A book. About the size of my two cupped palms. Old, by the look of it, same vintage as the napkin. I turned it curiously this way and that, looking for a power tab. But no, this was the real thing, bound in leather, stained and sueded with use. The dim daylight picked out traces of gold bordering the front cover.

I balanced it on one knee. A book. What a weird thing to carry around, hidden away like you couldn’t bear to be without it. Especially weird for a ninja girl with private heat on her tail. You’d think she wouldn’t want the extra weight.

I slid a finger along the worn spine, the girl’s glow still bright in my mind. I hoped she’d put the thug boys down hard and made a good escape. Careful not to crack the spine, I let the book yawn open at random. The pages were thick and yellowed, both sides covered with a faded handwritten scrawl. A tricky read. Hard to make out with each letter sliding into the next. But I could read it well enough to see it was a personal story. Stuff about waves and wind. Someone’s storm diary fished out of the flood? I didn’t think so. Not enough water damage. And the things it mentioned—a harbor, a crew, a ship and passengers, the open ocean—it had to be from way long ago, before the sea crawled up the streets of Manhattan and swallowed the Mississippi Delta.

A hardback book was rare in the den. One in good shape, rarer still. But I liked to think there’d been books, even real books, in my hidden past. A book felt right in my hand. Up on my dado shelf lived a pair of water-buckled paperbacks I’d got for free, since no one else wanted them. I read them over and over. I’d been called a suck-up for reading through the dozen or so on Rousseau’s library shelf. As if anyone could suck up to Rousseau.

I closed the book, rewrapped it gently, and set it aside for when I had better light. A book like this had to be worth something, more than Unca Joe’s tellers would offer. They’d see it as a stack of old paper, good for starting fires. As Rubio often mourned, no place for art in a survival economy. But someone would want it, right?

I’d need a source who knew books to tell me its real value, which likely meant someone outside the den, maybe someone at the Souk. Where I’d never been.

Crap! I’m doing it again!

I buried my head in my hands. What was going on with me? Sneak off to the Souk? Behind Rousseau’s back, behind the den’s? Try as I might, the thought wouldn’t leave.