Chapter 2
Heathcliff
Quoth shifts back into a raven and flies upstairs, no doubt to sit in his room all goony-eyed, painting Mina Wilde while he daydreams about a rare and radiant maiden whom he can never have.
She’s not for us.
The woman who just confronted me with fire in her eyes is meant for much greater things than this smelly old bookshop, no matter how much Quoth wishes it could be different.
No matter how much I—
No. I won’t think of it.
I fell in love once, with a woman whose eyes held a similar radiant fire, and my love rotted my heart from the inside out.
I may have been pulled from Wuthering Heights by Nevermore’s magic before I could become the Heathcliff the world feared, but I read the end of my story.
I know that love makes me a monster. My passion ruins whoever it touches.
I will not subject anyone, especially not Mina Wilde, to that torment, so I have walled up my rotten heart beneath a thick layer of ice.
No one is getting inside, not even book-loving girls with adorably unruly manes of gold-flecked brown hair who make me want to smile despite smiling being a disease of the masses.
So why did you hire her?
I search my blackened soul for the answer, but none presents itself. I might pretend that I gave in for Quoth’s sake, or because he’s right that Mr Simson foretold Mina’s arrival. I might even concede that having help in this shop could be a good thing.
But I pride myself on my brutal honesty, and so I must be honest with myself. The truth is that when I look into Mina Wilde’s fierce eyes, something stirs in my chest. My frozen heart is cracking open, and the void inside it yearns with an agony that’s almost physical.
There is only one way to mend the crack caused by Mina Wilde.
I check over my shoulder to see if no one is watching.
Satisfied that I’m blissfully alone, I pull open the bottom drawer in my desk, pop the secret bottom I installed to thwart Morrie’s purloining of my possessions, and slide my hand inside.
Mina Wilde has my veins running hot and my head spinning, but I have a tonic that could put the world to rights—
Where is it?
I run my hand around the bottom of the drawer, but my secret cavity is empty. I placed a flask of Mr Simson’s favourite whisky in there not three days ago. How could he already have…
“Looking for something?”
I whip my head up. Moriarty appears in the doorway as if by magic, his silk shirt neatly pressed and an expression of pure malicious joy dancing across his face. His blue eyes sparkle, and I find myself briefly unwound. He dangles my flask from long, delicate fingers.
“That’s mine,” I growl, waving the empty drawer at him.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. As the world’s foremost criminal mastermind, I should know.” Morrie peers at the label. “Can you believe Simson got this from a distillery that was bombed in World War I? This is rare stuff. It’s wasted on you—”
“Keep talking.” I brandish a stapler menacingly. “This stapler and your foreskin are about to get acquainted.”
“Oh, how delightful. I do occasionally enjoy being the submissive one.” Morrie raises an eyebrow. “Will you tie me to your desk and tell me I’ve been a naughty boy?”
“I’m… I’m… I’m going to give every child who enters this shop an energy drink and set them loose in your bedroom. I’m going to French braid your arteries! I’m going to send you to live in Wales!”
“Now, now, let’s not get nasty.” Morrie folds himself into his favourite velvet chair and regards me with that expression that always simultaneously makes my blood boil over and my dick hard.
Living with Moriarty is mostly infuriating, but occasionally confusing.
“Quoth’s flapping around upstairs and croaking incessantly, making it impossible for me to focus on my work. I presume this was your doing?”
“Mina Wilde.” I stare at the book open on my desk. The words blur together.
“And what, precisely, is a Mina Wilde?”
“My new assistant,” I growl.
Morrie’s smile could power all of Argleton for a week. “Well.”
He steeples his fingers together and peers at me expectantly.
I sigh. “Quoth made me hire her. He thinks she might be the one Simson told us about. You know how he looks with his huge raven eyes and his little beak tilt. I couldn’t bloody refuse, so if you’re looking for your ￡100, I’d talk to him because I’m going to have to spend every last cent I’ve got putting Morrie-proof locks on my drawers. ”
“This new assistant hasn’t even started work yet, and she has Quoth dancing around the attic and you reaching for the whisky bottle.” Morrie un-crosses and re-crosses his long legs. “I’m excited to meet her.”
“You stay away from her.”
That smile again. James Moriarty adores being told what to do. It makes it that much more enticing for him to do the opposite. “Quoth thinks that she might be going blind.”
“I hardly think that—”
The words die on my lips as an uncomfortable feeling seizes my body. Something invisible clenches my heart in its fist and twists, as if it were trying to squeeze the last of the HP sauce from the bottle.
Morrie’s eyes meet mine. For a single glorious moment, his haughty features twist with pain, and a flicker of fear passes through his icicle eyes. Seeing Morrie afraid almost makes the sensation of my heart being battered with a potato masher worth it.
Almost.
The last time I felt like this, it was when Morrie showed up—
That flicker of fear is gone in an instant, replaced by a sardonic smile. The sensation in my chest vanishes, just in time for me to register a crash as something heavy lands in front of the Classics shelves.
Not something. Someone.
Bloody hell. Not again. This is the last thing we need now, with Mina starting tomorrow.
Morrie rises to his feet. “I guess we should go and greet our new visitor.”