Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

“No,” he said, his voice suddenly rough. “Not at all. My niece and nephew were just the same.”

Lore wasn’t going to be around until the next morning, so Ashe and Reynard had plenty of time to keep Holly’s ghostbusting appointment. Ashe was glad it was going to be a quick job. She had far more interesting worries, not the least of which was the man sitting next to her. They were well into day two of the Great Urn Search, and she still didn’t have a lead and wasn’t sure where to begin looking. She was a slayer, not a detective.

“Pursuing any of the supernatural problems at hand will shed light on the others,” Reynard had maintained as he’d wrestled with the mysteries of the SUV’s seat belt. She hoped he was right.

Her tussle with Reynard this morning had nailed home the fact that, whatever her brain was thinking, her body wanted to know him a whole lot better. Her self-control circuits were seriously overheating.

She could feel herself sizing up Reynard for long-term potential. Which, of course, didn’t exist. Obviously, her libido wasn’t very bright. She was almost grateful when they reached their destination. She needed those last few brain cells for the task at hand.

She found a parking spot, sacrificed to the meter gods, and looked around.

The bookshop at Fort and Main was in an old two-story house. The front yard was separated from the street by a picket fence. Along the walk, a few hyacinths were just coming into bloom. The rest of the garden looked overdue for a good weeding. Ashe and Reynard walked to the porch. The paint was peeling around the windows and porch rail, and last fall’s dead leaves drifted in the nooks and crannies of the steps.

A wooden sign carefully lettered with BOOK BURROW hung above the door. The name had nagged at Ashe since she first heard it, but she couldn’t place why it was familiar.

“This place is neglected,” Reynard commented.

“If it’s a new owner, maybe he hasn’t had time to clean up yet,” Ashe replied. “I remember this store. Old Mr. Cowan used to own it. It was called Cowan’s Books back then. He used to save the Nancy Drews for me. He had an uncanny memory for which ones I still hadn’t read.”

“Nancy Drews?” Reynard asked.

Ashe walked up the porch stairs. “Mystery stories. I had the whole set when I was ten years old.” She paused, trying to sense anything odd about the house. It wasn’t sentient, just a house, but a faint sadness curled in the air like smoke. Maybe whatever was haunting the place missed old Mr. Cowan. She turned the brass knob and went in, setting off a door chime.

Reynard followed, looking around. The floor creaked beneath his boots. “It smells like mildew.”

“Maybe the roof leaks.” Ashe fought claustrophobia. There had always been lots of bookcases, but they had multiplied. Now they lined both sides of the hallway, leaning precariously where the old floor buckled and heaved. Stacks of boxes jostled for space in the corners. “I don’t remember it being this crowded. There’s got to be twice as much stock.”

Cardboard signs were tacked to the wall, each with an arrow and subject area. Cooking, this way. Military history, that way. Novels, upstairs. While Ashe scanned them, a faint sound came from the left, no more than a footfall on the thin carpet. She whipped around, far jumpier than she needed to be. There was nothing there—no monster pouncing from the shadows. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

The noise had come from the room she remembered held the cash desk, where Holly’s client was probably waiting. She listened again. Nothing hit her senses as a threat.

Then why am I so jumpy?

Get moving. The best thing to do was follow that noise.

She had to go carefully so that she didn’t knock something over. The store’s new name was apt: It was like burrowing through a tunnel of books. Reynard had to turn slightly, his broad shoulders brushing the shelves. High above, a stained-glass window shed a thin light over the mess.

The main room was much as she remembered it. The walls formed a hexagon, glass- fronted shelves reaching to a twelve- foot ceiling. The topmost books could be accessed by a library ladder that wheeled around the room. A bay window faced the street. Reynard paused to peer into a glass case. A stuffed marmot snarled from inside the dusty prison. “Why would anyone want this?”

“Yeah, especially when there’s a perfectly good two-headed squirrel over there. C’mon.”

He still hesitated, distracted by a collection of miniature sailing ships.

“Reynard?”

He pointed to the ship in the middle. “I sailed to India on one like that.” He straightened. “It was a bit bigger, though.”

Ashe envisioned Reynard on the high seas, and felt a pang of confusion. Imagining him in the past seemed right and wrong at the same time.

“Do you see anyone here?” she asked.

“No.”

The service desk was where she remembered it, at the back of the room. A huge, antique cash register, covered in brass scrollwork, perched on the mahogany counter.

“Hello?” she called. The sound seemed to die as soon as it left her lips. Bad acoustics, with all those books around. “Hello?”

“I’ll go look in the other rooms,” Reynard said, his brows drawing together.

“Just remember he’s a bookshop owner, not a demon.”

He looked down his nose. “Do you think I’ve forgotten how to deal with common humans?”

“You looked kind of serious there for a moment. I’m just saying . . .”

“I’ll mind my manners, madam,” he said a touch frostily, but the twinkle in his eyes gave him away. He walked back the way they had come, a slight swagger creeping into his step. It did nice things for his blue jeans.

Ashe’s heart gave a little gallop. “You do that, Galahad.”

Job. There’s a job, remember? She tried to tune into the house again, let her own energy fan outward until it touched the spirit of the place. Old places gathered memories, moods. It wasn’t active magic, just the silt of years past.

Heavy. Tired. Sad.

It came through faintly. The presence of the books muffled the feeling, absorbing the house’s energy as effectively as they did sound and light. Ashe could feel each volume, too, rows and rows of presences, individual auras rich with the trace of every reader who had thumbed their pages. A few books carried more than that, some pulsing with magic. Interesting, but not why she was there.

She pushed past the walls, reaching outward. Reynard was hunting through the rooms to the right. Mice tiptoed behind the baseboards, stopping, sniffing. Above, far above, someone waited. Not a human someone.

That presence sent a chill trickling down her body. She definitely had a ghostbusting job to do. Why isn’t the owner here?

There was an open door behind the service desk. Through it, she could see a flight of stairs to the floor above. These were plain and steep, originally a servants’ stairway. The main stairs were by the front door.

Ashe rounded the desk, ducked through the doorway marked PRIVATE. She’d never been back here before. She gave a curious look around. The room was cluttered with empty packing boxes. Mud smeared the old linoleum, leaving a crunchy film of dirt.

The place had the sour, close smell of neglect. No wonder it had ghosts. They loved undisturbed spaces.

Reynard joined her. “An eclectic collection. If only I had time to do some reading.”

“You find the owner?”

“No. There is a shed behind this building, though.” He leaned against the wall, the muscles of his arms and chest working the black T-shirt he wore. He could have modeled for Workrite’s next catalog. All he needed was a hard hat and a sign that said REAL MEN USE HAND TOOLS.