As the Inferno customer disappears between the aisles, Meg turns her attention to Maz and Eli.

Maz’s eyes lock onto her clipboard. Eli places the donations box on the floor closer to the shelves on the other side of the counter.

Meg’s fingers drum on the hardback in her hand, three short taps of a countdown. She gives the air a small nod. With a roll of her shoulders that is halfway between a challenge preparation and a warm-up, she retrieves her paper coffee cup from the display table.

The floorboards creak at the lightest touch of her steps.

She wanders to the counter as if this were a normal workplace and not a room that has just changed its pitch or temperature.

Her hand lays the book on the counter and stays flat on top of it. She leans towards Maz. “Who’s the mystery gent, then?”

“Probably here to collect overdue souls.” Maz reaches to the other side of the till. She grabs the barcode scanner hanging on its stand beside it as she turns over a book from the stack in front of her.

She points the reader’s red light in Meg’s direction. “Or needs a thesaurus heavy enough to impress someone.”

“Seriously, though.” Meg is addressing Maz, but her gaze slides to Eli first before she corrects herself. “What did he want from you?”

“It’s a dusty bookshop, Meg. What do you think he wanted?” Maz scans the book as the reader beeps with a pleased green light. The pen in her other hand logs it into her clipboard. *You could just let the secondhand titles and ISBNs try to save you.*

Meg clears her throat with two crisp rasps. “Apart from the book.”

“Just Dante.”

“Fair enough.” Meg takes a sip of her coffee as her brow crinkles into fine misaligned lines before she flicks her ponytail over her shoulder. “He’s fit, though. Dibs if he asks for staff recommendations.”

Eli picks up on the shape of Meg’s grin and props his elbows on the counter. *Ah. Alright. So, that’s how we’re playing it.*

Maz rolls her eyes, scanning another book. She keeps her pen moving. “He can recommend himself right back out if he’s here to flirt.”

“Yeah?” Eli leans in. “You were smiling.”

Maz corrals her laugh and moves on to the next book. The reader beeps its approval, and she logs it without writing the title. *He can’t punch a stranger for being too smooth. You can’t punch Eli for wanting everything to be square. You can’t punch Meg for being Meg. You can. However. Punch numbers.*

“So what?” She keeps her gaze locked on the tiny red light.

“So…” He trails off. A stack of books on the counter’s edge draws his attention.

His eyes snap to their haphazard order, hand slicing sideways to grasp the spines. He arranges them one by one by height into a neat blunt line and presses the pad of his thumb hard into each crown as if to seal in the disorder.

The moment he turns back to Maz, a cold itch crawls up his neck. They seem misaligned at the very edge of his periphery. He glances back. They look fine. Their alignment is as perfect as he left it. *Right. Yes. Fine. That’s what I thought.*

He pitches his weight towards her with the effort of pretending that the conversation never got interrupted. “So don’t play innocent.”

Maz is about to look up when the spine labels on the stacks by her elbow blur in the corner of her eye. For an instant, the letters seem to detach and writhe. They queue towards some bizarre order to rearrange themselves into words at the tip of her tongue.

The lights flicker. Each letter settles back into its initial place on the titles before she can read any of them. *You’re fine. It’s just the lighting mocking you for fun.*

Her fingers tap an arbitrary code on the barcode scanner. “Oh, that’s rich. You’re the one who–” She cuts herself off, shaking her head. *He’s the one who ‘what’, exactly? He was… Was he home last night? No. You left. Did you? Someone left. For sure. Nope. Oh, forget it.*

The words tremble out through her tightly bared grin. “I smile at one customer and you act like I climbed him like a library ladder.”

Meg snorts into her cup. The coffee sloshes from back to front, almost spilling.

“You…” Eli gives Maz a stare through narrowed eyes. *A joke, right? If that’s funny, clearly she’s not the one who didn’t come home. So, does that mean…?* “You don’t get to–”

“Why not?” Maz reverts to her brightest customer service smile, where anger pinches at the corners. “Because you can’t stand the idea that someone might look at me and not see–”

She clamps her mouth shut. The air-con tries to fill in the rest without success. *Too far. Get it together.*

Eli’s fingers tapping on the counter are too loud. He shoots a glance at Meg and returns to Maz. *Obviously, one of us should call this off. I could stop, but would she do it for this?* “Say it.”

Maz’s match his, only a beat off, a syncopated hazard that keeps running between them. *Just say it. Call ‘truth’ and he stops.* “Make me.”

His grin curves as he tilts closer to Maz, lips too close to her ear. He drops his voice to the register that only carries in one direction. “When?”

Maz squeezes the barcode scanner until its plastic handle gives a slight cracking sound. *Now you can hit him. Or laugh. Or grab him by the collar and skip ahead.*

She does none of those things. The red-eyed reader stays in her hand, not reading anything.

Eli’s smile holds its shape. *I guess winging it only gets me this far. So far.*

Maz’s eyes stay on the counter. *It won’t crack or turn into a flying carpet if you just stare at it too hard.*

The air-con fills the gap with its new low rumble. The cold, which hasn’t left the shop since the Inferno customer’s arrival, makes the wood in the shelves tighten with a tick. A book from the ‘Self Help’ section slides off and hits the floor. Neither of them turns to it.

Meg lowers her cup to the counter and places it in such slow motion that the coffee in it doesn’t even ripple.

“Don’t mind him, Maz.” She picks up a set of bookmarks from their spinner rack at the front of the till. After fanning them once, she throws them across the surface between Maz and Eli as if scattering breadcrumbs to feuding birds. “He’s always worn jealousy better than you.”

Maz looks at Meg’s cup. *She sounds like a test full of trick questions. She won’t give you a straight answer if you ask either. Just keep your head down. Keep working.*

Eli raises an eyebrow. *So, what, Meg’s been waiting for this moment? ‘Always’… I won’t start. I’ve now already got more questions than I walked in with.*

His gaze flicks over to Meg. *Jealousy, though? I thought she was the director of this joke. Why’s she being weird on purpose today? Because it’s a perfect day that obviously has nothing to do with anything weird.*

Ron returns from the staff room.

His eyes move between the trio before he steps back behind the till. His finger jabs a button. A loud ping rings out when the tray shoots open. He takes a stack of receipts out and shuffles them with an urgency that could pass for building a paper shield.

The man walks back out from the maze of aisles, Inferno under his arm. Each one of his silent steps towards the counter draws the cold deeper into the shop.

Ron notices the man’s shoes approaching before he rushes to adjust his glasses and align them at a flawless angle.

He reaches behind his back to pull his apron strings tighter. His hands return to the front to flatten the linen. He gathers the receipts, handling the slips as if they were made of ash. He places them on the counter with care.

His gaze begins to lift as his brows draw into a frown and correct themselves before his eyes meet the man’s.

“Mr. H.”