Grimoires and Where to Find Them Raconteur, Honor (read along books TXT) 📖

trick of the light, or his mind playing tricks on him? How delusional must he be to convince himself over and over that everything was fine? Just so he could keep his precious books. Books he couldn’t even understand, for the most part. How could this man have escaped the law for so long? It was all so senseless.

Massimo reached for another one, and this time I was quick to stop him, smacking his wrist sharply. “For the love of all magic, do not!”

He looked at me, his mouth screwed up bitterly. “What, I can’t even touch them anymore?”

“You complete imbecile,” I bit out. “No, wait, I suppose you can’t see it. This entire room is so magically volatile that if you touched that with your bare hands, it would either burn your skin with third-degree lesions, or you’d be violently ill for weeks, even with proper treatment. Do you not see how I have protective gloves on?”

His eyes dropped down to the thick work gloves on my hands with new understanding. “But I’ve been in here often.”

“But never more than ten minutes at a time, I bet,” Jere threw in with a derisive look. “Just enough to squeeze something else in, right? You were getting small doses, something you could process and come away with. Always felt like you were sick, or not like yourself, after you came out here, didn’t it?”

Massimo slowly blanched.

And he’d never put it together that something was wrong? I sighed, shaking my head. Great magic, the stupidity boggled my mind.

“Alright, Massimo, where else? As we pull these books and deal with them, I’m going to explain to you precisely what you did, and the effect it has now. And potentially what it would have done if left for even a week longer. Point us to the next one.”

He did, to a corner shelf, and wisely didn’t try to touch it. Jere pounced on it, and I quickly dealt with the charm inside the pages—this one was a charm for healing wounds, for mercy’s sake. All the while, I dictated what that absurd mix of magic had done. Jere spelled out precisely what it had done to the grimoire itself, what he’d have to do later to put the book back to rights so it could be safely handled again, and neither of us sugarcoated our words.

Massimo turned quieter and quieter, his eyes growing wide and a cough developing. He was stooping, too, his body becoming twisted from the magic going unfettered through his frame. It had already twisted up the joints on his right side, something a doctor would have to undo. But being in here was definitely making the situation worse. I belatedly realized I hadn’t put any protective measures on him, but I had no magic or sympathy to spare. I’d march him back out in a moment, after he helped us find the most volatile problems.

But before that happened, I’d make sure he was thoroughly educated on the disaster his ignorance had created here.

Rupert came into the kitchen with a wide smile on his face and a rumbly in his tumbly. “Oh, good, you did make it!”

“I did. Wait, was that supposed to be a pun?” Considering I was in the process of making multiple sweets, the question was a valid one.

He laughed, eyes crinkling up. “Not what I intended. You weren’t sure, what with the case load you have, if you’d be able to come today.”

“Yeah, it was a near thing. Managed to button it up last night, although paperwork is waiting on me.” I shrugged, as there was always paperwork. I hadn’t had a day off in five weeks because of various shenanigans, and darn it, I wanted to do something fun. And spend time with people, not be chained to my desk again. Two crazy cases back-to-back, with another case following the Reaper’s Case, was just no. I ain’t playing anymore. I need a vacation.

Besides, this was productive too. Rupert had been enthusiastic about taking charge of my strawberry endeavor, and he was already in the process of getting a business set up. But his main question was—product? Hard to plan production, distribution, and advertising if you don’t even understand your own products.

I took his point as a fair one and offered to show him, as I didn’t know how to explain this. Describing food is like dancing about architecture. It doesn’t really get the message across very well.

But for this, I would need all the counter space. So, I borrowed Rupert and Ophelia’s kitchen for the demonstration, as they had a kitchen large enough for a restaurant. Food was an important business in the Davenforth family. They also had all of my latest gadgets, including a refrigerator, so it was the best place to work—aside from my own kitchen.

And it was nice to have the time to cook and socialize. Our last case had been something of a doozy, in more ways than one. Although at this point, all I had to do was play witness at the trial. Which was set for next month. We had so much evidence on Massimo, there was no way he’d avoid jail time. Henri was concerned about whether he’d truly be punished, but I wasn’t. I had a royal mage playing witness, and he’d hammer home just how dangerous Massimo’s actions had been, how many people he’d endangered with his stupidity and greed.

At this point, all of the grimoires were safely back home. Jere was working on the ones that had been damaged so he could give them back in a proper state, and I couldn’t ask for more than that. It was a good ending to a bad situation.

Rupert pulled up a chair and sat himself near the island, watching me whip cream. “It does smell amazing in here. I have some paperwork for you to look over when you have a moment. Mostly about stocks and such. I’ve got it divided up as we