Chapter Fifteen
PAXTON
*
I woke up the next morning to find half a dozen texts waiting on my phone from Anna-Claire.
I winced as I scrolled through them with one hand, the other hand holding my cup of coffee. My trusty Mr. Coffee maker might be ancient, close to a million years old, but it still faithfully grumbled to life each morning to give me my cup of hot, steaming caffeine that I needed to start my day.
"How was Mister Creep?" I read off from the first one. Great. Alex would probably hate that nickname, not that he didn't deserve it.
"Ooh, no response. Are you otherwise engaged?" I checked the time stamp on that text. I'd been asleep by that point! Did she really expect me to still be out on the date at nearly midnight? What kind of night life did Anna-Claire imagine that I had?
I flipped through the other texts, down to the most recent: "Is he still there in your bed???" That's right, three question marks.
If I didn't answer it, I knew that she'd keep on sending me more and more outrageous guesses as to how the night turned out. After taking a long sip of coffee, trying to will the caffeine to kick in and clear away the remaining fog of sleep, I set down my mug and started to compose a response.
"Last night wasn't as bad as I feared," I typed out, then paused. Really, it hadn't been bad at all. It had been...
Insane. Mind-bending, but not in any way that I could have predicted. Alex had superpowers, the ability to change anything in the world, with just a thought.
Anything except for me.
And yes, he was still a bit of an ass, but he was also a cute one. I remembered again how he'd kissed me – twice. The first had been gentle, soft, exploring, but the second one showed hunger and arousal. From him, as well as from me! I knew that I certainly didn't have the supermodel looks and charm of some other women, but that hadn't seemed to stop him from pulling me in against him, making my body pulse in time with my quickly beating heart as I pictured all the other wonderfully, sinfully delicious things he surely wanted to do to me. With me.
I returned my attention to the half-composed text message, suddenly aware that I was sweating just from the memory of last night. "He wasn't as much of an ass, and I think he wants to see me again."
There. Some details, but nothing about any sort of impropriety. I hit send, figuring that Anna-Claire probably wouldn't see it for a while-
Immediately, my phone lit up with a response. I glared down at it, my hand frozen halfway to picking my coffee mug back up. Sure enough, Anna-Claire had immediately answered. What, was she glued to her phone?
"U didnt answer me. Is he there or not???"
"No, he's not here," I sent back. "He hasn't even seen the inside of my apartment."
"Aww. Another date?"
I considered this question. I had promised that I'd call him, after doing some research on his issue. Would he want to take me out again? I normally wasn't very good at reading people, but that kiss didn't leave much uncertainty behind. If he didn't kiss every woman like that, he'd probably jump at the chance to repeat it...
"Maybe. I have to get to work," I texted Anna-Claire, and put my phone away so that I could go get dressed. I heard it buzzing on the counter even before I left the room, but I forced my hands to remain at my sides, to not turn around and go check on the messages.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversized, comfy sweatshirt – perfect for sitting in a drafty bookstore and climbing up ladders to retrieve volumes on high shelves for customers. I finished off my coffee and opened my fridge to find something more substantial.
I spotted a box of pastries, left over from a self-indulgent purchase I'd made a couple of days earlier. Fingers crossed. I opened the box, and found a single remaining bear claw. Jackpot! I grabbed it with a napkin and munched on it as I headed downstairs to the bookstore.
Uncle Ryland was there already, of course; even though I lived just upstairs, he still showed up before me each day to open up the store and greet the regulars who waited faithfully outside to pick up their latest book orders. I spotted his balding, egg-shaped head bobbing through the aisles as I came down the stairs.
"Morning, Uncle." I leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek as he passed. He nodded back, although he couldn't hide the smile that flickered briefly across his face before he got himself under control.
Uncle Ryland finished handing off the book he'd fetched for a customer, ducked around the counter to ring the man up on our ancient cash register. "Eighteen dollars and seventy cents, Mr. Jackson," he said.
The tall, almost scarecrow-like man shook his gray-haired head ponderously. "Books keep on getting more expensive these days. I remember back when I could get a brand new volume for just a dollar."
"Me too, me too," Uncle Ryland agreed sympathetically as he made change for Mr. Jackson's twenty. "Here you go, Mr. Jackson. I'll give you a call when the next book in the series comes in, shall I?"
With a nod, Mr. Jackson carefully minced his way towards the exit. Uncle Ryland watched him go for a minute, then turned to me as the little bell above the door tingled with Mr. Jackson's departure.
"And what's on the docket for you today?" he asked, giving me a smile that seemed entirely too big for this hour in the morning. "Got a few more potential suitors coming by for me to chase off?"
"Yeah, because you did such a good job of that last time," I fired back, smiling to take the sting out of the words. "Uncle, what did Alex even say to you to win you over? You've never been happy with anyone who wants to ask me out."
I watched as my uncle's brow furrowed, a frown appearing on his face. "You know, I'm not quite sure I remember," he finally admitted, shrugging his big, bulky shoulders. "But he seemed like a good egg, that's all. How was the date?"
I certainly wasn't going to tell my uncle about the kiss! "Not bad," I admitted instead, quickly searching for a new topic, something less potentially embarrassing. "Say, that reminds me – do we have any books on magic?"
Uncle Ryland's face sharpened, taking on that glint of excitement that I'd learned to associate with the hunt for a new book. My uncle had a nose for this kind of thing, ferreting through the thousands of volumes stashed away in the shelves throughout the shop to winnow out just what he was after. "Magic?" he repeated. "As in performing magic? Stage illusions and the like?"
"No, not like that." I shook my head, wondering how much more I could say without sounding crazy. "Like, a book of unexplained phenomena, people who have claimed to be able to do magic. A history book."
"A history book of magic. That's a bit more challenging, given that it doesn't exist." Uncle Ryland laughed, and I forced myself to join in with him. "But if you look through the history section, back in the left corner, upper shelves, you might find something that gets you close to what you're after." His forehead creased as he peered at me. "Why the sudden interest in magic, anyway?"
I scrambled for an excuse. "Er, Alex wanted to know about it," I said, wincing that I couldn't come up with anything better.
"Alex the suitor? So we are going to be seeing him again, then?"
"If only to sell him some books," I promised, stepping forward to take Uncle Ryland's hand. "Here, I've got the shop for the rest of the morning. You can head back to your office, keep on working through inventory."
We both knew that the considerable amount of time that Uncle Ryland spent on "inventory" was really just his reading time. He'd start off cataloging books, but then he'd open up one that looked interesting, start reading... and next thing he knew, it would be the end of the day, and he'd be two hundred pages in – but wouldn't have touched the rest of the box of books that needed to be inventoried and priced and sorted to go out on our shelves. Sometimes, I was amazed that Davies Books turned any sort of profit at all.
My uncle obediently headed off towards the back room, and I sat at the front desk, waiting for the last couple customers who'd come in at the opening of the store to find their choices and bring them up to the register. Once the store had emptied out, I headed for the back left corner that my uncle had pointed out, wheeling over a ladder and climbing up to look at the rows of books on the higher shelves.
Indeed, a few volumes did look promising. I pulled off A History of So-Called Sorcerers, Mysterious Phenomena Thru The Past Five Centuries, and Wyrd Tales And Superstitions. All three books felt heavy and dusty, the smallest still coming in at well over five hundred pages. Not exactly light reading.
Stowing two of the books away beneath the front counter, I cracked open Wyrd Tales And Superstitions, flipping through the pages. Just as I'd feared, the text was dense, with only the rare woodcut illustration to break up the cramped, closely spaced lines. Even looking at the dense pages gave me the start of a headache.
I picked up my refilled coffee mug, took a fortifying swallow, and dove in.
Business was slow that morning, so I didn't have much in the way of distractions from forcing my way through the heavy tome. There didn't seem to be much in the way of actual magical reports; the author instead preferred to spend most of his time hypothesizing about why the "simple peasants" came up with such strange tales. He also had the annoying habit of referencing some of these "strange tales" without ever really explaining what they were, which left me flipping back through previous pages to see if I'd missed something. After a dozen pages, I dug out an old spiral-bound notebook so I could try and keep notes and not get totally lost.
By the time that noon approached, signaled by an uptick in the grumbling coming from my stomach, I'd made it through close to a hundred pages of the book... and had uncovered absolutely nothing. Maybe there might be some hints to Alex's power hidden in one of these volumes, but I already despaired over keeping up the strength to find it, in amid all these dense paragraphs, archaic words, and multiple run-on sentences that sometimes filled an entire page with black, cramped text.
I stuck a bookmark into my spot and slammed the book shut. A small cloud of dust whooshed out of it, and I coughed a couple times as I waved a hand to dissipate it. Putting the book back beneath the front checkout counter with the others, I turned my attention to a more pressing question: lunch.
As if in response to that thought, my stomach growled again, even louder than before. "Soon," I told it, patting it. "I'd really love a good sandwich right now, maybe with roast beef or pastrami, piled high..."
Unfortunately, I didn't have any of the necessary ingredients in my fridge. I had some old bread, a jar of peanut butter that had been creeping further and further back in the fridge, and some questionable jelly. That was about the extent of my groceries.
I'd just have to make do with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, convince myself that it was something more, I told my defeated stomach. I didn't have the time or money to go fetch something better right now-
I glanced up as the bell mounted over the front door of Davies Books jingled. Unbidden, a little smile appeared on my lips – and then immediately grew wider as my nostrils flared at the scent that accompanied the newcomer.