A Day in the Life of Edmond Holloway: Watcher, Demonologist, and Sometimes-Oblivious Consort to a Demon

The bookstore was located down a twisting maze of alleys, approximately fifteen minutes from the trolley stop. It had an unassuming front, drab brown wood with one small, dirty window set into the door. The name of the shop, according to the yellow letters on the window, was ‘Ephemeral Fantasies’, a name which would have drawn a considerably different crowd if not for the hanging sign above the door that proclaimed its real purpose in large yellow letters. It was by the singular word scrawled overhead that Edmond Holloway referred to the shop.

‘Books’ was his favorite shop, situated in his not-so-favorite district. The street, known for some obscure reason as Knuckleback Lane, smelled of decaying vegetables and rotting fish, due in part to the grocer at the end of the street and to the refuse overflowing the gutters along the sides of the road, throwbacks to before London had instituted a proper sewage system.

Like the rest of the shops on the street, ‘Books’ was frequented by a small number of very loyal patrons and seemed to oddly thrive despite its limited sales. It was bordered by a cobbler and an herbalist, each adding their own unique fragrance to the cacophony of smells outside the door. In the two years he’d been coming to this particular shop, Edmond had rarely seen anyone besides store owners walking the street, and he had yet to encounter another patron inside the bookstore.

He approached the bookstore at exactly 9:54 in the morning, a black messenger bag slung over one shoulder and a take-out box from one of the local bakeries in hand. The bell inside the door chimed as he entered, the only sound in the quiet bookstore aside from his footsteps. Edmond smiled, automatically relaxing as the smell of old books and freshly brewed tea filled his lungs. All around him, books littered every available surface, completely filling the shelves and overflowing into carefully managed stacks on the floor. He knew from experience that there was a mad sort of order to the lot, though he’d given up trying to find a book by himself after his first few adventures in the shop.