This particular episode is somewhat disturbing, and introduces a new key keeper and “Biblioprincess.” We open with a peaceful country scene and a man wearing goggles. He is looking at a map. His companion is a young woman in restraints sitting in the sidecar of a motorcycle. She mocks him, suggesting he is probably lost. The man responds with verbal abuse spoken in a disinterested tone. These two are Hal Kamhout and Flamberge. After the brief exchange, Hal gets on the motorcycle and they drive off, and we go to the opening credits.
When we get back from credits, the young man is driving around a small, peaceful looking town full of cheerful people. After driving around he meets up with Mabel Nash, a police officer who wants to talk to him about the girl in the sidecar. Officer Nash is a bit horrified by Flamberge’s attire, but Hal claims that Flamberge chooses to wear the restraints, while Flamberge states that she’s only trying to match Hal’s “preferences.” (As I said, the episode is somewhat disturbing.)
Introductions are made, and Hal states that he is looking for a man and a girl wearing a lock. He also mentions that the girl will be carrying a book. (This sounds like a sort of vague description of Huey and Dalian.) Mabel states that she doesn’t think she’s seen anyone fitting that description, and asks if the book is valuable. Hal says the book is worthless. After some more conversation where Mabel questions the peculiar metal staff he’s carrying, Hal states that he is a “Libricide Officer.”
Despite the weirdness of the very odd couple, Mable invites Hal and Flamberge into her home. She stops off to pick up some food at what’s either the local bar or diner. Given her interactions with the various customers at the establishment, she seems to be a very popular, well-liked cop. Hal is a bit suspicious of the number of brothels in town. Mabel states that the number of brothels is because there’s a weapons factory nearby. She explains that during the war there were a lot of soldiers and workers from the factory in town, which is why there are so many brothels.
Hal questions Mabel about the deaths of 80 people who had been killed after the war. Mabel denies that there have been any deaths vehemently. Hal asks why she believes that, and she states she knows because she’s a cop, and she knows that there have been no deaths or disappearances in her town for the past few years. Hal replies that the people who have gone missing or died were all travelers passing through the town. This prompts Mabel to enquire if the two people he had been looking for were among those who disappeared. Hal says he doesn’t know, but the reason he’s in town is to find out if these two people are somehow involved.
Mabel’s home is very big. She lives there with her grandparents and little sister whose name is Patricia. Patricia is extremely hostile toward strangers. She shouts at them to go away, and then runs off.
Later that night, Hal heads out to do some investigating. Flamberge opts to stay behind where she manages to make friends with Patricia. While Flamberge is winning over Patricia, Hal does some exploring. He discovers that near the town, obscured by some trees are the ruins of a second town.
Hal takes a walk in the ruins, where he meets a lady of the evening who definitely should not be there. After rebuffing the woman’s advances, and questions her. The woman can’t seem to process his questions, and she becomes agitated. She lunges at Hal, and its revealed that she isn’t human, she’s some kind of puppet. Hal continues to question her, but doesn’t get any useful information out of her because she is berserk.
Hal returns to Mabel’s home where her grandparents greet Hal as if he were Mabel. (They are either blind, or puppets.) When he gets back to his room he finds Flamberge and the little girl asleep on the bed. Patricia is very surprised to see that he’s alive. After some questioning, she confirms that the people who have been disappearing have been doing so because of Mabel.
Hal and Flamberge head out to the factory, where they confront Mabel. The factory has been converted into a puppet factory, with puppets making more puppets. Hal reasons that somehow, Mabel managed to learn the art of “shikigami” which involves spells animating paper or straw dolls. The principle here is similar, except these dolls are not made of straw or paper. It seems that Mabel has been replacing the people in the town with dolls that act and speak exactly the way they had when they were alive. Of course, these dolls have a flaw; if you go outside of a certain set of situations into something the doll wasn’t programmed to deal with, the doll will go berserk and attack.
Mabel and Hal have a confrontation where Mabel reveals that she encountered the other Biblioprincess after her town was bombed during the war. She and her little sister managed to escape the bombing and the fires, but most of the town had died. While she was stumbling around in the woods, she met a man and a little girl, who gave her a Phantom Book that would enable her to recreate the town.
Which she did. (And somehow, no one was disturbed by this. And no one thought that the idea of puppets being used to replace dead loved ones is actually kind of creepy.) They diverted the road and created a new town on the other side of some hills and the forest so as to block the view of the ruins. Mabel is apparently not aware that the dolls have a tendency to go into berserker mode when they get confused. She denies it that this is happening, and then goes into panic mode herself, setting her dolls on Hal and Flamberge.
There is a battle, and it’s revealed that the Libricide Officer is a fireman in the Fahrenheit 451 sense. His staff is powered by Phantom Books retrieved from the library. (Hal’s method of retrieval from the library is extremely horrifying, and painful for Flamberge. This probably goes a long way to explain Hal’s apathetic dislike and Flamberge’s malicious commentary and insults.) Hal sets the place on fire, and completely removes all of the memories connected to the Phantom Book from Mabel’s mind, returning her to her home.
Flam and Hal head off into the sunset. In the next episode we go back to Huey and Dalian who encounter a young woman with an almost supernatural sense of smell.