In closing he tapped the flyer. "It was stolen from this guy. He asked me to find it for him. I told him flyers were the best way to go."
"Will you know if he succeeds?"
"I promised I'd look into any leads if he wants me to."
Veilleur was staring at the flyer again. "Well, if you come into possession of it, I'd be very interested in seeing it."
He'd be delighted never to see it again, but he said, "Sure. But enough of the katana. Let's talk about the Taint."
"Of course. But first I'd like something to eat. I don't suppose Julio serves food?"
"Serves foodlike substances."
Veilleur frowned. "That doesn't sound very appetizing. Does he have a menu?"
Jack shook his head and pointed to the blackboard over the bar. "Just that."
Glaeken squinted at it. "The writing is very faint."
"That's because it's been there forever. He never changes it."
He looked around. "The place looks too small to have a kitchen."
"Not if you call a freezer and a microwave a kitchen."
Still squinting at the sign, Veilleur started to rise from his chair. "I'll have to move closer—"
Jack grabbed his arm. "I haven't known you long enough to call you a friend, but let me tell you: Friends don't let friends eat at Julio's."
The old man dropped back into his seat. "Thank you. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've eaten in my life, but my stomach's not what it used to be."
"Purely selfish on my part: I don't want you grabbing your gut and running out of here before you've told me a few things."
He laughed. "A practical man, and straightforward about it too. I like that." He sipped his stout. "You want to know more about the Taint."
Jack leaned forward. "Bingo. And maybe throw in a little info about Jonah Stevens while you're at it."
"If we have time."
Julio arrived with a mug of Yuengling for Jack and pointed to Veilleur's stout. "Get you another?"
"I believe so."
"You wanna eat?" When Veilleur glanced at Jack, Julio added, "Don' look at him. He wouldn't know good food if it bit him."
Jack said, "One of your burritos did bite me—right on the stomach lining."
"Don' listen to him. You hungry? You wanna cube steak? We got delicious stuffed cube steak."
Veilleur gave him a wan smile and shook his head. "I'm cutting back on stuffed cube steak."
When he was gone, Veilleur said, "I almost feel obligated to order something, even if I don't eat it."
"The Taint?" Jack said.
"Single-minded, aren't we?"
"So I've been told."
Veilleur leaned back. "To understand the Taint you need to know some of the Secret History of the World."
That phrase again. "When I was a kid, I had a good friend who used to talk about a Secret History of the World."
"The conspiracy crowd believes in a secret history and has countless scenarios for it, mostly wrong. But they're right about one thing: The world has a history known to only a few. It was codified once in a book that I hid away for safekeeping with other so-called forbidden texts, but they've all disappeared."
Jack had a flash. "That wouldn't be the Compendium of Srem, would it?"
Veilleur straightened in his chair. "You've heard of it?"
"Heard of it? It's sitting in my apartment."
"Amazing. Well then, why do you need me to tell you the Secret History when it's at your fingertips?"
Jack drummed those fingertips on the table. "It's not exactly an easy read, what with the pages changing every time you turn around."
Veilleur frowned. "Is that so? I guess Srem wound up with a multivolume work that she had to fit into a single book."
"She?"
"Yes. Srem was an ancient, ancient Cassandra who saw the cataclysm coming and wanted to preserve a record of her times before everything was destroyed."
"Cataclysm?"
"We'll get to that. But—"
"Wait-wait-wait." Something wasn't right here. "You said you owned the book. So how come you didn't know how the text keeps changing?"
Veilleur shrugged. "I owned it but I never opened it. Her history was no secret to me. I didn't need to read about it—I'd lived it."
Okay. Jack could buy that.
"But what good is a book that keeps changing?"
He scratched his beard. "Not much. Something must have gone wrong. That sort of book was designed to have a finite number of sheets but a virtually infinite number of pages."
Jack stared at him. "I will add what you just said to my list of Things That Make Me Go, 'Huh?'"