“I’m going to try to land us in the alley next to the speakeasy,” I told Pops. “Wish us luck.”
“Good luck,” he said. “And be home in time for dinner or Mrs. Turner will have a fit.”
“Promise.” I rose up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek.
“Koshka?” Pops said, addressing my cat. “If the Duke gets fresh with her, bite him.”
“He won’t even look twice at me,” I said, scooping up Koshka.
“Don’t listen to old Fanshawe,” Pops said. “If your mother were here right now, she’d be as proud of you as I am.”
But she’s not here, I thought but didn’t say.
“Thanks, Pops,” I said. “Now excuse me, we have a story to save.”
Pops passed me my umbrella and stepped back.
When performing an immersion, you always want to enter a story at the last possible moment before the damaged section. Never begin on page one, otherwise you could be wandering the story world for weeks or months—years even if you’re in a multigenerational family saga. Dangerous business. The longer a real person lives inside a story, the more likely they are to forget who they are and where they come from. A Book Witch from a neighboring coven got himself stuck for two weeks inTreasure Island.Apparently, he talked like a pirate for a month after that. Not kidding, the poor man had to see a speech therapist.
With my cat in one arm and my umbrella in hand, I read aloud from page eighty-six, willing us to become one with the story. It was the scene where the Duke of Chicago spots the socialite dancing with an infamous gangster.
She was a beautiful girl,I read,but so was Helen of Troy, and look what happened to the Trojans.
With a flick of my thumb, I opened my umbrella. All Book Witches use black umbrellas instead of wands. Seen from above, an open black umbrella looks like the dot atop a lowercase letter “i.” With my umbrella, I could make a portal through that tiny dot on the page and hide our presence at the same time.
And with the magic of storycraft, that’s precisely what happened. Koshka and I vanished from the real world into the story world, slipping through the miniature black hole made by the dot on the lowercase “i” in the word “girl.”
As we disappeared, I closed my eyes on a soft, warm September evening in Fort Meriwether, Oregon. When I opened them again, I was breathing the bitter cold and sinister air of Gangland Chicago.
Chapter Two
Koshka and I touched down safely into the alley outside the Bathtub, the infamous speakeasy the Duke of Chicago frequented in his books. Bad gin, he said, but good information.
“You all right?” I asked Koshka. We’d arrived behind a pile of garbage about ten feet high. The stench could melt glass, but at least it gave us good cover.
Koshka leapt out of my arms, ready to work. He scouted around the garbage while I straightened my suit. Some Book Witches suffer severe vertigo when entering stories, but I’ve never had that problem. I assumed it was because the Marches had been Book Witches for generations now. Pops liked to joke we had ink in our blood.
Koshka trotted back, indicating the coast was clear. Above me, at the end of my outstretched fingertips, my umbrella hovered, keeping the portal between the two worlds open. When we left, we would have to find our way back to this alley. Should be easy enough. Get into the speakeasy, free the Duke of Chicago, then we would be on our way.
And maybe if I played my cards right…he’d give me his autograph.
“All right,” I said to Koshka, “let’s go. Stay close.”
Together, we strolled out from the alley and mounted the sidewalk as if we belonged there. The few people out that night paid us little to no attention. Cats were a common sight in big cities, where rats andmice were legion. Coins clinked in my pocket and my face wore a tough customer scowl. I was merely another lost soul looking to drink my cares away.
Because Prohibition was still the law of the land, bars and other gin joints were hidden behind fronts. The Bathtub was in the basement of a haberdashery. I knocked on the nondescript front door of the shop, and a pretty but hard-faced young woman opened it.
“Yeah?” she said.
“I’m looking for a straw boater,” I said, lowering my voice an octave.
“We got boaters. In the back.”
She let me inside and locked the door behind me.
“I can find my way,” I said.
“What about the ratcatcher?” she asked, glancing down at Koshka.
