Rinn stared at the phone. She was not picking it up. She looked at Daniella. From the look on her face, Daniella was also not picking it up. Neither of them moved as the phone continued to rattle and ring.
They waited until the answering machine clicked over, echoing scratchy feedback for a moment before the caller left a message. “Hello—Josephine, this is Mr. Hunt. I was calling to check in with you about last night’s sales numbers, but I’m concerned that you’re not already in the office—”
At that, Rinn caved and picked up. “Hello, Mr. Hunt!”
“Josephine, is that you?” Archer Hunt Junior had one of those deep, smoothed-out Midwestern accents that people from places like Ohio liked to brag about—the kind of accent that every newscaster in America was taught to adopt because it was considered neutral.
It disturbed Rinn to hear a voice so proudly scrubbed of any location markers. It also disturbed her that Archer Hunt Junior had employed Jo for five or six years and he couldn’t remember that her name was Joelle.
Daniella reached out her hand, ready to take over the phone now that she knew it was the boss. Except, Rinn was not about to hand over the phone to Daniella. She didn’t cave that easily under pressure.
“No, sir, this is Rinn Olivera. One of the employees. Just made it to the phone.”
Daniella held her hand out more insistently and more in Rinn’s face. Rinn swatted Daniella’s hand away. She would not be intimidated by Daniella and her cool bleached-blond hair and her ability to show up to work in an outfit that Rinn wouldn’t even be able to wear to the convenience store with confidence.
“Was nobody manning the register?” Archer barked back.
“Sir?” Rinn didn’t understand the question. Of course nobody was at the register. The store wasn’t open yet. Why had her heartbeat kicked up a notch? Rinn knew she wasn’t wrong. She looked around, double-checking herself. No customers were there yet.
“I said—was nobody manning the register? How could you have possibly been so far from the phone? I made sure the phone was installed right by the cash register.” He was so insistent, so sure of himself, that for a moment Rinn faltered.
Daniella took the opportunity to snatch the phone out from Rinn’s hands. “Hello, Mr. Hunt! Apologies, Rinn is one of our newer employees; she’s a little slow on the uptake.”
Rinn bugged her eyes at Daniella; Daniella stuck out her tongue.
Rinn could still hear Hunt Junior through the receiver, even though it was up to Daniella’s ear. “Josephine, is that you?”
“It’s Joelle, sir. But yes. What can I do for you?” Daniella didn’t miss a beat.
Rinn shook her head. You can’t just impersonate our manager.
Daniella narrowed her eyes, like she was saying, Watch me.
“Why weren’t you at the register already?” That was Hunt Junior again.
“Sir, the store isn’t open yet, and I was just double-checking the takes from last night in the office. Otherwise, we’ve been setting up the store for opening, which is why such a junior employee had to answer the phone.” Daniella gave an honestly impressive stink eye in Rinn’s direction.
Rinn straightened her spine. She would not be intimidated by Daniella or her rudeness.
“Fine. Call me as soon as you’ve got final numbers. It’s important.” Leave it to Mr. Hunt to sound miffed and mollified all at once.
“Will do, sir.”
Mr. Hunt couldn’t see it, but Daniella did a little mock salute and hung up the phone.
Despite everything, Rinn had to stifle a laugh.
Daniella, however, was not amused. “Do you understand what you nearly did?”
“Answer the phone?” Rinn couldn’t imagine what she’d done to upset Daniella this early in the day.
Daniella scoffed. “You’ve got to be joking. You nearly got Jo fired.”
“Why would Mr. Hunt fire her for not being at the register before we’re even open?”
Daniella put her hand on her hip. She gave Rinn a good long stare. Her smudgy eyeliner lent her expression a feral quality. And then she pointed to the store around them. “Do you think everything is just peachy keen around here? You think that the store is just doing swell? Because it isn’t. The store is dying. Of course Hunt Junior would be worried about her manning the register. Don’t you know anything? Don’t you have eyes?”
Rinn frowned. “I know there aren’t customers. How many times does somebody have to say it? The store is closed right now.”
“You know, for such a smart girl, you can be so stupid.” And then Daniella was off, clearly unwilling to explain further.
And that left Rinn with one thought, one idea rattling around in her head. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it.
Wild Nights Bookstore and Emporium was dying?
She looked at the store from her vantage point nearly in the middle of the ground floor. The entire bookstore had this amazing almost gothic vibe going on—from the dark walls to the lack of windows in the back. It was authentic and moody. The kind of place where even if they stood in the same spot, no two people would get the same picture or even see the same thing. The dark walls shifted from black to slate gray to deep navy, depending on where you stood. Rinn still couldn’t say what color they really were.
It was also one of those old City Beautiful buildings. It had Roman-style coffers in the ceiling that created this rad three-dimensional pattern of square woodwork when you looked up. It had old, classical-style columns that ran from floor to ceiling—gigantic, fluted white pillars that were the only source of brightness in the entire space. And the second floor was a loft with a balcony, meaning that the entire first floor of the building was effectively two stories high. The second-story balcony was covered in fairy lights. And on the main floor, all the bookshelves were offset and formed this stunning radial pattern across the floor. The only right angles in the place were where the walls or the balconies met.
They even still sold penny candy and taffy and fancy, felt-tip pens by the register.
It couldn’t just close. Where would all the books go?
And Archer Hunt Junior—who owned the place—well, his dad had put up these wild art installations all around the place. There was a headless statue of a girl in roller skates installed so that she was hanging from the ceiling, over a set of stairs. And there was a tunnel of books, pinwheeling out from one of the walls. And somehow, he’d gotten an old bank-vault door up to the second story and put all the crime resale books in a vault. A vault.
This place was magical, and nobody really seemed to know about it anymore. Rinn didn’t understand it. Old Mr. Hunt, the current Mr. Hunt’s father, he had stipulated in his will that the bookstore was to remain a bookstore in perpetuity. It was supposed to stay in business for the community. Unless, of course, it was really becoming a hardship to keep open. As long as there were customers, Wild Nights was meant to stay open as a bookstore, and no sale of the land was allowed. Jo had told Rinn that once, right after she’d been hired.
And there was business, wasn’t there?
Rinn looked up at the balcony on the second floor. It was beautiful and haunted in the way that a space that holds worn, resale books can be—but was so often empty, when it should have been full of people snapping photos and giggling and picking up books and reading detective fiction in a freaking vault.