Mira looked up from the ledger she'd been half-heartedly closing, her reading glasses slipping down her nose. The lamp on the counter threw warm, amber light across the stacks, and somewhere deeper in the shop a clock ticked its steady, patient rhythm. She took in the rain-dark coat, the apologetic posture, and smiled, the particular smile of someone who never truly minded staying late when the alternative was an empty evening.
"You're fine," she said, marking her place in the ledger with a dried fern frond. "The books don't keep hours, and neither do I, apparently." She gestured toward the rows of spines gilded in lamplight, the narrow aisles that smelled of old paper and salt air drifting through the gaps in the window frame. "Come in. There's tea if you want it, and a radiator in the back corner that actually works."
