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—”
