“Not that she knows what to do with it,” the cat interrupts me.“But any normal spells you use for protection will be even stronger with her at the helm.”
“Do you know why the bookstore has a ghost infestation?”Tara addresses the cat, which is just as weird to see as it sounds.
Prudence ignores her.
“Right,” I say cheerfully.“Helpful per usual.”
“There are rules about this kind of thing,” Prudence finally says.“I can’t answer everything.I don’t know why.I don’t know how I know what I know.Magic is like that sometimes.”
“Fuck me,” Tara says, rolling her eyes, and I laugh at her annoyance.“Typical witch shit.Okay,” she addresses me.“The cat knows something, and I assume she’s useful?”
“My friend Ivy said she was like… an antenna or a battery or both, I don’t really get it.”
“Yeah, that makes two of us.Hmm.”She pauses, refilling my coffee mug with more steaming liquid.
“Is this really the state of the magical world?”Prudence asks no one in particular.She raises up on her hind legs and I tense, preparing for her to launch herself at me.
Instead, she makes a kekekekek sound at a small spider dangling from the old-fashioned chandelier.
“Is the spider magical too?”I ask her.
A low, rumbling growl is the only answer I get.
“I assume that’s a no,” Tara says.“Alright.I have to open the store.I have a book with some basic protection spells that should get you fixed up enough for today so you can start work.”
“It seems too easy.”I narrow my eyes at her.“I don’t need human sacrifice or something, right?”
“Dude,” Tara skewers me with a look of disgust.“I hope you’re joking.”
I hold my hands up in surrender.“Sorry.I was.”
Mostly.
“Magic, spellwork, witchcraft, whatever you want to call it—it’s about intent.Use the spell that calls to you in the book and execute it with pure intentions.You want to release the tormented… ghosts from whatever is keeping them trapped here.”Her brow furrows as she thinks through her words.“Think of it like the natural order of things, right?Nothing can last on this earth forever.They are being pulled to the next stage?—”
“What is the next stage?”I interrupt, fascinated.
“I have no idea,” she says, shrugging and then taking another thoughtful bite.“But I do know they want to move on to whatever it is.Sometimes something is trapping them here, or they have unfinished business, or some kind of intention that’s… less than wholesome.”
“Ominous,” I mutter.
“It’s definitely the last option,” Prudence says, her whiskers still twitching, eyes laser-focused on the arachnid overhead.
“Great,” I say, then square my shoulders.“Listen.I may not know what I’m doing when it comes to running a business, but I’m going to figure it out.I may not know what I’m doing when it comes to, ah, banishing spirits, but I am going to figure that out too.This bookstore is the flipping chance of a lifetime, and I’m not gonna let anyone take it from me.”I pause.“Ghosts or, uh, taxes.”
Tara claps her hands, beaming at me.“That’s the spirit.But honestly, taxes are a pain.Do you have a CPA?”
“I do,” I assure her.“The whole inheritance thing set me up with a slew of assistants.It’s bizarre, right?”
The thought clicks in my head, and Tara’s eyes and mine widen at the same time.
“I need to figure out who owned the bookstore last.”
“There’s probably a connection there,” Tara says at almost the exact same moment.
“Okay.Add it to the damned to-do list.”
“It better not be damned,” Prudence adds helpfully, then kekekekeks some more.“You have enough damned things hanging around without a list that’s possessed.”
