“I’m an instructor now,” she said, jutting her pointy chin out smugly. “I ran into Layla at the book fair in Edinburgh and she offered me the position.”
“What?” I might’ve shrieked the word. I couldn’t help it. Minka was the world’s worst bookbinder. She destroyed books. She was like the bubonic plague to books. Why in the world would anyone hire her to teach bookbinding? “You’ve got to be kidding.”
But she was no longer looking at me. I turned at the sound of scuffling footsteps behind me and saw Ned, the printing press guy, frowning at us. And when Ned frowned, what little forehead he had completely disappeared. He wasn’t completely unattractive, if you liked that haunted, confused look in a guy. Minka did, apparently.
“Hi, Ned,” Minka said, her eyelashes flitting rapidly.
“Huh,” he said as he scratched his pasty white muscle-free arm.
Was Minka actually flirting with Ned? I’d been teaching classes here for years and I’d seen Ned maybe four times. Each time, he’d said exactly one word to me. That word was Huh. Seriously, that was his only vocabulary.
Ned could work magic with the ancient printing press BABA used, but that’s where his social skills ended. He was probably a sweet guy, but he worried me. Today he wore a T-shirt that read “Can’t Sleep. Clowns Will Eat Me.” That might’ve been funny, but I was pretty sure Ned believed it.
“I like your shirt,” Minka simpered.
“Huh,” he said, then turned and walked away, disappearing down the hall.
“Nice talking to you, Ned,” I said, but I wasn’t sure he heard me.
Minka’s snarl returned, signaling she was ready to go another round with me. But it was not to be.
“Minka, darling,” Layla cried as she rushed forward and gave Minka a big hug. “I thought I heard your voice.”
Not surprising, since yapping puppies in the next county could have heard Minka’s voice.
“I’m so pleased you could join our faculty,” Layla gushed, winding her arm through Minka’s. Then she turned to me and her green eyes gleamed with amusement. “Don’t tell me you two know each other. Isn’t that perfect? Brooklyn, you’ll be able to show Minka around. I know you’ll make her feel comfortable and welcome here.”
Minka smirked in victory. Over her shoulder, I saw Naomi roll her eyes. Good to know it wasn’t just me who thought that would have been a really bad idea.
I gave Minka a look that made it clear that hell would freeze over before I would show her anything but the back door. My former good mood plummeted even further as I realized I’d have to spend the next three weeks trying to avoid both Layla’s caustic bitchiness and Minka’s toxic stupidity.
I thought of Minka’s first words a minute ago, about people dying whenever I was in the vicinity. I hoped her words wouldn’t come back to haunt us all, but with so many volatile personalities to deal with, I had to wonder how long it would be before one of us turned up dead.
I just hoped it wouldn’t be me.
Chapter 2
Avoiding Minka’s gaze, I turned to Layla and tried to smile. “I’ll have to take a rain check on that tour. Right now, I need to set up my classroom. See you all later.”
I walked with purpose across the gallery and down the south hall to my classroom. I hoped I’d be able to avoid Minka for the next three weeks but she was like a noxious cloud. Really. If I got within a few hundred feet of her, I tended to suffer flulike symptoms. I supposed I’d be forced to hide out in my classroom from now on, like a sniveling coward.
I stopped at the glass display case outside my room and found the posted schedule of classes for the month. Sure enough, Karalee Pines’s name was crossed out and Minka’s name was written in. She would be teaching a three-hour limp-binding class two nights a week for the next month. My own comprehensive bookbinding class was four nights a week for three weeks. The possibility of seeing her six times in the next month made my head hurt.
Safe in my classroom, I unpacked my tools, then placed the stacks of decorative cloth I’d brought on the side table. I’d found some beautiful printed paper at the Edinburgh Book Fair, from a vendor who specialized in handmade Japanese prints. These would be used by my students for book covers and endpapers.
Looking around, I took a quick inventory of the book presses and punching jigs. The jigs were clever, handmade contraptions made with two pieces of wood screwed together to form a V-shaped cradle. A thin space at the apex of the vee allowed for the pointed end of a sharp punching awl to make sewing holes in folded signatures.
There were six standard cast-iron table presses, plus stacks of twenty or thirty iron weights of different sizes and shapes. The students would have to share the equipment, but that was rarely a problem since everyone worked at their own pace.