Chapter Seven
The music and biography shelves had been rolled out of the way. The fold-out chairs had been set up in a circle around a small table laden with a pitcher of store-bought lemonade and champagne glasses Chester bought when Vi was in grade school back in Massachusetts.
The chatter from the back of the shop paused as Rosie yelled, “Any sign of him yet?”
“Not yet,” Vi said from the doorway. Not even a text saying he was backing out, which Vi had been expecting all week. “We’ll give him another five minutes, and then I’ll call to see what’s happened.”
Vi shot another glance at the closed garage sitting quiet and still across the street, then headed toward the back of the shop to join the others.
It was just the regulars tonight:
Lydia Wilson, peppy thirtysomething human who worked at the wing care clinic.
She had an old leg injury that meant she sometimes had a walking cane lying next to her chair, pale purple to suit her pastel clothes.
Preferred genres: sweet, small-town romances, memoirs about chefs, and long Russian novels by men who died two hundred years ago.
Joshua Haberdash, the minotaur who owned the flower store down the road. He enjoyed thrillers, self-help books, and Oprah’s book club picks.
Rosie Dunham, a fae who was eighty-five years young. Rosie had been attending the Sweethelm book club since before Vi was born. She and Chester got along like a house on fire due to their shared lack of interest in sugarcoating anything. Preferred genre: smut. She was not picky about the specifics.
Suze Adain, a sensible dragon who was a single mom and just as good at small talk as Vi was. Preferred genres: tragedies, books with experimental prose and unreliable narrators, and the occasional Jodi Picoult.
And Mosey, indoor cat at Sweethelm Books. Reader of nothing, beloved by all, curled under the table and purring as Lydia petted him carefully with her foot.
Rosie tugged on a pleat in Vi’s skirt as she arrived in the circle of chairs. “Did you see the Baked Goods Bandit struck again?”
“I saw,” Vi replied. She’d woken up to a dozen excited photos of the trestle table loaded up on Main Street.
By the time Vi got there, the table was empty.
Gabriella had sent walls of angry emojis when Vi told her they’d missed out yet again.
Next time the bandit hits, she’d texted Vi, we get there ASAP and we fight our way to the front.
Vi chuckled. They’d first encountered the Baked Goods Bandit two years ago, just after she moved to Claw Haven.
She’d meant to spend the morning driving Gabriella to a fancy paint shop out of town, trying to get her out of the house.
Then somebody texted them about the Baked Goods Bandit.
It was the first time Vi had heard of it.
It hadn’t even been 6:00 a.m., but they headed over.
Despondent, numb Gabriella had ended up elbowing a minotaur in the face to get to a peach cobbler.
She’d apologized, and the guy had understood.
Then the sisters had gone back to Gabriella’s place.
The two of them spent that whole morning grinning, sucking sticky peach juice off their fingers.
It was the first time Vi had seen her little sister smile since her husband had died.
Suze sipped the store-bought lemonade. “Lydia was just telling us about Chester. Poor guy. With only one wing, it’s not as if he could’ve flown and caught himself. Are you going to be working with him, Lydia? Your clinic offers physical therapy, right?”
“Just for wings,” Lydia said brightly. She turned to Rosie. “Speaking of, how are your exercises going?”
“They’re much better, thanks for asking,” Rosie said, spreading her stiff, translucent wings behind her. Then she hefted her cane. “I noticed you haven’t mentioned my new cane!”
Lydia cooed, leaning over the circle to tap her purple cane against Rosie’s new one. “I was just about to! I love it. It’s so cool. I can’t believe they let you keep your hip bone.”
“Waste not,” Rosie said, giving the cane another good pat. The top half of her walking cane was a spiky knob made from her own hip bone. It didn’t jell with the rest of Rosie’s fashion, which consisted of plaid skirts and stockings and comfortable blouses, but Rosie made it work.
“I got jealous of all the compliments Lydia was getting,” Rosie continued. “Young people shouldn’t hog all the nice canes, after all.”
Lydia laughed brightly, no trace of the awkwardness that sometimes came over her when people brought up anything related to her old leg injury. “Very stylish, Rosie. Now I’m jealous.”
“As you should be.” Rosie twisted to give the closed door a severe look. “Now our host is properly late. Who did you say this boy was, Joshua?”
“Oh, uh . . .” Joshua leaned over toward her more functional ear, fur falling into his eyes. “Remember that orc who spilled beer on your shoes at your granddaughter’s graduation party?”
Rosie gasped. “Oh, the Wicker boy. I hope he’s grown up a bit since then.”
“He wasn’t that bad,” Joshua said, always quick to defend. “His heart’s in the right place.”
“Well, I hope he brings food,” Suze said, her scaly tail lashing. “I haven’t eaten since lunch, and that was some useless salad. Bring on the scones and cream!”
Vi blinked. She hadn’t told Nick about their food rules, namely that home cooking was a requirement.
“Right,” she said. “I don’t know if—”
The front door slammed open, the bell jingling violently enough to make Mosey launch himself into the air and vanish over the bookshelves.
Everyone turned to watch Nick stagger in, almost falling over his huge legs in his haste. Vi refused to watch the satisfying tangle of his burly limbs. She was still mad at herself for being attracted to Nick. She had never been attracted to someone who infuriated her before.
“Ah, shit.” He grabbed the door for balance, crushing a plastic carton of cookies into the door handle. “Shit,” he repeated, pressing the plastic. It bounced back into place, but the cookies stayed broken.
Vi’s heart sank. She fixed a smile on her face. “Good to see you. Everything’s ready for you over here.”
Nick looked up. “Oh. Hey. You’re here. I thought you couldn’t—”
“I’m supervising for the first twenty minutes,” Vi said. “Then I’m having dinner with my sister.”
Nick laughed. “Pshhh. ’Course you are.”
Resentment curled in Vi’s stomach, hot and bitter. Why did he have to be so condescending? She was nothing but nice to him.
At least he showed up, she told herself. Maybe he’s really not doing this to screw with you. Maybe he really is just a hot, annoying idiot who wants to get involved in the community! That’s . . . nice. Give him a chance.
It was a hard pill to swallow as she watched him saunter over and drop the broken carton of store-bought cookies onto the small table in the middle of the circle. He stopped in front of the only seat available, gesturing at it and then at Vi, doing some strange approximation of a bow.
“I’m leaving,” she reminded him. “It’s for you.”
He bowed for real, then sat down heavily. He looked exhausted, slumped over in that tiny chair. His hair was even messier than usual. He hadn’t cleaned the black grit out from under his nails, and Vi eyed them as he brought the leather-bound copy of Persuasion she’d given him out of his jacket.
“Oookay,” he said, digging the discussion sheet out of the back and smoothing out the crumpled paper. “Let’s rock this shit. Where’s my favorite indoor cat?”
The others traded looks. Rosie gave Vi an amused look, like: What have you gotten us into?
“He’ll find his way back,” Vi said. “Have you met everyone?”
“Some,” Nick said. He nodded at Joshua. “Haberdash! Flower shop guy. You were always in the library with your hedgehog cousin at lunch.”
“Oh.” Joshua blinked in surprise, as he often did when people brought up high school, as if he was shocked people remembered him. “I suppose I was.”
Rosie held out her hand. “I’m Rosie. This lovely dragon is Suze, and the human over there with the gorgeous cane is Lydia. Nice to meet you, young man.”
Nick looked down at her hand, surprised. Then he grabbed it, shaking it hard enough to make Rosie’s eyebrows rise.
“You, too,” Nick said, finally letting her tiny hand go. “Hi, I’m Nick. Wicker. Did she not tell you about me?”
Everybody shook their heads.
“Just that we were getting a new head of the club while Chester’s healing,” Rosie said. “She had remarkably little to say about you, actually.”
For a moment, Nick actually looked . . . hurt. Then that expression was gone, so fast Vi was convinced she’d invented it.
Nick barked a laugh, fangs glinting. “Lucky for me, I guess.”
He dragged his hand through his messy hair. His fingers stuck on the tangles, and he winced as he yanked them out.
Vi stepped up from behind him. “Do you want me to start?”
He didn’t even look back at her. “Nah, I got it. I said I’d run this shit, and I’ll run it.”
He smoothed out the discussion sheet again. Vi wondered if he’d looked at it even once over the past few days. He was squinting at it like he’d never read it before, but that might’ve been because it was so creased, it was difficult to make out the words.
“Sooo.” He flashed the circle a grin. “When Anne meets Captain Benwick, did anyone expect—”
Rosie spoke over him. “Would you like some lemonade?”
Nick looked startled. Like he’d expected a classroom situation, with him talking and everybody else listening.
“I’m good,” he replied, giving her another smarmy smile that Vi refused to find hot. “Uh, help yourself to the cookies.”
Suze leaned in, popping the dented plastic open with the energy of someone who had been much more enthused a minute ago and had to readjust their expectations. Nobody brought prepackaged food to the book club. Chester used to have a poster about it out back.
Nick started again. “When Anne meets Captain Benwick, did anyone expect a love triangle?”