Page 52 of Booked for Theft

I frowned, as a little inconsistency in his story compared to our reality captured my attention. “Our carrier can’t fit Ajani and any other cats, kittens or not.”

“I bought a medium dog carrier with wheels specifically for the purpose of acquiring kittens today. It’s large enough for three cats to fit in should there be an emergency. It also rolls, so outside of hauling it down any steps, it can be managed with grace. I wheeled your fluffy goddess and our two new princesses to your SUV, as I noticed you had opted to walk to work today. I stole your baby and made off with her.”

“I’ll allow it; you were acquiring kittens for us. What happened to their mother?”

“I have no idea. We’ll have to quarantine Ajani and the kittens for at least a week, though. I’m sure the library will survive. I didn’t want the kittens to stay in the shelter, and I promised I’d take them to their vet next week to make sure nobody is sick. Ajani needs her boosters anyway, so we’ll take care of everything at the same time.”

“Ajani is not going to appreciate you making her visit two different vets. She is going to mark your soul, and she is going to get her revenge.” I would miss Bradley if Ajani destroyed him for his sins. “And since you’re the reason she has to go twice, you get to take her.”

“Harsh but fair. When can I expect you to get home?”

“I expect to get lost in a bookstore on the way home. It could be thirty minutes, it could be sometime tomorrow after work. Who knows? Not me. I’ll be a librarian left unattended in a bookstore.”

Bradley snickered. “I’ll meet you at the bigger of the used bookstores in ten minutes and provide adult supervision and a wagon for you to store your spoils.”

The wagon, which had been his idea, would drive us to the brink of madness. Rather than drive, he’d decided he wanted to walk to the grocery store. The wagon allowed us to haul our plunder home. Its oversized tires even handled slush tolerably well. Better still, we avoided using one of the grocery store carts.

Our wagon took up less space, and when he secured the handle, he could push it in front of him with no problems.

“I will see you in ten minutes. Make sure the kittens won’t get into trouble while we’re gone.”

“As they are not quite up for jumping over gates yet, I will lock them in the kitchen while I’m gone. In good news for us, they’re large enough for our new automatic litter box, which will be delivered later today. I got them their own standard litter box, which I have near the trash can right now. I ordered two more of the automatic boxes, and they’ll be here early next week. There was only one in stock locally.”

Life would be good, as the only thing better than having a cat was having numerous cats. “I hope we can teach these kittens to be lap and feet kittens.”

“I’m confident this will not be a problem. I’ll go contain the beasts. Try not to buy the entire store before I get there.”

“But what if I want to buy the entire store?”

“Please don’t. I’d have to find a way to make it happen, and I’m not sure I can afford that after buying the condo. But at least everything, including the renovations, was paid off out of the gate, right? And I even prepaid the maintenance on the place for twenty years at a set two percent increase per year to limit that potential nightmare. I did some checking, and the average is four percent a year.”

Bradley had suffered from anxiety issues of his own upon my return to New York, and I held hope he’d overcome them sooner than later. For the most part, he fretted about how I would view his various spending sprees in my absence, the condo being the expensive one.

For whatever reason, he refused to consider how much money he had made during my disappearance, not that I was truly aware of the value. I avoided asking him, as such questions distressed him. From what I understood from our parents, he’d struck it rich, felt guilty about his prosperity in my absence, and had zero problems with making that money disappear rapidly.

In a few weeks, I would propose therapy over the financial issues.

“Bradley, as you didn’t go into debt over prepaying the building maintenance, I’m fine with it. Yes, we’re screwed if we move because the fee prepayment doesn’t apply to the next owner and we will not be refunded, but we’re not that screwed. It’s paid off in full. If we get into dire financial straits, as long as we’re able to keep our internet and electricity bills paid plus buy food, we’ll be fine. Shelter is fully covered.”

“I know, but I still worry about it.”

“Please do the math for me. If the average increase is four percent a year, and the four percent a year applies to the increases that occurred prior, you locking us into the maintenance fees saved us a great deal of money. Thank you for negotiating that. It’s a lot easier to not worry about the condo when the maintenance fees are paid for in advance for roughly a third of my entire lifespan. It’s not like we have any plans on moving out of the New York City area.”

“That’s true.” Bradley laughed, and a moment later, I heard a chorus of mews. “All right, you furry tyrants. It’s time to go into the kitchen prison. Ajani, you can go where you want, including the counters, because I’ve learned that there’s zero chance in hell we’re teaching you not to climb wherever you want whenever you want.”

I snickered. In good news for our sanity, Ajani didn’t jump onto the counters often, as she disliked sliding across the polished stone, something that happened more often than not. “I’ll meet you at the bookstore. Try to escape their clutches sooner than later. If I’m left alone, I absolutely will buy more books than will readily fit into the wagon.”

“Maybe I should get a second wagon.”

“We do not need a second wagon. Just hurry up, tell Ajani I will always love her best, and meet me at the bookstore.”

If I wanted to put together a true timeline of the deterioration of the United States, I would need to dive back in time, searching for ancient books the government had missed in their purge. Magic had helped with preservation, and there was a healthy market for antiquities. If anyone asked, I would simply tell them Senator Thaddens had instilled a love of old books within me.

As such, I headed for the bookstore’s collection of books over two hundred years old, targeting the MR collection first.

The AD collection would run a risk of exposing me if I didn’t make it appear as though I wanted variety—and only after I’d gotten everything I wanted out of the MR books. As such, I went on a rampage, purchasing a sampling of non-fiction and fiction books, taking care to slip in the volumes that might discuss the downfall of the old system and the rise of the new.

Unless we understood how the machine worked, we couldn’t dismantle it in such a way it could never rise again.