A Book of Spirits and Thieves

A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © 2015 Michelle Rouillard

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ISBN: 978-0-698-14814-7

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To everyone who believes that books are
magic.

Chapter 1

CRYSTAL

“B
e careful where you point that thing, young lady. It’ll get you in trouble one day.”

The old man Crys had been stalking for twenty minutes glared at her through the lens of her camera. The deep wrinkles she’d found so fascinating now gathered between his eyes as he creased his forehead.

She snapped a picture.

“Thanks for the advice,” she said, flashing him a grin before she quickly made her escape.

It would be a great shot, one of her best yet. Eyes that had seen at least eighty years of life. A face, weathered and aged, with a thousand stories to tell. Definitely portfolio-worthy.

Crys passed a bank with a digital clock in the window and winced when she saw the time.
Becca’s going to kill me
, she thought.

The last class had let out at three o’clock, but because she hadn’t gone to school today, she’d completely lost track of time. She could smell spring in the air, finally, after such a long, cold winter. The cool breeze felt fresh and clean and full of possibilities, even beneath the scent of cement and dust and exhaust fumes.

It was five minutes to six when she finally made it to her destination. Five minutes to closing.

The Speckled Muse Bookshop was located on the west edge of the Annex, a Toronto neighborhood adjacent to the U of T campus and the Royal Ontario Museum. Busy streets, a young crowd—thanks to the proximity to the university—lots of restaurants and little independent shops.

Crys paused and snapped a shot of the weathered sign out front—she’d taken the same pic from nearly every angle possible over the last couple of years. Along with the name of the shop written in quirky, painted letters, there was an illustration of a little girl with big glasses, pigtails, and a sprinkling of freckles, sitting on top of a stack of books.

It was a caricature of Crys from when she was five years old, before she even knew how to read. Before she got contacts for her annoying nearsightedness and used her thick glasses only when she absolutely had to.

Back when the Hatchers were a whole family, not just three-quarters of one.

Something warm brushed against her leg, and she lowered her camera with a frown. “Who let you out, Charlie?”

Charlie, an adorable black-and-white kitten, replied with a tiny
mew
that seemed to have a question mark attached to it.

“Come on.” Crys leaned over and picked him up, pressing him against her chest. “You’re way too close to the street out here, little guy.”

A month ago, when it was early March and still freezing cold, she’d found the kitten next to a garbage can a block away from the store and next to her favorite sushi place. He’d been no bigger than the palm of her hand, and looked forlorn and miserable.
She’d brought the shivering handful home and insisted they keep him.

Her mother had taken one look at him and said no. But Crys’s younger sister, Becca, immediately stepped in and argued on behalf of the tiny feline’s fate. Between her two daughters’ joint arguments, Julia Hatcher finally relented. It was the first time in ages that Crys and Becca had agreed on anything. Becca then named him Charlie after
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, one of her favorite books.

Now Crys pushed open the glass front door, triggering the familiar, melodious chime of the doorbell that signaled a customer had entered. Immediately, she felt the heat of Becca’s glare from across the shop.

Yeah, I know. I’m late
, she thought.
What else is new?

The mail lay on a small table near the door in an untouched heap. Several brown cardboard boxes of books were stacked next to it.

The Speckled Muse was housed in a historical three-story building—one of the oldest in Toronto, dating to the mid-nineteenth century. Crys’s great-grandfather, a man of wealth and influence in the city, had purchased the building seventy years earlier and given it to his book-loving wife so she could open a bookstore. The current sign was relatively new, but the name of the shop was more than sixty years old.

If only great-granddaddy hadn’t squandered his fortune on poor investments, leaving nothing for his family line apart from the bookshop itself.

The Speckled Muse—a Toronto landmark. One of the oldest bookstores in one of the oldest buildings and, as many ancient edifices were, rumored to be haunted. Crys had yet to see evidence
of a ghost—apart from hearing the occasional groans and creaks that are normal in any old building.

All of this, both truth and rumor, helped to coax customers through the front door and into the maze-like shelves and nooks and crannies of the shop, which, contrary to its small and quaint storefront, had a massive interior that magically seemed to go on and on.

The first floor of the building was dedicated to the store, and the upper two made up the Hatcher family home, accessed by a winding iron staircase at the very back of the main floor. Three bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, a kitchen, a living room, and another bathroom on the second. Plenty big enough for the three of them. And now Charlie, of course.

“Thank you so much for coming in.” Becca handed change to a customer from behind the register. She wore her honey-blond hair off her face, in a loose braid that fell across her right shoulder. There was a pencil tucked behind her ear that Crys would bet she’d totally forgotten about. “I hope you enjoy the book.”

“Thank
you
for helping me find it!” The woman—a redhead with ruddy cheeks and a toothy grin, whom Crys immediately recognized as a regular customer—clutched the plastic bag bearing the store’s logo to her chest. “My mother read this to me when I was just a little girl. It’s an absolute treasure. And such a good price!”

With a bright smile, and a friendly nod in Crys’s direction, the woman left the shop with her reasonably priced treasure firmly in hand.

“Becca Hatcher—making dreams come true, one book at a time,” Crys said with amusement.

She received no response, just an intensified glare as her
younger sister moved from behind the long wooden counter toward the door, sidestepping the books that had piled up and needed to be logged and shelved. She flipped the sign to
CLOSED
.

It smelled musty in here—like old paper and leather. It was a smell Crys used to love, since it smelled like home, but now she thought they needed to give the shop a good airing out.

“No greeting for your favorite sister in the whole wide world?” Crys pressed.

“You were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

Crys shrugged. “I was otherwise occupied. I knew you could handle things on your own.”

Becca groaned. “Unbelievable. You don’t even care, do you?”

“About what?”

“That you . . .
you . . .
” Becca’s cheeks reddened with every sputtered word. If there was one thing that could be said about the Hatcher sisters, it was that they didn’t try too hard to keep their emotions hidden.

“I . . .
I
 . . . ?” Crys prompted. “What? Forced you to spend two extra hours around your favorite objects while Mom’s out doing her daily chores?”

“You made me miss book club.”

Crys inwardly cringed. Becca loved her stupid book club like a six-year-old loved gummy bears. “You know, you really should try to find a hobby that has nothing to do with books. Expand and grow. Live a little.” She gestured toward the front window, which looked out at the always-busy Bathurst Street. “There’s a whole world out there to discover.”

“You’re right. I do need another hobby,” she replied. “Maybe I should take up
photography
.”

She said it as if it were an insult.

“Whatever.”

“You’re so much like Dad—you know that?” Becca added.

Great
, Crys thought.
Twist that knife in just a little more.

Suddenly, Crys wanted to put down the camera—a Pentax from the eighties that took film that had to be developed in a dark room. It wasn’t fancy, and it definitely wasn’t digital. The flash had broken long ago and been discarded, which, because Crys liked using natural light for her shots anyway, didn’t make any difference to her.

Instead, she held the device up with one hand while still cradling a purring Charlie with the other and snapped a picture. Becca raised her hand to block her face, but it was too late.

“You know I hate having my picture taken!”

“You should get over that.” Crys had found that most people hated having their picture taken, which was why she much preferred taking stealth shots of strangers all around the city. She had no idea why Becca was so camera-shy. The girl could be a model. The lion’s share of the good looks in the family had gone to the younger daughter, a fact Crys tried very hard not to let bother her.

“You’re such a jerk. You know that?” Becca replied. “You only think about yourself.”

“Bite me.” Despite her bravado, a trickle of guilt soured Crys’s stomach, like always. It was definitely time for a subject change. “Did you know Charlie got outside?”

“What?” Becca glanced at the kitten, and her face blanched. “I didn’t even realize . . . If he’d been hit by a car—” She reached across the counter so she could gently pet the top of his head. “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry.”

“He probably just slipped out with a customer. It’s fine. He’s fine.” The kitten began to squirm, so Crys gently set him down on
the floor. He flicked his tail and sauntered away, down a long aisle of crammed bookshelves toward his favorite napping spot in the mystery section.

Becca swept her serious gaze across the front of the store until it fell again on Crys. Her dark blue eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head as if seeing her sister for the first time today. “You changed your hair again.”

Crys twisted a finger around a long pale lock. Normally her hair was a medium ash blond, just like their mother’s. A year ago, she’d started to dye it whenever she felt a whim, and it had since been black, dark brown, red, and, for a short time—and much to their mother’s dismay—bright purple.

Last night she’d gone platinum blond. Her scalp still burned from the peroxide, and she resisted the urge to scratch it, hoping her hair wouldn’t start falling out from the abuse she’d heaped upon it.

Although . . . bald might be cool to try out for a while.

“Yup,” she said. “You like?”

“Sure,” Becca replied after a moment. “It makes your eyes look even lighter.”

“Thanks, I think.” Crys didn’t know if that was a compliment or simply an observation. She had the same eyes as their father—icy blue and so pale they nearly lacked any color entirely. Some people said her eyes were spooky.

She was okay with this.

“Mom’ll be back in an hour,” Becca said, glancing down at her watch.

“Let’s get some sushi in the meantime. I’m starving.” Walking around all day would do that, and Crys had forgotten to have lunch.

“I’m sick of sushi. Let’s figure out dinner after we finish with the store.”

How could anyone ever get sick of sushi? Crys could happily eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if given the option. “Fine. Just tell me what to do, boss.”

“Sort the mail.” Becca gestured toward the pile near the front door. “And I’ll . . . I guess I’ll shelve these.” She grabbed a cardboard box and hoisted it up onto the counter. “A customer came in and had a bunch of used children’s books she wanted to unload. Mom wasn’t here to vet them as quality, so I took them all. I don’t know why anyone would want to get rid of all these books, but I guess it’s good for business, right?”

“Sure,” Crys replied distractedly, eyeing the mail. She’d spotted a suspicious-looking letter at the top of the pile and started walking toward it. “Shelve away.”

The letter was addressed to her mother, and it was from Sunderland High—Crys’s school.

She ripped it open without a second thought and scanned the contents, which informed Mrs. Hatcher that her daughter, Crystal, had a questionable attendance record. She’d missed three weeks’ worth of classes since the year began. The principal wanted to meet to discuss her frequently truant daughter’s choices and how it could put her graduation in June at risk.

Crys ripped the letter into tiny pieces and threw it in the garbage can. She didn’t need to graduate with top marks to be a photographer. And ever since her two best friends, Amanda and Sara, had both moved away in the last six months, classes held no interest for her anymore.

She only needed to survive until June to leave school behind her forever.

And in seven months she’d turn eighteen. That number meant the freedom to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
Eighteen meant she could finally leave Toronto and travel around the world, taking pictures, fleshing out her portfolio, so she could get a job at a magazine such as
National Geographic
.

That was both the dream and the plan. And only a matter of months and the occasional annoying letter from school stood in her way.

Along with letters and bills there was a larger parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It was covered in what looked like European stamps. She recognized the sender’s handwriting immediately.