The Bookshop Below
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Synopsis
A disgraced bookseller journeys into a lush, wondrous world of magical books, deadly ink magic, and secret societies, in this darkly spellbinding standalone fantasy novel from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The City of Stardust.
We are but story made manifest...
If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron’s bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it’s a glimpse into a world of powerful bargains and deadly ink magic.
For Cassandra Fairfax, it’s a reminder of everything she lost, when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she’s used her skills in less ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys and unscrupulous collectors.
Then Chiron dies under mysterious circumstances. And if Cassandra knows anything, it’s this: the bookshop must always have an owner.
But she's not the only one interested. There's Lowell Sharpe, a dark-eyed, regrettably handsome bookseller she can't seem to stop bumping into; rival owners who threaten Cassandra from the shadows; and, of course, Chiron's murderer, who is still on the loose.
As Cassandra tries to uncover the secrets her mentor left behind, a sinister force threatens to unravel the world of the magical bookshops entirely...
Release date: February 11, 2025
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 384
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The Bookshop Below
Georgia Summers
WHEN CASSANDRA FAIRFAX was a little girl, a bookseller told her about Lady Fate.
Lady Fate, with her enigmatic smile and her hands plucking strings across the chords of time. Lady Fate, who could make or break your fortune, who could set your feet astray from the path you had so determinedly set for yourself, or place glory in your outstretched hands. Lady Fate, the oldest of storytellers.
The bookseller knelt down, so they were eye to eye with Cassandra, and said, “Lady Fate will fuck you over, little girl.”
It was several years before she understood that anyone else can fuck you over just as easily, no godly intervention required.
Take now, for instance.
She’s standing in front of a sleek block of luxury flats towering over the Thames, wondering if she’s about to make another enormous mistake. Canary Wharf is full of such edifices, but the windows above are dark and opaque, the flats mostly empty: still waiting to be filled with designer furniture, along with the playboys and heiresses to inhabit it. People for whom money is no longer sufficient, who have already climbed to the highest rung they can buy, and are now looking for a different kind of currency to spend.
Her phone rings.
“Roth,” she says.
“Come on up, Cass.” His honey-glazed accent puts her in mind of tennis courts and long afternoons by poolsides. “I’ll buzz you in.”
Definitely a mistake. But it’s too late to back out now.
Well, no—she could still turn around and leave. But her rent is overdue, for one. And she’s just coming to appraise a few stolen books: an easy, uncomplicated job. Moreover, Roth pays well; she can tolerate a few hours of him for that.
The foyer is hauntingly dark, but in the gleam of the day’s last light, she catches the opulent decor. Veined marble flooring, glossy chrome fittings, and the ever-present security cameras to make sure the riff-raff stay out. Her boots leave traces of mud across the otherwise spotless floor as she walks past the empty reception.
Joke’s on them, she thinks, this riff-raff has an invite.
The elevator takes her up to the penthouse, where a man lounges in the doorway. She recognises Roth instantly: well built, with floppy blonde hair, and a tan to match the watch on his wrist. A less discerning admirer might call him a golden retriever of a man, but Cassandra knows a shark when she sees one.
“It’s been too long, darling,” he says.
“You could hire me more often,” she reminds him, as he takes her coat.
“And you’d like that, hm?”
Roth’s gaze lingers on her chest before he drags his focus back to her. She forces herself to smile, to appear not stupid but harmless. Possessable. Anyway, she knows Roth isn’t really interested in her—as long as she remains in reach.
“Just a couple of books,” she warns. “I’m on a tight schedule.”
She’s not, but let Roth think that she’s deigning to grace him with her presence.
“That’s all I ask,” he says.
“And I want the cash up front,” she adds.
He finally moves aside to let her into his flat, but not so far that she doesn’t have to brush past him. His hand touches the small of her back and lingers.
“What do you think of the new place?” he says, his breath against her ear. “Tempted?”
Cassandra tilts her head just enough for him to see her smile. “Oh, you know. Seen one, seen them all, really.”
His hand falls from her back. Something cold slithers into his gaze.
“Books are in the library,” he says, his superficial charm vanished. “And you’ll be paid when you’ve done your job.”
Rent, she reminds herself. And she can’t do that if she gives Roth the slap he so badly deserves.
“Is that a problem?” he asks.
Yes. But she shrugs. “Why would it be?”
The theoretical problem is that Cassandra isn’t supposed to be here at all. Most certainly she shouldn’t be offering to appraise stolen books—taken by Roth, or by another collector and then by Roth, or by some underpaid museum curator decades ago; who knows and, quite frankly, who cares?—much less sell them on to other unscrupulous collectors. But it only stops being theoretical if she fucks up, and a little bit of illegal brokering is a safer game than the one she was playing six months ago.
What a fuck-up that had been.
As Roth leads her through his flat, she has to admit that it’s a gorgeous space. Hideously outfitted, though, because it’s Roth. The living room feels more like a gallery, bedecked in abstract glass sculptures on gold-trimmed pedestals and topiaries clipped to angular perfection, all dominated by an ivory chaise longue in the centre. But the view is spectacular: an enviable expanse of London, with the Thames shearing through it, tinted by the blaze of sunset.
Roth recovers some of his showmanship as they walk through a set of glass doors. “This, darling, is where the magic happens.”
Roth’s library. Last time she was here, this room was little more than a construction site, the books still stowed carefully in boxes. But now she understands why he was so keen to move here, when he’d had his pick of apartments. The high ceiling allows for endlessly tall bookshelves, each one packed tight with rows upon rows of books. Most, if not all, will be rare editions, coveted by museums and collectors alike, although some are custom-bound in new leather with Roth’s name stamped on the back. A touch, no doubt, he’s picked up from other aficionados with more money than taste. Cassandra finds herself calculating the value and origins of each one, envy bitter in her throat.
If she didn’t know Roth better, she would conclude that this is the work of hired expertise. An interior designer with a careful eye, or a particularly savvy assistant. But Roth is a collector through and through; no book would have passed through here without his explicit, personal hand in the acquisition.
She wonders how many of them came from Chiron’s bookshop.
“Nice collection,” she says because she knows he’s waiting for a compliment.
“It’s nothing special,” he says, with blatantly false modesty. “I keep the real rarities in a climate-controlled library elsewhere.” As though reading her mind, he adds, “Seen the old man lately?”
If she didn’t know Roth as well as she does, or if it had been someone else asking, she might have chalked up the question as passing curiosity. But she’s seen that gleam in his eyes before.
She shrugs. “Have you?”
“Oh, I’ve seen him, sure.” Roth waves his hand in the air vaguely. “Around.”
Cassandra can imagine. At exclusive dinners, secretive conferences meant for booksellers and collectors only, underground auctions, where no one looks too hard at a book’s origins. At the bars afterwards, when the real deals happen, and the alleyways after that, where debts are collected and favours squeezed. What’s a little drink between old friends, after all?
What’s a little blood?
“He isn’t taking appointments anymore,” Roth says pointedly, as though this is her fault. “And there’s a book I’m simply dying to get my hands on.”
Well, Chiron had never much liked customers in the first place. Or people, for that matter. Once, Cassandra had considered herself the exception, along with a handful of booksellers who’d worked alongside him in his shop, each possessing decades’ worth of experience. Last she’d heard, he’d all but shut the shop, the booksellers long gone.
“Weren’t you his apprentice? Protégé?” Roth prompts.
Like he doesn’t know exactly who Cassandra is. Or who she used to be. She pretends to focus on a particularly glitzy set of rebound classics displayed in a glass case. How ironic that it’s Roth, of all people, who’s managed to put together what she’s spent nearly a decade hiding.
“Fairfax is a lovely last name,” he adds. “I don’t know why you’d change it to Holt.”
She keeps her eyes trained on the bookshelves. To keep people like you from finding me, she thinks.
He sidles over to her. “Darling, if only I had—”
“I told you, I don’t know where the bookshop is. What do you want with him?” she asks, as lightly as she can manage.
“Just satisfying my curiosity.” Roth rests his arms on the back of a chair and gestures invitingly. “Please.”
Cassandra settles herself at the table, ignoring Roth’s breath against her neck.
“The books?” she says.
“Packed away. Let me get them for you.”
While she waits, her thoughts turn reluctantly back to Chiron. It’s been years since she’s walked past a bookshop and lingered at its windows, wondering what Chiron’s would look like now, what ghosts might walk its empty corridors. What the crackle of a spine could sound like in a room with no clicking of terse, irritable bookselling teeth, no hands to pluck the book from inexperienced fingers. What it would feel like to have the books humming in her head again, the rustle of paper and glossy glide of ink, buttery leather under her fingers and in her mind, an entire world on the tip of her tongue as she recites Once upon a time—
No, she doesn’t think of it at all, anymore.
Idly, she splays her hands out on the table, and instantly regrets it. Although it looks clean, a sticky residue clings to the surface. Grimacing, she makes to wipe her hands on her jeans, then stops. Cautiously, she rubs the residue between her forefinger and thumb, then sniffs it.
Ink… and blood.
Every nerve sparks ablaze with warning.
“Cassandra Fairfax.”
She looks up—and locks eyes with Roth. Even though his gaze is steady, his eyes possess a glassy, otherworldly sheen. One that she knows all too well. A dense ripple of words slithers up his forearm, disappearing into his shirt. Ink magic.
She should never have come here tonight.
“Cassandra,” he says again, and his voice reeks with the tang of ink and power. “Tell me—”
She vaults off the chair in an explosion of energy. Roth lunges after her. The ink writhes on his skin, lending him strength. Strength that a reader has bestowed on him, judging from the way he moves, all leonine ferocity and unnatural speed.
“Cassandra Fairfax, stop,” he commands.
The sound pierces her through the sternum, against the door she’d been so close to fleeing through. Her body feels like lead, gravity exerting its terrible force, as the compulsion locks her feet to the floor.
Roth’s hands cup her face, cool against her flushed skin. She really should have slapped him when she had the chance.
“You’ve got your loyalties, I get that. I really do,” he says, all genuine earnestness. “The old man would be proud. But you’ve already proven that. So help me out, and I’ll help you, Cass. Talk to me.”
It’s just enough of a reprieve to allow her mouth to work around the compulsion. “Oh, fuck you, Roth.”
His eyes narrow. “Tell me where Chiron’s bookshop is.”
A wave of compulsion washes over her, seizing her limbs in a painful vice. Words bubble up her throat, drag her tongue over her teeth in the pre-echo of an answer. But reading rarely works so well on another reader.
Even—and perhaps especially—her.
“Who read for you?” she demands.
Not that Cassandra would know who it was. Someone stupid or greedy enough to work for Roth. Someone like her. But not, apparently, that skilled. Already, the script along Roth’s forearms is losing coherence, the bottom lines dissolving to gather in ink drops on his fingertips.
“Cassandra,” he says, then stops. “You shouldn’t be able to speak—you shouldn’t—”
She laughs, her lips bloody from biting down to stop coerced words spilling out. “Who do you think I am? Did you think this was going to be easy?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the edge of the doorway—and beyond that, all those glittering, expensive glass sculptures. Pins and needles shoot up her legs, welcome pain as the compulsion starts to slough off her. Come on, come on, she thinks desperately.
“Why not ask Chiron yourself?” she says, buying time.
“You haven’t even heard about him, have you?” Roth spits.
“I told you, I don’t run in those circles anymore. And I don’t care.”
“Well, if you don’t give a shit, then you have nothing to lose.” His mouth twitches smugly. “But we both know you have nothing worth losing, anyway.”
She smiles at Roth and looks pointedly at his beading script, the ink splatters on his glossy floorboards.
“Think it’ll stain?” she says.
The second he looks down, she bolts. Through the doors of the library, to the bleeding glow of his living room. One leg buckles underneath her—remnants of compulsion—and she grabs a plinth to keep herself upright. Roth crashes after her, fury writ large on his face. Even without his extra strength, he’s still an athlete, with all those summers playing tennis and winters spent skiing.
She lets him get close enough to reach her. His hand snatches at the back of her collar. Then she grabs the ornate vase from the plinth and smashes it over him. Glass shatters. Roth shrieks—whether in pain or anger, she can’t tell.
It’s just enough time for Cassandra to stagger towards the front door. She casts one look at the mess she’s left behind: Roth, clutching his face through blood-stained fingers; expensive glass everywhere; ink spattered across a cream carpet. A ghost of a memory rolls through her and she shudders. Another room. Blood against glass. Ink slick on her teeth.
Before she can examine it too closely—before she reminds herself that this is another fuck-up she promised she wouldn’t have—she yanks the front door open. The hallway beckons mercifully. Without waiting for the elevator, she takes the stairs two at a time, her heart pounding with every footstep.
“He’s dead, you stupid bitch!” Roth shouts after her. “They all know your name, where to find you. You think I’ll be the last? They’ll come after you, and God help you because I won’t. I tried, Cassandra. I tried!”
Cassandra keeps running.
CASSANDRA RUNS UNTIL her lungs burn. Until she has to stop and retch in an alleyway, even though nothing comes up. Just a faint aftertaste of ink and blood, hard proof that Roth had tried to compel her.
He’s dead.
When Roth doesn’t come barrelling after her, a fraction of relief seeps through her. But she feels watched, nevertheless, so she takes the long route home, slipping through winding streets and tucked-away alleys until the press of Roth’s fingers no longer haunts her skin. Halfway there, she shivers; although the days are still warm, London’s nights are beginning to feel the bite of autumn. Too late, she realises that her coat with her wallet and keys is still in Roth’s flat, but she can hardly go back for them now. So—no keys, no wallet, and not one penny of her fee.
Then again, he was never going to pay her. If she’s honest, it’s lucky that’s all he wanted to do: extract information and cast her aside. In his shoes, she wouldn’t have let herself leave. Not without guaranteeing absolute silence.
It doesn’t take more than a well-placed shove to bust open the door to her flat, with its flimsy lock and varnished plywood. The bang echoes in the corridor, but no one comes to investigate. No one would. It’s been a long time since anyone put together the identities of Cass Holt, book thief and ink magic reader, with Cassandra Fairfax, Chiron’s oh-so promising, oh-so disgraced ex-protégé, banished from his doors forever.
But Roth had done it, weeks ago. He’d made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, like it was just another quirky fact to add to her reputation. And she’d let herself believe him, even though there were reasons why she’d never connected the two.
Cassandra Fairfax. It’s been a long time since she’s heard her real name out loud.
She wonders how many people know the truth now. The booksellers and collectors, with their starving eye to acquire. What they would give. What they would take, for what they wanted.
The light flickers in her flat a few times before it sticks, giving Cassandra just enough to see by. She was hungry before she left for Roth’s, but now she has no appetite—only an aching exhaustion. But she forces herself to drag a bookshelf across her door, pinning it shut. It’s not enough to stop someone, but it might give her a little warning. Shivering, she clambers onto her couch, pulling her duvet around her shoulders.
Roth’s love for showmanship saved her, really. That, and the haphazard instincts she’s tried to hone over the past years. After all, he’s not the only person who’s tried to fuck her over—just the latest. And now that he knows who she is—was—she has no doubt he won’t be the last.
She puts her head in her hands and breathes deeply.
He’s dead.
It might be true. So what if it is? The Chiron she knew—the one who had been her mentor—died, as far as she’s concerned, the day she’d left his bookshop for good. If he still slinks into her thoughts occasionally, it’s only ever as a ghost, rummaging through worn memories to portend a future that’s already happened. And sure, maybe in her weaker moments, she lets herself remember all the things that have slipped away and all the things she no longer knows, so that her poltergeist more and more resembles a blurry, thumb-printed photograph with each passing year.
Roth had wanted to shock her with the news, and if it had been six months ago, the joke would be on him, as usual. Six months ago, it wouldn’t have made any difference to her—or at least, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Except six months ago, you made the second-biggest fuck-up of your life, and too many of the wrong people paid attention.
Through her parted fingers, she glances at the letter on her kitchen table, where she’s let it sit for the last two days. Unable to open it, and unable to throw it away. The address is written in a hand that she knows like her own heartbeat: Chiron’s.
It’s been years; people forget all sorts of things in that span of time. She might very well not remember where the bookshop is. But she couldn’t convince Roth of that, never mind all the collectors who’ll be lining up behind him—every power-hungry or even power-curious acquirer, ready to see the inside of Chiron’s bookshop. All desperate to get their hands on the book that could change their life.
Take my money. Take my firstborn. I’d kill a man.
Anyway, Chiron might not be dead. If she, say, walked past the bookshop tomorrow, and came face to face with him, that would arguably be a lot worse. His disgraced protégé returned, only to admit that she’s fucked up again, and maybe in worse ways than he’s even conceived of. She hates that she’s only proved him right; she hates that she cares what he’d think at all.
Cassandra eyes the letter again, in his handwriting. Addressed to her: Cassandra Fairfax.
Then she feels the ache in her limbs, the adrenaline rush of terror sinking into an exhausted, leaden-weight throb of fear. She’s slept badly the last few nights. The last six months, if she’d let herself admit it. For now, Roth doesn’t know where she lives—what a joke he’d make of her shitty studio apartment—and neither does anyone else, as far as she’s aware. It’s about the only thing she’s managed to get right.
She’s probably safe for a little longer. Long enough to put off reading that letter for one more day.
Cassandra wakes at four in the morning with the taste of ink in her mouth.
You don’t have to go to the bookshop, she tells herself, as she stretches, and makes herself a cup of coffee in the microwave because the kettle is broken. Haloed by the cool glow of her ancient laptop, she climbs back onto the couch and writes students’ papers. It’s a fall-back that’s often more hassle than it’s worth, but there is a fine line between what she earns from her other jobs and her rent. And within that fine line is a gulf of a sum. A sum that Roth should have paid, and then some, if he hadn’t tried to use her own skills against her.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the idea of legal employment had been both unthinkable and unnecessary. When Cass Holt had been a name that rattled every bookseller and collector in the country—anyone who’d dipped a toe into the murky waters of magic, and decided they wanted more. She might not have lived in a penthouse like Roth’s, but she’d had her luxuries, the command of a well-furnished flat, her own little acquisitions in the brief interlude when she’d fancied herself a collector. Being a thief, especially one as talented as herself, had paid well.
How far and fast she’s fallen, even when she’d thought there was nowhere further to fall than thief.
She spends the morning chasing students for their inevitably late payments, then departs to her second job at a local bar. And all the while she feels the press of the letter—literally, swiped from the countertop and shoved into the deepest corner of her jacket pocket. If Roth hasn’t found her by now, then he’s surely looking, with every resource at his disposal. She’s been careful, but Roth’s connections run deep, his pockets deeper.
At two in the morning, she finishes up at the bar and slips out of the back, away from her co-workers wearily stumbling out the front. Her head is weightless with exhaustion, and her body aches with the fingerprint-shaped bruises from where Roth grabbed her. She twiddles with the spare set of keys to her flat for a second, before remembering that the lock is broken and it’s fair game for anyone.
She really doesn’t want to face whatever’s waiting for her there.
Instead, she finds herself meandering past the road to her flat, down quiet, ink-dark residential streets, everyone else asleep; underneath the long shadow of St. Paul’s all the way to the snarled alleys of Covent Garden. Even at this unsociable hour, there are still tourists and late-night revellers rambling through central London, but they pay her little heed. She shivers, wishing for her coat again.
Just before Leicester Square, where the crowd surges and flows towards the bright lights of Piccadilly, she turns down a series of alleyways, slipping beneath dark windows and across empty roads like a wraith amongst the living. Then, at last, she stops in front of the entrance to a narrow street: Cecil Court.
Here, time seems to stumble, with delicate gates pulled over doorways and Victorian gas lamps throwing dim yellow light over painted signs. Old-fashioned window displays exhibit antique prints and lithographs, neatly trimmed from their literary counterparts; historic marble figurines and aged war mementos; enormous tea-coloured maps encased safely behind glass frames. But mostly, it’s books. For the last century, bookshops have gravitated to this particular street, as though drawn by a singular pull, though both owners and patrons would struggle to pinpoint the reason. A black hole, luring the literary-inclined.
Cassandra stands at the entrance of the street for so long her hands go numb inside her pockets. It might not be here, she thinks. She could still turn around. Go back to her flat, the glow of her laptop. The student papers, the bar. Brokering deals for stolen books because that’s all her skills are worth now. If she hasn’t already wrecked that part of her life alongside all the others.
Is this all there is?
She closes her eyes, recalls her dream underpinned by memory, and opens them again.
And there it is, as though it had always been there to begin with. Chiron’s bookshop.
The door is closed, of course, and the light is off, the shutters pinned back indifferently from the windows. The air behind the displays is still. But even in daylight it would be impossible to see the rest of the shop from the gloom that so pervades those scant few front inches. A wrought-iron lantern hangs above the sheltered nook of its doorway. It’s had a dozen names in Cassandra’s lifetime, never mind before, but the current sign batting back and forth in the wind reads: The Bookshop. As though no other signifier needs to precede it.
How many times has she dreamed of the lantern, the doorway, the paved stairs with a smooth dip in the centre, worn away by centuries of footsteps?
But they’re not really here, in the same way that the bookshop isn’t really here to anyone passing by. No one simply comes across Chiron’s bookshop. Maps forget its name; entire streets fail to acknowledge its existence; passers-by stumble over a crack in the pavement and catch—well, maybe a shimmer of glass, or the scent of ink, or the leafy rustle of pages. But no more than that. And by the time they right themselves, it’s vanished once again, just the ghost of a half-remembered thing.
The bookshop chooses its customers very carefully. But Cassandra’s not a customer. Not one of its booksellers, nor Chiron’s protégé. By all rights, she shouldn’t be here at all.
She climbs the stairs slowly, waiting for some well-deserved punishment to strike her. But she reaches the door unharmed. More worrying is the absence of angry footfall, of Chiron throwing open the door, furious at her audacity for returning.
She places her palm against the door, and a heavy clank echoes somewhere in the bookshop, deeper than one would expect. As though the building is mustering its strongest defences against her, every bolt sliding shut, arrows cocked from the narrow windows above.
But the handle yields to her careful touch, and the door eases open with a tired groan. She’s never needed a key to enter before, and the bookshop, at least, has held to this. A breath of air whispers past her into the cool night, and she inhales. Cedar, dust, the soft-sweet smell of old books—and underneath, the sharp tang of ink.
She touches the letter in her pocket and pictures Lady Fate with her cleaving smile, the skein of thread running through her hands in a spider’s web of past and future. A tight, unpickable knot, pinning Cassandra to the centre.
Fine, she concedes. You win.
Slowly, she steps inside.
CHIRON’S BOOKSHOP IS empty.
Cassandra peers around the corner, waiting for someone to materialise. The inside is black, suffused with a thick, uneasy quiet. When she takes another step forward, it’s more of a leap to avoid the enormous stack of post gathered at the foot of the door. The back of her neck prickles with the sense that someone is watching her.
“Hello?” she says.
A sound like distant thunder judders the floorboards.
She flinches, ready to run—but it’s only the bookshop flexing its muscles as it rouses from slumber. One by one, the lamps flicker on, sputtering dim orange light. The shadows dissolve into softer creatures as the room coalesces in front of her.
For years, she’s wondered what became of the bookshop. What new shores it had landed on, captained by its owner. Whether Chiron ever thought of her at all.
And now she’s here, she can barely drink it all in.
Most of the bookshop is just the way she remembers it, at least in terms of layout. An enormous cedar desk sits like a throne in the centre of the shop, armed with an expectant brass bell and bracketed by shelves that used to brim with books. Above, a chandelier twinkles with the remains of its crystal teardrops, cobwebs dancing in the gaps. Behind it, an elaborately carved stairwell twines upwards and below, with a moth-eaten carpet runner held in place by rusting ornamental rods.
And there’s the sound of the river, its current rushing underneath the shop. The black hole that so attracts the bookshops to this particular street, enigmatic in its machinations. The precise quality that makes this bookshop… other.
Always, the river.
The rest of the bookshop is lit in a warm orangey glow, illuminating rows upon rows of books grey with dust, dead plant pots and other detritus. It wasn’t so long ago that it was Cassandra’s job to water the plants and clean the shelves, and if she squints, she can almost see the ghost of her younger self ducking between a handful of irritated booksellers.
As far as entryways go, it’s pretty magnificent, and Cassandra would think she’s still dreaming, were it not for the state of the shop. She takes a deep breath, and inhales a musty, lonesome smell. Then she swipes her finger across the cedar desk and grimaces. The shop was always shabby, but Chiron would surely never have let it get this bad. Unless—
She sits down at the desk, the leather chair creaking under her weight. Runs her hands along its polished edge, gathering dust under her fingertips, until she finds an engraving: O to you, who holds our fate most tight, we are but story made manifest.
Chiron had told her that a magician-turned-bookseller had written that on the desk, that he was imparting a hidden phrase. And when Cassandra was still young enough to believe him, she’d passed other bookshops and wondered if they, too, knew this secret, whispered from bookseller to bookseller like sacred text.
Now, of course, she knows it’s just a line from an obscure poem. Not magic, or sacrosanct.
She gets up and brushes herself down. “Chiron?”
The bookshop is silent, save for the sound of dust humming against electric lamps. Reflexively, she glances to the oddly unadorned wall next to the staircase—odd because in a bookshop, no space can ever afford to be wasted.
But it isn’t wasted space. Not really. Because—
Upstairs, something thunks against the floor, and her heart pistons in her chest.
“Chiron? It’s me. Cassandra.”
He must be abl
Lady Fate, with her enigmatic smile and her hands plucking strings across the chords of time. Lady Fate, who could make or break your fortune, who could set your feet astray from the path you had so determinedly set for yourself, or place glory in your outstretched hands. Lady Fate, the oldest of storytellers.
The bookseller knelt down, so they were eye to eye with Cassandra, and said, “Lady Fate will fuck you over, little girl.”
It was several years before she understood that anyone else can fuck you over just as easily, no godly intervention required.
Take now, for instance.
She’s standing in front of a sleek block of luxury flats towering over the Thames, wondering if she’s about to make another enormous mistake. Canary Wharf is full of such edifices, but the windows above are dark and opaque, the flats mostly empty: still waiting to be filled with designer furniture, along with the playboys and heiresses to inhabit it. People for whom money is no longer sufficient, who have already climbed to the highest rung they can buy, and are now looking for a different kind of currency to spend.
Her phone rings.
“Roth,” she says.
“Come on up, Cass.” His honey-glazed accent puts her in mind of tennis courts and long afternoons by poolsides. “I’ll buzz you in.”
Definitely a mistake. But it’s too late to back out now.
Well, no—she could still turn around and leave. But her rent is overdue, for one. And she’s just coming to appraise a few stolen books: an easy, uncomplicated job. Moreover, Roth pays well; she can tolerate a few hours of him for that.
The foyer is hauntingly dark, but in the gleam of the day’s last light, she catches the opulent decor. Veined marble flooring, glossy chrome fittings, and the ever-present security cameras to make sure the riff-raff stay out. Her boots leave traces of mud across the otherwise spotless floor as she walks past the empty reception.
Joke’s on them, she thinks, this riff-raff has an invite.
The elevator takes her up to the penthouse, where a man lounges in the doorway. She recognises Roth instantly: well built, with floppy blonde hair, and a tan to match the watch on his wrist. A less discerning admirer might call him a golden retriever of a man, but Cassandra knows a shark when she sees one.
“It’s been too long, darling,” he says.
“You could hire me more often,” she reminds him, as he takes her coat.
“And you’d like that, hm?”
Roth’s gaze lingers on her chest before he drags his focus back to her. She forces herself to smile, to appear not stupid but harmless. Possessable. Anyway, she knows Roth isn’t really interested in her—as long as she remains in reach.
“Just a couple of books,” she warns. “I’m on a tight schedule.”
She’s not, but let Roth think that she’s deigning to grace him with her presence.
“That’s all I ask,” he says.
“And I want the cash up front,” she adds.
He finally moves aside to let her into his flat, but not so far that she doesn’t have to brush past him. His hand touches the small of her back and lingers.
“What do you think of the new place?” he says, his breath against her ear. “Tempted?”
Cassandra tilts her head just enough for him to see her smile. “Oh, you know. Seen one, seen them all, really.”
His hand falls from her back. Something cold slithers into his gaze.
“Books are in the library,” he says, his superficial charm vanished. “And you’ll be paid when you’ve done your job.”
Rent, she reminds herself. And she can’t do that if she gives Roth the slap he so badly deserves.
“Is that a problem?” he asks.
Yes. But she shrugs. “Why would it be?”
The theoretical problem is that Cassandra isn’t supposed to be here at all. Most certainly she shouldn’t be offering to appraise stolen books—taken by Roth, or by another collector and then by Roth, or by some underpaid museum curator decades ago; who knows and, quite frankly, who cares?—much less sell them on to other unscrupulous collectors. But it only stops being theoretical if she fucks up, and a little bit of illegal brokering is a safer game than the one she was playing six months ago.
What a fuck-up that had been.
As Roth leads her through his flat, she has to admit that it’s a gorgeous space. Hideously outfitted, though, because it’s Roth. The living room feels more like a gallery, bedecked in abstract glass sculptures on gold-trimmed pedestals and topiaries clipped to angular perfection, all dominated by an ivory chaise longue in the centre. But the view is spectacular: an enviable expanse of London, with the Thames shearing through it, tinted by the blaze of sunset.
Roth recovers some of his showmanship as they walk through a set of glass doors. “This, darling, is where the magic happens.”
Roth’s library. Last time she was here, this room was little more than a construction site, the books still stowed carefully in boxes. But now she understands why he was so keen to move here, when he’d had his pick of apartments. The high ceiling allows for endlessly tall bookshelves, each one packed tight with rows upon rows of books. Most, if not all, will be rare editions, coveted by museums and collectors alike, although some are custom-bound in new leather with Roth’s name stamped on the back. A touch, no doubt, he’s picked up from other aficionados with more money than taste. Cassandra finds herself calculating the value and origins of each one, envy bitter in her throat.
If she didn’t know Roth better, she would conclude that this is the work of hired expertise. An interior designer with a careful eye, or a particularly savvy assistant. But Roth is a collector through and through; no book would have passed through here without his explicit, personal hand in the acquisition.
She wonders how many of them came from Chiron’s bookshop.
“Nice collection,” she says because she knows he’s waiting for a compliment.
“It’s nothing special,” he says, with blatantly false modesty. “I keep the real rarities in a climate-controlled library elsewhere.” As though reading her mind, he adds, “Seen the old man lately?”
If she didn’t know Roth as well as she does, or if it had been someone else asking, she might have chalked up the question as passing curiosity. But she’s seen that gleam in his eyes before.
She shrugs. “Have you?”
“Oh, I’ve seen him, sure.” Roth waves his hand in the air vaguely. “Around.”
Cassandra can imagine. At exclusive dinners, secretive conferences meant for booksellers and collectors only, underground auctions, where no one looks too hard at a book’s origins. At the bars afterwards, when the real deals happen, and the alleyways after that, where debts are collected and favours squeezed. What’s a little drink between old friends, after all?
What’s a little blood?
“He isn’t taking appointments anymore,” Roth says pointedly, as though this is her fault. “And there’s a book I’m simply dying to get my hands on.”
Well, Chiron had never much liked customers in the first place. Or people, for that matter. Once, Cassandra had considered herself the exception, along with a handful of booksellers who’d worked alongside him in his shop, each possessing decades’ worth of experience. Last she’d heard, he’d all but shut the shop, the booksellers long gone.
“Weren’t you his apprentice? Protégé?” Roth prompts.
Like he doesn’t know exactly who Cassandra is. Or who she used to be. She pretends to focus on a particularly glitzy set of rebound classics displayed in a glass case. How ironic that it’s Roth, of all people, who’s managed to put together what she’s spent nearly a decade hiding.
“Fairfax is a lovely last name,” he adds. “I don’t know why you’d change it to Holt.”
She keeps her eyes trained on the bookshelves. To keep people like you from finding me, she thinks.
He sidles over to her. “Darling, if only I had—”
“I told you, I don’t know where the bookshop is. What do you want with him?” she asks, as lightly as she can manage.
“Just satisfying my curiosity.” Roth rests his arms on the back of a chair and gestures invitingly. “Please.”
Cassandra settles herself at the table, ignoring Roth’s breath against her neck.
“The books?” she says.
“Packed away. Let me get them for you.”
While she waits, her thoughts turn reluctantly back to Chiron. It’s been years since she’s walked past a bookshop and lingered at its windows, wondering what Chiron’s would look like now, what ghosts might walk its empty corridors. What the crackle of a spine could sound like in a room with no clicking of terse, irritable bookselling teeth, no hands to pluck the book from inexperienced fingers. What it would feel like to have the books humming in her head again, the rustle of paper and glossy glide of ink, buttery leather under her fingers and in her mind, an entire world on the tip of her tongue as she recites Once upon a time—
No, she doesn’t think of it at all, anymore.
Idly, she splays her hands out on the table, and instantly regrets it. Although it looks clean, a sticky residue clings to the surface. Grimacing, she makes to wipe her hands on her jeans, then stops. Cautiously, she rubs the residue between her forefinger and thumb, then sniffs it.
Ink… and blood.
Every nerve sparks ablaze with warning.
“Cassandra Fairfax.”
She looks up—and locks eyes with Roth. Even though his gaze is steady, his eyes possess a glassy, otherworldly sheen. One that she knows all too well. A dense ripple of words slithers up his forearm, disappearing into his shirt. Ink magic.
She should never have come here tonight.
“Cassandra,” he says again, and his voice reeks with the tang of ink and power. “Tell me—”
She vaults off the chair in an explosion of energy. Roth lunges after her. The ink writhes on his skin, lending him strength. Strength that a reader has bestowed on him, judging from the way he moves, all leonine ferocity and unnatural speed.
“Cassandra Fairfax, stop,” he commands.
The sound pierces her through the sternum, against the door she’d been so close to fleeing through. Her body feels like lead, gravity exerting its terrible force, as the compulsion locks her feet to the floor.
Roth’s hands cup her face, cool against her flushed skin. She really should have slapped him when she had the chance.
“You’ve got your loyalties, I get that. I really do,” he says, all genuine earnestness. “The old man would be proud. But you’ve already proven that. So help me out, and I’ll help you, Cass. Talk to me.”
It’s just enough of a reprieve to allow her mouth to work around the compulsion. “Oh, fuck you, Roth.”
His eyes narrow. “Tell me where Chiron’s bookshop is.”
A wave of compulsion washes over her, seizing her limbs in a painful vice. Words bubble up her throat, drag her tongue over her teeth in the pre-echo of an answer. But reading rarely works so well on another reader.
Even—and perhaps especially—her.
“Who read for you?” she demands.
Not that Cassandra would know who it was. Someone stupid or greedy enough to work for Roth. Someone like her. But not, apparently, that skilled. Already, the script along Roth’s forearms is losing coherence, the bottom lines dissolving to gather in ink drops on his fingertips.
“Cassandra,” he says, then stops. “You shouldn’t be able to speak—you shouldn’t—”
She laughs, her lips bloody from biting down to stop coerced words spilling out. “Who do you think I am? Did you think this was going to be easy?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the edge of the doorway—and beyond that, all those glittering, expensive glass sculptures. Pins and needles shoot up her legs, welcome pain as the compulsion starts to slough off her. Come on, come on, she thinks desperately.
“Why not ask Chiron yourself?” she says, buying time.
“You haven’t even heard about him, have you?” Roth spits.
“I told you, I don’t run in those circles anymore. And I don’t care.”
“Well, if you don’t give a shit, then you have nothing to lose.” His mouth twitches smugly. “But we both know you have nothing worth losing, anyway.”
She smiles at Roth and looks pointedly at his beading script, the ink splatters on his glossy floorboards.
“Think it’ll stain?” she says.
The second he looks down, she bolts. Through the doors of the library, to the bleeding glow of his living room. One leg buckles underneath her—remnants of compulsion—and she grabs a plinth to keep herself upright. Roth crashes after her, fury writ large on his face. Even without his extra strength, he’s still an athlete, with all those summers playing tennis and winters spent skiing.
She lets him get close enough to reach her. His hand snatches at the back of her collar. Then she grabs the ornate vase from the plinth and smashes it over him. Glass shatters. Roth shrieks—whether in pain or anger, she can’t tell.
It’s just enough time for Cassandra to stagger towards the front door. She casts one look at the mess she’s left behind: Roth, clutching his face through blood-stained fingers; expensive glass everywhere; ink spattered across a cream carpet. A ghost of a memory rolls through her and she shudders. Another room. Blood against glass. Ink slick on her teeth.
Before she can examine it too closely—before she reminds herself that this is another fuck-up she promised she wouldn’t have—she yanks the front door open. The hallway beckons mercifully. Without waiting for the elevator, she takes the stairs two at a time, her heart pounding with every footstep.
“He’s dead, you stupid bitch!” Roth shouts after her. “They all know your name, where to find you. You think I’ll be the last? They’ll come after you, and God help you because I won’t. I tried, Cassandra. I tried!”
Cassandra keeps running.
CASSANDRA RUNS UNTIL her lungs burn. Until she has to stop and retch in an alleyway, even though nothing comes up. Just a faint aftertaste of ink and blood, hard proof that Roth had tried to compel her.
He’s dead.
When Roth doesn’t come barrelling after her, a fraction of relief seeps through her. But she feels watched, nevertheless, so she takes the long route home, slipping through winding streets and tucked-away alleys until the press of Roth’s fingers no longer haunts her skin. Halfway there, she shivers; although the days are still warm, London’s nights are beginning to feel the bite of autumn. Too late, she realises that her coat with her wallet and keys is still in Roth’s flat, but she can hardly go back for them now. So—no keys, no wallet, and not one penny of her fee.
Then again, he was never going to pay her. If she’s honest, it’s lucky that’s all he wanted to do: extract information and cast her aside. In his shoes, she wouldn’t have let herself leave. Not without guaranteeing absolute silence.
It doesn’t take more than a well-placed shove to bust open the door to her flat, with its flimsy lock and varnished plywood. The bang echoes in the corridor, but no one comes to investigate. No one would. It’s been a long time since anyone put together the identities of Cass Holt, book thief and ink magic reader, with Cassandra Fairfax, Chiron’s oh-so promising, oh-so disgraced ex-protégé, banished from his doors forever.
But Roth had done it, weeks ago. He’d made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, like it was just another quirky fact to add to her reputation. And she’d let herself believe him, even though there were reasons why she’d never connected the two.
Cassandra Fairfax. It’s been a long time since she’s heard her real name out loud.
She wonders how many people know the truth now. The booksellers and collectors, with their starving eye to acquire. What they would give. What they would take, for what they wanted.
The light flickers in her flat a few times before it sticks, giving Cassandra just enough to see by. She was hungry before she left for Roth’s, but now she has no appetite—only an aching exhaustion. But she forces herself to drag a bookshelf across her door, pinning it shut. It’s not enough to stop someone, but it might give her a little warning. Shivering, she clambers onto her couch, pulling her duvet around her shoulders.
Roth’s love for showmanship saved her, really. That, and the haphazard instincts she’s tried to hone over the past years. After all, he’s not the only person who’s tried to fuck her over—just the latest. And now that he knows who she is—was—she has no doubt he won’t be the last.
She puts her head in her hands and breathes deeply.
He’s dead.
It might be true. So what if it is? The Chiron she knew—the one who had been her mentor—died, as far as she’s concerned, the day she’d left his bookshop for good. If he still slinks into her thoughts occasionally, it’s only ever as a ghost, rummaging through worn memories to portend a future that’s already happened. And sure, maybe in her weaker moments, she lets herself remember all the things that have slipped away and all the things she no longer knows, so that her poltergeist more and more resembles a blurry, thumb-printed photograph with each passing year.
Roth had wanted to shock her with the news, and if it had been six months ago, the joke would be on him, as usual. Six months ago, it wouldn’t have made any difference to her—or at least, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Except six months ago, you made the second-biggest fuck-up of your life, and too many of the wrong people paid attention.
Through her parted fingers, she glances at the letter on her kitchen table, where she’s let it sit for the last two days. Unable to open it, and unable to throw it away. The address is written in a hand that she knows like her own heartbeat: Chiron’s.
It’s been years; people forget all sorts of things in that span of time. She might very well not remember where the bookshop is. But she couldn’t convince Roth of that, never mind all the collectors who’ll be lining up behind him—every power-hungry or even power-curious acquirer, ready to see the inside of Chiron’s bookshop. All desperate to get their hands on the book that could change their life.
Take my money. Take my firstborn. I’d kill a man.
Anyway, Chiron might not be dead. If she, say, walked past the bookshop tomorrow, and came face to face with him, that would arguably be a lot worse. His disgraced protégé returned, only to admit that she’s fucked up again, and maybe in worse ways than he’s even conceived of. She hates that she’s only proved him right; she hates that she cares what he’d think at all.
Cassandra eyes the letter again, in his handwriting. Addressed to her: Cassandra Fairfax.
Then she feels the ache in her limbs, the adrenaline rush of terror sinking into an exhausted, leaden-weight throb of fear. She’s slept badly the last few nights. The last six months, if she’d let herself admit it. For now, Roth doesn’t know where she lives—what a joke he’d make of her shitty studio apartment—and neither does anyone else, as far as she’s aware. It’s about the only thing she’s managed to get right.
She’s probably safe for a little longer. Long enough to put off reading that letter for one more day.
Cassandra wakes at four in the morning with the taste of ink in her mouth.
You don’t have to go to the bookshop, she tells herself, as she stretches, and makes herself a cup of coffee in the microwave because the kettle is broken. Haloed by the cool glow of her ancient laptop, she climbs back onto the couch and writes students’ papers. It’s a fall-back that’s often more hassle than it’s worth, but there is a fine line between what she earns from her other jobs and her rent. And within that fine line is a gulf of a sum. A sum that Roth should have paid, and then some, if he hadn’t tried to use her own skills against her.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the idea of legal employment had been both unthinkable and unnecessary. When Cass Holt had been a name that rattled every bookseller and collector in the country—anyone who’d dipped a toe into the murky waters of magic, and decided they wanted more. She might not have lived in a penthouse like Roth’s, but she’d had her luxuries, the command of a well-furnished flat, her own little acquisitions in the brief interlude when she’d fancied herself a collector. Being a thief, especially one as talented as herself, had paid well.
How far and fast she’s fallen, even when she’d thought there was nowhere further to fall than thief.
She spends the morning chasing students for their inevitably late payments, then departs to her second job at a local bar. And all the while she feels the press of the letter—literally, swiped from the countertop and shoved into the deepest corner of her jacket pocket. If Roth hasn’t found her by now, then he’s surely looking, with every resource at his disposal. She’s been careful, but Roth’s connections run deep, his pockets deeper.
At two in the morning, she finishes up at the bar and slips out of the back, away from her co-workers wearily stumbling out the front. Her head is weightless with exhaustion, and her body aches with the fingerprint-shaped bruises from where Roth grabbed her. She twiddles with the spare set of keys to her flat for a second, before remembering that the lock is broken and it’s fair game for anyone.
She really doesn’t want to face whatever’s waiting for her there.
Instead, she finds herself meandering past the road to her flat, down quiet, ink-dark residential streets, everyone else asleep; underneath the long shadow of St. Paul’s all the way to the snarled alleys of Covent Garden. Even at this unsociable hour, there are still tourists and late-night revellers rambling through central London, but they pay her little heed. She shivers, wishing for her coat again.
Just before Leicester Square, where the crowd surges and flows towards the bright lights of Piccadilly, she turns down a series of alleyways, slipping beneath dark windows and across empty roads like a wraith amongst the living. Then, at last, she stops in front of the entrance to a narrow street: Cecil Court.
Here, time seems to stumble, with delicate gates pulled over doorways and Victorian gas lamps throwing dim yellow light over painted signs. Old-fashioned window displays exhibit antique prints and lithographs, neatly trimmed from their literary counterparts; historic marble figurines and aged war mementos; enormous tea-coloured maps encased safely behind glass frames. But mostly, it’s books. For the last century, bookshops have gravitated to this particular street, as though drawn by a singular pull, though both owners and patrons would struggle to pinpoint the reason. A black hole, luring the literary-inclined.
Cassandra stands at the entrance of the street for so long her hands go numb inside her pockets. It might not be here, she thinks. She could still turn around. Go back to her flat, the glow of her laptop. The student papers, the bar. Brokering deals for stolen books because that’s all her skills are worth now. If she hasn’t already wrecked that part of her life alongside all the others.
Is this all there is?
She closes her eyes, recalls her dream underpinned by memory, and opens them again.
And there it is, as though it had always been there to begin with. Chiron’s bookshop.
The door is closed, of course, and the light is off, the shutters pinned back indifferently from the windows. The air behind the displays is still. But even in daylight it would be impossible to see the rest of the shop from the gloom that so pervades those scant few front inches. A wrought-iron lantern hangs above the sheltered nook of its doorway. It’s had a dozen names in Cassandra’s lifetime, never mind before, but the current sign batting back and forth in the wind reads: The Bookshop. As though no other signifier needs to precede it.
How many times has she dreamed of the lantern, the doorway, the paved stairs with a smooth dip in the centre, worn away by centuries of footsteps?
But they’re not really here, in the same way that the bookshop isn’t really here to anyone passing by. No one simply comes across Chiron’s bookshop. Maps forget its name; entire streets fail to acknowledge its existence; passers-by stumble over a crack in the pavement and catch—well, maybe a shimmer of glass, or the scent of ink, or the leafy rustle of pages. But no more than that. And by the time they right themselves, it’s vanished once again, just the ghost of a half-remembered thing.
The bookshop chooses its customers very carefully. But Cassandra’s not a customer. Not one of its booksellers, nor Chiron’s protégé. By all rights, she shouldn’t be here at all.
She climbs the stairs slowly, waiting for some well-deserved punishment to strike her. But she reaches the door unharmed. More worrying is the absence of angry footfall, of Chiron throwing open the door, furious at her audacity for returning.
She places her palm against the door, and a heavy clank echoes somewhere in the bookshop, deeper than one would expect. As though the building is mustering its strongest defences against her, every bolt sliding shut, arrows cocked from the narrow windows above.
But the handle yields to her careful touch, and the door eases open with a tired groan. She’s never needed a key to enter before, and the bookshop, at least, has held to this. A breath of air whispers past her into the cool night, and she inhales. Cedar, dust, the soft-sweet smell of old books—and underneath, the sharp tang of ink.
She touches the letter in her pocket and pictures Lady Fate with her cleaving smile, the skein of thread running through her hands in a spider’s web of past and future. A tight, unpickable knot, pinning Cassandra to the centre.
Fine, she concedes. You win.
Slowly, she steps inside.
CHIRON’S BOOKSHOP IS empty.
Cassandra peers around the corner, waiting for someone to materialise. The inside is black, suffused with a thick, uneasy quiet. When she takes another step forward, it’s more of a leap to avoid the enormous stack of post gathered at the foot of the door. The back of her neck prickles with the sense that someone is watching her.
“Hello?” she says.
A sound like distant thunder judders the floorboards.
She flinches, ready to run—but it’s only the bookshop flexing its muscles as it rouses from slumber. One by one, the lamps flicker on, sputtering dim orange light. The shadows dissolve into softer creatures as the room coalesces in front of her.
For years, she’s wondered what became of the bookshop. What new shores it had landed on, captained by its owner. Whether Chiron ever thought of her at all.
And now she’s here, she can barely drink it all in.
Most of the bookshop is just the way she remembers it, at least in terms of layout. An enormous cedar desk sits like a throne in the centre of the shop, armed with an expectant brass bell and bracketed by shelves that used to brim with books. Above, a chandelier twinkles with the remains of its crystal teardrops, cobwebs dancing in the gaps. Behind it, an elaborately carved stairwell twines upwards and below, with a moth-eaten carpet runner held in place by rusting ornamental rods.
And there’s the sound of the river, its current rushing underneath the shop. The black hole that so attracts the bookshops to this particular street, enigmatic in its machinations. The precise quality that makes this bookshop… other.
Always, the river.
The rest of the bookshop is lit in a warm orangey glow, illuminating rows upon rows of books grey with dust, dead plant pots and other detritus. It wasn’t so long ago that it was Cassandra’s job to water the plants and clean the shelves, and if she squints, she can almost see the ghost of her younger self ducking between a handful of irritated booksellers.
As far as entryways go, it’s pretty magnificent, and Cassandra would think she’s still dreaming, were it not for the state of the shop. She takes a deep breath, and inhales a musty, lonesome smell. Then she swipes her finger across the cedar desk and grimaces. The shop was always shabby, but Chiron would surely never have let it get this bad. Unless—
She sits down at the desk, the leather chair creaking under her weight. Runs her hands along its polished edge, gathering dust under her fingertips, until she finds an engraving: O to you, who holds our fate most tight, we are but story made manifest.
Chiron had told her that a magician-turned-bookseller had written that on the desk, that he was imparting a hidden phrase. And when Cassandra was still young enough to believe him, she’d passed other bookshops and wondered if they, too, knew this secret, whispered from bookseller to bookseller like sacred text.
Now, of course, she knows it’s just a line from an obscure poem. Not magic, or sacrosanct.
She gets up and brushes herself down. “Chiron?”
The bookshop is silent, save for the sound of dust humming against electric lamps. Reflexively, she glances to the oddly unadorned wall next to the staircase—odd because in a bookshop, no space can ever afford to be wasted.
But it isn’t wasted space. Not really. Because—
Upstairs, something thunks against the floor, and her heart pistons in her chest.
“Chiron? It’s me. Cassandra.”
He must be abl
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The Bookshop Below
Georgia Summers
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