“What are we planning?” Julia asked as she joined them in the living room.
“We’re going to test a few things out,” Antonia explained. “To try and see the characters somehow.”
“Like how?”
“Maybe look through the windows… We’re not sure.”
“That makes them sound like zoo animals.” Julia frowned. “I need to work out why they’re here,” she added plaintively. “If you come into the shop and they keep disappearing, I’ll never figure it out.”
“We’ll just try a few things,” Antonia said consolingly. “Don’t you want us to get to see them, too?”
“Yeah, I do,” Julia acknowledged. “Let’s try a few experiments, then.”
At half past eleven, Aurelia and Oliver went down to the first floor of the shop on their own. He wanted her to explain everything that would happen that night before leaving her and Julia to it.
“First, a sort of cloud starts to come out of each stack of books,” Aurelia said, pointing to the table in front of them. “It starts off whitish, like smoke or fog, but then as it gets taller, you can see words printed across it. The cloud gets maybe this tall,” she said, raising her arm above the table, “and then it sort of spills over onto the floor.”
“Then what?” Oliver asked.
“Then it rises up and it’s like a column at first, but then it stretches into each character and the words change into the character’s skin, clothes, and hair.”
She explained how the characters had described the feeling of being pulled from their books, and how they could sit and stand in the shop but otherwise couldn’t touch anything, including her.
“Do you want me to corral Biscuit and Fezz back into the flat?” Oliver asked as he watched Biscuit nosing around at their feet.
“No, they’re fine,” Aurelia said. “The characters have seen both of them in the shop before, so they’ve got used to them.”
Oliver paused, a smile on his features.
“They’ve met Biscuit and Fezz?”
“Mm-hmm.” She smiled back.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to this.”
“It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“It is pretty cool,” he echoed, reaching out a hand to her.
Antonia and Julia came onto the mezzanine from the flat and joined them downstairs.
“Alright, Oliver—we’re peeping in the windows first?” Antonia asked.
“That was the plan,” he said.
“It’s nearly midnight, so you should get outside if that’s where you want to start,” Aurelia told them.
Oliver and Antonia stepped outside, and Aurelia closed the door behind them. The blinds were down, so she raised them up and saw Oliver and Antonia on the pavement, looking up at the building. She waved out the window to them and they waved back, then she walked over to join Julia at the Recommended Reads table to wait for the characters to arrive.
“Did you tell everyone I was coming back?” Julia asked Aurelia.
“Well, I haven’t seen them since the last time you and I were together, so no.”
“You haven’t? Oh…” Julia said, belatedly remembering that Aurelia had been busy trying to fix things with Oliver. “Do you think they’ll be annoyed they had to sit here on their own for a few nights?”
“No, don’t worry. I made sure they wouldn’t show up since I couldn’t be with them.”
“Wait… What? You can make themnotappear?”
