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The customer grabbed his bag and slinked his shoulders, stepping around Brielle and muttering something she couldn’t hear. She watched him sit in one of the few empty folding chairs at the back of the store set up in front of a desk with stacks of graphic novels on it. There was a big cardboard cutout of a superhero Brielle only recognized from Archer’s crumpled-up drawing.
So the guy had gone from outright contempt to muffled loathing. That’s what happened when you dissed someone who’d shown up with the guy they were all here to see.
The cashier went back to ringing up the line of customers—the next guy was also buyingThe Mystified—and Brielle stood there, resting her hand on her cross-body purse, trying not to tap her toes and come across as impatient. But the truth was, she felt uneasy in such a place without Pembroke, and Archer being the only person she knew there made her feel even more awkward.
“What’s up?” asked a middle-aged guy with short-cropped gray hair and countless visible tattoos. He even had big round black discs in his earlobes that made his ears bigger.
“This... lady,” said the cashier, gesturing to Brielle with both hands like she was a display onThePrice is Right, “says Archer Ward is waiting at the door.”
“Oh!” The middle-aged guy jumped and held out his hand. “George.”
Brielle took it and shook. “Brielle.”
George gestured over his shoulder. “Follow me.”
Brielle did, excusing herself a few times as they slinked through the too-big-for-the-too-small-store crowd, although George just sort of sucked in his breath and maneuvered through them without saying anything like a ghost sliding through unnoticed. He stopped only at the front of the rows of folding chairs briefly, nodding at the front row, which had eight seats with sheets of paper tossed haphazardly on them reading, “Reserved.” The only person on that side of the aisle in the front was a rather severe-looking woman who looked more out of place than Brielle did. She sat there, her legs crossed, in crisp slacks and a silky top more at home at a cocktail party, a pair of designer sunglasses resting on top of her head. Her attention was focused solely on her phone, which she kept in a case like it were an e-reader and prodded at with a stylus. “You can sit here during the presentation,” he said. “How many others did Archer bring with him?”
“Tw—” Brielle started to say, then remembered Pauline was leaving for the next few hours. “Just me.”
George nodded and strode over to the chairs, scooping up two of the “Reserved” papers and crumpling them in his hand. “The rest are for my staff,” he explained. They’d just barely taken three more steps toward a door leading to the backroom before two girls in adorably eye-catching Batman and Wonder Woman dresses squealed from the line of people standing to the side and rushed to take those two seats.
Once George got to the “Employees Only” door, he held it open behind him, revealing a mountain of boxes, a couple of computers with figurines perched all around them, a bathroom, and a couple of lockers in the back. Brielle took hold of the door and was about to follow when she glanced to her right and saw Pembroke.
“Pem?” she said, her jaw dropping.
George stopped ahead of her. “I’ll head on back to let him in,” he said, and Brielle nodded.
She hesitated, wondering if Archer was really expecting her to show up with George or to chat with him before his presentation began. It seemed the right thing to do—she could hang with Pembroke later, assuming she was here for the signing, which she seemed to be, as she was currently reading a volume ofThe Mystified—but there was this niggling worry at the back of her mind, the shock at seeing her friend after almost a week of dead silence. “Pembroke?” she said again, and she finally looked up.
Her eyes widened. She shut her book and slipped back behind the line of people.
“Pembroke?” called Brielle, and she let go of the backroom door to follow after the skittish young woman.
She almost lost sight of the oversized cargo pants and the tight black T-shirt she knew belonged to her diminutive friend, but Pembroke’s thick-rimmed black cat-eye glasses and blue-streaked hair made her easy to spot, even amongst so many others with just as much indie fashion style.
“Excuse me,” Brielle kept saying, finally letting out an exasperated sigh, holding her breath, and just shoving forward through the crowd. She grabbed Pembroke by the shoulder and spun her around. “Did you seriously just try to avoid me…?”
Pembroke’s gaze flittered up to Brielle’s and she adjusted her glasses with the hand not holding onto the book, rolling her shoulder out of Brielle’s grasp. “Sorry,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard.
“What?” said Brielle, slouching down to hear her better over the noise.
Pembroke straightened her back. “I said I’m sorry, okay?”
Taken aback, Brielle stepped on a guy’s foot. “Sorry,” she said, over her shoulder, feeling the full fury of the greasy guy’s glare. Ugh. This close, it seemed apparent the guy was way overdue for a shower.
She grabbed Pembroke by the arm again. “Can we go somewhere to talk? Somewhere quieter? Like outside, maybe?”
Pembroke swallowed visibly as she cradled her book to her chest. A receipt stuck out like a bookmark. “The panel is about to begin. I don’t want to miss it.”
Brielle frowned. “You came all this way to see Archer?”
“It’s only an hour away.” Pembroke said. “Archer Ward doesn’t do much traveling, so his rare appearances are usually within the vicinity of his hometown.”
They both stared at each other for a minute. “What areyoudoing here?” asked Pembroke at the very same moment Brielle asked, “But why did you come here without letting me know?”
“I forgot you lived here,” said Pembroke, holding her book higher up to her chin and practically pouting.
Brielle gripped her purse over her abdomen where it hung, grunting when someone trying to make her way across the room bumped into her from behind. She spoke loudly to be heard. “Why haven’t you answered any of my messages? Or any of Lilac’s and Gavin’s?”
