“I…I…don’t know. Quoth just turned into a bird, it’s crazy! I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Mina.” Heathcliff looked mournfully at his rapidly-declining whisky bottle. “Jo needs the truth.”
“Yeah. I know.” I sucked in a deep breath and poured out the whole story, how the bookshop brought fictional characters to life, how Quoth shifted between raven and human forms, and how I was the daughter of Homer and somehow responsible for it all. “The murders we’ve solved over the last year have just been the tip of the iceberg. There’s been a much greater mystery ruling over us all – Nevermore Bookshop and why it brings fictional characters to life.”
Jo glared at Heathcliff. “So you are Heathcliff Earnshaw, that stroppy, skeleton-hugging bastard fromWuthering Heights?”
Heathcliff nodded. She whirled around to face Morrie. “And you’re James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime from Sherlock Holmes.”
Morrie takes a deep bow. “At your service.”
“And Quoth is…”
“Croak?” Quoth tipped his head to the side.
“The raven from Poe’s poem,” I said in a small voice. “We have no idea why he can shapeshift. But I’m grateful for it.”
Jo gestured at Socrates, who appeared at the top of the stairs, eating ice cream out of a tub as he yelled obscenities at the presenters on BBC One. “And those jokers upstairs are…”
“…characters from Classical literature the shop has brought to life in the last month,” I shrugged. “There have been others, too. Remember Lydia? She was fromPride and Prejudice. And Morrie’s old boyfriend Sherlock…”
“Right.” Jo swallowed again. “The shop brings fictional characters to life. And you’re saying that Fiona…”
“—was drained of her blood by Bram Stoker’sCount Dracula, so he could steal the Romanian soil she kept in her box. Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” I reached across to hug my friend, but she shied away. “I’m so, so sorry, Jo.”
Jo gives a barking laugh. “I mean, I can’t say it’s entirely a surprise.” She tipped the bottle in his Heathcliff’s direction. “I can easily believe you’re the famous Heathcliff, and the way the raven reacted whenever anyone quoted Poe…and Morrie and Sherlock, I mean every fan fiction writer has been shipping that couple since the stories first made it to print. I feel so stupid for not figuring it out.”
“Don’t feel stupid. You’re the smartest person I know.”
“Hey!” Morrie protested. One look from me and he shut his trap.
Jo looked up at me, and I read the hurt behind the fear in her eyes. “You should have told me, Mina.”
“I know. I wanted to tell you so many times, but I didn’t think you’d believe me. And I didn’t want to lose your friendship.” I stared nervously at my friend. I hated all the lies I’d had to tell her over the last year. “I’ve spent my entire life watching people look at my mother like she’s insane. Which she is. But I couldn’t stand it if you looked at me like that.”
“If you can get justice for my Fiona, I don’t care if you’re the queen of bloody Sheba.” Jo clenched her fists at her sides. “That bloodsucker hurt my love. He dies tonight.”
“It’s not as easy as that. Which reminds me, we found Fiona’s box. I think she’d want you to have it.” I nodded to Heathcliff. He rummaged around behind the desk and pulled out the box from whatever crevice he used to hide it and handed it to Jo. Her fingers trembled as she took it from his hands, and from the way her shoulders heaved I knew she was dangerously close to crying again.
“Thank you.” She caressed the inlaid design. “This means the world to me. Now, what were you saying about the bastard who did this to her?”
As succinctly as I could, I recapped the plot of the book and reminded her that we needed to destroy every one of the fifty boxes of dirt before we could go after the vampire. We only had the dirt he took from Jenna Mclarey left to find.
“What if he uses more than fifty boxes?” Jo asked.
“We thought of that, but we don’t believe he will. Dracula’s habits are ingrained from centuries of life between the pages. He’s not going to veer from the plot and suddenly change things up just because he’s in our world. Plus, Grey Lachlan made it clear they don’t know we’ve destroyed all the other dirt. He’ll assume fifty is more than sufficient.”
Jo slumped back in her chair. “So what do we do?”
“We didn’t find Jenna’s dirt with the others at Dracula’s house, and we don’t even know the vessel it’s stored in. If we can figure out where she got it from we’d be closer to an answer—”
“I mean about Fiona.” Jo’s lip trembled. Right, of course. In the chaos of Jo discovering our secret, I’d almost forgotten why she came here in the first place – her girlfriend rose from death and was wandering the woods. “How will we find her?”
“Easy,” Heathcliff said as an ambulance tore through the village, sirens blaring. “We follow the trail of destruction.”
Chapter Fourteen
“That bitch is crazy.” Wilson coughed. “She was high on something, but I’ve never seen drugs do that to a person.”
