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Priya, who was a head shorter than Tempest, stood on her tippy toes to reach up and tap one of the floating quiz cards drifting at different heights around the sphinx. They’d selected questions from the section on books. The questions were on one side, and the answers on the other.

Question: In publishing, what term describes the right-hand page of a book?

A) Verso B) Folio C) Recto D) Gutter

Answer: C) Recto.

The term comes from the Latin recto meaning “right.” The gutter is the inner margin where the pages meet the spine. A folio is a sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves. The left-hand page is the verso, meaning “turned.”

“You still owe me, though. Don’t think I won’t cash in on the Fantasy ARCs you promised,” Priya said. “I’m going out for a bagel; do you want me to grab you anything?”

“No, I’m fine. I ate earlier,” Tempest assured her. She walked her friend out the front door and went to stand on the sidewalk in front of the shop to admire their handiwork from the outside. It had stopped raining overnight and there were a couple of blue breaks in the late June sky. The morning light spilled across the books in the window. It made them seem more special.

Tempest loved this hour, before the customers poured in and the ABCs arrived with their imperious demands. When it was just her, the books, and her morning coffee. She went back into the shop, locking the door behind her.

Fortune glided down from her perch above the register and landed on Tempest’s shoulder as she crossed to a faded reading chair in the corner. The old bird was warm and solid and smelled faintly of the clove-scented wood polish Tempest used on the display cases, because Fortune liked to nap on the high shelves. She’d been sleeping quite a bit lately. Tempest noticed that a couple of her tail feathers had faded from a bright, glossy red to a dull tan color, streaked with gray lines. This worried her. She had no idea how old Fortune truly was. The familiar had been with her family for generations.

“Oh, Fortune, my friend, neither one of us is getting any younger.” Tempest stroked the bird.

“Thirty-three. We shall see! Thirty-three!” Fortune squawked.

The bird had her number. Tempest would soon reach the age of magical majority. Thirty-three was the age of reckoning, a time by which witches were supposed to come into their own. She knew there was supposed to be something special about her upcoming birthday. But she had a hard time summoning any excitement for it.

It wasn’t as if she had no magic to speak of. It was that it was so useless. Sure, she could touch a book and absorb some facts and figures. But without context or control of it, that hardly seemed to matter. Who knew what she knew? Her mind was like a library that was missing its catalogue.

TAKE A BOOK, LEAVE A BOOK

we find our missing pieces,

and leave a bit behind,

in every story that we read,

we lose and find our minds.

The sign, hand painted by Tempest’s mother, still hung over the used books buying desk.

Halcyon Glass, legend had it, could absorb entire libraries, almost by osmosis. Not only did she soak up stories like a sponge, but she could also sense the souls of the authors who penned them. And it didn’t stop there, because books once read are said to take on a life of their own. She didn’t need to look up reviews. With the brush of one finger along a book’s spine, Halcyon could read the psychic residue and tell you whether that book had been loved or loathed and by whom.

Tempest wished she had one tenth of her mother’s talents, even though her stepfather claimed that having too much magic was what had made her mother sick. Book witch or no, there was only so much story any one mortal could contain. This was something Tempest could imagine.

Tempest had been born with the pedigree of a book witch, but the title wasn’t one she was sure she had the right to claim.

Some seeds, just don’t take. She could hear Clement’s voice in her head. She hated for her stepfather to be right, but in this case it was difficult to argue against the evidence. As her milestone birthday approached, she had been thinking about this a lot. She was also questioning why she was still here, still working in this bookstore that was no longer hers.

It wasn’t the first time she’d considered leaving, but it felt like it might be the last. Magical or not, her thirty-third birthday on Samhain felt like some sort of deadline. A cosmic reckoning time. She knew she’d have to make some decisions about her future by then.

Her thoughts strayed for a moment, as they often did when she considered leaving, to the old school bus she was in the long process of restoring and turning into a home on wheels.

It was a 1976 Bluebird, short nose, built for the transport of forty passengers. The exterior was the color of old mustard beneath the rust she’d been sanding off in patient weekend increments. She’d been working on it for two years now. It was parked in a chain-fenced, overgrown lot over on the east side, which she paid for in cash at the end of every month. She hadn’t told the ABCs or anyone else, other than Fortune, about her project. This was her secret. Hers and hers alone.

She had no real plans for it. She loved living with all the possibilities. They provided an endless source of daydreams.

She could park the school bus near Haystack Rock and go camping on the coast. Or she could turn it into a small shop or boutique and bring it to weekend markets. She could hop aboard and sail off into the sunset… Just knowing this made her feel less trapped.

Fortune made a small, contented snuffling sound and snuggled against her ear. But Tempest’s coffee cup was empty which meant it was time to stop fantasizing. She gave the plans for the signing one last review. When she saw Archibald and Barney standing outside staring slack-jawed at the stunning window display, Tempest set aside her clipboard and went to unlock the front door.

When she went to unlock the register, Tempest found that Clement had left a note propped up against it.