Even Vampires Get the Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking for a book?”
    â€œYes, some sort of medieval manuscript that was stolen. Evidently Mr. Race has quite a collection, and he didn’t notice the theft until he had ordered an inventory of his holdings a month ago. He’s going to have his housekeeper round up some information about the manuscript, but until then, we can get to work on the little info he gave me. He believes the manuscript could well have been taken by a rival collector.”
    â€œOooh. How thrilling! It’s like an art theft, only with a medieval book.”
    â€œMmm,” I said, gathering up my bag and jacket. “I’m going to go visit a couple of antique shops and see if I can’t get some info on who the big collectors are in Britain.”
    â€œWhat would you like me to do?” Clare asked, chewing another bit of flower.
    â€œYou’d better stop eating those flowers, or you won’t have anything left but a vase full of stems,” I said at the door.
    She shot me a look of pure outrage. “I do not eat flowers!”
    I raised my eyebrows and looked at the half-eaten carnation in her hand. She glared at it for a minute as if it had magically appeared there. “You’re a faery, Clare. No one else eats flowers but really hard-core vegetarians, and I’ve seen you wolf down a steak, so I know you’re not that. If you want to do something helpful, do an Internet search for me on the”—I consulted my notes—“ Simia Gestor Coda. With a name like that, it has to have some sort of a history. I’d like to know everything you can find out about its past. All Mr. Race told me was that it was written by a mage who was supposedly in Marco Polo’s service. Oh, also, pull up a list of the major antiquities dealers for England. It wouldn’t hurt to know who might be dealing in something like a rare antique manuscript.”
    I spent the next couple of hours visiting various antique shops in and around the Royal Mile, the most famous street in all of Edinburgh. By the time I tottered into the last shop on my list, a small, dusty shop tucked away between a bookstore and a gyro shop, Iwas feeling uninspired. The antique dealers were particularly loath to talk about their clients, and none of them had heard of the Coda.
    A little bell over the door jangled as I entered the shop. Like others of its ilk, this antiquities shop was filled to the rafters with statuary, objets d’art, stuffed animals, strange old mechanical pieces, books and illuminated manuscripts, and a myriad of other items whose use and purpose were shrouded in the distant reaches of the past. I browsed through the items, glancing periodically at a man I took to be the owner as he stood with his back to me in the doorway to another room, speaking to someone I couldn’t see.
    â€œShoot,” I said to myself as I glanced at my watch. I was three hours away from the office already, and I wanted to get back to help Clare. I stopped in front of a bookcase bearing a stuffed spider monkey, and sent yet another impatient look toward the man in the doorway. “I don’t have time for thi aaaaieeeeeee! ”
    My heart just about leaped out of my chest as the spider monkey I’d assumed was stuffed suddenly jumped from the bookcase to my shoulder. “Oh, man alive, you just scared a good ten years off me. Hello there, Mr. Monkey. Um . . . that is, I assume you’re a mister. I can’t tell, what with that little sailor suit you’re wearing. Do you belong here? Of course you do, what a stupid question. What else would a monkey be doing in an antiques shop? Would you mind asking your owner if he could talk to me for a few minutes? No? Drat. Well, doesn’t matter—you’ll do as an excuse to interrupt him.”
    The monkey, evidently satisfied with his evil planto give me a heart attack, leaped back onto the bookcase, where he smoothed down the fur on his