Way Down We Go

Chapter 5

The next time he appeared, Rory was coming out of the break room, carrying a box of new arrivals. He was squatting down, skimming the bottom shelves near the window. She dropped the box near the desk and stalked over to him.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed.

"Looking for the next book in that series I started over at your place," he said distractedly. "The one with the priest and the vampire and..." But before he could finish she'd rolled her eyes and walked to the next set of shelves and reached up to grab the book.

"Here," she handed it to him. "Now, you can go right?"

"See, this is just fascinating to me, this whole interpretation just gets to me." He was somewhere else completely, starting to scan through the volume.

"I'll buy it for you if you go now," she pleaded.

"Why? You get off soon, no?"

"How do you know that?"

"I came in this morning and asked. I wasn't going to lurk around the store all day."

"How considerate."

"Glad you thought so. Anyway, I figured we'd start today."

"Start what?" she asked. He raised an eyebrow, an expression she was increasingly beginning to associate with him.

"Training. What else?"

"Don't say that so loudly!" she whispered frantically. He grinned.

"Oh, calm down. I could be talking about anything. In any case," he held up the book. "Can I check out, please, miss?" he said politely. She glared but lead him back up to the cash register.

"Ah, Preacher, good choice," said Carl, who had started unpacking the box Rory had unceremoniously dumped before. "Anyways, Rory, you're free for today. Have fun," He gave her and Asa a smile.

"Oh, yeah. Thanks," she said sweetly while giving Asa the sort of look that would make a weaker man tremble.

"We will," Asa grinned. "I'll wait for you here," he told her innocently, ignoring her furious expression.

"Okay." She went back to the break room to clock out and grab her bag. She contemplated climbing out of the window for a moment, decided that wasn't practical, and took a deep breath. She walked back to the main store and out the front door, Asa right behind her.

"Relax, will you?" Asa said when they were outside. "It's not that big a deal."

"What did you tell him?" she fumed.

"Nothing. I said you were a friend and we'd planned to hang out after work but didn't know when you got off. I couldn't call because you were working. He seemed a bit surprised but that was all."

She made an incoherent grumbling noise.

"Seriously, you're making a big deal about nothing. You were worried about Rachel too, and was that really that bad?"

She shook her head. He was being a bit dense, in her opinion. Like she cared about interrogations. Rachel was beyond that, anyway. If Rory said to drop it, she would. Rachel respected her that much. She turned in the direction of her car, but he grabbed her arm and turned her around.

"Or, are you worried about something more than them teasing you?" he asked. She blanched and tried to pull away.

"You are, aren't you?" He laughed. "You're scared the big bad demon is going to go after your friends next, is that it?"