“If you have a problem with me, then you should fire me.”
“Ishouldfire you,” he growled. “Come upstairs and have a glass of wine with us.”
A wide grin stretched across my face. I held out my hand and Heathcliff took it, the heat of his fingers shooting through my body. “You’re on.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I’m stoked you’re not the murderer.” Jo poured wine into two glasses and pushed one across to me. “Now I can hang out with you without worrying I’ll end up with a knife in the back.”
We were sitting on either side of Heathcliff’s desk, holding the fort while Sir Grumpy went to yell at a poor defenseless bank teller over a check mix-up, as if it was her fault he couldn’t use the online banking app like the rest of the universe.
I clinked my glass against Jo’s. “I’m glad, too. Although I’m not sure you’re the best influence on me. I’ve officially become a day drinker.”
“You work in a bookshop in the age of digital media. I don’t think there’s anything to dobutdrink.”
I laughed. “I’ve heard that joke before.”
“I’m not sure it’s a joke so much as a universal truth.”
It was two weeks since we caught Darren, and Jo and I had been hanging out every few days, mostly drinking wine over lunch. She loved to regale me with grisly tales of life in the lab, and I stored up all the stories of Heathcliff’s customer interactions for her. She was the complete opposite to Ashley in nearly every way, but I had a feeling I was making my next girl-friend.
Jo left after we finished our glass. She had two autopsies to conduct in the afternoon. As I stared at the neatly stacked and dusted shelves (my handiwork) and tried not to think about Jo squishing around in someone’s organs, my fingers trailed along the edge of the Doomsday Book that sat on the desk.
Heathcliff’s discovery came back to me, about how the building had been in the book trade for hundreds of years. I’d been thinking about the room upstairs, and how pristine it was, as if it had only been abandoned a few months. But the furniture was old – Victorian, or maybe late Georgian. It seemed impossible that it should remain in that state, undisturbed, for all these years.
I turned over the edge of a page. I thought back to the occult room, and the old, dusty bindings on some of those books.I wonder if anything in there was from when the shop was first established.
I opened the top drawer of Heathcliff’s desk. There, nestled under a package of squashed Wagon Wheels biscuits, was an old-fashioned ring of keys. I shoved the keyring into my pocket.
“Watch the desk for me,” I called up to Quoth. “I just need to check something on the first floor.”
Quoth nodded from his perch on the armadillo. I bounded up the stairs and slipped into the storage room. Heathcliff had pasted a large DO NOT ENTER sign on the door and it was locked tight. I tried the keys until one turned. The door clicked open, and I entered.
This time, I ignored the book on the plinth and headed for the shelves, pulling books out at random and checking their inside flaps. Many of them weren’t in English, and it wasn’t as though copyright had been invented when they were written, but after a few volumes I found one that was dated to the fourteenth century. Of course, it was in Latin.
Why didn’t fashion school have a Medieval Latin class? Bloody hell.
“Morrie!” I grabbed the volume and brought it upstairs.
“Yes, gorgeous?” Morrie poked his head around his alcove, his face lit by the glow of his screens.
I thrust the book under his nose. “What does this say here, on the first page?”
Morrie peered at the volume. “This is the title of the work, which is afascinatingbook on demonology, and here’s the name of the bookseller where it was copied – Herman Strepel.”
I knew it.“This is the same guy who used to have a shop righthere. Is there any way to find out more about this Strepel? Ideally, a list of texts he had for sale.”
“Antique books aren’t really my thing, unless we’re talking about stealing them. But I’ll talk to some people.” Morrie grinned at me.
“This could be big. It could be a major clue as to why the shop does what it does. But Morrie, if I’m to have any hope of figuring this out, I need to know what the deal is with the master bedroom.”
“You have to ask Heathcliff—”
“I’m asking you.” I gave him my sternest expression.
Morrie sighed. “Mr. ___ told Heathcliff never to enter that room. He obeyed, but I didn’t. The first night I was here I stole the key from his desk and opened the door. Inside I found a forest.”
“A…”
