gun. He couldn’t shoot anyone, what with being dead, but that was ridiculous. David wasn’t going to arrest me or anything. He couldn’t even see Gideon.
I turned back, trying to come up with some reason David should go. He was usually one of my favorite customers, but I didn’t have time for it today. I had enough stress in my life without having someone around who annoyed Gideon.
“Anyway,” he said, and I wondered if he was going to do the job for me. “I was just worried about you. That guy—ah, Kurt—Kurt wasn’t the first mage that’s happened to recently. So I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I blinked in shock. “He was a mage? I didn’t—and it’s happened to other—” I broke off, gaze falling to the floor as the thoughts raced through my head, one after another, leading to a single, inevitable conclusion. “You suspect foul play.”
David gave a tiny grimace but didn’t deny it.
The bell over the door jingled again and a woman walked in.
David’s brows shot up, and he asked, “Mrs. Merton?”
“Lina,” she corrected with a tentative smile. “I didn’t expect to find you down here, Quaesitor.”
“The young woman who works at your counter told me Sage was at the shop when the incident happened. I didn’t expect to see you here, either.” He offered her a parody of his usual smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His whole face was like a pleasant mask, bland and emotionless, and a shiver crawled down my back at the exchange.
Fucking creepy.
She returned his smile with one just as empty and fake, and motioned toward me. “I recognized him when he was in the shop this morning,” she told him, voice an octave higher than when she’d entered, then turned to me. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I overheard you talking to your friend the other day and didn’t recognize you until this morning. You don’t leave your shop very often.”
Even more than David’s general . . . David-ness, she got Gideon’s attention. I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned in time to watch him lean forward on the couch, pinning her with his sharp gaze.
“No,” I agreed, tearing my attention away from Gideon and back to her. “I don’t. Sometimes I think I spend all my time here or at home.”
She giggled, and that came back into the realm of a natural sound. “Me too. It’s the danger of owning your own business that everyone warns you about, but you never think will happen to you.”
No one had ever warned me about any such thing—or warned me about anything in general, really—but I smiled and nodded.
“Anyway, I—” she paused and glanced at David, then back at me. “Like I said, I heard you with your friend, and you mentioned wanting to sell ‘the shop.’ I didn’t realize you were the person who owned the bookstore, and that the shop was this shop until I saw you today.”
David turned to look at me, a little sad and all serious. “You’re selling the shop?”
“What?” my father’s voice boomed from the mystery section, and I cringed at the volume.
The two of them, of course, didn’t hear him. They just assumed I was reacting to them.
“Oh,” she said, hand fluttering over her chest. “I didn’t realize it was a secret.”
David took a step toward me, eyes crinkled and filled with concern. “I didn’t mean that accusingly or—”
“I don’t know,” I told them all, maybe a little more loudly than necessary. “I’ve thought about it, yes. The shop was my father’s, and I don’t have a lot of good memories here.”
“Because he was an asshole,” Gideon said, meeting and holding my father’s enraged gaze.
I nodded. “Because he was an—” I turned a quick, annoyed glance Gideon’s way, then looked back at David and Lina. “Because he and I were never particularly close. I hadn’t intended to work in a bookstore for the rest of my life, I just sort of fell into it when he needed my help. And now that he’s gone, I have other options.”
It was an odd thought, really. I hadn’t intended to work in the store forever, sure, but I also hadn’t minded the idea. I loved books, and I would be happy to spend the rest of my life among them. I’d just never thought of the shop as a part of that. In my mind, the shop had always been my father’s.