Sasha and Amaritha have also ordered dragon-shaped cookies from every bakery in town (there are two) and one large cake from a bakery in Greater Pepperidge, and baked goods are arranged on every flat surface in the bookstore. Amaritha beguiled a few of her arty friends into sculpting our new logo out of clay, and the little sculpture sits in one of my shuttered front windows; the reveal of the sign, which Sasha has arranged via some clever system of ropes and pulleys attached to the ribbon her mother will be cutting, will also reveal the two front windows. (The other is filled with our most beautiful editions of our bestselling tragic romances, all, appropriately, marked up 20 percent.)
By midmorning, Yenny’s trumpeters have drawn a crowd. I wonder idly whether and how Bash will show up; it wouldn’t be like him to stand outside and wait, but it also wouldn’t be like him to miss the fun. Especially given that, apparently, all six princes are planning to attend. Calla, I was told, whipped them all into shape, giving them a stern talking-to about supporting me in my time of need, or something similar. I smile a bit at the thought. Perhaps they’llbuysomething. We even stocked a few copies of Belancz’s monograph, which cost a fortune to procure from his royal printer. I wonder idly if, with enough mead, he could be tempted to give a reading.
“Nice crowd,” Bash says, his voice low in my ear. I gasp and whirl around.
“How did you even getinhere?” I say, a little more loudly than a princess ought. In my defense, he took me by surprise.
He shrugs. “Magic.”
I roll my eyes. “Honestly, Bash.” I find I don’t have any sensible way to finish the sentence, so I turn around again to stare outthe window. He moves to stand beside me, and I swear I can feel the heat of his body.
“You must be proud,” he says, gently.
“I am, actually,” I say. Modesty prevents me from getting too high up on my horse, but there’s no harm in admitting to a little satisfaction at a job reasonably well done. Especially given the circumstances: curse; no experience; useless princes; falling books.
“Look,” he says, nodding down at the growing crowd. Amaritha is bouncing around joyfully, Sasha trailing after her in an especially eye-catching ensemble of black velvet and lace. Her grand reopening best, I presume. At one point, Amaritha turns and throws her arms around Sasha’s neck; the dracone goes stock-still, her hands at her sides, and clearly only just finds the courage to raise them and—possibly—even consider putting them around Amaritha when the perfidian releases her and bounds away.
Even from afar, we can see that Sasha is positively glowing with joy.
“It’s sweet,” I say. “The two of them.”
“Wonder if the mopey one will ever get up the courage to ask the chipper one out,” Bash murmurs. I know he knows their names perfectly well, but heaven forbid he ever so much as suggest emotional attachment to anyone or anything.
I turn to him and fold my arms. Maybe having been kissed by Calla a few days ago has given me a little more courage. “What are you doing here, Bash?”
“Couldn’t miss the party,” he says, not taking his eyes off the crowd.
“There’s plenty of room outside,” I point out. “And my store is, you know,locked.”
“Your store,” he says.
“Yes,my store.”
“You usually refer to it in the plural, you know. ‘Our store, our idea, our thought.’ Or, at least, with a nice, neutral definite article. ‘The store. The desk. The cat.’ ”
Ido?
“So it’s good to hear you acting as though you own the place. You and you alone.”
“It’s the royal we, I’m sure,” I say, a little loftily. I’m still processing what he’s just said. Surely that can’t be right. “I must have slipped up.”
“Yes, in this one case, and only when referring to the bookshop, do you use the royal we. But only this one,” he says, smiling a little.
We’re silent for a moment.
“I suppose it never really felt like mine,” I finally say. “It was Mrs. Gooch’s, and Beulah’s before that, whoever she was, and the place where I was living. They weren’t even my clothes, my teacups.” I pause.
“But now they are,” he says, very gently.
“Now they are,” I agree. I’m not sure what changed; maybe it was just the passage of time. “Although I’m still missing one of my teacups and a stack of books,” I point out.
“Those were a fair trade,” he says.
“Except the books!”
“A fair trade, I assure you. You may have even gotten the better bargain, though we won’t know for a while yet.”
“Youstillwon’t tell me what you left when you took my books?”
