Page 72 of Tracking Snow

I pick up a book with a shirtless man on the cover and a castle burning behind him. Snow laughs at something Chip says, bright and sharp enough to cut across the store.

The title reads, The Duke’s Monstrous Secret.

"That one's the fourth in a series," a soft voice says behind me. "You want to start with the first. If you wanted. To start that is."

I turn to find a small woman beside a cart of books. Her voice stutters, unsure, but her gaze is fixed and unblinking. Soft brown waves fall around emerald-tinted glasses, a pencil tucked behind her ear. A folded cane hangs from the cart handle next to a stack of paperbacks feathered with sticky notes.

"Jessie," Chip says over the hiss of the espresso machine, "he’s still acclimating. Start with a bookmark or something."

Jessie looks from me to the book in my hand. "He picked up book four," she calls back. "He can’t start on book four, it has to be book one."

"I'm not starting anything." I put the book down. "I don't read this stuff."

"But if you do, it needs to start with book one," Jessie says quieter, just to me this time. "Emotional damage deserves chronology."

She crosses over to a shelf without a word, runs one finger along the spines like she's playing an instrument, and pulls out a paperback. Worn at the corners. Used, then. Loved, even. She closes the distance for the first time and holds it out with both hands.

"This one's yours," she says.

"I don’t want a book."

"I know," she says, pleasant as anything, and keeps holding it out. "But it’s yours. I have a gift for this kind of thing. Knowing what book people need."

I take it because she's going to stand there until I do.

Prophecy Girl. A series title across the bottom reads The Five Orders, Book One.

I turn it over and skim the back.

A boy taken as a child by a secret order. Raised on rules and ritual, groomed his whole life into a weapon, taught that demons are everywhere and love is a liability he was built without.

Then a girl. A girl who looks at the weapon and sees the boy, who teaches him the one thing the order never did, that he is lovable, and by the last line of the copy he's breaking every rule he was raised on, breaking the entire order if he has to, because of how completely she loves him.

Everyone inside has gone very quiet.

"Consider it a free sample to get you hooked," Jessie says with a smile, then returns to shelving books from her cart.

I’ll take it, but I won’t read it.

I will, Three says.

Me too, Five adds.

I suppress the need to roll my eyes at the romantics jammed in here with the rest of us pragmatic personalities.

Sounds like good world building, Six adds.

You too? I groan.

"Isabelle," Snow calls, pulling my attention. Quickly, I shove the book in my hoodie pocket and head over to join Snow, who has already sucked down half of the largest iced coffee I’ve ever seen.

A full-figured woman holding a baby emerges from a back office, her wide-leg pants flowing as she moves. The baby reaches up and grabs at her brown bangs, and she dips her head lower, letting him catch them.

Something hooks behind my sternum.

She smiles down at him like getting her hair yanked by a tiny fist is the best thing that has happened to her all day.

Her pink shirt reads Hot Book Summer in wavy retro lettering, above a stack of paperbacks melting like a rainbow popsicle, colorful drips sliding down from the spines.