Death's Door by April White

Author:April White [White, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946161154
Publisher: Corazon Entertainment
Published: 2020-05-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

For a Tuesday night, The Door was busy, and I was glad I’d asked Macey to come in. I had hoped to be able to take off early for a spiral-hunting expedition with Poe, but between a bowling league tournament win and a surprise birthday party, we didn’t stop running until I locked the door behind her at 2:10am. And as tempted as I was to sit down in my chair and curl up with a good book, I found both chair and book occupied by my uninvited guest when I finally made it upstairs.

I had locked Poe in my library while the bar was open, and when I went to check on him, it seemed his only movement, given the size of the stack of books next to him, had been between the bookshelves and the chair. There was a notebook and pencil next to him, but his attention was deeply engrossed in the pages he was reading.

Poe looked up from his book. “I believe, when I wake up from this dream, that I shall never again presume to believe I know aught of the world.”

I looked at his reading material of choice and almost laughed out loud to see 1984 in his hand.

“I had the thought,” I said as I handed him the container of fried rice, “that I shouldn’t take you with me tonight when I go hunting for spirals.” I’d taken the other half of the food out to George, who’d been reading a two-day-old newspaper by the light above the door. He’d thanked me kindly for the meal and told me to keep an eye on my paper products in the coming months because the price of oil had gone up so much the supply chain could be affected.

Poe looked up in surprise from the rice. “How will you know whether it will work?”

“I have the drawing you made, and I can wander around nighttime Baltimore a lot less conspicuously than you can. If I find one, I’ll come back and get you, but until then, you can stay here and safe from anyone who might recognize you as the security cam guy, or worse, as yourself.”

“Why, pray tell, would that be worse?” His voice had the edge of an offended man, and whatever ease we’d managed to find with each other was suddenly tenuous.

I stared at him for a long moment, then tried to listen to my words as though I were him. “Time travel is not a normal or expected phenomenon, and the very few people who can do it are careful to keep their ability a secret. So, while it is true that there are people who would be utterly thrilled to meet the Edgar Allan Poe, there are also people who would see you as an oddity to be studied, or worse, to be feared. Those are the people who would have you locked up ‘for your safety,’ and certainly you would be poked and prodded and tested to see what’s different about your blood and your immunities and your genetics.

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