My eye snags on an entry. It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The entry reads, “Browning 9mm Hi-Power—Nazi artifact—MELT DOWN ASAP—DO NOT LISTEN TO IT.” That’s slightly alarming. But there’s nothing here that says why, or what it would say. As far as I can tell, the Browning just makes much bigger holes than normal, feels disgusting to hold, and gives off an air of disappointment whenever I don’t kill someone with it. There are times I’ve wondered if it had a mind of its own, and now I’m pretty sure it does. But you can say that for any magical artifact. I get the same sense from my time-twisting pocket watch, though I’m never creeped out over picking it up like the Browning.

I found the gun in the attic of my parents’ house when I was fifteen. If it’s listed here, then what was it doing there? Who took it out and why? A mystery for another day, I guess.

I keep going until I find an entry for a compact makeup mirror that shows an image of what you’re looking for and tilts in its direction. There’s a note next to the entry. “V. POWERFUL.” That sounds like just what I need. And thank fuck it’s not the kewpie doll. I got enough of creepy dolls in Mexico to last a couple lifetimes.

The mirror’s in a storage unit in Sherman Oaks. I haven’t been inside this one yet, but I know where the keys and codes for it are, including instructions to get past the wards keeping it safe. When I got them, I put them all in a safe deposit box in Van Nuys. For once I won’t have to slog across all of L.A. to get where I’m going. When I get a chance I really need to see if there’s a teleportation charm somewhere in the ledger.

It doesn’t take long to get to the bank in Van Nuys and then to the storage unit in Sherman Oaks, a nondescript two-story box covered in stucco with a gated-off parking lot. There’s an office, surveillance cameras, a loading dock. Everything you’d expect to see.

I punch a code into a keypad next to the gate and it slides open, too silently to be normal. The office is closed. There are no hours posted. I peer in through the glass doors and see everything I would expect to see, only it looks too clean, too uniform. In fact, now that I’m looking, everything looks too clean. The parking lot asphalt is too black, the painted parking lines too white. There are no scratches on the doors, no dings in the paint, chips in the stucco.