Imogen double-checked to make sure her phone was on silent. She didn’t want to miss this. Rinn’s voice had gone all hushed and almost reverential.

No, not reverential. Somber.

Rinn waited until she had the entire audience’s attention again. “Brock Harvey was one of my favorite-of-all-time authors. I run a book account, and When We Were Us is largely why I started my account, why I got so many people to start reading. Why I wanted to reach out and talk about books. I know, that’s a lot. But I feel like I have to give you this context. Earlier today, Mr. Harvey hit on one of our underage employees. He’s been asked to leave the store, and we’re unfortunately going to have to cancel our event.”

My God, was she good at this. Nobody dared even breathe while Rinn paused to take a breath.

“As you may or may not have heard, this bookstore is in trouble. So instead of celebrating a man who brought a lot of hurt into this space, we’re going to celebrate our bookstore. We’re struggling here, and we’d really love your support. We’re also going to celebrate a young woman who is a poet, because that feels like justice today. We’d love if you stayed, ate some of the snacks and cakes we had ready for this visit, and instead listen to some rad poetry. We get if you’d like to leave, though. The choice, as always, is yours.”

Rinn smiled. It wasn’t her usual, ray-of-sunshine smile. It was a quieter thing. A smile that was a little bit sad and a little bit threatening. “Thank you so much for your time.”

And then Rinn turned around, hooked her arm in Imogen’s. And pulled her along. Imogen gave one last, confused smile at the girl, whose eyes had gone wide as she’d listened to Rinn speak.

Rinn kept walking. Imogen did her best to keep up. Nearby, Daniella was holding her notebook; her voice was fairly steady as she practiced her poem aloud. But her voice was a lie; Imogen could see her hand shaking as she turned the page.

“I warmed them up for you,” said Rinn. “You’re going to have quite the audience for your show.”

Rinn winked, then let go of Imogen’s arm. She went off, to go set up decorations for the party. Imogen watched as she wove in and out of customers, making sure they were staying. After a minute of watching Rinn work, Imogen looked over at Daniella. She could tell, of all the things that Rinn could have said, that mentioning the audience had not helped Daniella’s nerves. Daniella’s hands shook even more visibly as she read aloud this time.

Imogen sat down next to Daniella. “How’s it going?”

Daniella looked up, her face stricken. “Oh, great. Super. Really fantastic. Looking forward to it.”