Sponsored Fiction: Donor House: Echoes of Alexandria - Nick and Alice's First Visit: 1074 words

[k_a_webb]

Setting named by: ysabetwordsmith
Story written for: ysabetwordsmith
Story sponsored by: ysabetwordsmith

If it hadn't been for Nick pleading with her to go with him Alice probably never would have visited Echoes of Alexandria. She'd walked past it a couple of times but had never been able to gather up the courage to actually step into the human-run bookshop. Being a vampire made everything different. There were humans who made it very obvious that vampires should not be in their shop, even though they couldn't put up a sign any more that said 'no vampires', and then there were humans who didn't have a problem. It was just a case of knowing which shops had humans in who weren't anti-vampire.

 

Cate, the woman who ran Echoes of Alexandria, had come to them. That was unusual enough, but then she had asked if one or more of the older vampires at the donor house would be willing to give a talk on history. Alice wished that she'd had a camera to photograph the looks of complete disbelief on Issac and Nick's faces. In theory they wanted to become a real part of the community but in practice none of them were sure that it was possible. When Cate had left they'd talked about it and in the end they had chosen Nick because they felt they needed someone who was in charge of the house doing the talk.

Alice knew that Nick didn't really want to talk about his past. It had taken her months when they'd first met to even get him to tell her what time period he'd been born in because he didn't like to think about it. On the day she was turned she'd told him off for burying his head in the sand but he still did. Instead of dealing with everything he compartmentalised and, although she was still angry with him, she couldn't help worrying about him. If he'd been human she might have tried to convince him to see a therapist but she didn't know if there were therapists for vampires. That was the reason she had given into his pleading.

When Alice walked into Echoes of Alexandria she was glad that she had given into his pleading. It had been a long time since she had last visited a bookshop and it had been tiny compared to Echoes of Alexandria. She was also glad that Cate had suggested they arrived a little early so they could get used to their surroundings. A chance to look at the books before she had to spend her time holding Nick's hand would do her the world of good. Slowly they made their way over to the counter where Cate was stood, staring down at what looked like an e-reader.

“Hi, Nick,” she said, looking up at them, “and Alice. I'm glad you could make it.”

“Cate,” Nick replied quietly, nodding at her before falling silent.

Alice couldn't stop herself from putting out a hand to squeeze his as she said, “It's nice to see you again, Cate. How are you?”

“I'm good.” Cate looked at Nick and then back at Alice. “Is he going to be okay?”

“You'll be fine, won't you?”

Nick managed to smile at Cate and it was almost convincing. “I made the choice to come here and talk about the past so that's what I'm going to do.”

Cate smiled back but she didn't look any less worried. “If you need anything then let me know.” She glanced up at the clock. “We have about ten minutes before people start arriving so would you like the grand tour?”

On any other day Alice would probably have said no. She liked walking around bookshops at her own pace but she decided that she'd stick with Nick because he needed her support. There was so much that she still didn't know about his past and she didn't know how having to think about it would effect him. Nick had said that he could cope with talking about it as long as he stuck to talking about the history of England rather than his own history.

“That would be nice,” Nick said.

Cate put her e-reader down behind the counter before stepping out from behind it. “As with any book store we have a fiction section,” she said as she led them towards the first set of shelves. “We also have a couple of e-readers that are pre-loaded with some stories, most of which are by self-published authors.” She smiled at them. “I know that most book stores probably wouldn't stock anything that is self-published but there are some good authors out there who have stories that may never have sold to the mass market.”

Alice looked at the e-readers with interest. If there was someone there to show her what the good self-published work was then she'd be much more likely to read it. She was just aware of the horror stories about self-publishing and that had put her off.

“I'm a huge fan of self-published work,” Cate continued, still leading them through shelves of fiction books. “There's some wonderful work out there as long as you know where to look.”

“Isn't having those e-readers bad for business?” Alice asked.

“This bookshop is more than just a place to sell books, Alice. I don't know if anyone would ever agree with me, but I think of this place as one of the hubs of the community. People come here to do more than just shop and that's what I love about being here. We have a book swap meeting once a month, where my regulars come in and swap books that they've read with their friends. There's also three different book clubs that visit here once a month. I don't charge them but they often put some money behind the counter to keep the store running.” Cate looked around and smiled at Alice. “If I want to keep this place running then I have to be inventive. Everyone who comes in here could easily buy the books they want off the Internet so what I do is give them more than one reason to visit.”

“How do you pay for everything?” Nick asked, looking thoughtfully around the store.

“I do make money from selling books, then I have my regulars who often help me out if I'm a little short. It's not easy but I never opened this place thinking that it was going to be easy to keep running.”

© K A Jones 2011


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Comments

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

The book store is interesting. I take it the name comes from the old libraries in Alexandria that got burned down?

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That's exactly where I got the name from. I'm glad you recognized it! This is also part of my project to celebrate bookstores in fiction, in hopes of encouraging folks to support brick-and-mortar bookstores.