Grimalkin reached up and licked my nose, her whiskers twitching. I hugged her to my body.You’re a good girl. Can you scratch her eyes out next?
“I’ve got a lot of work to do here.” I shoved a book on the shelf at random. “I can recommend some picture books that are just your level.”
“Mina—”
Grimalkin climbed on top of my shoulder and hissed at her. I made a mental note to ensure she got a big saucer of cream. “Bye, Ashley.”
“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,youcan 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.
