Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
T he next day, Luke and Esme were in the bookshop drinking tea. Esme had arrived in the morning and bustled about putting food into his fridge and making him drinks. He wasn’t complaining about her company, but didn’t like the fact that she was clearly still worried about him. He thought he was doing an excellent job of being fully recovered and didn’t like the evidence that she could see right through his act.
‘Have you taken pain killers today?’ she asked, catching him rubbing the place on his chest that hadn’t stopped aching. ‘The wounds should be scabbing over.’
‘All good,’ he lied. They weren’t bleeding anymore, that much was true, but they felt as if they were. And while he no longer felt as if he was burning from the inside out, his cells seemed to have retained the memory of that feeling.
She looked like she wanted to ask him something else but, after a moment of indecision, went and scrubbed the mugs in the small sink.
They had spent a companionable hour with Luke sitting in his reading chair while Esme browsed the shelves at the back of the shop. Now, they had steaming mugs of spiced tea, supplied by Esme, and a bar of Fruit & Nut chocolate, supplied by Luke by way of Matteo’s shop, and they were having a well-earned break from all the relaxing.
The bell on the front door jangled and a man wearing head-to-toe black appeared from the short entrance passageway. Luke glanced at his watch, automatically checking how long before the causeway would close again for the day. Visitors often called in to ask and then left again without even glancing at the books. Luke tried not to take it personally, but it was hard, and he often found himself patting the bookshelves or the counter in hurt solidarity with the shop.
This visitor was looking around at the shelves with real interest, though. He wasn’t dressed like the usual winter visitors, either, in a puffy jacket or technical waterproof. Instead, he had a long black coat that looked like something from a film. His bleach blond hair stood up in messy spikes and he had the kind of skin tone that suggested he didn’t do a lot of rambling in the sunshine.
‘Are you Luke?’ The stranger’s voice was surprisingly deep and had a rough smoker’s edge. ‘The owner?’
‘I run the shop,’ Luke said. There was a split second when he wondered if he ought to be revealing his identity to a complete stranger, but then he realised that the man didn’t seem like a goon sent by Dean Fisher. His build was slim and he had a bookish goth vibe.
The man glanced at Esme, but she didn’t say anything. She was sitting on a wooden stool behind the counter and she put her mug of tea down onto the surface. Luke could see tension in her shoulders and he moved next to her, providing a barrier of sorts.
‘Okay, then. Good.’ The man looked around again. ‘I’m in the right place. I wasn’t sure. You don’t have a name on the shop, you know?’
Luke shrugged. ‘It’s the only bookshop on the island.’
The stranger didn’t move for a moment, staring at Luke as if he was trying to work out whether to say something or not. Seeming to come to a conclusion, he added. ‘I’m Iain.’
Luke adjusted his weight slightly. He didn’t feel a threat, exactly, but he was wary. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I used to deal with Jute Books in Dundee.’
‘I see,’ Luke said, although he didn’t.
‘And now I need a new place.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’
‘Fraser bought certain texts from me. And I bought certain texts from him. Specialist books.’ Iain was watching him carefully.
Luke nodded. ‘I think I know the kind of thing you mean. I don’t know if I can help.’
The lights in the shop flickered.
Esme stood up as if she had been stuck with a pin. Her head whipped around as if she expected to see somebody behind her.
‘I went to Campbell & Sons,’ Iain was saying, ‘but the owner was away. The girl there said I’d be best off coming to you. She said her boss had off-loaded most of his specialist stuff down here. To the old owner. I think the name was Alvis. Maybe Alvin? Gave me this address and your name. I’ve come down from Edinburgh.’ There was a note of pleading in his voice. He glanced around as the lights continued to flicker. ‘You got dodgy wiring?’
‘Something like that,’ Luke said, patting the counter gently. ‘I think I spoke too hastily.’ The lights stopped flickering wildly, but he could sense the bookshop listening. Waiting.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Esme slid from the stool. She was suddenly very close to Luke, and he fought the urge to put an arm around her.
Iain looked surprised. ‘All right. Yeah. Thanks.’
‘We can sit down for a bit. You’ve had a long journey.’
‘I have,’ he nodded. The aggrieved note was back when he spoke again. ‘There was an accident on the A1 and I don’t really like crossing the border. No offence.’
Esme’s back was to the man at this point, so only Luke saw her roll her eyes. He felt some of the tension leave his body at her levity. If she was comfortable enough to offer tea and make jokes with her eyes, then things must be all right.
He watched Esme head to the staff cupboard and then turned to offer the man a seat on the stool Esme had just vacated. He pulled it away from the counter so that there would be no danger of the man spilling tea onto his ledger.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’
Luke looked around the empty shop in a bemused manner.
Iain cut his eyes at the open door. The sound of the kettle boiling came from within.
‘You can speak freely in front of Esme,’ Luke said.
‘Right.’ He didn’t look sure. ‘I might look around for a moment,’ he said abruptly. ‘If that’s okay?’
‘Sure.’ Luke gestured at Iain to help himself and then slipped into his usual bookseller mode. Politely ignoring the customers as they browsed the shelves but ready to help if they looked even slightly uncertain or likely to ask a question.
He also moved the stool and fetched a folding chair from the staff cupboard for a makeshift seating area.
Iain’s manner had relaxed considerably by the time they gathered to drink their tea. It was the soothing effect of browsing bookshelves, Luke thought, having witnessed the phenomena many times.
‘Thank you for this,’ Iain said, raising his mug.
‘You are very welcome.’ Esme offered him a biscuit from a tin that Luke was pretty sure she had brought from her house. ‘Tell us about your interest in magic.’
He went still, the oat biscuit held halfway to his mouth.
‘It’s all right,’ Esme said. ‘This is the island bookshop and Luke is Alvis’s successor.’ She looked at Luke encouragingly until he nodded.
‘It’s not in magic, as such,’ Iain said. ‘It’s the books. I like collecting them, seeing them, touching…’ He seemed to realise that he was sounding a little odd and stopped himself abruptly.
‘Your interest is academic,’ Esme supplied.
‘You are a collector,’ Luke added.
‘I’m a connoisseur,’ Iain corrected them somewhat fussily. He took another biscuit and dunked it into his tea. ‘I can tell the good ones from the rubbish. That’s why Fraser would buy from me.’
‘The shop in Dundee? It’s closed?’
‘Aye,’ Iain said. ‘That’s right.’
‘Not permanently, I hope?’ Luke asked, a horrible feeling creeping over his skin. ‘There wasn’t a fire?’
Iain stopped mid-dunk, his expression shocked. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘There wasn’t-?’ Esme broke in, glancing at Luke. ‘Don’t say the shop burned down?’
He shook his head. ‘Fraser’s house. They said he was asleep. Wouldn’t have known anything, but still…’ Iain shuddered. ‘Horrible. That’s why the shop is closed. It was just him running it.’
There was a short silence. Luke didn’t look at Esme. Another fire. A bookseller in his own home. The five points of pain on his chest flared and he thought, for a moment, that he could smell burning meat. He put his mug down so that nobody would see his hand shaking and took a long, slow breath.
Rubbing at his chest and feeling the pain recede to its normal ache, he heard Esme asking Iain another question and realised that she was filling in the awkward pause.
‘Where do you find books for your collection?’
‘Places like this,’ Iain said, looking around. He turned thoughtful. ‘Well, not exactly like this place. More just ordinary second-hand bookshops, sometimes charity shops, boot sales, that kind of thing.’
‘That seems pretty prosaic,’ Luke said. He was trying to imagine an ancient magical text hanging out on the shelf of a Red Cross Shop.
‘House clearances are best,’ Iain said. ‘People often don’t know what they’ve got.’
‘It still doesn’t seem likely. There can’t be that many magical texts in the world. It must be like looking for…’ He had been going to say a ‘needle in a haystack’ but Iain jumped in and supplied ‘treasure’.
‘It’s a treasure hunt,’ he repeated, looking truly animated for the first time.
‘Okay,’ Luke was still trying to get his head around the man’s obsession. Luke liked books a lot, probably more than most people, but to spend his time hunting down rare volumes, sifting through thousands of Tom Clancy’s in the hope of stumbling across an antique oddity, seemed extreme. ‘And you make a lot of money doing this?’
The man’s eyes shifted. ‘Some. Sometimes. Connecting the right buyer.’
‘And you just buy and sell? For profit? Do you keep some, too?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got a small collection. But it’s the finding them I like. They always move on eventually.’
That was strange phrasing. Like the books had wills of their own.
Esme brushed crumbs from her fingers. ‘You’re not tempted to use the books yourself?’
‘Use them?’
‘For magic,’ she said, the word hanging in the air.
There was an awkward pause as Iain gaped at Esme like she had grown a second head. Then he gave a nervous laugh, like he had decided she was teasing him.
‘Some of these books,’ Luke waved a hand, ‘have instructions, spells, all sorts of information.’
‘Yeah, but…’ Iain looked at them nervously, his eyes flicking between them. ‘Magic’s not real.’