Pride and Premeditation

by Steffanie Holmes

As we walked toward the shop entrance, loud house music blasted my ears. A customer rushed from the store, her hands planted firmly over her ears.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled at Quoth. He shrugged and followed me inside.

  As I made my way down the darkened hallway, Lydia crashed through the room, spinning and jumping like a wild animal. She’d replaced her bonnet and empire line dress with an off-the-shoulder shirt adorned with a sequined penis across her breasts, leopard-print ballet flats, and a pair of the tightest black jeans I’d ever seen.

  “Oh, Mina, you have returned.” She threw her arms around me. I staggered back under the force of her embrace. “Won’t you dance with me? The boys are such spoilsports. All they want to do is rest.”

  Beside me, Quoth’s body shrunk into itself in an explosion of feathers. His bones cracked as they reshaped into wings. A moment later, a large raven took off, seeking the shadows of his lair above the entrance.

  I didn’t blame him. Lydia was a terrifying presence.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” I asked, disentangling myself and wrapping my scarf tighter around my neck. Even though Heathcliff had the stove in the main room blaring, it wasn’t exactly warm in the shop.

  “Of course not, silly goose. The dancing keeps me warm!” Lydia laughed and twirled away. “This music is so much more lively than the pianoforte. Why, I should like to dance all day and night.”

  From the chaise lounge in the corner, Morrie moaned.

  I stepped inside, unable to conceal my smile. The criminal mastermind lay in a messy heap across the couch, a cold compress over his eyes and an expression of existential angst marring his usually-smug features. All around him towered boxes and shopping bags. Makeup and hair straighteners and stacks of clothing and colorful iPhone cases spilled over the tables and cascaded across the floor.

  Heathcliff was nowhere to be seen. I bet he’s hiding in the storage room, leaving Morrie to take care of Lydia. Smart man.

  “She made me take her shopping,” Morrie whimpered. “She needed things so she could fit into our modern age.”

  I grinned. At least he’s too exhausted to be a wanker today.

  “Lord Moriarty and I had such good fun.” Lydia pulled his credit card from the pocket of her figure-hugging jeans and waved it in his face. “What a wondrous invention this is. I never wish to part with it.”

  “Give that to me,” Morrie held out a limp hand. “It looks tired.”

  Lydia tossed the card at him, laughing. She grabbed her a brand new phone from the table beside the armadillo and changed the song to a death metal track. “This one reminds me of Mary playing the pianoforte at the Netherfield ball!”

  I sat down on the end of the couch, my eyes darting over Morrie’s features, trying to commit every detail of him to memory. Would I even remember what things looked like when I was blind? Would the full picture of Morrie’s high, sharp cheekbones and haughty lips and strong jawline and willowy, muscled frame cease to exist to me, accessible only in fragments through moments of touch and sensation. Would the ice-blue of his eyes no longer pierce my heart?

  “Why are you looking so odd?” he asked. “Did Quoth ask you to do something kinky on your date? Did he make you eat a dead mouse?”

  “No, I—” I opened my mouth to tell Morrie about the doctor’s office, but I bit back the words. As far as Morrie and Heathcliff were aware, Quoth and I had been out on a date. I glanced away, sucking in my breath and blinking away a tear that threatened to spill down my face. If I said something to Morrie now, and he acted the way he’d been acting… I couldn’t handle it. So I changed the subject. “Do you have my letter?”

  “It’s in my pocket.” Morrie sighed, flopping back against the pillows. “Can you get it? I can’t move right now.”

  I slid my hand into his pocket and pulled out my father’s letter. As soon as my fingers grazed the paper, a cold shiver ran down my spine.

  “Did you have time to look over it between trips to the Barchester mall?”

  “My investigations have confirmed our suspicions,” Morrie said. “The compounds in the ink match those used by Herman Strepel. The person who wrote this note and the person who lettered Batrachomyomachia are one and the same.”

  My father is Herman Strepel.

  My chest tightened, and my mouth dried out. For the first time in my life, my father had a name and a profession.

  So what? What does it matter that my father is an ancient book-letterer who owned Nevermore over a thousand years ago? He still knocked my mother up and then ran out on us when I was a baby.

  And if he was Herman Strepel, then why was he in our time period in the first place? Did he just hop around the different centuries, selling books and breaking hearts? Where was he now? Has he been eaten by dinosaurs?

  What does he know about fictional characters coming to life? The two things had to be connected. And who is his enemy?

  And what does Mum know about any of this?

  Quoth swooped into the room and settled on my shoulder. “Croak?” he asked, nuzzling his head against my cheek.

  Your thoughts are all tangled up, he said. You should speak to your mother.

  “Not going to happen,” I said aloud. Quoth shook his head sadly.

  “Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity,” Morrie said from the couch.

  “I know. Conversing with fictional characters is sign number two, and having a time-traveling dad is number three, so I might as well have myself committed right now.”

  “The post’s arrived.” Heathcliff wandered in from the other room and dumped a stack of envelopes on the desk. “There’s a letter for Lord Moriarty. Since when do you get mail?”

  “Give me that!” Morrie leaped to his feet, knocking over a stack of makeup bags as he grabbed the envelope from Heathcliff’s hands.

  “Expecting to be drafted?” Heathcliff shot back.

  Morrie didn’t seem to hear. He tore open the envelope and scanned the letter. “But that’s… that’s impossible,” he muttered.

  “What’s impossible?” I tried to peer over his shoulder.

  Morrie shoved the envelope into his pocket, keeping his hand on top so I couldn’t pull it out. “Oh, nothing, nothing. My bank manager messed up one of my Cayman Island transfers, is all. Excuse me.”

  “Morrie—” But he’d already disappeared upstairs. I glanced at Heathcliff, but he shrugged.

  “Don’t bother with him. He likes his secrets. You and he are alike in that respect.” Heathcliff dropped a book on his desk, picked up the next one from his stack, and left the room again, no doubt to return to whatever foxhole he was hiding in.

  What did he mean by that?

  “I guess I’m minding the shop, then!” I yelled over Lydia’s music. “That’s good. It’ll give me time to finish this Jane Austen display!”

  As I arranged books and festival flyers around the stuffed armadillo, I thought back to the time a week ago, when Morrie had handcuffed me to his ceiling and he and Quoth had done amazing things to my body. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life, and from the way Morrie’s voice had wavered, I’d thought that maybe it meant something to him, too. Afterward, he ran away, leaving me and Quoth snuggling together in his bed. The panicked look in Morrie’s eyes before he fled… that was the same look he wore when he’d read that letter.

  What’s up with Morrie?

  Chapter Eight

  “You haven’t been home for two nights.” Mum pounced as soon as I walked through the door.

  “Let me get inside before we have it out. It’s freezing.” I slammed the door, kicking off my wet boots and peeling off my gloves.

  “Don’t speak to me like that. I didn’t know where you were. You could be lying raped and murdered in the street!”

  “You’re overreacting. You know I don’t walk around here alone. The guys are walking me home, or I take a rideshare, or Jo drops me off. If it’s such an issue for you, I could just move into Heathcliff’s shop �
� that way I’d never be out on the mean streets of Argleton.”

  As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. My mother recoiled as if I’d slapped her.

  “If that’s how you feel,” she said in a chipped tone, backing into the kitchenette.

  I sighed, sliding my rucksack off my shoulder and following her into the kitchenette. “It’s not. You can always ring the shop if you need me—”

  I stopped in my tracks, my jaw dropping as I surveyed the carnage in our kitchen. Every pot, pan, bowl, and plate we owned was stacked on the counter or scattered across the floor. Pink and purple goop dripped down the cabinets and splattered the walls. It looked like a My Little Pony had exploded in the microwave.

  “I did ring the shop!” Mum stood in the middle of the mess with her hands on her hips. A smudge of purple glitter extended across her cheek, like some kind of tribal marking. “I asked for you and that rude gypsy said, ‘We don’t have any titles with that name’, and hung up on me!”

  Thank you, Heathcliff. “He probably misunderstood you. Mum, what happened here?”

  “I told you I need your help! Sylvia made up these craft kits to make bath bombs and soaps and face creams. She wanted me to test them to make sure the instructions were easy to follow. But everything keeps going wrong and it’s all because you weren’t here.”

  “I don’t see why my presence would help – I don’t know about any of this stuff, either. If you were having trouble, you should have called Sylvia.” I picked up a jar of peanut butter on the counter. Glittery pink goo had dried over the lid, forming a seal. I banged it against the counter to loosen the crud. “Aren’t some of these chemicals hazardous? Should you really be doing this in our kitchen?”

  “These are exactly the questions I needed you to ask!” Mum swept a bunch of dishes into the sink, leaving a rainbow smudge of unicorn poop across the counter. “But you didn’t even call—”

  “I wrote you a text message.” I didn’t send it, but you don’t have to know that. “Morrie and I stayed up late watching a film, so I decided to crash at the shop. And then Jo and I were hanging out last night, and she’d had too much wine to drive me home, so I kipped on the sofa. Here, I’ll help.”

  “I didn’t get this text,” Mum muttered. I slid in beside her and turned on the hot tap to fill the sink, piling the dishes neatly on the counter to make more room.

  Guilt chewed on my gut. I should have texted her. Quoth was right – she worried about me. As I moved, the edge of the letter brushed my leg. All the guilt flew from my mind as my father’s words came back to me.

  Did you know my father was a time-traveling bookbinder? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ll let you know more details next time.” It came out more petulant than I’d intended. “Morrie and I are going to the Jane Austen festival this weekend, so I won’t be home. There, now you know.”

  “Are you and Morrie dating?” Mum’s eye sparkled. My transgressions were forgotten with the prospect of a son-in-law who was richer than Croesus.

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, no.” The lie felt uncomfortable on my lips, but I couldn’t very well tell her the truth about the three guys. “We’re just friends. I’m capable of being friends with guys without sleeping with them.”

  “But if you were to date Morrie, I want you to know that I’m okay with it. I think you and he would make a lovely couple.”

  “What about me and Heathcliff?” I raised an eyebrow. “Or me and Allan?”

  “Mina, it’s mean to tease your mother like that.” She threw a tea towel at me. “You’re not serious, are you? Morrie is a much better match. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

  The letter dragged against my leg. What does that mean, Mum? She didn’t elaborate, of course. She never did about my father. She just called him, ‘that bastard’, then reached for another mug of tea, which was what she did now.

  “Speaking of your mistakes,” I blurted out. “I received a letter from Dad.”

  Dad. The word sounded ridiculous. I might as well have said a letter from ‘Pope Gregory the Ninth’. I’d never called anyone ‘dad’ in my life.

  SMASH. The mug slipped from Mum’s hand and crashed against the countertop. Sherds of ceramic flew everywhere. She leaned over the counter, her face white.

  “Mum?”

  “That’s not possible,” she whispered, gripping the edge of the counter.

  I hadn’t meant to tell her about the letter. But now that she knew, I’d see what I could discover. I took her hand and led her over to the table. I pulled out the nearest chair and Mum slumped down into it. “It came to the shop. It’s on this weird old-fashioned paper.”

  “Can I see it? What did it say?”

  I paused, my fingers pinching the corner of the envelope in my pocket. I wanted desperately to fling it across the table at her, but her pale face gave me pause.

  If what the letter said was true, if my father really was Herman Strepel, then he knew about whatever magic had a hold on Nevermore Bookshop. When I thought about it rationally, I didn’t believe my mother knew anything about it; otherwise, she would have tried much harder than she did to keep me away from the place. She was living in Barchester when she was with my father, so she didn’t connect him to Argleton or Nevermore.

  She doesn’t know. The certainty hit me like a punch in the gut. Whatever secrets my father was protecting, he’d kept them from her, too. That made me feel a little better, and I hated myself for that.

  I withdrew my hand from my pocket and bent down to clean up the broken mug. “I left it at the shop. I didn’t want to look at it, you know? He said that he still loves us, and he left us because he was a danger to us. It kind of sounded as if someone was after him.”

  “How dare he? After all these years.” Mum slumped down in her chair. “I suppose it was some elaborate poem surrounded by fiddly drawings. He fancied himself an artistic soul, did your father. Really, he was just a crooked second-rate criminal.”

  “What kind of crimes? Please, Mum, you’ve never told me anything about him. Was he a druggie? A thief?”

  “Counterfeiting.” Mum gritted her teeth, as though she couldn’t bear to get the words out. “He sold copies of Banksy paintings and old medieval manuscripts.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. It fit with Herman Strepel’s unique skills. “What was he like? What about his family?”

  She sniffed. “He didn’t have any family, but he got on well with my parents. Dad wanted him to join the family business, but he kept insisting we’d get rich one day off his manuscripts, and he wouldn’t need to peddle drugs anymore. Apparently, he was working on a masterpiece. Some never-before-discovered work by Hester or Horatio or something.”

  “Homer?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember. He was always talking nonsense about old writers and artists.” I picked up the bigger pieces of broken cup and tossed them into the rubbish bin, my mind whirring. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Herman Strepel’s copy of The Frog-Mouse War had shown up in the shop when he was counterfeiting Homer in my time. Was it a message from my father somehow?

  “That would make sense, then. The letter was handwritten, and there were drawings in the border.” I hunted out the brush and shovel and swept up the tiny ceramic fragments and as much unicorn poop as I could. My hands shook with excitement. This was more than I’d ever found out about my father. “Do you have any idea what he might be talking about when he says he’s in danger?”

  Mum shook her head. “He’s a criminal, Mina. He’s probably pissed off the wrong people. If he writes any more letters to you, he’s going to be in danger from me.”

  You never told me before that he was an artist and a writer. That he was a reader.

  All my life I’d been the opposite of my mother. She had no imagination. She thought books were stupid and had barely ever set foot in Nevermore Bookshop (except to drag me away as a child or to sell her pet dictionaries), whereas I had practically been raised b
y those fictional characters. She was the one who talked me out of my English degree at Oxford because she thought I had a better chance of making it as a fashion designer than as a writer. Even when I was being bullied and I hated myself and I felt so completely alone, she never told me that there was someone else out there like me – my father.

  Rage boiled up inside me, turning my veins to lava. My hand balled into fists at my sides. I hated her. She kept this from me, and I needed it. If I’d known I wasn’t so completely alone, if I hadn’t felt like such a freak, things might’ve turned out so differently for me…

  I slid into the chair across from her. On the stove, the kettle boiled, but both of us ignored it. I studied my mother’s face, noting the bags under her eyes, the vein throbbing on her temple – the same one that throbbed when I did something naughty. My fingers itched to slap the expression off her face. How dare you be angry with me? I have every right to hate you right now.

  “You’ve never told me this,” I whispered, the words hard. “You never told me that I was like my father. All my life you made me think I was a freak because of the things I liked. And it was all because you were angry with him. When you looked at me reading or drawing, you saw him. The only reason you wanted me to pursue fashion was because it was something you liked.”

  “Don’t turn this around on me, Mina,” she snapped. “He’s the one who walked out on us and left me to raise you. I did the best I could with what I had. I put you through school and I let you hang out at that musty bookshop you loved more than our home. I did everything I bloody could to give you the life I didn’t get to have. And you get one letter from him in twenty-three years and now you hate me.”

  “Don’t you think I might have liked to know I had a father who loved to read? Don’t you think I would have wanted some kind of relationship with him? But you made me think he was an evil criminal just so I’d hate him as much as you. Well, congratulations, Mum. I hated him, all right, but not as much as I hated myself!”

  “He was a criminal!” she screamed. “Just because he did his crime with pretty pictures instead of drugs doesn’t mean he was a person you should have in your life.”