Page 32 of The Trick of It

She frowned at him over her shoulder, already half sold on the odd insects. “You might be right.”

By the time she’d seen the marvels from storage, Seph had committed to two insect frames, the snake skeleton, and a decision pending in her next fiscal month between the armadillo or the pangolin.

“Write me here and I’ll tell you when new things come in,” Mags suggested. “And maybe tell me what’s in that shop of yours as well sometimes. Perhaps we can trade.”

“She wants the hoopoes too,” Rhys put in, already digging out a crumpled wad of bills from his pocket. “Can you finish it by tomorrow morning?”

“Aye, of course,” the lady answered, eyeing the money.

“‘Tomorrow’?” Seph repeated. “Are we for certain not leaving tonight? I did pack a change of clothes, but I thought if we finished quickly enough …”

Rhys paused, blinking those long dark lashes at her. “Of course we’re staying. Meeting starts at midnight. You think I’m just going to have Mr. Cagney sit in the cold coach into the wee hours, and then drive us back besides?”

And then to Mags, he said, “Deliver it to the Hoppy Hare when it’s done, if you please. Our coachman is there for the day.”

Seph was frowning as she followed him out. She had brought things to sleep in, just in case, but she hadn’t really considered that they wouldn’t return immediately after finishing their mysterious summons unless something dire kept them here. And furthermore …

“Mr. Cagney?” she exclaimed, the name finally clicking into place. “That’s Errol’s da who drove us here today?”

Rhys turned to her, his face scrunched up like he hadn’t heard the question correctly. “Yes, of course it is,” he said. “Stablemaster, isn’t he? We’re still staffing up the Rest. There wasn’t anyone left when we all came home and we use the coach sparingly enough.”

She gave a stiff nod, still unsettled by it.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to be driven by Errol’s father, though of course she could not think of any reason why it should be. It was and had always been his vocation, after all.

“Where to next?” Rhys asked, tilting his head back to consider the long rows of possibilities down this lane of the Twittings. “Or shall I pick the next one too?”

“How much was the hoopoe display?” she asked instead of giving him an answer. “I’ll pay you back when we return to the shop.”

“You certainly will not,” he told her. “And you won’t be selling that, either. It’ll be a centerpiece of your shop for the other creatures to huddle around. A gift.”

“I do not want a gift,” she returned, wrinkling her brow.

“Too bad,” he said. “Oh, a lapidary! Let’s go in there next.”

By the time the sun had started to set, Seph had spent triple what she’d set out to this morning. She had her dioramas and her puzzle boxes and an assortment of kaleidoscopes that she’d gotten from the stained glass workshop’s leavings near the big church in the center of town. Those had been planned.

But now she also had several preserved exotic creatures, a barrel of tumbled stones, and jagged pieces of fool’s gold—and still one shop to go before dinner.

“Rhys,” she whined, trailing after him. “I really don’t think I can afford any other spontaneous investments.”

“Last shop’s not necessarily for you,” he told her over his shoulder. “Just a place Willa took me a few times when I was younger. You’ll like it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered, but she followed along, anyway, watching her own shadows grow long as the light dimmed around them.

The final stop was on the high street, tucked at the very end, between the linen shop and the apothecary. It was long and deep and had fresh paint on its door, which already set it aside from their other stops today.

“A bookshop?” she said in surprise, as soon as he’d pulled the door open. “We have bookshops in Brighton, Rhys.”

“Not like this one,” he told her. “Novels and reference are up front for the normal folk, but there’s magic in the back.”

“‘Magic,’” she repeated flatly.

“Magic,” he assured her. “Come on.”

She could see before they’d even reached the shelf he was aiming toward that there was a sign hanging above it, much like her edible oddities sign, in wood with grooved, painted words for the passerby.

Hidden Histories, it read. England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.