I quash my first instinct, which is to shout for Honeyrose from the open doorway to try to call her back and beg her to talk my parents out of what will absolutely be their terrible solution to my problem. But then again: If I tell her not to let them find a prince for me, she’lltellthem that I specifically asked that they not send a prince, and if they hadn’t already been considering using a prince to break my curse, they will thereafter. There is thetiniestpossibility theywon’timmediately think “prince,” and the last thing I want to do is plant that seed myself. Instead I turn around and survey my new kingdom.
Looking at it as a proprietor rather than a customer, the bookstore is not in great shape. What appeared to me merely the day before—just yesterday—as charmingly eccentric decor strikes me now as a potential death trap for unwary customers. And, as my perfunctory investigations have already demonstrated, theredoesn’t seem to be much organization. There do, however, seem to be a lot of books. Alotof books.
And, to judge from the cobwebs, a lot of spiders.
I have no idea what I now have, or where it is, whatever it is. Right now it’s just books. And lots of them.
Might as well go see what to do about them.
I head back to the desk where I first met Mrs. Gooch. I can see some of the precarious piles of books and papers have vanished and the whole area looks a lot tidier, even with the cat perched right in the center of everything, as it seems to be. Indeed, now that I’m behind it, I see that Honey has sorted everything out very nicely; there’s a brand-new accounts ledger, pigeonholes filled with stationery and quills, pots of ink in various colors, and a lockbox for the petty cash, which I’ve been instructed to take to my room every nightandset with a minor locking charm between every use. She also set up a clever little spell for the door: a small, flat stone that has been enchanted so that it either locks all the doors simultaneously, or, when reversed, unlocks themandmakes a littleOpensign appear in one of the bow windows by the door leading out to the street. I smile. Honeyrose thought of everything, of course.
I flip the stone to “closed” and pull out a blank book and an enchanted quill. I don’t really have much of an idea what I’ll be recording as I take inventory—or whatever it is I’m about to do—but armed with a book and quill, I feel prepared to tackle the task. Whatever it may be.
“Do you want to come with me?” I ask the cat.
The cat blinks at me.
I decide to work my way down from the top floor.
The local temple bells are ringing the lunch hour when I finally drag myself, dust-covered and sneezing, out of the thirdfloor and back downstairs. There may, at one point, have been some sort of system to the way books were organized up there, but whatever it was has been lost in the mists of time; it’s all just stacks of books now, haphazardly and mostly randomly piled here and there. My notebook mostly contains notes that read:history?? But also weatherandatlas or spells?and???
Rather than reopen, I decide to go wash off and head back into my room. After the heat and dust of the third floor, the cool darkness of my little apartment is welcome. I decide to go digging around to see what sort of food and supplies I’ve got. On the shelves with the books and the plates and cups, I find a tin labeledBiscuitsand open it to discover what looks and smells more like that bitter tea Mrs. Gooch served me than biscuits. I pull a handful of the stuff out—dark brown, dried to a crisp, and very smelly—this is almost certainly what I was drinking yesterday when Mrs. Gooch offered me a cup of tea. But whatisit? I set it aside and make a note in my notebook:tea leaves. Thenbiscuits?
In the end, I wind up organizing the shelves instead of eating or drinking anything; I meant to pull only the books off to make room for the plates and cups and tins of food, but in the end, everything came off. The books, I’m pleased to discover, are mostly books of poetry, and two heavily stained and well-thumbed books titledHousehold MagicandGarden Magic. I set them aside to examine later, corral the poetry to one side of the shelves, set the plates and cups to another side, and make a note to learn a cleaning spell for dishes, and investigate every tin. Many are empty, and none are labeled with anything approaching what they appear to contain.
Nevertheless, when I step back, about an hour later, the shelves look much tidier. I dropGarden Magiconto the bed to read after I retire for the evening, wash my face, then try outHoney’s prestidigitation spell and instantly feel much less grimy. I decide to change into something clean and pull out another outfit, then head upstairs and flip the stone back to “open.”
Which is the exact moment my stomach grumbles, and I realize I managed to go through the lunch hour without actually eating anything.
I’m just contemplating my options when the chime above the door tinkles, and my first customer steps inside.
Chapter 10
The figure before me is tall and, although silhouetted against the shelves, clearly reptilian. A dracone, I think. No surprise; there are a lot in Little Pepperidge. The figure approaches, and I’m surprised to see that she is young and dressed with rather less flair than draconae usually are. Indeed, she’s wearing nothing but black. Perhaps she’s in mourning?
She takes me in with big, doubt-filled eyes.
“Hello,” I try.
“So it’s true, then,” she says, dolorously.
I take a breath, then, not sure how to answer her question, exhale.
“Mrs. Gooch, I mean,” she says, mournfully.
Oh, poor girl. She must have been a friend. “I’m afraid so,” I offer, kindly. “Did you know her well?”
The girl sighs. “No,” she says, droopily. “Not at all.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I liked to sit on the third floor and look out the window. Mrs. Gooch always let me.”
“Oh,” I say again, this time surprised. Therehadbeen a rather moldy-looking pillow under the dormer window overlooking the street outside, but I had assumed it had simply been abandoned there, as the broken furniture piled in other corners of the same room also seemed to have been. Apparently not. “Forgive me for asking, but why?”
“I like to read,” she says, sorrowfully, and indicates a book tucked under one arm. “School just let out and I’d rather not go home.” She pauses. “You know. Ever.”
“Ah,” I say, since I don’t know what else to say.
