The Readaholics and the Gothic Gala Read Online Free Page B

pointed. “Past the self-help books.” Maybe he’d pick one up on the way.
    â€œThank you.”
    I watched as he threaded his way toward the restrooms, wondering again why he was here. Maybe he was homeless and was here for the free cake. I put him out of my mind and moved toward Gemma, who stood surveying the long line of people waiting to get books signed. Her expression was a perfect blend of pride and happiness.
    â€œIt’s going so well, Amy-Faye,” she said when I came up to her. “Thank you!”
    â€œIt was your vision,” I reminded her. “And you convinced the authors to come.”
    â€œI’d met them all before, you know. At Gothicon in San Francisco. It’s a convention of all things gothic for people who are into that. It attracts readers, fans of shows like
Sleepy Hollow
, historians . . . all sorts. There are panels, costumes. . . . Tim Burton gave the most amazing speech. He has such a gothic sensibility.” She sighed ecstatically.
    â€œSounds like fun. Look, I’m going to leave Al in charge here and go over to the high school to make sure things are set up for the auction and writing contest, okay?”
    â€œI’ll see you over there in a couple of hours,” Gemma said, turning away to answer a question from a customer.
    Snagging a piece of cake on my way, I slipped out Book Bliss’s back door to where I’d left my van in the small lot behind the store. It was a perfect fall day with the sky so blue and sharp it felt like I could cut myself on it, and the sunshine warm on my bare arms. It was going down into the thirties at night, but today was a glorious sixty degrees.
This is why I live in Colorado,
I thought, unlocking the van. Earlier I’d loaded the boxes from Gemma’s stockroom that contained the auction items, and I peeked in to make sure they were still there. Yep. With the cake balanced on my lap, I was cranking the ignition when someone pulled the passenger-side door open and I jumped.

Chapter 3
    B rooke Widefield hopped onto the seat. “Can I come with?”
    Grabbing for the cake plate, which had slipped when I jumped, I got frosting on my fingers. I licked them. “You scared me, leaping in the van like that. I thought I was being carjacked.”
    â€œRiiight. Like any self-respecting thief would want a van that said ‘Eventful!’ in big green letters on the side.”
    She had a point. My wheels weren’t exactly inconspicuous. Nor were they the sexy sports car I would have preferred. However, the van was reliable and utilitarian. In my biz, it was more important to be able to cram sixty boxes of giveaway T-shirts, eight folding tables, two dinosaur-shaped piñatas, and a partridge in a pear tree into my vehicle than it was to go from zero to sixty in less than five seconds. I chuckled at the thought of my van getting to sixty in much under a minute and a half. Putting the van in gear, I rumbled out of the lot and turned onto Paradise Boulevard, the main drag through Heaven.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” Brooke asked, pulling down the visor to check her mascara in the mirror. She removed a smudge.
    â€œNothing. What did you think of the event?”
    â€œWent great. Your usual bang-up job.” She snitched the cake plate off my lap and broke off a bite and ate it.
    â€œHey!”
    â€œYou said you were on a diet. I’m saving you from yourself. It’s what good friends do for each other.” She put on a saintly expression.
    â€œWow, what a pal.”
    â€œDid you see Lo chatting with that man-god? What did you say his name was, the one who came with Mary Stewart?”
    â€œLucas. Her brother. No, I didn’t notice Lola.” Our friend Lola Paget was a serious woman who’d been a year ahead of Brooke and me in high school, then had studied chemistry at Texas A&M before coming home to Heaven to turn the failing family farm into a