Two more exclamation points? Something needed to be done about this punctuation abuse.
On the table sat books featuring all the great fictional detectives in history—Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot; Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey; Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins; Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew (of course); and Tom Hightower’s Duke of Chicago.
I couldn’t help myself. I picked up a slim paperback copy ofThe Velvet Coffin,a Duke of Chicago novella that had been reprinted with the original 1949 pulp cover: Duke in a purple velvet-lined coffin, his eyes closed, playing dead.
Of course Duke didn’t look quite like Duke. Fictional characters never look like the cover art, and no artist could adequately capture how handsome he was in the flesh.
“I miss you,” I whispered, touching the cover.
“Rainy?”
At the sound of Dr. Fanshawe’s voice, I hid the copy of Duke’s book behind my back. If she knew that I was even within ten feet of a Duke of Chicago book, I might never get an assignment again.
“Dr. Fanshawe,” I said, stepping away from the table like it was radioactive. A mistake as I was still holdingThe Velvet Coffin.I grabbed the nearest hardcover and hid Duke’s book behind it. “I was on my way to African Cuisine, I swear.”
“Hi, Rainy!” Penny Nichols jogged to me, grinning and waving as if she hadn’t seen me in years. “And, hello, Koshka!”
I could hear the exclamation points in her voice.
Penny was one of those effortlessly stylish girls who I’d always mildly envied. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty but dressed to the nines every day. She wore her hair in a chic dark bob and skipped around Fort Meriwether in kitten heels.
Dr. Fanshawe, however, looked like a librarian. Specifically, a librarian from the Library of Alexandria, and she was still furious about that fire. She scared me frankly, which is why I needed to distract her.
“Um, great sign, Penny,” I said, nodding to the mystery display on the table. Both of them took the bait. They looked at the sign while I slipped the Duke of Chicago book I was hiding back onto the shelf. “Your work, I see.”
“You’re so clever!” Penny said. “How did you know I made it?”
All apprentices in our coven worked in the bookstore part-time. Truly, nothing prepares one better to battle evil than working retail.
“Call it a wild guess,” I said. Then I noticed something I’d missed while I’d been panicking. “You’re wearing bunny ears.” The bunny ears were dark brown, almost the same color as her hair. “Are you seeing this, Dr. Fanshawe? Wait, you’re wearing a crown. What is happening? Am I losing my mind? Again?”
“Apparently, it’s Mad Hatter Day,” Dr. Fanshawe said drily. “Penny is insisting we celebrate it.”
“Good old Mad Hatter Day!” Penny said. “October sixth. Don’t miss it!”
I blinked at her. Exclamation points tended to make my eyes water.
“This is arealholiday?” I asked.
“InAlice in Wonderland,” Penny began, “the book’s famous illustrations by Sir John Tenniel feature a drawing of the Mad Hatter with a price tag in his hatband that reads 10/6. Ten shillings and six pence. And 10/6 is also October sixth, therefore…Happy Mad Hatter Day!”
“In England, they do the day before the month so we really should celebrate it on June tenth,” I reminded her.
“But we’re not in England. Here. I brought you these. We can be twins!”
She stepped forward and placed a pair of white bunny ears on my head.
“Koshka can be the Cheshire Cat,” she said. “Would you like that, you handsome boy? I won’t make you wear a hat. You don’t even have a forehead!” She bent down and scratched Koshka under the chin. He was in heaven. I, however, was not.
“You know, I only celebrate one book holiday a week, and tomorrow,” I said, nodding to the table display, “is the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s tragic unsolved death, which is a big day in the March household. So…”
“What is that?” Dr. Fanshawe demanded, eyes narrowed.
While I didn’t say my favorite four-letter word at that moment, I thought it. Loudly.
“What is what?” I asked.
“Do you have a book behind your back?”
