“You just ran off after the job announcement. We didn’t even get a chance to talk—”
“I have nothing to say to you.” I spied the raven perched on the curtain rail, watching the scene unfold with those beady brown eyes. I pointed at him. “If you need someone to talk to, try him. He loves it when you quote ‘The Raven.’”
“Oh, he’s cute. And if you mean that silly poem you used to recite all the time, I think it’s burned into my memory.” Ashley rolled her eyes and held up her hand, clicking her fingers as if that would get the raven to approach. “‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many—’”
The raven sprung into the air and let forth another lethal package, exactly on target.
SPLAT.
“Argggh!”
Ashley flung her hands up to shoo the raven away, and rushed for the stairs. The bird settled back onto the curtain rail, dark eyes peering back at me as if checking on a job well done. Probably it was just a shadow, but I swear, it winked at me.
Chapter Six
Ashley seemed determined to torture me. She ran off after the raven left his present on her Birkin bag, but returned an hour later wearing a pink peasant dress covered in a print of black revolvers. She spent the next hour browsing in the Sociology section. Every five minutes she’d wander over to the window, then return to the shelves. She left without buying anything. I didn’t unclench my jaw until she was around the corner and out of sight.
“Your friends are weird,” Heathcliff said as I helped him answer the shop emails.
And by helped, I meant that he dictated vitriol to me and I translated his archaic insults into something akin to modern, civilized English. The only email I didn’t change was the one to the support team at The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. “They won’t recognize me if I’m polite to them,” he huffed. I reluctantly agreed, mostly because I relished what might be my only chance in life to type the sentence, ‘Far rather would I be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions, than, even for one more moment, endure the puerile ramblings of such a gibface flapdoodle.’”
And Mum said this job would be boring.
“Ashley’s not my friend,” I said through clenched teeth. “Why is she weird?”
“She spent an hour here, notwithstanding her visit earlier, and she didn’t leave the Sociology section once.”
“That’s weird?” I mean, it was for Ashley, but Heathcliff didn’t know that.
“The Sociology section is the bookshop dead zone. It’s where we stash all the books we can’t put anywhere else. No one buys from the sociology section, not even sociology professors.”
I pretended to write on an imaginary notepad. “Note to self; No one buys from the sociology section, especially not my weird ex-friends. See, I’m learning so much about the book trade already. Now, what do we do for lunch? I’m starving. Do we go out or—”
“I don’t go out. There’s enough people mucking about in the shop as it is, without seeking out their ignorance in my free time.”
“Well, I could go up to the flat and whip us up something—”
“No. You don’t go upstairs.” Heathcliff pulled out the top drawer of the desk. “I’ve got plenty of food right here.”
I peered into the drawer, which was stuffed full of moldy pork pies, dried sausage, and chocolate bars melted into eldritch shapes.
I pointed to a discolored lump at the back. “Is that an anthill?”
Heathcliff grabbed a chocolate bar and slammed the drawer shut. “If you’re going to be a nag, you can go out. Fetch us something fried or coated in sugar.”
“Fine.” I grabbed my coat. “It’s my treat this time, but if you want me to scavenge lunch every day, it’ll be an extra fifty pence an hour.”
“Sold.”
“Croak!” added the raven from the top of the staircase as I made my way down the hallway.
“And some berries for the bird,” Heathcliff yelled after me.
“That’s an extra quid!” I called back as I slammed the bookshop door behind me.
“Croooooak!”
* * *
As I pushed open the heavy door twenty minutes later, splattered with rain and laden down with a tower of Indian food, a bottle of white wine, and a punnet of imported blueberries, a foul smell hit my nostrils, like death and moldy socks and stinky cheese all rolled into one.
“Did the cat bring us a surprise?” I asked as I slid the food down on Heathcliff’s desk and rolled over a stool to join him. The odor burned my nostrils so bad my eyes watered.
Heathcliff grunted and yanked the lid off a rogan josh. “This reeks of chili and foreign spices.”
“Of course it does, it’s curry. How can you smell anything over that reek? Are you sure there’s not a pile of rotting fish in the back of that desk drawer?”
“It doesn’t smell so terrible.”
“Huh. I guess your olfactory senses have been blunted by years of living in bachelor squalor, and that’s why you don’t want me to go upstairs.” I spread takeout containers across the desk. “Go on then, grab some utensils and dive in. If that rogan josh is too spicy, I’ve got us butter chicken and a couple of samosas and even a bottle of cheap plonk to celebrate your genius decision to hire me and the fact that I’m going to turn this place around—Heathcliff, that smell is foul. We can’t keep letting that bird defecate in here, it’s giving this bookshop a really bad—” I stopped short as my eyes followed my nose to the source of the smell. In the wingback chair under the window sat a disheveled gentleman wearing jeans that were more holes than fabric. He wore a trench coat stained with streaks of filth, and his wild hair looked like it hadn’t ever seen a comb or a shower. He had a book open in his lap and one hand thrust into the front of his jacket. At first I thought he was being filthy, but his hand was over his breast. Still, weird.
I leaned over the desk, where Heathcliff had his nose in a book, his heavy boots crossed on top of his keyboard while the computer beeped in protest. I waved my hand under his face, but he didn’t look up at me.
“Um, Heathcliff,” I whispered. “I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a hobo reading in the corner.”
“Of course I noticed.” Heathcliff tossed down the book and lifted the lid on a container, frowning at its contents. “Did you get any onion bhaji?”
“If you hate e-commerce stores and people with mobile phones, surely you have a thing about smelly hobos stinking out the shop?”
Heathcliff glanced over at the homeless man, who didn’t seem to have noticed my arrival. “Earl doesn’t have a home. He sleeps on a park bench. It’s cold and wet outside and he wants to read books, and the best thing is… he does not own an ereader.”
My chest panged at his kindness. Living in New York had hardened me against homeless people, but Heathcliff was right. There was no one else in here and it was miserable outside. “You’re sweet, for a grumpy bastard.”
Heathcliff grunted as he tore off a piece of naan and soaked it in rogan josh. “Maybe he and I have common interests.”
“Why don’t you let him crash on your sofa upstairs, then?”
“Are you making a joke? He smells. I’m not having him near my stuff.” Heathcliff pulled two wine glasses from the second drawer in his desk and set them on the table.
“You keep wine glasses in your desk?”
“I work in the book industry. There’s always a reason to drink.” The cork lasted all but a second under his strong fingers. As Heathcliff poured the wine, I let my mind wander, and it went straight to a fantasy of Heathcliff flinging the stacks of books and computer off his desk, throwing me down, and consummating our already combative working relationship with the most intense fuck I’d ever experienced.
I bet Heathcliff uses words like consummating, which is totally okay if he can give multiple orgasms…
Damn, what’s wrong with me? He may be hot, but he’s my boss. And he’s also a dick.
A huge dick.
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I bet he has a huuuuuge dick…
Oh Aphrodite, save me.
I stared hard at my curry, hoping Heathcliff would attribute my red face to the high levels of chili.
“If that girl wasn’t your friend, who is she?” Heathcliff muttered between bites of naan.
“Just a girl I knew,” I said into my lunch. “I suppose she was my friend once.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Good. I fucking hate talking.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of books and rotting fish. After an hour or so, the homeless man inserted a dirty Wimpy Bar receipt as a bookmark, shoved his book under the chair, and shuffled out of the shop. As he passed Grimalkin in the hall, the black cat hissed and swiped at his ankle with her lethal claws. “Don’t bother the customers, Grimalkin,” Heathcliff muttered without looking up from his book. “He doesn’t have another cat with ‘im.”
Curious as to what had held Earl’s attention, I waited until Heathcliff was occupied with a customer and slid the book out from under the chair. Our homeless friend was devouring The Cutest Book of Cats. I guess it goes to show. I shelved the book back where it belonged.
At four o’clock, Morrie ducked through the door. “Ooh, who brought wine?” He grabbed the half-finished bottle and poured the dregs into a glass while Heathcliff shooed the last browser out and locked the door behind him.
“I did.” I slid onto my stool beside the desk and tried to swipe the glass out of his hand. Morrie sure had a habit of just taking what he wanted, even if it didn’t belong to him.
Morrie held the glass over his head. “You didn’t bring enough.”
“You going to push me off a waterfall over it, Moriarty?” I lifted an eyebrow.
Heathcliff stomped back into the room, Grimalkin scurrying around his feet. The raven swooped in from upstairs and landed on the armadillo. “Don’t let anyone else in,” he growled at me. “We’re closed, and I don’t want—”
There was a clattering noise from the front hall, like something heavy hitting a wooden floor.
“Get away from that fucking mail slot,” Heathcliff thundered, sprinting for the hallway. Sensing mischief, the raven fluttered after him.
“Did you have a nice day at work?” I asked Morrie.
“The company lost eighty-five million quid,” he said casually, sipping his ill-gotten wine and flipping through a lurid paperback about Jack the Ripper. The raven fluttered back into the room and perched on the back of the chair.
“What?”
Morrie’s eyes flicked down the page. “Yup. The money just vanished from the accounts. Poof, like magic.”
“How are you not more worried about that? Do you still have a job? Will you even get paid?”
“I was let go, along with everyone else. The company was bollocks, anyway. They never acted on my suggestion to institute a bring-your-pet-to-work day. I was going to let this guy loose on the middle-management fat-cats.” Morrie reached up and tickled the raven under the chin. The raven made a hyuh-hyuh-hyuh sound deep in its throat, almost as if it was purring.
“But you don’t have a job! And eighty-five million quid doesn’t just disappear—”
“Fuck,” Heathcliff returned with a stack of Dan Browns. “You turn your back for a bloody moment and they’re shoving these through the mail slot. I’m going to board the bloody thing up. People are monsters.”
“Agreed,” I piped up. “Anyone who reads Dan Brown is a monster. They’re not even good enough to recycle.”
“We could burn them in the fire to keep ourselves warm,” Morrie suggested, rubbing his shoulders.
“And toast marshmallows!” I added.
Morrie turned to Heathcliff. “Mina’s perfect. We have to keep her.”
“Croak!” The raven agreed.
“Meow,” Grimalkin chimed in.
I picked up one of the books. “Hey, actually, could I take some of these? I think I could make something out of them to sell. My mother’s always going on about diversifying your income streams.”
“We sell books,” Heathcliff growled. “But not these books.”
“You might, after I’m done with them. Trust me. You got a spare box?”
Heathcliff handed me one and I sorted through the stack for books in decent condition. Morrie flung himself down into Heathcliff’s chair, his emerald eyes dancing as he watched me work. “So how was your first day, gorgeous? Don’t spare the juicy details.”
“Don’t you want to talk about your job—”
“I’m just dandy. I have some money stashed away. Tell me about working with Old Cantankerous.”
“It was fun,” I said, and I meant it. Heathcliff and Morrie were both profoundly odd, but despite Ashley’s visit, they’d completely taken my mind off my eyes and everything that happened. It didn’t hurt that they were easy to look at, and that every time Heathcliff growled something in his gravelly voice I imagined him saying my name as he thrust into—
Yikes. I buried my reddening face in the Da Vinci Code.
Plus, I was surrounded by books. Their comforting smell brought me back to my childhood, when they were my one escape from the shittiness that was my life. It was fitting that after everything that happened in New York City, I’d come back to Nevermore Bookshop to escape once more. Books really were my salvation.
And I’ll only be able to read them for a short while longer.
The thought slapped me across the face, startling me out of my happiness. The ophthalmologist said the changes would be slow at first – my peripheral vision would shrink away until I saw the world through a narrowing tunnel. Then I’d start seeing random colors and lights. Then, at some undetermined point in the future, I’d go completely blind.
Blind.
No more colors. No more turning the pages of my favorite books. No more fashion or art or fun. Only darkness. Only nothing.
“Hey, earth to Mina.” Morrie snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You went off somewhere. Your face has gone all blotchy.”
“I’m fine. I’m just a little terrified of that archaic thing.” Fishing for a change of subject, I glared at Heathcliff’s ancient computer, the only thing standing between me and Morrie’s hot, lanky body. “Does he even have a website?”
“We don’t need a website.” Heathcliff yelled from deeper in the shop.
Morrie leaned across the desk, his face lighting up with wicked glee. Up close, his scent hit me – fresh and tangy, lavender and vanilla, with a hint of something much, much darker. “I’ve been trying to get him to make one for years.”
“It’s the twenty-first bloody century. Every legitimate business needs a website. How do people find the shop?”
“I don’t want them to find the shop,” Heathcliff yelled.
Morrie flashed me a smile that melted my panties. “Here’s an idea,” he whispered. “Come around to my place tomorrow night. We’ll build a website. He doesn’t get any say in it.”
“Why don’t we just work on it during the day? Your place is his place, and it’s not as though you have a job to go to.”
“Can’t. I’m heading down to London for a standing appointment with my bank.”
“You go to your bank in person? And you call Heathcliff a dinosaur?”
Morrie blinked. “It’s a very specialized bank. What do you say? I’ll be back around seven, so you could come by at eight? I’ll make sure he leaves the door open for you.”
“You mean, I’d get to go upstairs?”
“No,” Heathcliff yelled from the depths of the shop.
“Yes.” Morrie grinned.
“Croak!” agreed the raven.
I reached out and shook Morrie’s hand. “It’s a date.”
Chapter Seven
Mum arrived home from her wobbleator sales seminar just as I put two bowls of leftover curry on the table. “I’ve had the most brilliant idea for my vibration training starter packs, Mina. I need you to
go to the market and get me some cheap towels and water bottles. I’m going to peel the labels off and put my stickers on them.” Mum slapped a roll of garish stickers bearing an out-of-focus image of her smiling face and the words, ‘Vibrate Your Way to a Nu Life with Helen Wilde.’”
I cringed at the spelling of new. “Wow, Mum, those are… something.”
She grinned. “Aren’t they splendid? Tonight I learned that branding is vital for an entrepreneur to succeed. My business mentor has a machine that prints these in an instant. And they only cost me two hundred quid—”
“Two hundred? I could have got you something better off the internet for a tenner. Mum, how much are you spending on this new enterprise? You’ve got enough for the rent, haven’t you? Because Heathcliff isn’t paying me much and I—”
“Relax, darling. I’m going to make it all back by Sunday, plus a two hundred percent ROI. That means return-on-investment. See how much I’m learning?” She paused. “Actually, better make that next Wednesday. But definitely no later. Will you go to the market?”
“Mum, I worked all day. I don’t want to go back to town. And look, I made dinner. Plus, I had a project I wanted to start on tonight. Can’t you go to the market?”
She pouted. “But darling, I was so busy with the seminar I haven’t had a chance to do my vibration exercises today. I can’t sell these machines if I don’t use them. Authenticity is important in today’s consumer market and—”
“Fine.” I slurped up the last mouthful of curry and grabbed my coat. The last thing I wanted to do was head out again, not with Ashley wandering around the village. But I remembered I didn’t have the craft glue I needed for my book project, and I knew Mum wouldn’t let up until I ran her errands. “Car keys?”
Mum shook her head. “Mina, you shouldn’t be driving with your eyesight.”
“It’s not dark yet. I’m fine.”
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea. Besides, the car’s spewing black smoke again. I think it’s the alternator.”
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