Rainy stared at the now-repaired umbrella in her hands. Hot tears of gratitude filled her eyes as she clutched her umbrella to her chest.
Was this the magic of the real world Maxine had told her about? This subtle, quiet magic of a stranger helping another stranger fix her broken umbrella in a public bathroom?
She almost liked this magic better than her own.
—
Exiting the bathroom,Rainy found herself in a lobby area filled with large posters on easels.
The first poster made her breath hitch.
Maxine.Rainy knew her like she knew her own face in the mirror. Maxine looked thirty or forty years old. She wore slim jeans and a chunky white sweater. Her hair was in a soft bob, and the large tabby cat in her arms looked magnificently grumpy yet blissfully content in that way only well-loved and terribly spoiled cats do.
Rainy tore herself away from the poster and went to the next one.
She also recognized it—the very Gothic cover of the first Rainy March novel. Under it, a caption read,
Published January 21, 1975, Lion House Books. While commonplace now, the Book Witch series was one of the first cozy mystery series to utilize paranormal elements. Since 1975, the Book Witch series has sold forty million copies and has been translated into over thirty-five languages. Publishers coined the term “Book Witch effect” to describe the surge in sales of older classic titles that accompanied every new Rainy March novel. After the release of book nine, for example,Dead Men Don’t Bite, sales ofTreasure Islandsurged, and the book briefly appeared on theNew York TimesBest Sellers List. Manhattan bookseller Petra Locke recalls, “I remember the month we couldn’t keepBeowulfin stock.Beowulf!And it wasn’t students buying it for a class. It wasn’t even homework. Rainy March had one of her adventures in the epic poem, aiding Beowulf in his hour of need after another character has deserted him. We sold a hundred copies or more in one week. That’s bestseller numbers for a book that was written in the tenth century. That’s the Book Witch effect in action.”
“Good for me,” Rainy said and would’ve patted herself on the back if she’d been alone.
The next poster displayed a timeline of the series from the first book in 1975 to the final book, published five years ago. Thirty-six books in total before Maxine was forced to retire from writing because of ill health. The last book, it said, was calledThe World Was Being Watched.It was set inside H. G. Wells’s classic science fiction thriller,The War of the Worlds.Rainy remembered this case well, because in her mind it had happened only a year ago. The main character had been captured by aliens, thus altering the ending of the story. It had been up to Rainy to rescue him. How could that have been five years ago? Book time, of course. Book time passed very differently than real time.
One date in particular stood out from the rest. October 1999. As the poster explained,In The Book Case Files of Rainy March, Book Witch #21,An Unreasonable Amount of Trouble,Maxine Blake introduced a loveinterest for Rainy in the form of the fictional Duke of Chicago. Sales, which had been lagging in the late nineties, rebounded, and the Duke soon became a regularly occurring character in the Book Witch series.
Rainy’s heart gave a little jump against her rib cage when she read Duke’s name. But the date? 1999?
“We’ve been in love for over twenty-five years? Well, it’s about time we got engaged, I guess.” She touched her ring, glad to find it had survived its trip into reality.
A young librarian in a polo shirt and khakis passed by pushing a book cart, then stopped to whisper, “They’re about to start, by the way.”
Rainy pointed to the poster. “Do you have any Duke of Chicago books?” She lowered her voice and whispered, “I’m a Ducky.”
“Oh…um…well, we carry all the Book Witch books. They’re checked out right now, though—”
“No, I mean the mystery series. The Duke of Chicago series.”
Understanding dawned on the young librarian’s face. “Ah, no. The Duke of Chicago is fictional. Maxine Blake made him up for the Book Witch series. There are no actual Duke of Chicago books.”
Rainy met her eyes. “Are you serious?”
“Sorry.”
“If Maxine Blake weren’t dead, I’d kill her.”
The librarian blinked at her.
“I didn’t mean that literally,” Rainy said.
“It’s okay,” the librarian said. “I feel your pain. It should be a felony to introduce fictional books in novels and then not let readers read them.”
The librarian pushed their cart along to the next room, and Rainy jogged down past more posters detailing her own life, ignoring the temptation to stop and read them all.
But one caught her eye and she paused to look at it.
It was a single-panel cartoon in black and white, like the ones inTheNew Yorker.A figure who was very clearly supposed to be her stood on a small hill by a single tombstone with the nameMaxine Blakecarved on it. The cartoon Rainy’s black umbrella was open and rested on her shoulder. Her head was bowed in mourning. A bundle of forget-me-nots lay atop the gravestone.
The caption simply read,No words.
