Five

Arthur spends thirty-six hours in a daze, skipping a library shift and dreading the Special Collection he is being blackmailed to rob. On Friday he returns to work but avoids the rare-book room, recalling its treasures, including the infamous Enoch Crane memoir bound in human skin. He feels more dangerous to the books than any pest.

While shelving, Arthur selects duplicate modern first editions—The Killer Angels, Katherine Anne Porter’s Collected Stories, and The Moviegoer—worth roughly five hundred dollars. Behind the counter, he discreetly removes their magnetic strips with an X-Acto knife, stows them in his backpack, and finishes his shift, taking a cautious first step toward the $60,000 demand.

Afterward, Arthur uses microfiche to research Daphne Nighswander. He finds reports detailing her PCP bagging, her racist misidentification of Black postal worker Albert Frown as a gang threat, the shooting that shattered his leg, and the ensuing twelve-hour standoff that ended after a lottery drawing. She later received a minimum ten-year sentence.

Van interrupts to announce a trip to Colin Wren’s estate for psychic testing of Van and Donna, requiring non-psychic controls. Van insists Arthur and Allie come; Arthur deflects but agrees, and their banter reveals Van’s insecurity about Allie. The plan sets the next move in probing the “twin telepathy.”