“Come on, Sparky, a book club could really be fun. I’ll do all the work.”

  “Yeah, Sparky, it’ll be great.”

  “Lu, you’re her girlfriend, you have to say that.”

  “Well, I’m not her girlfriend and I for one would love to get out of the bakery, have a glass of wine and talk books, Sparky.”

  “Me too, Sparky.”

  “Plus it’ll be great practice for me, leading a group into a different book each week.”

  “Fine, fine, as long as you all ambushed me and I don’t have to deal with it. I’ll buy you the wine each week.”

  “Great, I’ll ask Juliet if she wants to join as well, that’ll give us five to start with and maybe more people will join us later on. What genre would you like for the first week?”

  “Horror.”

  “Romance.”

  “Thriller.”

  “Mystery.”

  “Ok, let’s write all four genres down then Sparky can pull the first week’s genre from the hat.”

  “See this is what I’m talking about, you’re already dragging me into the club.”

  “Come on, Sparky, just pull out the name and we won’t bother you again, after you buy us that wine.”

  “Yes, Rose, must I remind you who owns this place?”

  “You do, Sparky, that’s why you’re buying the wine.”

  “Ok, as store owner, wine provider, definitely not part of this book club. This week’s genre is Thriller. Now what’s the book going to be, Rose?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to pick a thriller set in the human world, it has a huge easter egg with actual ties to Lily. Next week someone else picks the book. Any Objections? Fantastic, I think you all enjoy this book. By the way, who put Thriller in the genre draw, I had romance.”

  “I did, Rose, I love a fast paced thriller that really holds my interest.”

  “Fix, fix, Rose's girlfriend just happens to win the draw.”

  “Pipe down, Salome, don’t you have some sweet buns to bake?”

  “Yes we do, Salome, let's get back to the store. Do you know what an easter egg is?”

  “Maybe an Easter is one of those giant reptiles, umm, dinosaurs I think they were called, but I don’t see how they relate to you.”

  “Here’s a copy of the book for each of you, and I’ll see you Friday night, have fun reading!”

  “Bye, Rose.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye, everyone.”

  “Ok, are we ready to start work on your Bibliomancy now?”

  “Can I just speak to Juliet first? I want to invite her and give her a book that counts as Bibliomancy, right? Passing a solid object from our world to hers.”

  “Fine but at the pace we’ve been going you’ll be sixty by the time you finish your apprenticeship.”

  “That’s ok with me, if it’ll keep me out of Oberon’s hands and jail. I’m all for it.”

  “I wouldn’t have told you two about this if I wasn’t trying to avoid a second violation. Lu can co-write with anyone in the world except for Bibliomancers.”

  “I know and I don’t mean to keep bringing it up, it’s just always on my mind. Maybe we should just go now and get it over with.”

  “No, absolutely not, you want to go to the King when you are a full blown Bibliomancer, not an apprentice, by the time I’m done training you you are going to be quite powerful, an asset to the King. Understand, it’s always better to deal from a place of power. So first off, don’t worry about something that may never happen, second, get so powerful that no one, even a king, can’t do anything to you, third, you already have a place to go if things ever get bad and you are a god there, even if you grant its residents free will and agency. Something I heartily agree on. If anyone entered your world with the intent to harm you or those under your protection you still yield absolute power there and no one can take that from you. You have agency of your own so just stay as diligent in your lessons as you are defending those that need help. Which reminds me, the first task I gave you dealing with Salome, I know how angry you must have been with those despicable men and I very much approve of the restraint shown.”

  “I almost regret making that toad a toad for life.”

  “But that’s the point, Rose, he had agency, you gave him the choice. Answer truthfully and he’d just be in prison. But he made the choice to lie, his act was so vile, he couldn’t admit it to his wife, so he took the coward's way out, lied and saved himself from answering to his wife and daughter. When you asked for the wife, I wasn’t sure what you wanted to accomplish?”

  “I wasn’t sure if she was complicit or not. How can you sleep next to someone so vile and not know about it? So I wanted to make sure, then it dawned on me that he might have children of his own that he preyed on.”

  “I just wanted you to know that it was well done, and a good step forward in your apprenticeship. Now I believe that you wanted to contact your friend.”

  “Yeah um maybe I’ll just pop over there for a little bit and bring her the book.”

  “Good then that actually does count as Bibliomancy practice.”

  I spoke the first Bibliomancy spell I’d learned, Locate, Juliet. She was in the barn, so I spoke my latest spell learned, Travel To, and stepped to her location.

  “Oh god it’s the middle of the day, what are you two doing? No, no, don’t answer that.”

  “Good afternoon, ma’am, it’s lovely to see you.”

  “Thank you, Ivy, but I’m just seeing a little too much of each of you.”

  “That's rich coming from the girl who used to beg me to let Damon ravish me so she could watch, now she gets embarrassed watching two women making love.”

  “Stop teasing me, Juliet, I’ll wait outside so you can put those breasts away.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute. We are almost done.”

  “Fine.” I heard some moaning and I started to hum and after a couple of hummed songs later Juliet emerged with a huge smile on her face and sausage in her hand? “Juliet, why do you have a sausage in your hand?” She handed it to me.

  “It’s not a sausage it’s a stone, a pleasure stone you…”

  I dropped the stone. “Awwkk, I know what a pleasure stone is for, why did you hand it to me?”

  She picks it up and wipes it on her apron. “I thought you wanted to see it so I handed it to you, now I have to wash it because you dropped it in the dirt.”

  “Well you really should wash it after use anyway.”

  “Yes, I know that, Rose.”

  “Are the real things that big?”

  “Well I can’t say from personal experience, but the upstairs maid has quite a lot of experience in that area and she says that all men think theirs is that big, but in reality they’re much smaller and nowhere near as firm. She said some of them stay firm for less than a minute before they get quite soft again. Like a pigs bladder with a hole in it.”

  “That must be quite disappointing.”

  “Yeah, Ivy can go all…”

  “Ok, gotta it, don’t need to hear anymore.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well I wanted to see how you are doing after yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m fine and so mad at myself for saying all those horrible things about that poor girl. I don’t know why you didn’t just burn those two pigs alive in the street, it’s the least that they deserved.”

  “Well I don’t think life as a toad will be too pleasant. What about that church should I do something, do you think?”

  “It’s already done, first I spoke to a lot of the villagers and we decided that the best thing to do was close the church and use the building as a school house, so the kids can learn to read and do their math. Then I called all the church board members and told them the village decided that we didn’t need a church we needed a school and if they had any objections the road to next village is right there.”

  “They didn’t give you a hard time, those religious people can be very…”

  “Yes they can, but before I told them the village was taking their church I informed them just what obscene, vulgar men ran their church, hinted there might be investigations into all the members of the church if it was still incorporated by sundown today. The six remaining board members voted to shutter the church immediately and handed me the keys. The town carpenters are going to turn the pews into desks. Guess who the first school teacher is going to be? That’s right, it's me. Now the kids won’t have to go out of the village to attend school, and I can keep a closer eye on that Sebastian.”

  “No Juliet, if anything we owe Sebastain a debt of gratitude, if he hadn’t spoken up, albeit, for completely the wrong reasons. Salome would still be under the thumb of those two scum. No, we and she are lucky, she’s going to work at Lily's bakery and go to school if she wants to and she joined my book club. Which brings me to why I’m here. I wanted to invite you and Ivy to our Friday night Book Club, Sparky pays for the wine.”

  “Well Ivy can't, she's the captain of the darts league, and they play every Friday. But I’ll be happy to come if you don’t mind bringing me over.”

  “Fantastic, here’s this week's book. It’s a thriller set in the human world and it has ties to Lily’s bakery, hopefully everyone will enjoy it.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “A night with women, drinking wine, how can we not enjoy that.”

  A new tactic to deal with drunk patrons

  Before my set at the tavern I usually take a walk in the woods around Wyldwood, it’s not as rugged terrain as we have in Tranquility and the paths approach sidewalk sized openings. I missed my daily walk with Rose, but she is working hard during the day and I get to spend every evening with her, which more than made up for the lost walks in the forest.

  Friday night I’ll have close contact with Juliet for the first time and I’m frankly embarrassed that she’s seen me naked. I know that she has a lover of her own and that she’s like Rose’s sister but I do still get jealous sometimes of their closeness, not that I’d let Rose know that. I want her to have friends like Juliet, I want her to have the best of everything.

  I wonder if Rose prefers this life in town or the life we might have had in that little cottage. But Sparky thinks that Rose might become one of the most powerful Bibliomancers in Emain Ablach. He hinted to me he’d never met an untrained Biblomancer with as much power. The training is not only going to refine her power but also cause it to grow. I need to work hard to remain worthy of her, I can’t even imagine my life anymore without her in it.

  As a bard I often receive song requests and in the past they were all over the place. But now I get request after request for Lily’s song. I suppose it’s worse here in Wyldwood, because everyone knows Lily and that just adds another layer of popularity here. So to slow down the multitude of requests for it I just tell the crowd that’s my opening and closing number. Since I ply my trade in a tavern I habitually have to deal with very inebriated patrons who often don’t get the idea that other patrons don’t want to hear the same song over and over. So I tell them I just played that ten minutes ago but I’ll play it again in a little while. Is there anything else you’d like to hear?

  This frequently works, but almost as regularly it does not and sometimes they come after me. They expect a woman to be an easy target but if they try to grab at me or take a swing, I try to catch the hand coming at me, twist the arm and show them the door. Usually to much cheering and applause today as I was trying to accomplish this the guy’s equally hammered acquaintance came charging at me from behind.

  The crowd’s yells alerted me that something was wrong so I needed to change tactics fast so instead of leading drunk one to the door I swung him around and pushed head first into drunk number two. By this time the bartender, blackjack in hand, approached the pile, grabbed one by the collar pointed at the other for me to pick him up and we tossed them out the front door into the middle of the street. The first came back swinging and the bartender knocked him hard on the head. He was down and not getting back up anytime soon. When he does it’s going to be an awful headache. First from that hangover then from a bump on the top of his head. His friend was a bit smarter, when he saw his friend drop, he took off presumably for home.

  Ah the glamorous life of the bard. But the afternoon shifts while yielding less in tips due to the smaller crowd were in general easier. Fewer drunks, more patrons interested in the music and generally friendlier. I’ll gladly trade a few tips for time with Rose. Tonight we’re planning on reading to each other from the thriller Rose picked for book club, and I’ll find out what an Easter egg is.

  A Bibliomancy field trip for the book club

  Sparky says I’m ready but I’m both excited and nervous. I've never carried more than one person through the doorways I create in a book and this is my first time entering another author's story. So my top concern is for everyone's safety. After that it’s for the maximum amount of fun, we can’t interact with the main characters as the story unfolds, otherwise we’d be altering the narrative so we’ll be on the sidelines observing. I reach in and pull out Juliet, just as Lu is coming in. I’m a little nervous about Lu and Juliet, this is the first time that they’ve had time to actually interact. Everyone is dressed in Earth clothes circa 2025. Lu looks great in her leather pants and jack. Juliet, wearing a skirt and sweater. Juliet walks over to Lu and puts out her hand. I can't hear what they’re saying. They shake and then Juliet steps back, just as Lily and Salome are entering the shop, Juliet strips off the sweater revealing the fact that she isn’t wearing a bra. Grins at Lu, says, “Now we're even.” Lu grinned back.

  “Juliet, what are you doing, put on that sweater and why aren’t you wearing a bra?”

  “That was payback for that day you guys took that outdoor bath, I didn’t want Lu to feel self conscious so I thought I’d give her a free show, I didn’t expect to do it for the whole club.”

  “Well should I strip too?” asked Lily.

  “No, no, no, gods we haven’t even started to drink yet. Juliet this is Lily and Salome and you’re already skinny dip friends with Lu, what do you say, we head to sunny Sicily. We can watch Paula’s first interactions with McCracken when he forces her to come get him in the bar, we can watch from the lobby. Please remember no interactions with the two leads though.”

  It was like watching a play, we couldn’t go on the bus but just seeing the action unfold from outside was enough. The next scene Juliet wanted to see was the octogenarians having sex in central park, but that actually happens off the page so we moved to central park and saw the kid videoing the couple in the throes of passion.

  Next we jumped to Washington, watching Paula climb up the outside of the building to get into her room while McCracken sat outside her door. Then we jumped to the Portland park where X was killed, but we just watched their interactions by the fountain. Poor X she was barely older than Salome.

  Next we jumped to the scene in the Chicago hotel where Paula’s fellow agent was at the hotel and to throw him off track Paula kissed McCracken for the first time, he rescinded as expected by kissing her back and squeezing her ass. Next we jumped to the airport watching Paula smoke bomb the bathroom, then she used Madd Maggie’s credit card.

  Finally we jumped to Heathrow. I would have loved to see Henry’s ‘death’ scene but I couldn’t figure out how to keep us undetected on the plane and we got to see Paula and Henry switch places at the airport effectively sneaking Paula into the country. That’s where things went wrong. I saw a woman watching me at the hospital where Paula meets the Mi 5 agent, then started towards me so I ported everyone back to the bookstore, just to be safe. I wanted to talk to the woman and it appears she wanted to talk to me.

  I asked “Are you the author?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m safe talking to you, right?”

  “Of course you are, did Trump send you?”

  “Who’s Trump? Is he the villain, the orange guy? If that’s who you mean no, nobody sent us, that was my book club, we read your book this week. Would you have a few minutes to speak to them, we have wine.”

  “Well you should have led with the wine. It'd be my honor to speak to your club, where did they go, they were just here?”

  “Easier to just show you actually.”

  We ported to the bookstore. “I’m sorry I never asked your name. I’m Rose.. are you alright?”

  “Where are we, did you drug me?”

  Lu came over, “Who’s this, Rose?”

  “No I didn’t drug you I just ported you to the bookclub you said you wanted to come, please someone get the author a glass of wine.”

  Salome, pour a tall glass of wine and brought it to the author. “I really enjoyed your story authoress, but it was so sad when X was killed. Did you really have to do that?”

  The author took the wine and chugged it down. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the book store where I work in Wyldwood.”

  “New Jersey, how did I get to New Jersey?”

  “No not New Jersey, Emain Ablach, Madd Maggie's home. Lily, that’s Lily she runs Madd Maggies Magical Bakery. You must know her, you had her give Paula a credit card that saved everyone in the airport in Chicago. Look, maybe I should bring you back to your book, I thought you knew Maggie.”

  “I do know Maggie, she told me a crazy story when I was thirteen years old visiting her bookshop. She claimed to be from Faerie and had a bakery there but she fancied opening a bookshop, but her friend Thistlewick Brightspark already had one in her home town so she came to New York City. She hired me even though technically she wasn’t allowed until I was sixteen. Anyways she hired me and paid me in books which I always thought were much better than money anyway. Then when I was sixteen I became a paid employee until I graduated college and started writing full time. She gave me a credit card just like the story in the book. I still have it, never used it, I keep it for good luck.”

  “That’s an easter egg.” I explained to the club, only someone who knows about Maggie would put that in a story.

  Salome said, “We thought that an Easter was a dinosaur.”

  “No, it’s one of their crazy religions.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry honey I shouldn’t have…”

  “No Rose it’s OK, it was really bad for a long time but now I have you all and I’m here and if I never hear anything about a religion again I’ll be happy. I’m sorry Miss Author, we don't even know your name.”

  “It’s Paula Talbert.”

  “Well we’re pleased to meet you, I’m Rose, this is Juliet, Lily, Salome, and last but certainly not least is my girlfriend Lu, she’s a bard.”

  “And a werewolf.”

  “Juliet, what did I tell you about outing people.”

  “What’s the difference, Paula’s going back to her world it’s not like she’s going to go running all over Wyldwood shouting the bard’s a werewolf.”

  Paula laughed. “Are you two sisters?”

  “No, I'm the main character in her novel, Salome is from her novel's world as well. Lu and Lily and Rose are all from Emain Ablach.”

  “Wow, you’re like a real live person.”

  “I am a real live person.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know for sure but probably because Rose is a Bibliomancer, sort of a wizard.”

  “We have them on earth as well but they aren’t wizards, they charlatans who claim to be able to tell the future from a book, but it's all a lie.”

  “Can you do that, Rose?”

  “No, Salome I can’t and I really don’t think I’d want to. I’d have nothing to hope for and I would just be sitting there waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Fortune telling is not for me. Want some more wine, Paula?”

  “Sure I really chugged that first one I thought I was going mad.”

  “Well any questions for our author.”

  “I’ve got one, you hinted at the end of the book that Paula and McCracken might be opening a detective agency. I’d love to read another book. They're such an interesting couple. Do you have any firm plans for a sequel?” Lu asked.

  “I have another book for another publisher then I’m finishing up right now and I have an outline for another Paula book that I sent to my agent. You all liked McCracken, you didn’t think he was sexist or creepy always squeezing Paula’s ass.”

  “McCracken is like Prince Charming compared to the guy Rose had me set up with. He was a sexual predator who wouldn’t leave the maids alone. Rose had to banish him.”

  Lily said, “I really liked McCracken, not at first, but that scene on the bus where he fixes that flash drive for her. Plus we’re always seeing him from Paula’s eyes. In the beginning she thought he encouraged his young female admirers so maybe she’s a little jealous. But then you find out that they’re really a burden to him. By the end of the book I thought Paula started enjoying the ass squeezes, did I misread that.”

  Salome said, “I thought the same thing Lily and as someone who has experience with sexual predators I really wouldn’t put McCracken in that category, he seemed almost devoted to Paula.”

  “I really appreciate the input, I’d thought to write him out and give Paula a new love interest, but if you all liked him. I’ll have to rethink the whole outline.”

  “Salome, we have to open the bakery early, what do you say, time to go?”

  Paula asked, “Is it far, Maggie described it to me once but I’d love to see it in person?”

  “No, it's only a few blocks away. Lily, do you think Leave This Muffin could portal Paula from Earth to here?”

  “It might why? I was going to ask her to join our book club.”

  “I’d love to join your book club, how often do you meet?”

  “Well this was the first meeting and we’re shooting for every Friday, if the Muffin doesn’t work, I could meet you at the Hospital or Heathrow anywhere in your book and bring you over.”

  “Will we be going into a book every week?”

  “Sure if everybody wants to and it’s not too dangerous like a war zone or something.”

  “Oh, my god it looks just like Maggie described it to me.”

  “Come in I’ll give you some muffins, just hold out the Muffin and say I want to go to Enigmatic Parchments and a little blue demon appears and he opens a portal then you just step through and you're here.”

  Then I jumped Juliet home and Paula back to the Hospital near Heathrow.

  “I really want to bring wine next time but I can’t carry anything into the book, just myself.”

  “That’s ok just write I have a bottle of wine and you’ll have it in here and you should be able to carry it when we jump to the store.”

  “Fantastic, I will write us, a couple of very expensive bottles of wine. I’m so glad I met you all.”

  “Well it was all due to that Easter egg and the fact that I knew everyone would love the book. I just had an idea, let’s test the muffin, I think it’ll work better in here.”

  Paula called the demon and asked for the shop and the portal opened and she carried the muffins through to the shop. I picked her up there and brought her back to the hospital where we set up a set of lockers we could use to pass books and muffins back and forth. I promised to leave next week's book in the locker on Monday morning and said good night. I jumped back home where Lu and I declared the first meeting of book club a success.