[Oxrun Station] The Last Call of Mourning by Charles L. Grant

shop's open door was a cave's entrance, beckoning.
    "Oh well," she said. "I better see what happened to my books." She yawned suddenly, laughed when Ed followed. "You'd better get home, pal. You look ready to drop." She walked inside quickly and switched on the overhead lights, a series of three white globes ridged and slightly greyed now by the smoke. She winced at the stains that curled like grasping fingers out from the back room up to the ceiling, but as far as she could tell none of the stock had been damaged except for a few volumes that had been knocked onto the wet carpet by the passing firemen. On her way to the office she paused for a moment, brushed a hand over Cyrano's untouched face and shook her head slowly.
    And it was not until she had decided that what had to be done could easily be put off until tomorrow that she realized Ed was standing behind her. She turned and looked up at him, a sympathetic smile working her lips when she saw again the rumpled hair, the unshaven jaw, the demand for sleep in his eyes that he was denying as hard as he could.
    She ignored the stench of burnt cardboard and lingering smoke, the unpleasant give of soaked carpeting beneath her feet.
    "You saved my life again," she said quietly. "Sort of."
    "All in a knight's work, lady."
    She ignored, too, the pun. "Is Sandy all right "
    "As well as can be expected. He's still shook at being nabbed like that, but you've got a friend there for life, Cyd. He was really scared. Hardly said a word all the way home."
    "He's a good boy. Always was. God, listen to me," she said then with a grimace. "I sound like a teacher."
    A silence.
    An awkwardness that soon turned her around to recheck the lock on the narrow back door— shaking her head at the firemen who'd forgotten to reset it—before following Ed to the front where she locked that door and moved out to the sidewalk. She had no idea how to leave, how to let him go after what he had done, was almost ready just to walk away when a notion made her stop in the middle of a stride. "Wait a minute," she said. "How did you know it was my store, anyway? And how did they get in there without smashing anything?"
    Ed looked up at the nightsky and cleared his throat, folded his arms over his chest, dropped them, stuffed his hands into his pockets. He took two steps from her toward the curb to open her car door, but she grabbed his arm and held him tightly.
    "Edwin Grange, what have you been up to behind my back?"
    "A lovely back, I must say. One of the nicest, in fact, that—
    "Ed!"
    It was one of her mother's favorite and oft-used axioms that every male had within his repertoire of begging expressions the standard little boy plea: Don't hurt me, Mommy, I was only trying to help. But she'd thought that Ed, of all people, would have long since abandoned such an obvious ploy. Not this time however. His right hand remained in his trouser pocket while his left scratched at his cheek, temple, into his hair and down to his nape while his face contorted into what seemed like a permanent grimace. Both hands and a foot in the cookie jar, she decided; but she waited to see if she had a right to be angry.
    "Ed," she prompted softly, the tone suggesting she wouldn't spank him.
    "Angus," he said finally, his voice hoarse until he cleared his throat. He checked the sky again, glanced in the direction of his apartment's safety. "I keep a file of store owners, you know, hit them every so often with one of my brochures for security guards, alarm systems, things like that. When I saw that carpenter go in there last week, I knew someone was getting ready to move in. So I asked around, Angus told me."
    "Well, why didn't you tell me that you knew?"
    "I figured you didn't want anybody to know. You wanted me to know, you'd tell me in your own good time. I know you, Cyd. I could wait."
    "And the key?" Immediately, she held up a hand. "Don't tell me—Angus. Keep an eye on the poor girl, Eddie," she said, mimicking the lawyer's