Atria sat up on her elbows to give her a wounded look. The effect of it was somewhat hampered by the veil of dark hair that’d fallen across her face, not to mention the smeared eyeliner and body glitter. “You don’t wanna be my sister?”
Digging around the bag for another cookie, Ruby replied, “I wanna, but I just don’t think it’slegalis all.”
“Oh.” Atria looked truly crestfallen, which wouldn’t do.
Pushing her bare feet into the carpet, Ruby scooted herself toward her friend on her back. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be sisters,” she offered, holding out the bag full of crushed holiday cookies. “We just gotta do it criminal style.”
Ruby shook the bag. “We’ll be cookie sisters. Cookies exist beyond the bounds of thelaw.Those are for measly men and cookie-haters.”
“Oh,”Atria breathed, nodding. It took her two tries to get her aim right, but eventually she managed to get her fingers in the bag. Breaking off a piece of already shattered cookie, she offered it to Ruby with all the solemnity of the temple priestess she’d been raised to be.
“Cookie sisters,” she intoned, “from now until death!”
Ruby took the piece and brought it to her lips. “From now until death!” After some thoughtful crunching, she added, “Or until I throw these up later.”
Atria flopped back down onto her pillow.“Puh-leasedon’t talk about throw-up.”
Fairylight 24hr Books
Margot didn’t feelat home at very many places in San Francisco. Even after two months in the city, she struggled to get used to being so alone and yet constantly surrounded by strangers. With the looming holiday, she felt that isolation much more keenly. And that was saying something, because shealwaysstruggled during Burden’s Moon.
There were only two places she felt at ease. The first, of course, was her clinic. The second was the bookstore.
Fairylight 24hr Bookswas empty when she stepped through the old doors, the bell over her head chiming. The bookshop was almost oppressively warm, as if all the books crammed so tightly together on the shelves that spiderwebbed out from the entrance were somehow creating their own heat. Upbeat jazz whined from the tinny speakers mounted in the corners of the store. Claudette, the giantess who owned The Fairylight,refused to play anything else.
The Fairylightwas willfully against city coding, organization, and common sense. The store was a maze of towering bookshelves and uneven floorboards covered in old, mismatched area rugs. The electricity hadn’t been updated since the thirties, so exposed wiring snaked along shelves and whatlittle could be seen of the walls, trailing up into light fixtures that glowed orange.
Margot, who’d spent most of her spare time in the shop since she discovered it, still couldn’t make heads or tails of the place.
“Bardil?” she called, adjusting her hold on the paper coffee cups in her hands, “Claudette?”
“In history, healer.”
Margot ran a hand through her windswept hair, her fingers caught in the tangles as she wound her way through the stacks. The Fairylightwas probably the only place in San Francisco one could walk right by a giant and not see them.
Claudette was hunched over a rusty cart, her huge, arthritic fingers plucking up books by the tens. Margot nearly passed right by her, tucked away as she was in the moving shadows cast by the buzzing lights. Seeing the giant was always a pleasure, but it was particularly nice on that rainy Sunday.
Turning her great head to look at Margot through coke-bottle glasses, her cloud of white hair swaying, Claudette asked, “Everything all right there, healer?”
Margot offered her friend the coffee she’d picked up from Ruffled Feathers. When Claudette took it between two fingers, Margot unzipped her jacket with her free hand, letting in the musty warmth. Looking up at her elderly friend, the words came out in one gust. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You look it. Did the clinic get busy?”
Margot shook her head. “No, I just had a less than sane idea last night.”
The giantess’ fingers stilled on the shelf. Her eyebrows, white bushy things that stuck out above her lenses, pinched on her wrinkled forehead. “What? You planning a coup or something? The elves won’t take kindly to that, I tell you what.”
“What? No.” She shuddered. “I could never run this territory.”
“Then what?Are you planning a murder?”
Margot watched Claudette turn her attention back to the shelf. “No,” she answered, already flustered. “I just— I went to the market off of Carolina Street the other day, and I noticed… Well, you remember when we were talking about how there used to be a clinic in there when I came by last week?”
“Ah.” Claudette’s old bones creaked as she roughly scooted books to one side, making room for newcomers. Margot never once caught her actually organizing a pile of books, but somehow they were always in order by the time they made it to the shelf. “So you bought contraband.”
“Huh? No! What would I even do with— Iwantto reopen a clinic there. You know, for all the people who can’t or won’t go somewhere?—”
“Ah, ah! This sounds like it’ll take a while. If you’re going to chat, you’re going to work.” Claudette jabbed a meaty finger at a stack of paperbacks on the cart, saying, “You know the drill, healer. No free rides in this bookshop. You buy or you work.”
