Nick had met Darcy? I opened my mouth to ask him how, but Nick spoke first.
“Tell me when he appeared and how.”
He was looking at me with such intensity that I swallowed. “It happened the night I stole the book. I was reading it on the bus, and then I fell asleep, and I think that’s when he turned up.”
“Oh my God!” Nick barked, then lowered his voice. “I knew something weird was going on when you kept coming back to the shop, but I thought you’d just come across a rumor online and were suspicious. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me Mr. Darcy had appeared?”
“Excuse me, but you’re not really in a position to complain here,” I hissed back. “You told me it was a completely ordinary book and laughed at me for thinking it might be magic. So if this is a ‘who did the biggest lie by omission’ competition, I think you definitely win.”
“This isn’t a game, Zoe! This is bad,reallybad; you have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything. It wasyourbook that thrust Mr. Darcy into my life.”
“But that’s not possible,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s never the books.”
“What do you mean, it’s never the books? How did this happen, then?”
Nick didn’t answer, and I saw him glancing around to check that no one else was in earshot. When he looked back at me, I could see the anger in his eyes had been replaced by something else.Fear.
“OK, so it’s too complicated to explain it all now, but basically the women in my family had a special ability…a power, for want of a better word,” he said, his voice so low that I had to lean in closer to hear him under the thumping music. “This power meant that when they read a passage from a book and at the same time wished with their whole heart for a character from the book to appear in front ofthem, it would happen. They quite literally read the fictional character into real life.”
Not long ago, if someone had said this to me, I’d have thought they were either drunk or really into fan fiction. But given that Mr. Darcy was currently doing tequila shots with my best friend at the bar, I didn’t doubt Nick for a second.
“So your family’s power made your mum’s copy ofPride and Prejudicemagic, which is why Mr. Darcy appeared when I read it?” I said.
“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Nick said. “It wasn’t my mum’s books that were magic—it washer. So she could read Darcy out of any copy ofPride and Prejudice—and in fact, she did, several times—but if I tried the same thing with exactly the same book, it wouldn’t work. That’s why I didn’t ever think you’d actually read Darcy out, because I’ve never heard of anyone outside of my family ever being able to do it. But clearly I was wrong.”
“Hang on, are you saying I have some freaky book-witch powers?” I said, my voice going squeaky with incredulity. “That’s ridiculous! Nothing like this has ever happened to me before I picked up your mum’s book.”
“Are you sure? You’ve never read a book and suddenly been confronted with a character from it?”
“Erm,yes, I’m sure. I think I’d have remembered.”
“Well, however it happened, we need to fix this tonight.”
“What do you mean, fix it?”
Nick looked at me as if I’d just asked him if Cruella de Vil was a recommended puppy breeder. “We need to return Darcy toPride and Prejudicebefore it’s too late. Did you actually throw my mum’s book away, or were you lying about that too?”
I grimaced, but I saw Nick exhale with relief.
“Thank God, otherwise we’d be totally buggered. OK, so I’ll take Mr. Darcy to Baskerville Books now, and you can go and get the book and meet us there.”
Nick moved past me in Darcy’s direction, but I stayed where I was. A few days ago, this was all I’d wanted: for someone to tell me they knew a way to get Darcy back into the book. But everything had changed over the past forty-eight hours, and not just for me but for Darcy too. I remembered his words on Wednesday night. “Were you to tell me that you had found the means for me to depart, and that I must bid you farewell at this very moment, I believe I should feel quite bereft.” Darcy didn’t want to go back toPride and Prejudice, and I didn’t want him to go either.
I turned around and grabbed Nick’s arm. “What if I don’t want to fix this?”
He looked back at me. “What do you mean? He has to go back.”
“No, he doesn’t. Darcy likes it here; he told me he wants to stay in our world.”
“But that’s impossible! Zoe, you don’t understand how dangerous this is. He can’t stay here any longer.”
“Yes, he can. He’s happy and I’m happy too. We’re not doing anyone any harm.”
Nick’s eyes bulged as he took a step back toward me. “Oh my God, is he in love with you? Shit, have you two…”
He trailed off, and I found myself blushing. “No, we haven’t! Not that it’s any of your business, you perv.”
