“Manageable.”
“Wow, that’s fucked up.”
“Sasha!” I say, shocked.
“Oh gosh, sorry, Tandy. I forgot.”
The cursed sailor is laughing again. “Forgot what? That Her Most Serene Honor’s not meant to hear the coarse language of the people, lest her delicate ears rot off?”
“It’s not polite to curse in front of, you know.Royalty,” Sasha whispers. “And ‘Your Honor’ is what you say to a judge. ‘Your Highness’ is what you call a princess.”
He shrugs. “Youdon’t call her Your Highness,” he says.
She looks at me, suddenly horrified. “Oh no. I don’t! I’m so sorry.”
“Stop, I’m not—” I sigh. “While I’m stuck here, in this bookstore, I’m not anyone. Well, I’m not anything. I might as well be Beulah Bonecrusher, bookstore owner. Tandy is fine.”
“I beg your pardon,” the cursed sailor says, executing yet another ridiculous bow. “Tanadelle, I was told.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. You kept calling meBeulah.”
“Isthatwhat that was about?” he says, giving me a knowing wink.
My cheeks flame to life once again, and I scowl at him for about the seventeenth time. “I’ve no idea what you mean.” Obviously I know exactly what he means. He’sflirtingwith me. Again. It’sentirelydiscomfiting.
“Naturally,” he says, not remotely discomfited. He must flirt all the time. I feel myself blushagain. Flirting is new to me, and I’m not very good at it.
Behind us, on the stairs, Sasha exhales noisily. “I am so confused right now,” she says.
Chapter 14
After a long, awkward pause, Sasha clears her throat. “Well, anyway, I need a hand upstairs for a moment, okay?”
I glance at the cursed sailor. “Feel free to look through everything, see if any books help. I’ll be back down in a moment if you need me.”
He winks at me and my blasted cheeks flare up again. I turn away, hoping he didn’t see it, and follow Sasha upstairs.
She’s done a brilliant job organizing the room so far; a quarter of the books seem to have been sorted into corners, and more are piled in the center of the room.
“I think we’re going to run out of space before things are completely sorted,” she says, indicating the pile that I think is in the “not to keep” corner. “I was thinking maybe we get the window open and, like, I could set up a pulley system to get them downstairs in bulk, rather than us having to carry them downstairs in stacks.”
“That’s a fabulous idea,” I say. “Do you think you could construct something like that?”
“Easy,” she says. “Engineering is the only subject that’s actually interesting. Since they’ll already be outside…we could, like, put out a table and sell them? Or even give them away?”
I hear the chimes downstairs tinkle. “New customer, maybe,” I say. “Hold that thought; I’ll be right back.” Two customers in a day: It’ll be my busiest day as a bookstore owner yet.
I head downstairs and land on the ground floor to find…no one. Not the cursed sailor, and not any new customers. He must have left. I try to ignore the little flutter of disappointment I feel.
Which becomes a lot easier as soon as I notice what he’s done.
“Blast!” I shout.
I hear Sasha clattering above, and a moment later she appears on the stairs. “What’s wrong?”
“He left,” I gesture at my desk. “And he stole my books!”
“Yeah, that figures,” she says, calmly.
