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And then we were nearing the metropolitan area, and I closed the window and turned on the air. Exhaust wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“Marion called last night,” Delilah said.
“She and Douglas find a house yet?” Marion was a friend of ours—a coyote shifter—who had been displaced when the Koyanni burned down her house and her café. The café had been restored, but she and her husband had been living with our neighbor Wilbur—our neighborhood necromancer and frootloop—helping him out. He’d also been a victim of collateral damage, only instead of a burned shell of a house, he was missing a leg.
“Yeah, they’re closing on it and moving in about three weeks. Marion’s sister came to get Snickers, their cat, when they moved in with Wilbur. She’s going to keep him for them until they move. They didn’t dare take Snickers to Wilbur’s, not with Martin around. He might eat him.” Delilah grimaced, and I grimaced along with her.
“He’s a freak show, that’s for sure.” I sighed. “But I guess he’s our freak show, as much as we might not want to claim him. I imagine Wilbur will be glad to have his house back, though.”
“Marion thinks he’s going to miss them.”
“He’s such an odd duck. Just when I think I might actually like him, he goes and does something to piss me off. He wanted to borrow Rodney the other night, but Morio told him to fuck off.”
“What did he want with Rodney?” Delilah sounded as suspicious as I felt.
“I dunno, but it couldn’t be anything good.”
Rodney was a bane and a curse, though he’d been given to us as a gift. The bone golem would have made the perfect love child of Howard Stern and Rodney Dangerfield. Toss in a touch of Don Rickles, and he’d be the perfect storm. We couldn’t get rid of the little freak, though, because Grandmother Coyote had given him to Morio. I not-so-secretly hoped that one day Rodney would find himself on the business end of a very big sledgehammer.
As we neared the corner of Strand and Oakes, I pulled into a space that opened up even as we drove down the street. Bingo! Right in front of Mystic Charms. I had a knack for finding parking whenever I needed it.
“You want to stay here, or come in?” I leaned over the backseat to grab my purse and glanced into my side mirror to see if anybody was coming. Last thing I needed was for someone to take off my door when I opened it.
“Coming with.” Delilah hopped out. The sidewalks were cracked, barely above street level, and when the rains flooded the streets, the shops put out sandbags, just in case. But it was a low-rent district, and businesses that skimped by on a shoestring found it easier to survive here.
As we headed into the store, I automatically scanned the room for any sign of trouble. It was second nature now—especially when we were dealing with magical shops and clubs.
Mystic Charms was a homey little shop, but looks were deceiving. The owners were an interracial couple—an FBH witch and her Fae husband. Laslan had come over from Otherworld, met Beth, and fallen in love, much as our father had done with our mother. But instead of going back to Otherworld with him, Beth had persuaded him to give it a go over Earthside. They were both powerful, each in their own form of magic, and I respected their integrity, so I frequented their shop.
Delilah hovered over some pretty candles, while I checked out the other patrons in the shop. There were two who were obviously Wiccan—which was merely one branch of FBH paganism and witchcraft.
Another woman resonated with a dark, deep, shamanic energy. She felt edgy and powerful, and intriguing.
A fourth was flipping through the how-to books on the shelf, looking frustrated. I wanted to go over and tell him to quit reading and go out and just explore his magic, but that wasn’t my place.
Instead, I picked up a basket and glanced around, looking for the herbs and oils, which had been moved from their usual location.
In fact, now that I looked around, I saw that the entire shop had undergone a change in looks. After a moment, I spied the herbs and headed over to a wall that was now lined with cubbyholes.
Within each niche stood a jar filled with herbs. They were in alphabetical order, and as I set down the basket and began moving the mandrake root and wormwood to the counter with scales and plastic sacks, the man slammed the book he was holding back onto the shelf and, with a disgruntled sigh, headed out the door.
Beth, who had been watching him from behind the counter, marched over and tried to smooth the ruffled pages, then sighed and carried the book back to the counter. She turned just in time to catch my eye.
“Camille!” She bustled over to give me a hug.
“Who was Mr. Disappointed?” I nodded to the figure retreating out the door.
“Oh, him. Don’t mind him, except, damn it, he ruined another book. I don’t like to send them back—it messes up the authors—so I just buy them and add them to the lending library I keep in my home. Then I send Jake an invoice and he pays it without comment.”
“What’s his problem? He looked disgruntled.” In fact, he’d looked downright pissed off.
“Disgruntled? Yeah, that’s Jake all right. He’s always in here, looking for books to give him power. He doesn’t want to actually do the work, and he’s always looking in the sections that would burn his fingers, if he ever tried casting any of the spells from them. He’s not a bad person, per se. Just lazy, whiny, and apathetic. He shouldn’t be practicing magic in the first place. But enough about him. What do you need?”
She wrapped an arm around my shoulder as we turned to face the wall of herbs. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”
“I love it.”
And I did. Everything was organized and tidy. I glanced up at Beth. She was taller than I was, and larger—the woman was plump, that was for sure, but she wore it well, and her gypsy skirt and halter top suited her, as did the armful of bangle bracelets and the large chunk of smoky quartz hanging around her neck.
