When I returned from the bakery for our breakfast order, Mrs. Ellis was holding court outside, delighting her audience with tales of the sordid goings on within the bookshop of ill-repute. I’d have thought it hilarious if her words didn’t hit so close to home.
If I wasn’t secretly lusting after three guys.
I snuck around the back to avoid Mrs. Ellis’ gleeful tales. Heathcliff let me in. He presented me with a tiny black key.
“I got it cut for you yesterday,” he said. “You can use it whenever you want. Even if… even if it’s not work hours.”
“Thanks.” The gesture touched me, partly because I knew how hard it was for him to let someone new into his life. Heathcliff’s black eyes looked right through me, like he could read all the thoughts running around in my head. Which would be bad, on account of how little clothing he wore in most of them.
“Just don’t go snooping through my stuff when I’m not here,” he added.
I smiled. “You’re never not here.”
Heathcliff stepped back to let me in. Quoth swooped down from a dark corner and zoomed between us, making a beeline for the oak tree in the center of the village green.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Only the wind knows,” Heathcliff replied. “He’s been all weird and silent all night.”
“He’s always weird and silent.”
“Not like this. He asked me if he could put some of his paintings up in the shop. With price tags.” Heathcliff’s savage features winced at the idea.
“That’s a good thing. Quoth’s an amazing artist. I bet people will buy his work.”
“Of course you’d say that,” Heathcliff glowered. “You’re the one giving him dangerous ideas. I bet you won’t be the one consoling him when nothing sells.”
“Right, as if you know how to console someone.”
“I know how to hand them a bottle of wine. Don’t sit with him in public again. You’re a bad influence.”
Grinning, I followed Heathcliff into the shop. We sat down at his desk and I spread out my bakery purchases. “No Morrie today?”
“He’s following a lead. Apparently, that ring is from Debenhams, so he’s gone to the nearest store to see if he can find out who purchased it.”
“Oh, interesting. That means it probably wasn’t part of a fashion show goody bag. Did he say if he thought it was relevant?”
Heathcliff sipped his coffee and opened his ledger. “Honestly, I wasn’t listening. Morrie talks a lot, and most of it is self-congratulatory bullshit.”
“You’re not wrong about that. What’s on the agenda today?”
“We’re opening. We can’t afford not to. You okay with that?”
“I’m the one who’s been telling you to open!”
“Keep talking lip and I’ll make you give tours of the murder site,” Heathcliff growled, leaning back in his chair and opening a book.
My jaw dropped. Did he really just say that?
“Um, if that was a joke, it was a bloody horrible one.” I folded my arms. A tense silence descended between us.
I waited for an apology. When one wasn’t forthcoming, I finished my coffee and flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN seven minutes early and threw the door open. “Welcome to Nevermore Books,” I yelled into the street. “Come in, come in, everyone is welcome!”
“We haven’t opened yet,” Heathcliff boomed from the main room.
“We have now,” I shot back. Mrs. Ellis bundled up the stairs, and I grinned and greeted her with a hug. “Hello, Mrs. Ellis. I hope you and your friends stay as long as possible. All day, in fact. Why don’t you ask Heathcliff to take you on the tour of the murder site? It’s on the way to the erotica section, which I know is what you really came to see.”
Mrs. Ellis tittered as she shuffled off toward the main room. I grinned as I busied myself dusting the shelves. Heathcliff was in for a maddening day.
* * *
People poured through the house all morning, gawking at the pulled-up rugs on the first floor and stage-whispering about Ashley’s murder and my possible involvement. I ignored them as best I could, and by lunchtime, they’d stemmed to a trickle. We even sold a Folio Society collection to Mrs. Ellis for enough money to pay for a nice curry for lunch.
I was slurping up the last of my rogan josh when Heathcliff dropped a box onto the desk. “I’m going out. I’ve got to get all the online orders to the post office. You sort through this box for anything worth keeping.”
I glanced up in surprise. “You sure you don’t want me to go instead? I thought you’d rather die than have another inane conversation about Deidre the postmistress’ pet goldfish.”
“Not true.”
“That’s what you said yesterday!”
Heathcliff tapped the box. “These are engineering books. I’d rather face the people. Don’t burn the shop down while I’m gone.”
So you’re not going to apologize, then?
Heathcliff stomped out back, slamming the door behind him.
Guess not.
“Well, Grimalkin,” I scratched my only female comrade behind her ears. “I guess we’ve got some work to do.”
I sorted, catalogued, priced, and shelved the books in the appropriate section while Grimalkin wound her way around my feet, dragging a bird toy on the end of a stick. “Okay, okay,” I laughed as she batted the stick against my leg for the third time. “I’ll play with you.”
As I twitched the stick through the air, Grimalkin leapt dramatically from the top of the Sociology shelves. She executed a perfect backward flip and chomped down on the bird, yanking the stick from my hand and darting off between the shelves.
“Hey, you scamp, come back!” I chased after her. “I can’t play with you if you don’t give me the stick back!”
“Meow!” Grimalkin chirped in reply. She scampered around the end of the Engineering shelf and disappeared into the small drawing room that served as our storage room.
“Come on, a black cat in a black room, that’s not playing fair.” I fumbled along the wall for a light switch and flicked it on. The hidden room erupted with light, revealing stacks of archive boxes, piles of books, and cleaning tools that had clearly never been used stacked up in the corner.
“Meow!”
I slid between two piles of boxes and felt my way along a set of metal shelves. A thin shaft of light illuminated a black tail flicking through an open door at the back of the room.
Aha.
“Grimalkin, please don’t go in there.” But she was a cat, so of course she disappeared through the gap in the door.
I tapped the door with the toe of my boot. It swung inward, revealing a pentagonal, windowless room lined with bookshelves. This room must be directly below the bathroom upstairs and above the reading nook in the World History room downstairs. In the center of the room stood a pedestal with an enormous book open on top. Grimalkin luxuriated across its pages, clamping the bird between her claws and tearing feathers from its tail.
Heathcliff must be using this as an extension to the stockroom. I patted the walls until I found a light switch and flicked that on. Pale light from a dusty chandelier illuminated the space just enough that I could make out the books double-stacked on the shelves. Ancient leather spines bedecked with gold pushed up against battered volumes. Only a few bore titles, but those that did filled me with a weird fluttery sense.
Mytho-hermetic Dictionary (translated by Joseph Zabinski), Testament of Solomon the King, Liber Thagirion, Ancient Magick Spells of the Occult, The Miskatonic University Yearbook, 1937.
Occult books.
But… this didn’t make any sense. There was already an Occult section in the bookshop, filled with lurid glossy covers of bare-breasted maidens holding up swords to catch the moonlight. The only people that ever went over there were tall guys in leather trench coats and women with wavy hair who smelled like ylang ylang. Why did we need a secret back room?
“What’s this all about, Grimalkin?” I asked. “I don’t—”
Of course. It’s the secret occult collection Mr. Simson compiled so he could figure out why the bookshop kept bringing literary characters to life.
Grimalkin yawned in reply, stretching out across the pedestal and rolling on her back, kicking her paws up in the air. I rubbed her stomach while she purred, and my eye caught the cover of the book underneath.
It was made from a fine black leather, blank except for a small symbol inlaid in gold in the center. I ran my fingers over the spine, and a sliver of ice drove into the back of my neck.
Grimalkin meowed and leapt off the table. She circled my feet as I ran my fingers along the deckled edges of the pages. Goosebumps rose on my arms. I flipped open the cover, expecting to see towers of skulls and mirror writing. Instead, every page was blank.
My fingers tingled as I flicked through the pages again, but there was nothing inside the book. Even so, every hair on my body stood on end. I closed the book and studied the cover, wondering if the symbol held a clue as to what it was and why it was blank—
“What are you doing in here?” A voice growled behind me.
I whirled around. Heathcliff stood in the doorway, his bulk blocking the light from the storeroom beyond. His wild hair stuck out at all angles, and his eyes blazed.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Grimalkin snuck in the doorway behind that stack of boxes and I thought—”
“You thought you’d snoop around in my private property? How’d you even get the lock open? Is Moriarty teaching you how to be a criminal mastermind?”
“The door was open, and I followed Grimalkin in here. I didn’t realize this was private. I thought it was just old stock or something.”
Heathcliff grabbed my wrist. “You shouldn’t be in here. These books are dangerous.”
I wrenched my arm away. “Why? They give wicked paper cuts?”
“I don’t know why! All I know is that when Mr. Simson left the shop to me, he told me to keep this room locked and not to let anyone in here. Not even Morrie or Quoth have been in here.” Heathcliff pointed to the lintel over the door, where a series of symbols had been carved into the wood. “He placed these runes there to contain the magic within this room and stop anyone passing. How did you get past it?”
“I’m telling you, the door was open. I didn’t even see those runes. Maybe Morrie taught Grimalkin to pick locks with her claws.”
“This isn’t funny,” Heathcliff growled.
“You really believe in all this occult magic stuff?”
“I never did until I woke up in this shop. If you discovered your entire life was just words in someone else’s book, would you believe in magic?”
“Fair enough. And Mr. Simson believed as well.” I glanced up at the pentagonal ceiling. “Do you think this room shape is significant? I know pentagrams have meaning in pagan rituals. I’ve seen The Craft.”
“Even if it is, this isn’t your concern.”
“Of course it’s my concern. I want to help you figure out how you got here. Maybe if we uncover the secret spell or whatever, we can reverse it and send you back.”
“Why? You want to get rid of me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You want to send me back to the life where my greatest love dies and I turn into a vicious sociopath who kills dogs and abuses children?” Heathcliff’s whole body shook with rage. “Is that how little you think of me?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“None of us want to go back. We can’t go back. If we could go back, Wuthering Heights would end at chapter nine and no one would have heard of the Reichenbach Fall. It’s too late for us – what we want to do is stop this happening to other characters.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Why are you even here?” Heathcliff waved his hand at the room, at the shop, at the village outside. “You’ve crawled back to Argleton with your tail between your legs because of a single wanker’s harsh words. You’ve come back to this bookshop because you want to pretend you’re a child again, sitting in a corner, reading her stories and waiting for someone to come along and save her. Only now, you’re using our lives, our stories, to distract you from living your own. Hear this, Mina. Life goes on after tragedy. Time marches onward. This shop is not a place out of time – it will not save you any more than it will save me. I have glimpsed my future, and I am incapable of being saved. And you—” he jabbed a finger at my chest. “You will go blind, but if you don’t step out those doors, then you’ll become the footnote of your own tragedy.”
Tears welled in my eyes. His words cut right through me, the wounds stabbing through Marcus’ rejection and Ashley’s death and the ophthalmologist’s terrible diagnosis. How does he see right through me? I’ve been invisible for so, so long.
I backed up against the plinth, my hands scrambling for something to hold, for anything to put distance between my raw, open heart and Heathcliff, whose black eyes threatened to burst everything open.
“I don’t want to be in the world if I can’t see,” I choked out.
“Plenty of pleasures in this world don’t require the use of your eyes,” he shouted.
I laughed through my tears. “That sounds like a really bad pickup line.”
“It is the truth. I’ll not see you give up even a moment of your life in order to give me back mine. That’s not in my future. I forbid it.”
“You can’t forbid me, you idiot. You forget that I’ve read your story, too. ‘If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day.’ You said those words, didn’t you?” Tears streamed down my face. Heathcliff glared at me in stone-faced silence. “There are not two people alive who share a love like that. You may think I can’t imagine what it is like to lose that, but I can. I know what it is to have your passion severed. It’s as if a piece of yourself has been cut out and tossed away—”
My words cut off as Heathcliff’s mouth met mine.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My heart leapt in my chest. All the need in my body sizzled to the surface, shedding the depression that clung to me like a second skin. My mind screamed that this was a terrible idea but my hands reached up and tangled in Heathcliff’s hair and my body folded into him and I dived into the abyss of darkness and despair and longing that was Heathcliff’s soul.
The kiss fired up my whole body, every atom of me in brilliant glow. Heathcliff’s huge hand cupped my cheek, clamping me in place as if he expected me to flee. I should be fleeing. I should run away so fast right now.
But how could I run, when this man and I connected with such inevitable force, our bodies and minds colliding with the fury of nature? We drank in each other – an elixir more potent than wine or the tiny pills Ashley and I popped one night at a punk show that sent me into a spiral of rapturous worship.
It was like kissing a part of myself, and not in a sad narcissistic way, but in a ‘nobody sees into all the dark places of my heart’ way. He’s more myself than I am.
Behind me, Grimalkin howled, jabbing at us with the stick of her toy.
Heathcliff tore his lips from mine. The spell broke. We stared across the void at each other, both fighting for breath, for control.
He backed away, his eyes blazing. “Stay away from this room,” he growled, dragging me out the door and slamming it shut behind him. “And stay away from me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You stay away from me,” I growled, my heart pounding against my chest. “You’re my boss. You can’t do this.”
Before Heathcliff could reply, I shoved past him, elbowing him in the ribs as I fled out of the secret room, through the shop, and down the stairs. His boots clattered after me.
“Mina, don’t run away from me.”
“You just told me to go!” I screamed, and slammed the back door in his face. I sprinted down the narrow lane behind the shop, emerging on the other side of the bakery, facing the village green. Angry tear
s rolled down my cheeks, and I swiped them away.
Where to go? Home was out. Mum was there today and I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. The one place I felt safe in Argleton was Nevermore Bookshop, and Heathcliff’s kiss had shot that all to hell.
I balled my hands into fists, then uncurled them. Bloody Heathcliff.
How had everything got so messed up?
I thought Heathcliff could be my friend. God knows I needed some of them. But then he kisses me and my body just melts into him and I think all these things about souls and lines from a book…
“Mina. Hey, Mina!”
“Not now, Darren.” I wiped my eyes and turned to face him. It must’ve been Darren’s day off, because he was wearing a hideous striped sweater and tan trousers, and had his hair combed up in a flick. Red circles ringed his eyes, and his skin appeared blotchy. He carried a brown bag from the off-license under his arm.
“I was just heading back to my flat, and I recognized you. You’re upset over Ashley,” his face collapsed in concern. “I know. Me too. I haven’t been able to go to work since I heard. I just… I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Yes, it’s awful.” Fresh tears rolled down my cheeks – tears of guilt. Ashley was dead, and I was upset over a guy. Meanwhile Darren – who’d been the brunt of Ashley’s jokes and derision for years – had clearly been up all night crying over her. “Please, Darren, I need to get home—”
“Listen, I’m not doing so well. I think it would help if I just… if I could talk about her with someone who knew her. Do you have a minute to grab a drink with me?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. Heathcliff’s kiss still burned on my lips.
“I never told you, but I’m in love with Ashley. Was in love, I guess I have to say now.” His voice cracked. “I never got up the courage to tell her in secondary school, and I was hoping now that she was back in the village I’d get the chance to take her out and tell her how I felt. Now I’ll never have that opportunity and I just…”
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