“You want me to redo the original transaction? From scratch?” Rinn really hoped that this would work. Deflect. Live to fight another day. “You do know we’d have to find all the original books that you tried to sell just to log this all correctly?”

“Well, not from scratch, but yes, please.” Birdman tacked on that please like he was a very polite person and he knew how the rules of society functioned and he was going to use all of them to get his way on this one.

And Rinn, she took a deep breath, and, rather than screaming, she redid the original transaction from scratch, because she was a real pushover like that. The books were still stacked right behind the register, luckily, so she didn’t have to go looking for them.

Eventually, she gave Birdman his store credit—which, why he wanted store credit after finding out the store was closing, was really another matter that Rinn did not want to deep dive into. The cost of the books he was buying didn’t take up all of the money he was making off the books. But far be it from Rinn to get into an argument about value propositions with this guy.

Besides, Rinn hadn’t given up on figuring out this whole Archer Hunt Junior business. She didn’t want to be right on this one. But she might be. She had to figure out what was going on to know for sure. The best person to talk to about any of this was the person who handled all the sales transactions for Wild Nights. And that was Daniella.

Rinn had to start there.

Only, Daniella was in more than a huff when Rinn arrived. She was standing with a chair in each hand. For a moment, Rinn thought that Daniella was going to ignore her.

But then Daniella blew some hair out of her face with a puff of frustration and said, “Can you help?”

Daniella didn’t wait for an answer. She dropped a chair onto the floor with a clattering bang.

Rinn picked up the chair. It had landed perilously close to her feet. Maybe just now wasn’t the ideal time to talk numbers with Daniella. Maybe she needed to help the girl out for a bit before asking for clarification on what was going on with Archer Hunt. “What are we doing?”

“Setting up the rows for the stupid Harvey event.” Daniella grabbed her chair so that the back corners of the legs dragged along the floor, making a horrible scraping noise against the concrete section of flooring.

Rinn did try to be forgiving in many things. But she was tired of swallowing all of Daniella’s petty opinions, especially when her favorite book was involved. “It’s not stupid.”