What did a girl have to do in this town to get her hands on a book? Not just any book, the first book in a series. The second and third were everywhere, easy to find, sitting in stacks and piles and taunting Riley in every book store she entered. Why? Because the first book was nowhere to be found.

Sold Out.

In every single store she visited.

Sure, she'd heard great things about the books. She'd also heard that along with the surge in book sales, there'd been a bum rush on book covers and anything else that could be used to hide the title of a book from prying public eyes. As if the blush on the cheeks of guilty parties weren't enough to identify them anyway. The brunette had heard that too. This was no series for amateurs. She smirked. Good thing she was a pro at this sort of thing.

Except that she was being given no opportunity to put her skills to use. None whatsoever. It stood against logic that this last ditch effort would pay off, the books were relatively new, and people didn't tend to bring relatively new books to a used book store to get rid of them. Then again, if what she'd read was true, then all the boring middle-class housewives who hid the books between their mattresses and box springs until husbands were at work, and kids were at school might just be desperate enough to immediately bring them to a place like this after finishing.

Open the door came, in Riley went as the little bell jingled. Riley didn't really want any help, she wanted a little luck so she could find the book and get home to read. On impulse, she'd bought the second and third books in one of the stores so she'd have them when she found the first. If she found the first.

With a sigh, Riley moved into the bookshelves and started to scan. These places did their best to put things in some semblance of order, but without the benefit of inventory things were always a little hectic. She started in the romance section...it just seemed most likely.

Allison was less than fond of customers. People in general, really, but customers in particular. Or maybe it was just the obligation to interact with them that made them particularly irritating to her. Either way, dealing with the endless stream of ‘does this still cost the same as the price tag says if I take the cover off?’ and ‘where do I find the history books that aren’t in the nonfiction sections?’ was more than enough to make her volunteer to take any job the bookstore had that didn’t require dealing with people. The idea, of course, worked a bit better when she wasn’t the only one working. At least when she was, though, she could bring whatever she was working on up to the counter. Looking busy would, sometimes, discourage the people who wanted to chat about nothing.

The end of the school year meant all the nearby college kids were happily getting rid of every book they could, and so the store had several boxes full of to-be-sorted books sitting in the back, multiplying far faster than they were being removed, and Allison had carried (with a great deal more effort than she would have liked) two such boxes and all necessary papers up to the counter to work on sorting them. The mess had lured a few people over to ask what she was working on, but there at least hadn’t been any more people insisting on chatting with her than normal, so that was a benefit. And it was interesting to see what all the books were. Some books had a surprising number of copies; she had to wonder what the classes reading them could possibly have been about. She was guessing the multitude of Dr. Seuss books and the many copies of Havemercy had come from different classes, but it was more amusing to imagine them in the same one.

Allison glanced up as the door opened, nodding automatically to the woman who came in before going back to sorting books. It was always nice when people ignored her; it meant she could ignore them.

The girl behind the counter looked like she wanted to help Riley just about as much as Riley wanted to be helped. Good. Nosey helpers in book stores were annoying. The thought reminded her of the Full Circle, in particular the time that Aurum had caught her reading one of her books. That made her smile, even if he had been a huge nuisance at the time. The coffee bar at this place didn't have an Aurum though, and for some reason the pastries just didn't look as good. Yeah...this place would just have to be for the books.

Further and further Riley wandered, trying to locate the object of her quest. Romance was first. The books were alphabetized, but unfortunately the J’s were severely lacking in the titles Riley wanted, so she moved on to a section titled “Best Sellers” if this series didn’t qualify, she didn’t know what would. Again, she scanned, again she came up with nothing.

It was tempting to simply walk out of the store, they weren’t the first one to disappoint her today, but they were the most recent. Also, that little bell was obnoxious as hell.

There were boxes of books up on the counter though, and Riley looked down at the bag that was looped over her arm. She had the second and third books...going home without the first just seemed ridiculous on a level she didn’t even want to deal with right now. Up she slumped, chancing a glance at the girl behind the counter.

”Can I look through these?” she asked, already reaching into the box. It wasn’t like anyone had sorted the books or put them on the shelf. What damage could she do by looking? Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to ask the clerk to help.

“Uh.” Allison looked up, caught completely off guard by the woman’s request. “Sure.” No one had ever asked to look at the books before they were sorted, at least that she was aware. Or anything to do with them, really.

...Probably because they were generally kept in the back, where no one could see. “If you could just keep those,” she pointed to her right, at the books she’d already priced and sorted into sections, “separate, that would be great. What are you looking for?”

She was also keeping an eye on that bag. The woman didn’t look like she was thinking of stealing, nor was the book store at all a logical place to steal from, but better to be paranoid anyway. At least enough to be able to tell Shannon she had.

She also wondered what exactly the woman was looking for. Very determinedly looking, it seemed, if she was willing to sort through the boxes of miscellaneous things Allison was dealing with for a chance of finding it.

Awesome. Now she even had permission. Plopping the bag of already purchased books on the counter, she started digging through the box. So many of them were obviously textbooks that the brunette had to wrinkle her nose. New Yorkers and their educations. What was it with this place? It was like Seattle and coffee. Everyone in New York was a student.

Except her. The thought made Riley smile as she continued to look, but the smile quickly faded as she realized that the book she wanted wasn’t in the box. Back into the box they went, and she sighed in heavy irritation, casting another glance at the girl working behind the counter.

”Are there any more of these? The ones that aren’t out on the shelves yet?” she asked.

”I know it’s a pain in the ass, but I bought the second and third book in the series on impulse and I’m going to have some kind of fit if I have to go to another store.”

Allison’s question was ignored as the woman dove into the box, looking through the books for whatever it was she wanted much more quickly than Allison would have expected. Allison shrugged and went back to sorting the books she had.

She looked back up at the woman’s question. “Yeah, eight or nine more. Boxes,” she added as an afterthought. “Would you like me to get them?”

She kind of doubted that would be a yes. Not many people were willing to look through eight boxes of anything, much less unsorted anything. On course, not many people were willing to sort through one box, either, so who knew.

Not many people were willing to go through 8 or 9 boxes of books, (some of which had probably come from a cat lady’s house.) Of those people, very few were Riley Sommers and none of them had her stubborn streak.

What kind of book store lets inventory sit in the back of the store instead of being out on the shelves? She thought as she thought over her options and finally nodded. This was the only way.

”Yes please, if you don’t mind. I’ll even help you fetch them if you want.”

See, she could be civil.

Allison… had not expected a yes. Except she kind of had, so she nodded and stood, pushing herself onto her toes to try and subtly stretch before turning. “That’d be great. They’re pretty heavy, though, so you know.”

The bookstore was, essentially, a long, narrow rectangle, made narrower by the chunk of space that had been sliced off the side to make bathrooms and the “back” that was actually next to the main store. As a result, it took some weaving to get all the way to the (actual) back of the store where the door to the side room where things were stored, along the counter and then between the bookshelves that were crowded almost too close together, with books stacked on top of each other or parts of shelves left empty depending on what the section was. Allison, personally, thought that the shelves looked almost ready to fall over should anyone bump into them, but they never had. Well, not without much more force than bumping into would imply, anyway.

The back room was shaped like a miniature of the store, a narrow rectangle with plastic shelves on each side, boxes full of books and the occasional collection of CDs, tapes, comics, records, magazines or other miscellaneous media each possessing a half full box of their own, and empty boxes (collected from grocery stores that no longer needed the storage their products had come shipped in) stacked in a tumbling pile at the end of the room. Three bare lightbulbs stepped down the center of the ceiling, making the light in the room (comfortingly, to Allison) sharp and harsh. The boxes of books were closest to the door, except for an empty space on the lowest shelf that had previously held the boxes Allison had already taken out.

“These,” she waved at the shelves holding the boxes of books. “Are all books. There might be one or two in those,” she pointed at a set of smaller boxes, which had been brought in too recently to even sort out what type of media they were yet, “too, since we haven’t had time to look through them yet, but they look like they’re mostly kids’ stuff and dorm room posters.” Boys’ dorm room posters, more specifically. Which, regardless of what Allison had volunteered to do to avoid people, she was not touching. Seeing them out of the corner of her eye was more than enough for her start making odd faces.

The storage area of the shop, (since it couldn't really be called a back) was large and full of books. There was no end to the surprises today! It was a little dark and more than a little dingy, but it was nothing Riley hadn't expected. So she followed, still alternating between glad that the shop girl had agreed to this, and mortified with herself for going to such lengths.

And here were the boxes, just in time to save her from a mental conversation that probably wasn't going anywhere good. The boxes were interesting to Riley, who could barely fathom giving up her books, but many of them looked like they'd come from Frat Houses that Riley wasn't sure she wanted to touch anything until it had been disinfected.

It didn't look like she'd have to though. The girl from the shop was indicating other boxes that looked a little less like they'd rolled off a campus. There were a lot of them too, and that seemed to be a decent case for giving it a look, despite the probability that she'd be digging through something from some cat lady's basement.

Moving closer, the brunette tugged on one of the boxes to test its weight. Finding it acceptable, she hefted the thing into her arms, "Guess I'll start here." she said, heading back towards the "front" of the shop.

Allison was kind of surprised that the woman could pick up the box. Not that they were impossible to pick up, but they were fairly heavy and fairly awkward and thus difficult to pick up, so most people preferred not to. Including Allison, who normally had gotten used to carrying boxes like that quite a while ago, but today was technically, if barely, still healing. She was also still stubborn, though, so she shrugged, picked up another box, and followed the woman to the counter. And, with that box deposited, went back for another, and a third, until eight boxes were lined up, not neatly at all, along the counter, and her leg, while not in too much pain, was still noticeable complaining.

Allison dropped into her chair with just enough control to, hopefully, seem lazy instead of tired or in pain, and reached for one of the boxes. “What were you looking for?”