The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

by Garth Nix

  But it was being paid for by Special Branch, and that meant not only being observed—Susan had a very jaundiced view on what Inspector Greene’s “keep a bit of an eye on” actually meant—but also beholden to the police. This made Susan feel more than uncomfortable and she wasn’t prepared to put up with it for long. She told herself it would only be until she could find a job and some doubtless far worse accommodation that didn’t come with strings attached.

  Susan presumed that her comings and goings would be recorded by the apparently uninterested Mrs. London, and quite possibly all the other inhabitants of the house would be watching her as well. She expected questioning at breakfast, and possibly a handsome young man (or woman) strangely keen on showing her the city or something like that and being a bit too curious about her life, but was surprised to find that there were only three other inhabitants, two women and a man, all much older and all very much dedicated to keeping to themselves. There was hardly any talk at breakfast, and after the barest introductions—and those with patently false names—Susan was left entirely to her own devices.

  Surveillance was another possibility, so she spent some time examining the light fittings and a couple of minor bumps in the wall plaster for microphones, but they seemed innocuous as far as she could tell, and besides, what could she do about it anyway? There was only the one phone for the residents, in the entry hallway. That was undoubtedly bugged, but as so far she had only called her mother, it didn’t seem likely there would be anything of interest for the police to record.

  Susan’s mother, Jassmine—the extra s added only a few years before, courtesy of a short-lived relationship with a numerologist—had been curiously uninterested in the demise of Uncle Frank, though Susan had not gone into any details and certainly had not said anything about Merlin, giant lice, or the Old World. In fact, Jassmine wasn’t particularly interested in anything Susan had to say, her bemused tone typical of one of her periods of detachment the psychologists blamed on her use of LSD in the sixties, when she had been heavily involved in the music scene. Jassmine herself, when she returned to a more alert plane, did not think it was to do with drug use and claimed to have taken “very little” acid, despite hanging around with people who did. Susan wasn’t sure whether to believe her but had long since gotten used to her mother varying between being somewhat unreliable and completely so.

  “The bedsit sounds good,” Jassmine had said vaguely. “Do send me a postcard. Trafalgar Square or somewhere nice.”

  “I will, Mum,” replied Susan. Why Jassmine thought Trafalgar Square was nice, she didn’t know, but it was a place they always visited on their trips to London, which, though they usually coincided with Susan’s birthday, never seemed to have a particular point or object to them. In fact, the only regular part of these excursions was a visit to Trafalgar Square, where Jassmine would sit beneath one of Sir Edwin Landseer’s bronze lions for a while and then suggest going somewhere—anywhere and nowhere in particular—for cake.

  Jassmine’s early life was a mystery. Like much else, she either wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about it, so Susan only had snatches of information gleaned from occasional comments, never answers to questions. The fifteenth-century farmhouse near Bath was the only home Susan knew. It had apparently “belonged to the family forever,” but it had been a holiday house until Jassmine moved there sometime before Susan was born. Jassmine herself had grown up somewhere in central London, evidently to a family with money, since the farmhouse sat on three acres and had been extensively rebuilt at least twice in the last hundred years.

  But Susan had never met a living relative. There was only she and her mum.

  Given Jassmine’s general stonewalling on the past, it was a minor miracle Susan had managed to extract some names and other fragments of information about the men who could possibly be her father. One look at Frank Thringley had given her a visceral sense he was not her father, later confirmed by Greene’s explanation about the usual sense of wrongness from a Sipper.

  Thringley had been the easiest of the names to investigate, because of the Christmas presents and a definitive current address. For the others, she had some first names; possibly misremembered or misspelled surnames; a reading room ticket, presumably for the British Museum, that looked like it had been through the wash, with the name written on it faded into oblivion; and a silver cigarette case engraved with some sort of emblem or perhaps heraldic device, which might or might not have any relevance to the past owner.

  But before she could start investigating, Susan needed a job. She was used to working in cafés, restaurants, and pubs (since the age of fourteen, illegally, though no one paid any attention to that in the country), but with the country falling into recession, jobs were not easy to find, even casual pub work. But Susan was lucky, and on her first day, after only fourteen attempts, she walked in as a barmaid walked out to go home to Australia. She and the owners immediately got on, and so Susan was employed at the princely cash-in-hand rate of 60p per hour for a casual but regular shift at the Twice-Crowned Swan, which was on Cloudesley Road, less than half a mile from Milner Square.

  The Swan was a good pub, as they went, Susan considered. It was clean and well-run and the publican and his partner—Mr. Eric and Mr. Paul, as they insisted on being called—were both former circus performers; they’d done a strongman/acrobat routine for twenty-five years where they threw each other up in the air and spun about and also threw enormously heavy items at each other and juggled them. Both could still do a standing backflip and lift a keg under each arm. No one messed with either of them, so the drunken anger-management issues that had marred some of Susan’s previous pub work experiences tended to be few and short-lived.

  Mr. Eric and Mr. Paul were control freaks, but she didn’t mind that, once she’d learned they really were particular about the exact angle to hold a glass when drawing a pint, or that the tonic bottle had to go on the left side of the gin glass, and change had to be counted back, no reading it off from the cash register.

  After starting at the pub, Susan didn’t have much time to think about what had happened in Highgate Wood, or to do much else. Her shift was from eleven in the morning to half past eleven or midnight, depending on the clean-up time after last drinks at ten thirty. The pub was closed between three and half past four, but there was always work to do, cleaning or sorting or helping Mr. Paul in the kitchen.

  But after a week at the Twice-Crowned Swan, Susan had her day off coming, and her subconscious took advantage of this approaching treat by deciding to process what had happened at Highgate Wood. As this resulted in waking up terrified at four a.m. from a dream about the black fog streaming in through her windows and the Shuck coming up the stairs, she was grateful work had kept her occupied or exhausted for so long. If she’d had the dream on her first night, she would have woken screaming, rather than only choking in panic.

  Even so, she got up and turned the light on, and checked her door and window. Both were shut and locked. No one was in the street or the square’s garden. The moon wasn’t up, the sky was clouded, the only light came from the streetlamps at the front.

  At first it seemed nothing in particular had triggered the dream.

  Then she looked out the smaller rear window of her room, which provided a view onto the very long, narrow garden at the back of the house. Most of it was laid down to lawn, with a vegetable patch on the right side, and there was a wooden shed with a shingled roof right at the back, by the fence.

  Something was on the roof of the hut.

  A lump of darkness and shadow, with shining green-blue eyes.

  An urban fox, Susan told herself. Or Mister Nimbus, the landlady’s cat.

  But it was much bigger than a cat or a fox, and the eyes weren’t reflecting light from the house because there weren’t any lights on out the back. They were lit within, by some banked-down fire of intense turquoise. . . .

  Suddenly, the eyes and the shadowy body disappeared. Not sliding away like a fox, or a cat.


  It was gone. Vanished.

  Susan checked the window. It had a solid bolt as well as the latch on the sash. Both were locked shut.

  Nothing could get in. Or not easily, anyway. Not without breaking the window entirely.

  Somehow, this did not fill Susan with confidence. She got dressed, in her well-worn Clash T-shirt and faded black overalls, hesitated over bothering with shoes but decided she should put on her Doc Martens before going downstairs to the kitchen to borrow Mrs. London’s rolling pin. An old one, a cylinder of solid, iron-hard wood, tapered at each end. Then she sat in her single armchair where she could watch the door to her room, the big street-side window, and most important the smaller one at the back, and stayed up the remainder of the night.

  In the morning, she ate her full English breakfast, without black pudding—which Mrs. London now knew to leave off her serving—and thought about going back to bed. The other lodgers disappeared to their work or study or whatever they did, with Mrs. London offering her usual incomprehensible Glaswegian farewell that probably meant “Have a nice day” as everyone left the breakfast table.

  Susan had thought about starting her search for her father, but the shadow on the shed in the night had changed her mind. She had to talk to Merlin, and that meant finding one of the bookshops Inspector Greene had mentioned.

  Half an hour after breakfast, she left the house. She had just shut the door when she realized someone was on the steps: a glamorous young blond woman in a white cowboy hat, a leather biker’s jacket over a blue cotton sundress, and Docs very similar to Susan’s, though black. This ensemble was completed by a tie-dyed yak-hair shoulder bag, at which point Susan did a double take and stared.

  “Merlin?”

  “Susan!” said Merlin with a ravishing smile. He . . . she . . . came up the steps and delivered a sort of half bow, half curtsy salutation.

  “Um, have you changed?” asked Susan doubtfully. “Into a woman, I mean.”

  “No,” said Merlin. “That kind of shape-shifting takes some time, and we have to go to Silv . . . go somewhere special to do it. But I like to wear a nice dress from time to time anyway.”

  “I was going to look for your bookshop today, to try and find you,” said Susan. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t,” said Merlin. “I only got off the sick list this morning, and the first thing I’m told by the powers that be is to fetch you in for a bit of a chat.”

  “Uh, when you say ‘powers that be,’ do you mean, like, actual power—”

  “No, I mean my great-uncle Thurston and probably great-aunt Merrihew as well,” replied Merlin. “Why were you coming to see me?”

  “I . . . I saw something last night,” said Susan. “I mean, early this morning. In the garden, watching my window. Sort of like a fox, but bigger, with glowing eyes.”

  “What color?”

  “Sort of green-blue. Turquoise. And it disappeared. I mean, I was looking straight at it and then it wasn’t there. It didn’t move, or jump away.”

  Merlin raised an eyebrow.

  “This was in your garden? Here, behind the house?”

  “Well, on the roof of the garden shed. What was it?”

  “I’d better have a look.”

  Susan still had her latchkey in her hand. She opened the door and saw Mrs. London standing in the hall, looking slightly flustered, only a few steps back as if she’d suddenly retreated when the key clicked in the lock. Merlin, who was close behind Susan, called out a cheery greeting and waved his white-cotton-gloved left hand.

  “Good morning, Mrs. L! How are you?”

  “None the better for your asking,” sniffed Mrs. London. “Which one are you? Only I have to write it in the book.”

  “Which one . . . which . . . I am heartbroken, Mrs. L. Merlin, of course.”

  “Thought you were your sister. You and your shenanigans.”

  “It’s easy to tell us apart now, Mrs. L,” replied Merlin easily. “She’s gone right-handed.”

  “What do you mean you have to write in a book?” asked Susan. “You mean for the police?”

  “For the inspector,” said Mrs. London dourly. “Not quite the same thing.”

  She looked at Merlin suspiciously.

  “What do you want anyway? Inspector said Susan should be done with your lot.”

  “Sadly, it seems otherwise,” replied Merlin. “I need to take a look in your garden, Mrs. L. Something was there last night. On the shed, at least.”

  “I wondered why Mister Nimbus was sniffing about the shed this morning,” said Mrs. L. “Go on, then.”

  “Thank you!” beamed Merlin, proceeding past the landlady at speed, with Susan close behind. Once through the kitchen and out the back door, he leaned in close and whispered.

  “Who’s Mister Nimbus?”

  “Her cat,” replied Susan.

  “Really? He’s new. . . . I wonder what happened to Terpsichore, her old cat. Useful types, cats. You know what they say: ‘The cats and the owls and the better type of raven, know more of what is doing than any human maven.’”

  “Who says that?”

  “I read it somewhere,” said Merlin. He proceeded along the edge of the lawn, bending over to look at the bricks laid along the edge. “Do you like this dress, by the way?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “Do you like me better in a dress or in trousers?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it. . . .” mumbled Susan, who had thought about it.

  Merlin smiled wickedly and ran his left hand over the paving stones that demarked the end of the lawn, with the shed on the other side.

  “The wards are intact.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The wards are magical lines of protection, boundaries that something inimical cannot cross. This house and the gardens are strongly warded and, as far as I can tell, no one has tried to interfere with them.”

  “As far as you can tell?”

  “It’s more of a right-handed thing,” said Merlin. “But they haven’t been obviously broken. You look good in overalls, by the way.”

  “Uh . . . thank you,” replied Susan.

  “I look good in overalls, too,” mused Merlin. “When I can get some that fit.”

  Susan found herself nodding, and stopped.

  “Fancy a drink later? Or a movie?” asked Merlin.

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Yes,” said Merlin. He sounded a little surprised himself, as if he hadn’t meant to ask her at all.

  “I hardly know you,” said Susan as dismissively as she could manage. She was attracted to Merlin—who wouldn’t be—but she didn’t like that he was all too aware of it. He seemed to be the sort of beautiful person who had to test their charms on everyone they came in contact with, and she wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “We have saved each other’s lives,” said Merlin. “That’s a real icebreaker. Tell me—”

  “What about this creature on the shed?” interrupted Susan, keen to get the conversation back on track. “And you taking me to your bookshop . . . and anyway, I have someone back home.”

  “Really? But you broke up when you left, right? It wouldn’t be fair, otherwise. What’s her name? Or his? Anyway, with the boundary wards intact, the Kexa couldn’t get closer than the shed.”

  “The what? And his name’s Lenny. He plays the French horn.”

  Even as she spoke, Susan regretted offering up this detail, though Merlin restrained himself from more than the faintest lift of one eyebrow.

  “Kexa. Or hemlock cat, if you prefer. A cat beast of the darkest hours of the night, whose breath is poison. Sent by someone to have a poke around, or maybe breathe on someone. I suppose this confirms it.”

  “Confirms what?” asked Susan. She was feeling both slightly flustered and a little bit annoyed. Merlin had no right to be so attractive, mysterious, and annoying all at once.

  “It confirms that Great-Uncle Thurston is right, which to be fair doe
s happen occasionally when he stirs himself. The Greats do need to see you. Come on, the cab’s waiting.”

  He turned about and started to walk back along the lawn, but stopped as Susan grabbed his shoulder.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! Does it still hurt?”

  “Of course it does,” replied Merlin. “I’m on light duties for two weeks. No unpacking books, no tidying shelves. Marvelous.”

  He started to turn away again, but Susan spoke very sharply and sternly, and he stopped.

  “Merlin! Why do your relatives want to see me? And who sent the . . . the—”

  “Kexa.”

  “Kexa. Inspector Greene warned me I was at risk from the Old World if I stayed in London—”

  “Yes,” said Merlin. “Far more so than we thought initially, if a hemlock cat is prowling about the place. That’s why you need to come in to the shop.”

  “Greene told me not to have any more to do with you and the booksellers, either.”

  “That was good advice. Then.”

  “What do you mean ‘then’ and why are you interested now?”

  “Well, personally I like you and—”

  “Merlin—”

  “There’s a Kexa after you, but that aside, my esteemed elder relative has got the idea that the Raud Alfar warden in the wood wasn’t shooting at me. Admittedly, I gave him that notion, after I’d had time to think about what happened.”

  “What do you mean? You were the one who got hit!”

  “Yes. I put myself in the way. But the warden was aiming at you.”

  “Me?!”

  “And the Raud Alfar don’t shoot regular mortals. Not usually. So my sainted great-uncle—technically great-great-great-times-something-great—has consulted with my sainted great-aunt, likewise times whatever, and they have asked themselves, What does that make you?”

  “It doesn’t make me anything,” protested Susan.