A Dead and Stormy Night

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Hey, that was for Mr. Earnshaw,” I said.

  “He doesn’t need it. Sugar makes him cranky.” The guy chewed happily, wiping a speck of cream from his perfect nose with the back of his hand. “Trust me, I’ve just saved you from a torturous morning. No need to thank me. I’m James Moriarty, at your service. Everyone calls me Morrie.”

  He stuck out a hand. I shook it, an electric pulse running up my arm and straight between my legs. Isis help me, this man is trouble.

  “Your name is James Moriarty, like the villain from Sherlock Holmes?” I snorted. “No wonder everyone calls you something else.”

  “I can assure you, the association is coincidence. James Moriarty the character fell off a cliff, and since I abhor the great outdoors, that’s unlikely to happen to me. As is the nature of nicknames, I had no choice in the matter. If I had, I’d make everyone call me ‘Your Highness.’ Or perhaps, ‘Oh well-endowed one.’” He winked at me, and my stomach flipped. “You must be the new shop assistant. You won me a bet, so I like you already.”

  “Bet?”

  “Yes. I’ve been bugging His Royal Surliness to get an assistant for several months now. He was convinced no one would want to work for him. I bet him a hundred quid that if he put an ad on the app, he’d get at least one applicant. He agreed to the bet on the condition he wrote the ad and I uploaded it, since he doesn’t know what an app is. And here you are, which is fascinating.” Those icy eyes swept over my body. “You grew up in the village, but you’ve recently returned from overseas. America, if I may be so bold? Perhaps New York?”

  I blanched. “How’d you know?” I hadn’t told Mr. Earnshaw any of that.

  “It was a series of simple deductions. I heard you speaking to Mrs. Ellis, and from her words and her previous occupation as teacher, I concluded you must have known each other from your youth. Even if you hadn’t yelled it in the street, I guessed New York because of the slight accent you’ve acquired. That you’ve been away some time is evidenced by the fact that everyone in this village knows not to knock on this door before nine, if they know what’s good for them. Especially if they’re carrying the wrong kind of coffee.” Morrie swiped one of the two lattes on the tray. “He prefers his black.”

  “And how do you know that?” I fumed. Those coffees weren’t cheap, and my funds were running low. I hadn’t expected to also be buying breakfast for a random stranger.

  “Ah, but that should be easy for you to deduce. No time to talk. The game is afoot.” Morrie hopped down the steps, his laptop case banging against his long legs. He glanced back over his shoulder, throwing that wicked smile at me once more. “If you ever get bored of trying to wrest an intelligent conversation out of your friend Earnshaw, go upstairs and wait for me. Oh, the fun we’ll have, Miss—”

  “She’s not going upstairs,” Earnshaw glowered. He strode down the steps and whipped the remainder of the scone out of Morrie’s hand. I opened my mouth to speak, but he’d already disappeared back into the depths of the shop. “You better get inside within the next thirty seconds,” he yelled from the other side of the door. “Or I’m giving your job to the bird.”

  Morrie shrugged. “He’s a little precious about his personal space. Honestly, I’m surprised he even lets customers into the shop. I’m his flatmate and he won’t even let me cook him dinner. And I’m a fantastic chef.”

  “So you live upstairs, too?” I asked. My fingers gripped the doorknob, conscious of Earnshaw waiting inside for me. But Morrie’s smile had me frozen on the spot, my legs a pool of jelly. A delicious shiver ran down my spine as I felt Morrie’s eyes roam over my body again. I hope I get to see a lot more of you, you strange and delicious creature. “Do you also work in the shop?”

  “Not bloody likely. I have a real job.” Morrie checked a smartwatch on his wrist. “Which I should probably be getting to. But I’ll stick around for a few more minutes if you like, make sure he actually lets you touch the books.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I grinned at Morrie. This day is looking up.

  Morrie escorted me back to the bakery to buy another coffee and scone. When we returned to the bookshop, he held the door open for me, sweeping his arm in a grand gesture of chivalry. My eyes struggled again in the dim hallway. Two dark shapes darted across the brown carpet in front of me. I followed them into the main room. A black cat stood on the large oak table with the globe on top, one paw raised in defiance as he stared up at the chandelier above. The raven perched on one of its spindly arms, waving the tip of his wing just out of the cat’s reach.

  “You’ve played the game before, Grimalkin,” Earnshaw muttered to the cat without looking up from the computer screen. “You always lose. Why would this time be any different?”

  I set the coffee on the desk. “I hope you like it strong and black.”

  “Like my soul,” he sighed and grabbed the cup.

  I waited for Earnshaw to give me some instructions, but he kept his eyes glued on the screen as he sipped his coffee, his mouth twisted in an ugly scowl. Morrie folded his lanky body into the wingback chair under the window. He slid his phone out of his pocket and tap-tapped the screen, but I could tell he wasn’t reading it. His eyes burned trails across my body.

  “So…” I swung my arms around. “Where do I start? Can I take down the black-out blinds and arrange some window displays? Or I could dust the shelves in the—”

  “Yeeeeooooow!”

  I whirled around just in time to see a flash of black streaking behind the Medieval History shelves. The chandelier swung wildly as the raven unfurled its wings in victory.

  “Croak,” declared the raven.

  “Stop torturing her.” Earnshaw glared at the bird.

  He pulled out two of my tail feathers, a dark voice shot back.

  I glanced up. It was that same voice from yesterday. It wasn’t Morrie’s London private schoolboy drawl or Earnshaw’s northern dialect. It was throaty, rich, and utterly entrancing.

  It also didn’t appear to have an owner.

  “Is there someone else here?” I asked.

  “We’re not open yet,” Earnshaw snapped.

  “But I just heard a voice talking about feathers—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” A woman spoke. I whirled around and saw an old lady standing in the door, clutching a large tapestry purse between her trembling hands. “The door was open. I just wanted to know if you had a certain book. I’ve been looking for it for years in different bookshops, but no one can help me.”

  Earnshaw’s eyebrows shot up in my direction, as if to say, “See?”

  But… but that’s not the same voice!

  The lady approached the counter, holding her hands six inches apart. “Do you have this book? I read it at a hotel in London back in 1984. Or ’83. I can’t quite remember. It’s about this big, with a blue cover, and it’s called something like The Idiot’s Confectionary Shop…”

  Earnshaw sighed. He lurched his massive frame from the chair, and moved to the Classics shelf, which occupied one entire wall of the room. He pulled out a copy of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and shoved it into her hands. “This the one?”

  “Er, why yes… yes it is!” She stared at the book with shock.

  “Shall I ring it up for you?” I beamed, moving behind the counter. I can’t believe we’re already making a sale this early in the morning. This is thrilling!

  “Oh, well, I…” she flipped open the cover. “It’s a little bit too pricey for me, I’m sorry. But thank you.” She dropped the book on the desk and backed away. “I’ll just be on my way—”

  “Croak,” the raven spoke from his position on the chandelier.

  “Oh, a raven!” The woman’s face broke into an enchanted smile. ‘What’s he doing inside the bookshop?”

  “He lives here,” Morrie said.

  “He sure looks comfortable up there on his wee perch,” she cooed. “He’s like the shop mascot. It reminds me of that poem… the nuns made me memorize it as
a wee lass in school. 'Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore—’”

  “Croak,” said the raven.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Morrie warned, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket and steepling his fingers as if he expected something specific to happen.

  “—‘Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, ‘art sure no craven—’”

  “Croak.”

  “Seriously, lady.”

  “Leave her, Morrie.” Earnshaw placed Toole’s book in Morrie’s lap and flipped open the cover, pointing to something on the page. “She’s sealed her fate.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, just as the raven lifted a leg, angled its body, and dropped an almighty poop onto the woman’s shoulder.

  She screamed, flinging her purse up to clobber the raven, but it had already swooped away, landing gracefully on the armadillo. The woman screeched a string of words that would have made the nuns blush and scrambled down the hall. The whole house shuddered as the door slammed on its frame. The bell tinkled.

  “Croak!” the raven called after her, and proceeded to preen its wing.

  Earnshaw and Morrie burst out laughing. I put my hands on my hips. “You might have helped her!” I cried. “You could have given her a tissue or at least knocked a couple of quid off the price of that book.”

  “What, and pay her to take it off my hands?” Earnshaw held up the book, where I could see a price written in neat cursive. £1.50.

  “But she said it was too expensive. And she didn’t look poor. That purse she was carrying was a classic Chanel.”

  “Here’s your first lesson about the second-hand book business. Many people come into bookshops every day. Only a select few of them want to buy books. The rest want to waste your time. You’ll learn to distinguish them two, but only if you stick around long enough and don’t do anything stupid. She was a time waster, and now she won’t come back. The bird did us a favor.”

  Earnshaw reached into the top drawer and pulled out a handful of dried cranberries. He tossed them on the floor. The raven leapt down from the light fixture and hopped across the rug to collect his prize.

  “He’s really cute,” I said. “I didn’t know you could have a pet raven.”

  The raven jerked its head up and glared at me with fierce brown eyes edged with gold, almost as if he objected to my choice of words. Which was ridiculous. Ravens were intelligent, but they didn’t understand English.

  “He’s no pet,” Earnshaw growled. “He’s another bloody nuisance flatmate, just like that twit over there.”

  “I’m no twit,” Morrie yawned. “Heath is the one who uses up all the hot water shampooing his eyebrows.”

  Earnshaw did have magnificent eyebrows. “Your name is Heath?”

  Morrie snorted. “He hasn’t told you yet? And after you made such fun of my name, you’re going to love this. Our beloved, cantankerous bookshop proprietor goes by the name of Heathcliff Earnshaw.”

  Chapter Four

  I laughed. “As in, Heathcliff the infamous rogue from Wuthering Heights?”

  “My mother had an abominable sense of humor,” Heathcliff mumbled.

  More than that, she has bloody psychic abilities. Because how else did you explain that this devastatingly handsome, epicly-eyebrowed, brooding fuckwit ended up with the name Heathcliff?

  “This is too hilarious.” Laughter bubbled out of me. I leaned against the desk, clutching my stomach as tears of amusement prickled in my eyes. “How can you two live in a bookshop with those names? It’s way too meta.”

  Heathcliff and Morrie exchanged a weird glance. “We met online,” Morrie said, “in a chatroom for children of literary-obsessed lineage.”

  His words took a few moments to sink in. “Oh. You guys are a couple?” Of course; all the clues were there – two bachelors living over top of a bookshop, Morrie’s impeccable dress sense, the fact Heathcliff kept looking at me with that sneer of disgust. Obviously, they were more than just flatmates. Shit. I sounded so disappointed. I tried to cover my tone with a cough. “I mean, that’s perfectly okay, of course. I just meant that I didn’t realize, not that it matters to me one way or the other—”

  “James answered an ad I put in the shop window,” Heathcliff said. “Our names are an unfortunate coincidence.”

  “We’re not together,” Morrie added, his tongue flicking across his lip. “Although it’s not for lack of trying on my part. Heathcliff is such a prude.”

  “So you’re—” I dared to ask.

  “Pansexual, I believe you call it these days. In the world of my books, it was known as sexual deviancy.” Morrie’s eyes flicked down my body again, and I shuddered. Yes, please.

  “So if you want to fuck him, you can go right ahead.” Heathcliff scowled. “Just don’t do it upstairs. I have to eat up there.”

  “Hey, that’s not appropriate—”

  “All this talking isn’t getting any work done.” Heathcliff shoved a box from behind the desk with such force that a cloud of dust kicked back into his face, staining his eyebrows and stubble a dignified grey. “These are books.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” I shot a glance at Morrie. “No offense.”

  “Oh, I never take offense.”

  “You’re to go through this box and pick out the books we’re going to keep, then load them on to the computer and shelve them. There won’t be many books for keeping.” Heathcliff glared at Morrie. “You can blame him for this thankless task because I slipped out to the post office and he got sweet-talked by a dim-witted octogenarian into accepting this drivel.”

  I flipped the lid on the box, revealing stacks of James Patterson and Nora Roberts titles. Airport books, of course.

  “If you’re wondering why we don’t want books like these—”

  “Because they’re airport books. We don’t buy airport books, Mills and Boon, or nineteenth century bibles. If anyone comes in with railway books, self-help, local history unless it’s self-published, and Folio Society volumes, those go on the yes pile immediately. I told you, I grew up in this bookshop. I learned a few things from Mr. Simson.” I held up a copy of The 5 Love Languages. “Case in point – this is a keeper.”

  Morrie and Heathcliff exchanged a pointed glance. Are they making a judgement about my competency, or did I miss something?

  Both of them swiveled away, as if they’d been caught doing something naughty. “She’s got this, grumpyguts,” Morrie flapped his hand at Heathcliff as he picked up a battered copy of Jurassic Park from the top of the box and settled himself back into the leather chair. The raven perched on the back of the sofa, peering over Morrie’s shoulder and moving its head across the page. It almost looked as if it were reading the words along with Morrie.

  I sorted through the book stack. Grimalkin crept back into the room and wound around my ankles. Morrie read while Heathcliff worked at the computer. Heathcliff’s version of working involved mashing the keys with his fist and yelling colorful swearwords at the screen when it didn’t do what he wanted.

  “You okay there?” I glanced over his shoulder as I set a stack of keepers on his desk.

  “I bloody hate online bloody orders,” he growled, hitting the side of the monitor again. “Why can’t people just come into the shop like the good old days?”

  “Maybe because they’re all burned up in your sunny disposition?” Morrie piped up from across the room.

  “Croak,” added the raven.

  “That’s enough out of both of you.” Heathcliff shot back. “Shouldn’t you be at your job?”

  Morrie yawned. “And miss the chance to see you explain the computer to Mina? Never. I texted and told them I’d be late. They don’t care. They have bigger problems today.”

  “This actually looks pretty easy.” I leaned over Morrie’s shoulder. “You’re just adding the books to this online catalogue and that syncs them to Amaz—”

  “
Do not speak that word in this shop!” Heathcliff boomed, clamping his hands over his ears.

  I stumbled back in alarm, catching myself on the edge of the desk before I toppled over into a disordered heap. Grimalkin fled up a bookshelf.

  “What word?” I gasped, struggling to return my heart-rate to normal. “You mean the name of the world’s largest online store? But then how do we talk about running the business—”

  “We call it The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named,” Morrie said happily. “Although Heathcliff has some choicer phrases, if you prefer.”

  “Fine,” I sighed. “I guess I should have known I was working in a house of crazy. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Heathcliff, show me how we get the books onto The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.”

  I leaned over Heathcliff’s shoulder as he explained how the catalogue and pricing software worked. There were a lot of different factors to consider, but he warned me in particular that I had to be careful with automatic price-matching. The feature would ensure a book you uploaded would always undercut the cheapest volume for sale in The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but if we didn’t monitor the prices carefully, we could accidentally sell a priceless first edition for three pence. Judging by the way Heathcliff jabbed at the keyboard with a single finger and slapped the side of the screen every time he couldn’t find the button he wanted, he’d clearly let a few first editions go at bargain-basement prices.

  As I reached for the mouse, my arm brushed his, sending a shiver through my body that had nothing to do with the winter chill. This is insane. I cannot fall for this guy. He’s my boss and a complete wanker and judging from the fit of his shirt he has no idea about fashion. He’s straight out of the nineteenth century.

  “—and here’s where we can see the online orders. Check this inbox every morning, find the books, box them up, and take them down to the post office. Don’t leave it for me to do. You can make small talk with Deirdre the postmistress, and bring back more of this coffee on your way back.” He banged the empty takeaway cup against the desk. “Are we in agreement?”