Maz steps out of the staff room first, already halfway into her coat.Don’t mention the mirror. Eli follows three seconds later, jacket on, head down, and makes a beeline for the display table.Normal. I can do normal. Ish. Ron stands in front of the till, back leaned on the counter, eyes on the rain outside.…

Wait, what?Maz blinks as fast as she can, as hard as she can, to force a reflection to admit its mistake. The fluorescent buzz goes quiet as the light dips. It returns louder and stays. In her next blink, her reflection seems to be what the mirror promised it should have been in the first…

At the back of the staff room, the door to the facilities stands as warped as the rest of the wood in the bookshop and as shut as the front door. Its plastic sign shows two overlapping stick figures. Small book shapes have been added between them in permanent marker. Maz pushes through and leaves…

The Frayed Spine’s lull, only tested for its cracks now and then by the pattering of rain against the windows, cracks as Meg storms out of the staff room and slams the door shut behind her. Her ponytail snaps side to side. Each one of her heavy footfalls makes the warped floorboards creak pitchier. The words…

“You need to be upside down too. I mean, to read that one. It’s a whole new genre.” Eli taps the mint tin in his hand against the upside-down paperback that Meg pretends to read while perched on the arm of Eli’s chair in the staff room. The tin sketches a full loop in two…

Ron reaches under the till and brings out a jar labelled ‘Tips’. He puts it down on the counter, and the glass, as thick as a magnifying lens at its base, lands with a heavy thud. The coins inside, arranged in groups of tidy layers, take their time to settle back from clinking against one…

Maz steps outside to the alley behind The Frayed Spine.Welcome to the graveyard of soggy neglect. She slinks under the roof’s overhang where a strip of dry ground holds out against the rain that has slowed to a drizzle. The back of her hand tosses her fringe aside as she gives a bitter chuckle at her…

Meg stands halfway up the rolling ladder, positioned by the shelves along the side wall.“How much longer?” she asks the shelf where her hand braces, but receives no answer. Her mouth cinches at one corner as her other hand takes a paperback from a stack on the rung at her waist level. Its slick cover…

The Frayed Spine’s staff room, wedged sideways across from the counter, looks like a functional shoebox at best. With just about enough space, it can contain three people and only if they arrive in a chipper mood. The coat rack that stands proud in its overload by the door seems to be taking up the most…

A handwritten label that curls around a squat jar reads:‘Ari’s Viper recipe (final v3 v4).’ It has its own maple shelf by a rainbow beaded curtain for a door. Its thick glass holds a dark green liquid. Ari stands at a steel workbench by the shelves. Latex gloves, stained green and yellow, cover his hands up to…