Chapter Twenty #2
Perhaps there’s another timeline where no one sits at this table because Cassandra is never summoned to a stranger’s bookshop.
Because Chiron is still alive and furiously himself, unimpeachable as a bookseller, unthinkable as a thief.
Yet somewhere along the way, something fractured, and now Cassandra is here instead, the threads of fate loose in her hands.
All she needs to do is tug on them and follow to the thin dividing line where they had started unravelling.
Put like that, there’s no choice at all.
“Then I have to go down there,” she says.
He blinks, taken aback. “But at Maud’s, you said—”
“I know what I said.”
For some reason, Lowell seems a little flustered by this. “Well, I, er—do you want… someone to go with you?”
Lowell Sharpe, white knight indeed.
She shakes her head. As tempting as it is to say yes, please, and could you go first?, she’s the owner. This is her responsibility. Better to not give Lowell—or anyone else—another reason to doubt her.
Cassandra pours more tea, but it’s gone cold.
Quietly, she murmurs a long-ago memorised couplet, and suddenly steam curls from the teapot.
It had been almost impossible to read like that so far away from the bookshop, and often it simply hadn’t been worth the trouble.
But now, with the river lingering in her muscle memory, it’s all coming back to her, so easy that it’s almost intuitive.
“Anyway, you never said how you know—What the hell?”
Cassandra glances up at Lowell, then sees his expression. She rolls her eyes. “No one’s watching.”
“The river’s not a plaything,” he hisses. “I can’t believe you would do this after the Templetons. You saw what happened—you know the danger—”
Cassandra cuts him off. “Is the tea shop burning down? Is anything on fire?” She leans back in her chair. “I know what I’m doing. Besides,” she adds, “people read for lesser things.”
There aren’t that many readers outside the circle of booksellers and owners, but the ones that exist have always been in high demand—and not just for important readings.
She’s seen readers carve fireworks out of words, build entire illusions out of paragraphs.
Whittling down a book’s magic for frivolous entertainment, until someone would whisk it away to a bookshop to renew it in the river.
“They shouldn’t,” he says vehemently.
She considers needling him, but she doesn’t.
After all, she was tense at the Templetons, too, seeing the reading tilt sideways, away from the reader’s intentions.
But small readings, like hers, are harmless.
She’s not pulling words from a book meant for another.
And if the bookshop disapproved, it surely would have punished her by now.
Certainly Chiron had never said anything—and that was approval enough, from him.
“Don’t you enjoy it?” she asks suddenly.
To her surprise, he looks weary. “I do. I did.”
Cassandra glances sharply at him, but his gaze is distant, elsewhere.
She knows what regret sounds like. But she can’t imagine the Lowell Sharpe dancing even close to the line of impropriety, or misuse of the river.
Perhaps a reading turned against him, then, or another George Templeton with a less timely outcome.
“So you read without ink—or a text, of any kind?” Underneath Lowell’s fading annoyance, she’s sure she can detect a reluctant curiosity.
She shrugs. “I’ve always been able to.”
“Always?”
“I grew up in a bookshop,” she says tersely. “It’s not that unusual.”
“So did I,” Lowell says, sounding a little too close to sceptical for her liking.
He looks like he wants to say more, but instead he settles for pouring the rest of the now scalding tea into his cup.
She tries not to bristle. Maybe he thinks she’s hiding something; maybe he’s just questioning why Lady Fate would choose to bestow that depth of reading on someone like her.
But it stands to reason that growing up in the oldest tributary bookshop might give her an extra edge.
True to his word, Lowell pays for the tea and scones, while Cassandra idles by his car, raking over the conversation. Chiron, Roth, the river… and Maud. Whatever she’d wanted to say to Cassandra, it might already be too late.
Lowell returns to the car. But instead of getting in, he hesitates. “I’m not just trying to piss you off.”
“What?” Then she remembers their argument in Maud’s bookshop. “Oh. Look, I didn’t—”
“I wasn’t trying to question your judgement. I really was only asking.” His mouth twitches at the corners. “That time.”
She meets his gaze, and knows they’re both thinking about their clashes before, from the moment he’d walked into Chiron’s bookshop to witness unfolding disaster.
Lowell gives her another sideways glance, as though he can’t tell what to make of her.
Or more likely, Cassandra thinks, he’s trying to decide whether she’ll keep his secret.
The rest of the journey home is silent, Cassandra turning over the day’s events in her mind. Lowell drops her off just outside the bookshop. Although Byron will have left for the day, the lights are still on, a warm orange glow glinting off the pavement.
“I’ll keep looking,” he says. “Chiron’s death, those guys at Maud’s…” He frowns. “It doesn’t sit right with me.”
“I’ll keep looking, too.” She pauses. “Let me know what you find?”
He nods: a truce. For now.
A series of notes exchanged by Cassandra Fairfax and Lowell Sharpe, attached to one black cat of questionable origin
I believe you left this in my car yesterday. You’re welcome.
I already told you, I’m not taking the cat. You’re welcome.
The cat hates me. It likes you. I’m sure you can draw a conclusion.
Just because it hates you doesn’t mean it belongs to me.
Really? The collar says otherwise. For what it’s worth, I think Errata’s a very handsome name.
Not my collar or choice of name. But since you like it so much…
Aloysius is getting tired of trekking back and forth across London. But I’m a patient man, Fairfax.
Stop leaving the bloody cat with Byron!
A secondary note scribbled on the back of a catalogue card is attached to the collar of the cat, slipped underneath the first.
I’ll come back for him when she’s out. Don’t tell her <3 P. S. Errata is a handsome name, thank you very much. Byron xoxo