8. Helene #2
I cast a wave at the couple who own the art gallery perpendicular to us, their heads bent together as they adjust planters full of burgundy mums.
They barely spare a glance at me, but the wind carries their whispers. Clean-up crews from the gas company will be assessing the scene soon. The cops are all over it.
I huff out a breath. So, what? The town goes on about their day as usual despite the heaps of evidence that this wasn’t a fucking gas line eruption?
Thorn & Candle takes up the entire first floor of one of the downtown buildings. I’m not sure if it used to be anything else. I only know that once upon a time, Barnes, being on the town council, saw an opportunity to snatch the deed out from the old owner and he’s held dominion on the space since.
I guess it pays to be part of the elite.
The town council rules everything in Nightshade Hollow.
Barnes is already here, and the antique scroll of the Open sign clangs against the glass door when I push through. It swings over the tattered red runner, another relic from a better time gone by.
A curving mahogany serving table acts as the checkout counter, the gold on the register faded by years of too many hands.
“You’re late.” Barnes coughs, the sound mingling with the echo of the bell above the door.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking.”
He blinks at me, hovering behind the front desk in wait. “Excuse me?”
“The festival?” I shrug out of my coat and hang it on the nearest rack. “I’m not injured.”
A hush swallows the words. Dust motes dance in honeyed light, dim and golden but never quite warm.
My stomach drops at an alarming rate when he fails to react. My feet are glued to the floor as Barnes flips through the ledger on the front desk.
“Oh, yes. Well. I knew you would be, or the authorities would have called.”
Knew I…what? I’d almost died.
How could Barnes just forget…
Or has he brushed off…
I shake my head, the rest of me rolling in time with the motion. “What are you talking about?”
“The authorities are calling it a tremor, or some nonsense. Town didn’t lose power, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.”
He says, like a troll crashing the festival happens every other day. Where’s the gossip? Where’s the paranoia?
“Now that you’re here, Blake, I need you to restock the dried yew berries and start an inventory for the products we lost.”
I slide behind the desk and stash my purse in one of the squeaky drawers, shaking the whole conversation free. But it clings, sticky, like sap on the inside of my head.
“I figured. Do you still want the yew with the brass keys?”
The keys no one remembers the locks for are always a big draw. I love the scent in this place, old paper, beeswax, a faint tang of iron and incense. At least Barnes got something right. The bulbs in the old chandelier overhead flicker like they resent being electric.
The shelves creak under the weight of old books. Thorn & Candle’s got its own rhythm, a heart still beating beneath the floorboards.
Barnes has a small old timey radio blasting with media reaction to the Festival yesterday. With police and public outcry claiming a weather event coupled with unstable grounds.
As though an earthquake was to blame.
Civic consequences will be a long time coming, and I tune out the blur of noise, the voices assuring us everything is going to be okay.
This is stability. This is comfort and claim. I chose the job out of necessity and stayed for the same but even habit can become home if you give it enough time.
I grab the box of inventory to stock and take it to the rear of the shop. Soon muscles warm, movements go mindless, and the knot in my chest relaxes.
Barnes isn’t worried about yesterday because there’s nothing we can do. I need to take a page out of his book.
A faint scruff of boots on wood have me turning and the air shifting. “Hey boss?”
But he’s standing at the front of the closest narrow aisle with our new sign in his hands. He lifts it high. “Hand-painted,” he says with pride lighting his eyes. “Weathered gold leaf on black woodwork.”
Thorn & Candle: Books and Curiosities.
I flash a grin. “It looks great.”
“I’d have gotten it bigger if I knew I’d have insurance money coming.” His grumble echoes, but I’m already rounding the counter.
The dusty burgundy, dark planks, and candelabra gold have been a sanctuary. Yet the wrongness of yesterday permeates this place too. Whether it’s in my head or not.
I take the stone from my pocket, staring at the glittering rune etched into its face, then duck amidst shelves so lofty they bow under the weight of knowledge.
My heart climbs into my throat at a second scuff. We’ve got a customer. But I didn’t hear a bell. “Hello?”
The man’s standing between the stacks. Tall. Still. Too at ease for someone who shouldn’t be here this early. Black T-shirt, black hair catching amber light—and for a beat I can’t tell if he belongs to the living or something older.
I palm the sigil and his gaze drops. I've never seen him before. But the same rune tattooed on his bicep is heavier, more meaningful than coincidence. Black lines etch up his arm and disappear beneath the seams of his tee.
I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.
“You always pull the same rune when you’re about to ruin yourself.”
His first line isn’t a greeting.
It’s intimate, unsettling. And I can’t stop staring at him. His almond-shaped eyes gleam like he knows something I don’t, a smoky gray with flecks of something darker. He’s unreadable.
I shiver, going still, self-preservation kicking in.
Ink-dark hair, long on top and the sides cropped tight, beg for fingers to run through them. He’s lean, graceful, moving like a whisper or a threat.
“Can I help you find something?” I ask.
At least I’m breathing, standing, speaking without a wobble.
This place is usually quiet until the old ladies come in to sell their older romances and mysteries they’ve been reading and swap them out for the subsequent set.
Whoever the stranger is, with his tattoo of Perthro, he isn’t the type interested in either genre. What are the chances of seeing two hot guys in this town in two days?
Unheard of.
“I’ve got it, pretty monster.” He reshelves the tome in his hand and moves ahead to the next one.
What the actual hell?
“It’s generally polite to ask for a person’s name before you dispense with frankly insulting pet names,” I say.
He turns his back on me and plucks another book from the shelf, trailing his thumb over the gold lettering. “Is it? I hadn’t heard.”
“Then you don’t get out much.”
I trail him through the winding aisle, the novel still clutched in his hand and the rune in mine. Caught in his wake.
“Oh, trust me, sometimes they let me out of my cage.” He flashes me a white-toothed smirk. “And when they do, I like to...read.”
He tosses the tome over his shoulder, and I catch it automatically. The title, something about obscure Norse poems that Barnes picked up a few months ago, was mis-shelved. I tuck it under my arm as the stranger moves to the next shelf.
“You don’t strike me as the reading type,” I reply.
Shit, he’s attractive. Too delicious for me to indulge in light flirtation. But Perthro, and the man’s smile, snag me.