She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Because you wanted to keep the three of them all to yourself, you saucy minx. I thought it was about time you had some fun in your life. You were always such a highly-strung child. Besides, I think the Spirit Seekers might be able to help you figure out where these fictional characters came from, and maybe we could become the new stars ofStrictly Come Ghosting. We’d travel around haunted bookshops and introduce ourselves to other handsome fictional chaps. I was rather hoping Mr. Darcy might show up. Or Rochester...” she sighed dreamily. “Yes, I think tall, brooding Rochester is the man for me…”
I burst out laughing, but it hurt. It stung my throat so bloody much. I held onto Heathcliff until my head stopped spinning.
Heathcliff kicked Grey’s prone body. “Is he dead?”
I noticed the pool of blood flowing from around Grey’s wound. I knelt down beside him. Oscar nudged my hand, sniffing and making little growls. I knew then that he’d been trying to warn me about Quoth back in the art gallery. He sensed something wrong and tried to pull me out the door, but I didn’t let him.
I rubbed Oscar behind the ears with one hand. With the other, I grasped Grey’s wrist, feeling a faint pulse. “I…don’t think so. He didn’t disintegrate to dust when Mrs. Ellis staked him, which means he’s probably still at least partly human and bleeding internally. We should call an ambulance.”
“And get Mrs. Ellis thrown in jail for staking him through the heart? Not happening. This woman is a national hero.” Heathcliff reached down and scooped Grey up with his free arm, tossing the man over his shoulder. He staggered up to the back door and tested it, but it wouldn’t budge. Another scream pierced the night.
“The bastard’s locked us out.”
Heathcliff staggered back around to the front door, still carrying both Quoth’s cage and Grey’s bleeding body. Mrs. Ellis threw my arm over her shoulder and handed me Oscar’s lead. I let the two of them lead me back onto Butcher Street just as Heathcliff roared with defiance and battered his fists against the locked door.
“This ismyshop. Let me in, you poxy bastard.”
Mrs. Ellis fished inside her wallet and produced a key. “Helen gave me this. She made a copy when she was minding the shop once, in case she needed to get inside when you weren’t around.”
“Never have I been so glad my mum is…my mum.” I tossed the key to Heathcliff and he fit it into the lock. The door swung inward, just as another grisly scream echoed in the gloom. I reached into my purse and pulled out a crucifix and a wooden stake. “Let’s slay a vampire.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Heathcliff stumbled inside, grunting as he struggled to keep hold of the cage with Grey on his back. “Our little birdie’s been working out,” he huffed.
“Croak! Croak! Croaaaaak!”
“Sharpened his beak, too, hasn’t he?” Heathcliff winced as Quoth bit his finger through the bars.
“Dracula’s blood has given them super strength.” I fumbled for the light switch, but when I flicked it, nothing happened.That’s right, Victor blew the power and Handy Andy has been too busy with my mum’s business – and my mum – to fix it yet.
We were literally going in blind.
Good thing I was used to the dark.
My finger tightened on Oscar’s lead. In the darkness, he wouldn’t be able to see my hand signals, so I gave him voice commands as we moved deeper into the shop. My chest heaved with fear, but I swallowed it back and focused on what I could control. I couldn’t see, but I didn’t need to see to know what was going on. Iknewthis shop – I knew every shelf and cobweb and hidden corner. I knew where to stand to avoid the creaky floorboards and to duck when entering the Children’s room because the doorway was lower. I knew the scent of fresh wood polish and old leather and ink and the rising damp that came from the flooded cellar and the walls where I guessed the pipes had burst.
I felt, too, the presence of Dracula. He was here, no doubt about it. He’d poisoned the air with his presence, and the shop stank of him. His power and domination rolled off him in waves that crashed against me, making me feel violently ill. Every step I took seemed to confirm this wrongness – as if his very presence broke something fundamentally right and true and good about the universe, and it didn’t quite know how to pick up the pieces.
I was the last line of defense against this horror.
Nevermore Bookshop wasmyhome, and I’d defend it, and those I love, until my dying breath.
Heathcliff swore as he crashed into a bookshelf, but Oscar kept pushing forward, unperturbed by the gloom. He read my emotions and took his cues from me, so I needed to stay calm. I needed to find what I was looking for. I listened to the footsteps overhead – not Dracula’s, they were too hurried – and felt the air shift as someone moved by the poetry shelves.
“Mina, something terrible has happened,” Socrates cried from the darkness, his voice muffled by the stacks of poetry books between us. “Some ladies broke into the shop and were passing around wine bottles and strange devices, and then there was a knock at the door and they let in a handsome stranger. And then the screaming started.”
Someone nudged my arm. Mrs. Ellis’ voice whispered in my ear, “Who’s this fellow? He sounds like that clever old scallywag who tried to rescue the philosophy books today. I thought he was rather brave.”
Trust Mrs. Ellis to be thinking with her lady boner at a time like this.
“Socrates, it’s okay. You can come out.” My gaze was drawn to a flickering light that emerged from the end of the poetry shelves and bobbed toward us. Seeing the brightness sent a fresh wave of nausea and pain through my skull, and made a series of orange squiggles dance across my vision. As the light drew closer, I smelled burning.
“You’re burning a book.” Heathcliff sounded distraught. “What is it with this village and burning books? What have the books ever done to you?”
“I needed some light, didn’t I?” Socrates snapped, waving his makeshift torch in Heathcliff’s face. “Don’t worry, it’s only Seneca the Younger’s letters and essays. That little rascal thought he could be a Stoic while also acquiring a fortune and enjoying the riches of Nero’s favor. The only thing that double-faced ass-kisser ever did stoically was off himself.”
“Shut your pie-hole and help me get this lot upstairs,” Heathcliff snapped.
