Lake Silence (The Others #6)(54)

A muttered remark from one of the women. I didn’t catch it, but that look filled Julian’s face again—a look that made me think he’d been other things in his life besides an amiable bookstore owner.

“You know what else my friend told me?” I asked Julian, once more pulling him away from a potential confrontation.

“What?”

“That there is a shade of red lipstick favored by women of mature years that has a special, very secret ingredient. Know what it is?”

“What?” he said again.

“Bull urine.”

He blinked. The women, who had their backs to us, gasped.

“What?” Julian said for the third time, making me wonder if something was wrong with him. He usually wasn’t so limited in his vocabulary.

“Bull urine. It’s the ingredient that adds that hint of yellow under the red. So instead of asking someone if he would kiss his mother with that mouth after he uses really bad swearwords, you should be asking if he’d want to be kissed by someone wearing that shade of red lipstick.” I looked at the two women and gave them a Sproinger happy face.

They stared at me as if I’d suddenly grown fangs. Which made me wonder if there were any of those costume shops left where you could buy things like fake teeth for Trickster Night. Might be fun to greet the Proud and the Huffy with a fanged happy face. But I wouldn’t want to insult my attorney, whose fangs were anything but fake.

One of the women lifted the books she had selected to make sure we were watching. Then she dropped them on the floor and sniffed at Julian. “If you’re going to let riffraff into your establishment, we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

“Do that,” Julian snapped. “And just so there are no misunderstandings in the future, if you do decide to purchase books here, I won’t accept any used books from you in exchange. The last time you brought books in, one had been dropped in dirty water and the other two smelled like cat piss. Any books you buy here from now on, you pay the going price.”

“Well!” the first woman huffed.

“I’m going to report you!” the other snipped.

“To whom? I own the place,” Julian said.

The second woman hesitated, then dropped her stack of used books on the floor in a show of solidarity. The first woman kicked a book out of her way as she marched to the door and out, her friend trailing behind her.

Julian came out from behind the island counter and began to pick up the books the women had dropped. When I took a step to help him, he snapped, “Don’t.” Then, more softly, “Bitches.”

Since I didn’t think any business in Sproing could afford to lose customers, I felt badly for him—and felt guilty because my coming into the store had contributed to his trouble with some of his customers.

I watched the women cross the street. “They’re going to the police station.” I turned and looked at him. “They’re going to report you to the police?”

Julian had been checking the books for damage. He glanced toward the police station and sighed. “Gods, I hope Wayne isn’t in the station right now. This is the kind of bullshit that makes him crazy and is the reason he chose highway patrol in the first place.”

I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about a large man with a gun going crazy. Then again, I woke up that morning with a Panther-shaped Cougar standing next to my bed, staring at me as if trying to decide if I was still alive and was going to get up and make breakfast or had died and could now be breakfast. Since it looked like this was going to be my new normal, I might not be using the straightest ruler when it came to measuring crazy.

I went into the back half of the store, where the new books were shelved. Julian had a small display next to the island counter that held the newest releases, but the rest of the new books were back here. It seemed like a less-than-stellar business plan, having the more profitable part of your stock where it wasn’t easily visible, but the used books really were more like a lending library than a store.

Maybe Julian should make up a membership card and charge a modest annual fee that allowed people to do the buy and swap of used books like they did now, and people who didn’t pay the fee could just buy the used books.

I’d float the idea past Ineke first and see what she thought. In the meantime, I gave in to the need for some kind of treat to take away the sting of the woman’s words and my guilt over hurting Julian’s business. I browsed the shelves, picking up another thriller by Alan Wolfgard as well as a mystery by an author I hadn’t read before. According to her bio, she lived in the Finger Lakes area in a village I’d never heard of.

Looking at the terra indigene names on the covers of some of the books, I realized why Julian kept the new stock in the back half of the store. Sure, he carried the books by human authors that could be found in any bookstore in human-controlled towns, but he also had books by authors who would be unknown in cities like Hubbney or Toland—authors he kept in stock for a clientele that wasn’t human.

I selected a few thrillers and mysteries, then perused the romance shelves, finally choosing one about a ship’s captain and a female stowaway who faced danger on the high seas—the biggest danger being the Sea itself. The capital S was the only hint that the captain and his stowaway might be squaring off with an Elemental, so of course I had to buy it.

I brought my selections to the counter. Julian looked at the stack and sighed.