The Woman Who Died a Lot

“She’s really funny, you’ll like her.”

“Is she an . . . elder sister? The sort that takes a bath quite often and who never locks the door?”

“Not at all,” she said, giving him a thump. “She’s my younger sister.”

“Blast.”

“If he carries on as he is,” said Landen under his breath, “I may have to kill him myself.”

“Don’t even think about it. The world needs Gavin—or his intellect anyhow—and Tuesday seems to be fond of him in an unfathomable sort of way. Besides, if they can figure out how to make the shield work, Joffy in the cathedral and the felons up at Wroughton don’t get fried, Swindon gets to keep the hundred million pounds from Smite Solutions, and the library gets some funding. Best of all, I don’t have to transport a righteous man around all tomorrow morning. You know how tiresome those can be.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Children first.”

We stood there in silence for a while, contemplating the unusual turn of events and the mixed feelings they engendered. We were glad that Tuesday had a boyfriend, just disappointed it had to be Gavin.

“What now?” asked Landen.

“I need to get back to the office. Duffy and Spoons will be organizing a garage sale to try to fund the library service.”

Landen said he would drop me there on his way home. I could use my official car to get home, or call a taxi.

“We can drop into Image Ink on the way,” he added.

“Okay—but let’s not forget this time.”

34. Thursday: Evening

John de Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine tell-all of 1209, Bonkeing Kinges for Pleasure and Profite, was the first true celebrity bio. Despite receiving rave reviews and a massive two-figure advance for a sequel, the book did not find favor with King John, Eleanor’s son, and de Hepburn was found dead the following winter, having apparently “Atempted to swim, with dire foolishness, the river Cherwell while disporting himself chained to an anvile.”

James Finisterre,

Genres in Classical Literature

I spent the rest of the day at the library, trying to change the large quantity of salable equipment that Duffy and Spoons had earmarked into cash. The difficulty was not in finding a buyer— there was a lot of good stuff there—but persuading the banks to agree to a line of credit ahead of the sales. They wouldn’t be working tomorrow, because the financial center was to be evacuated as a precaution due to the upcoming smiting, so it was imperative that this was sorted before the end of the day. If it wasn’t, by the time the banks reopened on Monday morning, the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service would be bankrupt and closed, the rubber stamps would have fallen silent, and all chance of retrieving overdue books would be gone forever.

I’d called home several times to see how Friday was getting on at the timepark. Millon had gone with him to keep us advised of progress, but other than a call on a landline to say that Friday had donned a gravity suit and gone in, there was no news. If he had to go “deep slow” at the timepark to find the Manchild, he might not be out for hours.

Twice during the afternoon, I had my hand on the red phone and the emergency hotline to Nancy at the World League of Librarians, but each time Duffy laid his hand on mine, telling me this was not anywhere near a serious enough emergency, leaving me wondering just what was. But he was right. By the time early evening had rolled around, I had negotiated a half-million-pound overdraft. We now had two whole days in which to figure out our financial problems.

I dropped down to the subbasement as soon as I was done to see how Finisterre and Phoebe Smalls were doing with the palimpsests.

“We’re working through the pages of Brothels of Dorset on Sixpence a Day one leaf at a time,” replied James, whose eyes were looking tired from comparing hundreds of pictures, “and we’ve managed to source where the manuscripts he reused might have come from—mostly mass-copied cookbooks and celebrity bios.”

Phoebe held up a scan of one of the palimpsests, the old writing running under the new.

“This was originally a page from the thirteenth-century bestseller Parsnipe Cooking with Olive of Jamestown, which was the first cookbook to have a production run of over two figures.”

James held up another example of lost and recovered writing.