Ari stands nose to nose with Meg and holds her stare with a sneer.“Threats aren’t your thing, Meg. They don’t even qualify as enforcement, you know.” Meg lowers her arm as her eyes narrow.“Oh, what would you rather I do, then? This is actually good. Let’s see if you can imagine the sort of enforcement I…

As Maz and Eli step closer to the pub entrance, the lone streetlamp gives up at last and cuts out. Ron stands by one wing of the door, waiting with his hand poised to open it. “Are we sure this is just a pub and not an ancient nightclub?” Maz tips her chin up at…

The pub calls itself The Archive, or at least that happens to be what the bronze letters claim, hammered across the stonework above the double doors. A few paces from the pub entrance, Meg spins back, arms shooting outwards. She catches Maz by the sleeve with one hand while the other lands on Eli’s shoulder…

Maz steps out of the staff room first, her baggy cardigan getting in the way as she tries to put on her coat.Don’t mention the mirror. Eli follows three seconds after her, jacket on, head down, and makes a beeline for the display table.Normal. I can do normal. Ish. Ron stands in front of the…

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 entrance. The plastic sign on it tries to stay relevant with its two stick figures, and the small book shapes overlapping between them in permanent marker.…

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 as each one of her heavy footfalls makes the warped floorboards creak pitchier.…

“You need to be upside down too, I mean, if you’re actually going to read that one. Then it’s a whole new genre.” Eli taps the mint tin in his hand against the paperback Meg holds the wrong way up.“Genius? Obviously. Tragic, beyond doubt.” Meg, perched on the arm of Eli’s chair in the staff…

Ron, behind the counter across from The Frayed Spine entrance, reaches for a shelf under the till and brings out a jar labelled ‘Tips’. As he puts it down, its thick glass thuds against the wooden surface. The coins inside, arranged in tidy layers, take their time to settle after clinking against one another. Dull…

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…