybe a little bit hot, if she was being completely honest, but mostly they were vile. A sound like distant laughter floated out of its pages.

"But yeah, either way. The police here aren't a huge fan of vigilante justice, since it's kind of against the law here. But good luck." She gave him a thumbs-up.

Chloe sighed. "It's for an interdisciplinary project between the biomagical department and my advisor," she said. "I made the mistake of reporting that one of the cursed books had a ritual for causing male pregnancy hidden in it. They tested it out and it worked, and now they want me to go back through and, ah, interrogate some of these books for more neat rituals like that one."

Chloe would much rather be doing something else with her research fellowship right now.

As Max proclaimed his innocence, the demon-girl just snickered. "Alright, alright. I'm sure you're an upstanding citizen. I'd really prefer it if you just reported this to the police, though, but..." Chloe's phone buzzed, then buzzed again, and again, from a rapid fire of texts messages. "Yeah. You're not getting into the cursed book repository. You'll die or go crazy, probably."

She pulled her phone out and read something on it. "Ok. He hangs out in the dirty part of the docks. So, southwest end of the island, away from most of the city. If you find a bar called The Briny Depths, you're in the right area. And apparently everyone hates him, so you can just... ask around and they'll point you to him, I suppose." She pocketed the phone. "That's about as good as I can do for you. Sorry there isn't an address."