Chapter 15
Morrie
“Idon’t need tea,” Mina says sternly. “I need answers. Feathers stuck out of Quoth’s skin. He had a beak. And then they just got sucked inside his body.”
I like Mina when she’s stern. I picture her as a naughty schoolteacher with a ruler, but quickly shove the fantasy aside.
She’s clearly terrified, but she’s holding it together, hands on her hips, looking absolutely delectable.
If Quoth wasn’t having a birdie freak out and Heathcliff wasn’t glaring at me like this was somehow all my fault, I might indulge one of my fantasies on her right now.
It’s hard to be afraid when you’re screaming your way through an orgasm or ten.
But it seems we’re going to have to talk about it instead. How unimaginative.
“You may have spent four years in America, but you’re British at heart. You need tea.” I pull over my computer chair and sink into it, steepling my fingers together as I watch Mina for signs she’s going to bolt.
If I tied her up, she wouldn’t be able to bolt, and that would be more fun for everyone…
One glare from Heathcliff strips me of that thought.
We wait in silence while the kettle boils. We need to give Quoth time to gather himself. He appears in the doorway, a tray balanced in his hands. I reach over and collect my cup. Quoth holds the tray out to Heathcliff, who snatches his cup and raises it to his lips.
Mina takes the remaining cup – one of Quoth’s hand-painted ones, I can’t help but notice – and rests it on the arm of the chair. She doesn’t drink.
“I’ve got my tea now. Start talking. Why is Quoth a… a shapeshifter?”
The other two glare at me. I guess I’m doing the explaining, as usual. I lean forward. “You know how you joked about our names, how ridiculous it was that he was Heathcliff and I was James Moriarty, and I know you thought Quoth was an odd name, too.”
“It is an odd name.”
“Our parents weren’t strange librarians who named us after characters from literature.
We are those characters.” I splay my fingers across my chest. “I am James Moriarty, mathematician and master criminal, and arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. He is Heathcliff, spurned orphan and beloved of Cathy of Wuthering Heights. This here is Edgar Allen Poe’s raven, the one who perched upon a chamber door.
We don’t know how we got here or why, but we’re definitely not supposed to exist in your world. ”
She snorts, not usually an attractive sound for a woman, but she makes it cute. Also, snorting is fully justified given the circumstances. “Right. Come off it. You said you were going to tell me the truth. I don’t want any more stories, especially not one this bloody stupid.”
“It is a story, Mina,” Heathcliff says gruffly. “We are the stories. Think about it. Why else does Morrie seem completely unperturbed about his employer losing millions of quid overnight?”
Quoth’s face collapses with misery. “Why else would feathers poke out of my skin, and you’ve never seen the raven and me in the same room together?”
“Why else is Heathcliff such a prick?” I toss in.
“But… but that’s impossible!” she cries.
“Agreed. I’ve been running computer simulations ever since I arrived here, trying to find an answer for how it happened. My conclusions have all been the same – we shouldn’t be here. And yet, here we are.”
“But… how?”
“We don’t know,” I shrug. “I’ve directed a considerable amount of energy toward solving the puzzle of it, but so far to no avail. All I can tell you is that the most likely responsible party is Nevermore Bookshop itself.”
“How can a bookshop be responsible for this?” Her voice rises another half octave.
“I need a proper drink.” Heathcliff slams his empty cup down on the tray. He disappears into the kitchen and returns with a dusty bottle of wine. He pops the cork and fills his empty teacup, which he hands to Mina. He takes a long, deep swig from the bottle.
I notice that this teacup she raises to her lips.
“None of us remembers how we got here,” Heathcliff says between gulps.
“Last I recall, I alighted from Wuthering Heights in a state of great agitation after overhearing Cathy planned to wed Linton. I’d stolen a bottle of Hindley’s finest whisky, and I took this medicine as I ran, for I had lost myself to the futility of love.
I stormed across the moors until the drink purged the rage from my bones, and I passed out in a puddle.
I woke up on the floor in front of the Classic Literature section.
Mr Simson collected me and gave me some magical elixir to sober me up—”
“Gatorade,” I correct him. “I keep telling you it’s not magical. You can buy it at the market for two quid.”
“Shut up for a moment,” Heathcliff swigs another gulp of wine. “Mr Simson explained that the shop was cursed, and that he’d been expecting me for some time.”
“He … what?” Mina slumps down in the chair, pressing her fingers to her temples.
“He said a few years after he purchased the building from its previous owner, the Greek poet Sappho appeared on the shop floor, same as I was lying there now. He said he’d had a few others over the years, always from the Classical Literature shelves.
He saw it as his duty to help them find their way in the world as best he was able.
He found Sappho a post as a weathergirl.
Lady Macbeth runs a chippie up in Glasgow.
Pip from Great Expectations is a council planner in London, if you can believe it. ”
Mina snorts again. I’m starting to adore the sound.
“Mr Simson said that’s why he kept the bookshop all these years.
He needed to help them. He didn’t think anyone else would.
And he wanted to figure out why we kept showing up.
He wanted to break the curse before the shop brought back some truly heinous villain.
” Heathcliff shoots me a look, which only makes me want to prove to him just how heinous I can be.
“That’s why he started Nevermore’s occult collection. ”
“I’ve seen the Occult shelves, behind the pet books,” Mina says. “It’s not exactly impressive. Just a bunch of flat earth conspiracies and new age rubbish.”
“You have seen the dime-a-dozen tarot books we leave on the shelves for the plebs,” I say. “Mr Simson kept all the real occult books locked away under protection. He believed that in one of these books he’d find the secret of the shop’s magic.”
“Wait a second.” Mina stares at Heathcliff, her eyes wide as saucers. “If I believe this story, which I’m not saying I do, you were pulled from your story as you left Wuthering Heights? You never came back?”
I know what she’s thinking. She’s trying to redeem Heathcliff in her mind. But that road leads only to madness. You cannot redeem a character who believes himself irredeemable.
Take it from someone who knows.
“And you?” She swirls to face me, and something in her eyes makes my villainous heart stutter against my ribs. “You never met Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls?”
I shake my head, fighting to maintain my composure.
I can’t let her see what that look of hers is doing to me.
“I found myself placed in such a position through Holmes’ continual persecution that I was in danger of losing my liberty.
The situation had become impossible, so I left England in my attempt to remain one step ahead of my foe.
I fell asleep on the train to Geneva, and woke up here. ”
“But what about you?” Mina turns to Quoth. He shakes his head.
“He’s different,” Heathcliff growls. “Mr Simson never said anything about shapeshifters.”
“I have a theory that he might be both the raven and the poem’s anonymous narrator,” I say. “Somehow, they were pulled from the poem as a single unit.”
“I remember little from my previous life.” Quoth stares at the ceiling as words tumble out – more words than I’ve heard him speak…
ever. “This stands to reason since I came from a poem and not a book. I recall only a room filled with books and a sensation of time marching on without me, while I remained frozen in a memory that faded into nothingness, dragging some vital piece of me into the void along with it. Even now that memory haunts me, and my mind snatches at the visions as they grow ever dim. That is why I spend most of my time in my raven form.” Quoth pinches the skin on his thigh.
“This human skin feels… awkward. Plus, these stupid things are a bit useless.” He flaps his arms.
Mina bites her lip as she watches him.
“But I heard Quoth’s voice in the shop when the raven was around,” she says.
I frown. “You did. And that’s highly irregular. In his raven form, Quoth can communicate telepathically, but only other fictional characters have ever been able to hear him. Until you. That’s why Heathcliff gave you the job.”
Heathcliff looks like he’s imagining turning my kneecaps into decorative oil burners.
“So why can I…”
“Yet another question we’re not yet able to answer, gorgeous.” I pat her leg, enjoying the little fizzle of energy as she leans into my touch. “Let us clear your name of this murder first, and then perhaps between the four of us we can figure out the secrets of Nevermore Bookshop.”
“What about Grimalkin?” she asks, faintly.
“She’s just a cat,” Heathcliff says.
“We’re almost certain,” I add.
“Meow,” Grimalkin confirms, stretching out across Heathcliff’s lap.
Mina tips back her head, skulls the wine, then holds out her glass to Heathcliff. “You got more?”
“You planning to drink until this seems plausible?” Heathcliff asks.
“Damn right.”
“A woman after my own heart.” He returns to the fridge and pulls out another bottle of cheap swill.
He offers the bottle to me, but I shake my head and pull out my trusty gold flask.
I have too much respect for myself to allow one drop of that corner store plonk to touch these lips.
Quoth too refuses, which is for the best, since I notice him reach out and yank a feather out of his forehead.