The Blank Miracle

Blushing pools of dust-filtered sun spilt upon the tiled floor as Evie locked the plexiglass door of the café. She cast her limpid gaze across the jumble of stools, deeming the space worthy of a sweeping. Brushing aside a blond curl that had escaped her scrunchie’s hold, she swerved her aproned hips around the counter to grab the cherry-red handle of the broom. While weaving herself between tables, her eyes snagged suddenly on a reflective patch of brown against the peplum wallpaper. Drawing closer, she scraped back the stool to wedge out a small leather briefcase.

Damn, she thought. The owner might return for it, meaning she would be marooned here for who knows how long. A noise of aggravation broke the steady lull of the ceiling fan’s whirling as she gripped the case’s handle and led it to the back room.

Entering an office lined with teetering racks of supplies, she placed the case on the desk, smattered with color-coded schedules and sticky notes. Glancing at the singular security monitor trained upon the front entrance, she turned to leave before hesitating.

Her eyes flickered back to the case, which patiently returned the look. Her estimation of time this case would add to her shift would be far more accurate by knowing the value of its contents, but a boorish voice in her mind condemned the thought of snooping. Still, her conscious cleared as her fingers brushed the cool metal of the clasp. The latch gave an unoffended click as she eased it open.

Her gasp rasped low and ballooned her entire chest. Her widening eyes never stilled as they drank in what was now revealed under her trembling fingertips.

Money. Stacks of crisp and compacted bills jammed the entire case. Her mind went static as she processed the cartoonish amount of money before her. After a moment of stunned reconfiguration, her attention was caught inexplicably by a slice of onyx leather snugged against the rustling bills. Her fingertips tugged it from the case’s hold, and out slid a thin and unassuming notebook.

Cradling it in her flattened palms, she traced its creamy raven cover. Flipping it on its front, she observed the words Genesis 2:16-17 stoically engraved upon the cover. Her eyebrows crushed together as she flipped the ivory pages against the pad of her thumb. She found only unbroken emptiness within.

Her attention returning to the case, Evie asked aloud incredulously, “How much money is this?” A flicker of life from the notebook halted the miniscule motion of her fingers.

There, written at the top of the page, were the clearly inked numerals: $20,000.

She turned the book’s page, the writing leaving her sight for a split second, before returning to the same page again. And then, for a moment, the case completely left her thoughts, because she was grappling with a small act of the impossible.

The line was gone. The page once again a blank stare under her gaze. She manically flipped back and forth, searching for the scrawl within the cavernous white of the book, but it was gone. Erased by an invisible hand.

Tenuously grasping to logic, she placed the open book on the table and plunged her forearm into her purse, which was slung haphazardly on the chair beside her.

“Where is my phone?!” she growled, finding nothing but gum wrappers and her wallet. Straightening herself, she scanned around the cluttered office. Her eyes brushed past the book, then backtracked so severely her neck pinched.

Evie gawked as the previously blank page calmly relayed the words: under the passenger side seat of your Chrysler Sedan.

Thunderstruck, she slowly lifted the book to examine it, but then jolted as a large burst of noise suddenly sounded from outside the office. Her eyes instinctively leapt to the security monitor above the desk, where she saw a man pulling violently on the glass door’s handle. She squinted at the screen before clapping her hands to her mouth as his fist, containing a blunt object, shot forward and smashed the pane in front of him. Blood rushing in her ears, she watched his arm slither through the shattered hole towards the inner lock.

She slipped the notebook in her apron pocket while her racing thoughts landed on the exposed bills upon the desk. She watched the man exit the camera’s frame before she sprinted lightly toward the corner and slipped behind one of the towering metal racks, hoping the closely stacked boxes would obscure enough of her from his sight.

The seconds bled into one another until the man rushed into the room and looked wildly around before spotting the case upon the desk. Eyes glinting, he lunged forward and gripped it with a sound of triumph. Evie watched with wide eyes as his features fell. His large hands seized handfuls of bills, pushing them to the side as he dug throughout the case.

Evie’s breath caught in her throat as he suddenly turned, his unhinged eyes locking through the shelves upon her frightened ones. Two strides and he was on top of her, reaching around to snatch her wrist and yank her forward into the light. She cried out, as the struggle sent metal pans flying off the shelf and clattering to the ground.

“Where is it?!!” he bellowed, searching her trembling features. Evie paled and gestured weakly toward the disarray of money around the desk.

“I sw-swear I wasn’t going to take any of it! I was just going to call my boss-”

She was cut off by his gaze sweeping over her form before halting on a slight bulge in her apron. Without a word, he shoved his hand in and pulled the book from her. His face cracked with relief. Facing him so closely allowed her to drink him in: rugged olive-toned features that framed his sharp Cola-colored eyes above a gradient of stubble that added to his unkept appearance.

“The book?” she accused, her eyes flickering to the case once more, “But why-”

He released her without answering, his attention only on the small charcoal book. Hurriedly, he flipped it open, and demanded verbally, “How far are they?”

Evie watched as the next page turn immediately revealed another arbitrary sentence: 238 m SE.

The man cursed and strode back toward the desk, completely ignoring Evie’s prompting glare.

“That book,” Evie stated purposely, “The words… they keep disappearing.” Hooking his attention, the man suddenly stalked toward her, once again in her face.

“What did you ask it?” he demanded.

“Ask it?” She seized a bolt of unfamiliar boldness. “How about I ask you what the hell you’re doing here?!” He blinked at her.

“What’s your name?” he asked with a plastic tone of etiquette. She returned only stony silence.

He let out a single humorless laugh before peeling the pages apart once more. There, laid bare between them, Evie read upside-down the words Genevieve Marsia Fueller.

“Genevieve?” he lilted.

Evie’s head was whirling so loudly she couldn’t even process how impossible the world had become in the past ten seconds. He took advantage of her shock to go on, “Well, I’m sorry Genevieve, but there’s not enough time to walk you through this.” He addressed the book once more, “How many are coming?” He flicked the page to reveal a single 2.

A string of curses followed before, “I bet they sent Joshua.” As if declaring it himself, a sharp crash tore the tension between them. They both looked toward the monitor to see two large figures bursting through the café’s entrance.

“Who are they?” Evie asked shakily.

“Zealots” the man answered darkly. “Bad ones.” He addressed her trembling form with genuine sympathy, “I’m sorry Genevieve. I think you’re involved.”

Numbly, she felt him thrust the book into her hands and move her toward the supply closet before shoving her inside.

His outline was harsh against the fluorescent light. “No one calls me that,” she said thinly. “It’s Evie.”

His focus held for a moment. “Roger. Nice to meet you. Stay out of sight,” he answered, before slamming the door shut.

Plunged into darkness, Evie listened to shuffling followed by silence. Leaning forward, she cracked open the door to let in a slice of light. She spotted flickers of two men entering the room, immediately seeing the strewn money on the desk.

“He was here,” one deadpanned.

“Still am,” Roger sounded, stepping out from behind the door and, to Evie’s stifled gasp, holding a gun.

A tense moment stretched before the shorter of the two men growled, “What did you do with it?”

Roger didn’t answer right away, a knot in his brow furrowing. “Joshua, please see reason-”

“Et hoc est onus quod de proditione,” the encrypted words tumbled from the man before he lunged forward at Roger.

Evie didn’t have a clear view of the struggle, but a sudden ear-piercing bang of gunfire pulled an involuntary scream from her, as she stumbled back into the shelf behind her. Light flooded into the closet as the larger man jerked the door open to reveal her. Blindly fumbling for anything useful on the shelf, her hand grasped around a can of cooking spray before she thrusted it in the man’s face and let fire directly into his eyes.

The man yelped in pain and stumbled back only to be struck by the butt of a gun, crumbling him to the ground. A panting Roger was then revealed to Evie, as well as a motionless man lying face down across the room, leaking a pool of crimson from underneath.

Roger stepped over the mound of the man’s unconscious form to grab her shoulders and utter a breathless, “Thanks.”

Evie felt shattered. “I am so fired,” she offered densely in that moment. Roger’s short laugh was laced with concern.

“Look at me - hey. Look at me,” Roger shook her roughly from her daze. “I can’t leave you here. Do you have a car?” She nodded thickly, glancing at her purse.

Roger followed her look and scooped it from the ground, before shutting the case closed and lifting it. She felt his hand tug her forward. “C’mon.”

She followed him out of the office and through the front door, shards of glass crunching beneath her feet. Waxen twilight bathed the parking lot, where she found the sense to take initiative and point towards her parked Sedan.

She sunk into the passenger seat as he found her keys and chimed the car to life. They pulled away as Evie began to feel her fingertips again, which were still pressed into the warm leather of the book. She slowly turned to stare at his profile, clouded with concentration.

“Those men,” her voice was soft, but strong as wire, “were after this… magic book?”

The words seemed to offend him, as he pinned her with a heavy stare. After a moment, he spoke –

“Magic is a word used to diminish a miracle. And those men weren’t the only one’s after the knowledge that book contains.”

She felt rattled by his words, letting the silence stretch before she prompted, “Knowledge?”

“You said yourself that you asked of it. How creative were you?” He paused for her to answer. When none came, he mused, “What are tomorrow’s lottery numbers? What’s the date of your death? Where is the Library of Alexandria?”

He rattled them off seemingly without thought, but left Evie reeling. She glanced down in awe at the book cradled in her palms, before she remembered. Contorting her arm down and under her seat, she fumbled blindly around until finding what she was already certain of being there.

Guiding her phone out from underneath the seat, she held it aloft for him to look at quizzically.

“Well,” a smile bloomed on her lips, “it helped me find my phone.”

His smile was confused in its rarity, splintering his stern composure, as Evie stared forward at the rushing world, toward a fate for which she had no answer.