New (still nameless) fic: Chapters Two and Three.

Author's Note: O HAI DERE! This is technically two chapters. This is because chapter three was short anyhoo, and also because I want to cut to the action. Enjoy.

The Broken Spine is my pride and joy. It's a little old building in Dublin, selling books and serving food. It's pretty simple. Wall-to-wall bookshelves, most with books, a few with comic books, magazines and newspapers. (No tabloids, broadsheets only. You want to buy The Sun, get the hell out of my store.) There's a small café in the back, where I sell tea, sandwiches, and, occasionally, one of Finbar's cakes. We have a few computers you can access for a small charge, but it's not really an Internet café. As well as full-on magical stuff I sell straight-up genre fiction. Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi, my personal favourites.
If the store's open, I'm probably there. Anybody with magic puts no stock in age, and ordinary muggles assume I just work there, even though I own the place.
Errant decided to show up just as I was helping an elderly lady pick out a paperback for her teenage granddaughter. He simply strolled into the shop and said Hi, which was rather inconsiderate. The old woman fainted, and I managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but only just. Fortunately, the shop was fairly empty at the time, and the woman was the only non-magical one there. I caught myself wondering how Errant got around the city. Most ordinary mages could pass as normal, but there was no hope for Errant.
"This is nice," he said, craning his neck and looking around the place. "Bit small, though."
"Much like yourself," I said, whilst trying to revive the old lady. "Except for the part where it's nice."
"Well, if it's like me, I assume there's more to this place than meets the eye?"
"It's a goddamn magical bookstore. Of course there's more to it than meets the eye. We've got the standard commercial stuff up here, and the magical stuff is downstairs." As I spoke, I felt the woman stir. "Go hide behind a shelf or something. She's waking up." Errant grudgingly did as I instructed as the woman came to.
"Welcome back," I said to her. "You fainted. It's understandable. It's pretty hot."
"It's minus two outside..."
The woman was indeed right. It was late November in Dublin, and it was bloody cold.
"Well... Maybe you just... My thermostat... What book did you want again?"
I managed to get the woman to leave, and I threw in an extra paperback for her granddaughter because I felt bad. As she thanked me and left, I went up to the door and flipped over the "open" sign. We were now officially "Closed for lunch, please come back in ten minutes." This was a necessary precaution. I intended to take Errant down below, and I didn't need anyone coming in when no staff were present.

As we descended the ladder that was hidden behind the checkout desk, I braced myself for more comments about the size of my shop. "Downstairs" is simply a small, windowless, concrete room lined with more bookshelves. The entire thing is maybe seven feet by seven feet, but we have a pretty wide selection of books for you to choose from.
I turned around, preparing myself for an insult, but instead I found a doll in a Ramones shirt poring over a large Grimoire on the study of possession.
"You rip that, you buy it."


Errant himself is a Possessive, I later found out. Possessive mages can usually touch something and take it over, making it animate if necessary. They leave their unconscious body and get "back into" it by touching it again. Errant possessed a doll twenty-odd years ago, as a Hallowe'en prank, but when he tried to return to his house, someone had stolen his body. Unable to change forms without returning to his original body, he was stuck as a doll until he could find his old one.
"Are you going to buy that?" I asked him.
"Nope."
"Well then, put it back. In the right shelf. Right-way up."
"And if I don't?" he said, looking up at me.
"Then I kick you in the head and take the money myself. Maybe I'll even let you keep the book." If we sound as if we're being horrible to each other, we weren't. It was mostly just friendly, I'm-going-to-take-this-piss-out-of-you-because-I'm-Irish-and-you're-Irish-and-that's-what-Irish-people-do banter.
"Jesus. Calm down," Errant said grudgingly, reshelving the book."
"Jesus doesn't need to calm down, I do. See anything you want?"
"Not down here." Errant looked back up the ladder. "Do you have any Stephen King?"
"Now, what kind of bookshop doesn't have Stephen King?" I smirked.
After picking up a brand new copy of "Bag of Bones", Errant left the store. The next time I saw him, I would be significantly less pleased to be in his company.