Read Online Wakening the Crow by Stephen Gregory - Free Book Online

fixated on the tooth as much as he was... but also, at the same time, she was pushing something towards him on the purple velvet, trying to catch his attention with the glint and the razor-sharp edges of their diamond brilliance, she was nudging her diamonds of shattered windscreen under the focus of the angled lamp.
    Too late. He didn’t see them. Just as I took two strides forwards, to pull her away from the display and grab the pieces of glass in the palm of my hand, there was another flurry of wind in the hallway.
    More than a flurry. More than a whispering commotion of autumn leaves. A soft but sudden explosion of sound.
    We all turned to see what it was. ‘Hello my love, are you home?’ I blurted, and for a moment I thought it was Rosie, home early, and my stomach lurched with dismay. Chloe gave a shout of recognition.
    But no, it wasn’t her mother. Something, someone or something was in the church hallway. In and out so fast, it was no more than a shadow. A rag of shadow blown in and out by the night.
    Me and Chloe, we were framed in the doorway as the reporter whirled round. Some instinct triggered in his investigative brain made him reach for his camera. Pop, pop, pop... he fired off three flashes of dazzle-blue light.
    The two of us. And behind us, a rag of shadow, a blur of movement in the darkness. I thought I’d seen it. And Chloe had seen it, with a gurgle of surprise. Then it was gone. Gone with a glimmer of silver it had snaffled from the cold stone slabs.
    ‘Marvellous... it’s all I need, more than I need, some great snaps and a great story.’ He, Joe Blakesley, was bundling his way out of the vestry, into the hallway and out of the church door. ‘Poe...’ he was saying to me, although his voice was muffled in the winding and winding of his long red scarf around his face, ‘... it’s all you need... just get Poe, any old books and articles and stuff and the tattiest old paperbacks and stuff you can find... it’s all you need...’

 
    Chapter Eleven
     
     
    J OE B LAKESLEY HAD two pieces in the Nottingham Evening Post , in the same edition, a few days later. After nearly a year with the paper, a few weddings and making the editor’s coffee in the mornings, he had two pieces in one edition.
    Rosie was impressed by the article.
    ‘Poe’s Tooth? Is that a good name for a bookshop?’ She shrugged and admitted that yes, it might be. She read it all aloud, as we sat side by side in bed, with Chloe snuggled between us. It wasn’t long, it was hardly a feature, it was a modest piece on page nineteen, squeezed between a report on the opening of a new dialysis clinic in Beeston and another on the vandalism of a footballer’s BMW. But there were a couple of thumbnail photographs of me and Chloe at the fireside, me and the display of books, and, most importantly, a close-up of the relic after which the shop would be named; rather a blurry shot, dazzled by the overhead lamp, so the reporter had transcribed the handwritten note, verbatim, with his own translation.
    ‘“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings...’’’ Rosie had laid out the newspaper onto the bedcover, across her lap and mine, with Chloe all but smothered beneath it. With a grimace, affecting a mock-portentous voice, she was re-reading the headline. ‘Oh dear, a bit corny, isn’t it? But the article’s good, I like it, I like it... a new bookshop to be called Poe’s Tooth Books is about to open... yes, well done, my darling, I like it.’
    She leaned towards me and we kissed. Chloe disappeared completely, under the newsprint and the blankets. There was another photograph, me and Chloe looking utterly startled, our faces pallid and oddly misshapen, like a couple of victims... a father and daughter retrieved from the bottom of a canal, maybe, or rescued from the ruins of a collapsed building. We were framed in the doorway of the vestry. Behind us, the blackness of the church hallway was a mouth, agape, leaning forward to