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"Dad used to bring me here," I blurted out.
Uncle Quint moved closer to me until we were standing side by side in front of the grimy window. I turned and faced the building proper, staring inside, trying to make out what lay behind the glass.
"Why?" Quint asked curiously, sounding like he really wanted to know the answer to that one word question and I wasn't surprised to hear it. If it had to do with my dad, then he would want to know it. He loved my dad and I knew we both wished he'd been Quint's dad too instead of his brother.
"I wasn't entirely sure why he brought me here at first." I told him honestly. "This place has always been run down and, from what I could tell over the years, she'd never made any attempt to make it any better."
"She?" Quinton asked quietly. There was a growl to his voice that I didn't care for all that much and I figured it was there because we were talking about an unknown female and the only female he cared to talk about was ours.
I shook my head and smirked at him sadly. I'd never cheat on Ariel, not for anything. Quinton knew me better than to ever question that and if he didn't then I really might go ahead and punch him.
"A witch owned this building before I did," I told him. Then I went and told him all I knew about her, all my father had told me, which, arguably, wasn't much. He listened in silence while I talked and we stared at our reflections in the window.
When I was done speaking he turned towards me with bright, almost glowing brown eyes. His mouth was pinched tightly and his cheeks were flushed angrily.
"How many of them do you think are out there?" He grated out past his clenched teeth.
"I don't know," I whispered sadly. And that was the truth. But I had a sick feeling there were a whole lot of them and they were all in deep cover, hiding from the rest of us. Who knew what they did for work or how they hid what they were from the general population, but it made me sick to my stomach to think about.
It made me think it was time for a change and I had a feeling I knew just where to start and his name was Rain Kimber. If he was to be taken at his word then he'd been helping out rogue females for a long time now, or at least his family had been helping them. He'd obviously stopped when Ariel had gone missing as a young child and he'd been all about looking for her for the past however many years. He'd know how we could find them, how we could help them.
My eyes raked over the run down building with a whole new light, finally seeing the potential in the place. I would need to see the office and the apartment before bringing the topic up with Uncle Quint, but I was hopeful the spaces could be cleaned up just like the shop could and then the possibilities were endless.
I just hoped Uncle Quint and Rain would think so too. My original reasons behind buying the building had been purely selfish and had riddled me with even more guilt over the old broad being dead. It felt good to have a different agenda where the building was concerned, a chance to slightly do some good for our fucked up community, even though nobody outside of my family needed to ever know about it. And, gods help us all if the Council ever even found out I'd thought about harboring rogue's. They'd kill us all, my entire coven.
Chapter Nine
He loved her
Quinton eyeballed me carefully as I pulled the key out of the lock and twisted the knob, opening up the door that would lead us into the musty shop. My nose twitched from the dust and I wondered if the place had been locked up tight since I'd left with the keys because it badly needed to be aired out.
"Where's the fucking light switch," Quint bitched from behind me.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had absolutely no freaking clue where the light switch was or if the lights even worked. I'd never been here where there were lights on in place of candles lit up dangerously and strewn all over the place.
I reached around, feeling the walls anyways, in search of any kind of switch. I made contact with one and flicked the switch up. A buzzing hummed through the room as crappy, florescent lights flickered to life from the ceiling. I cringed, almost preferring the soft glow of candlelight to the harsh brightness of the overhead lights.
"It'll need new lights," Quint muttered from behind me. "Something not from the Stone Age and a whole lot less harsh on the eye."
I grunted in consent.
I shut the door and locked the deadbolt as he wandered further into the room. I laid my back against the door as I watched him silently wander through all five rows of shelves that were in the center of the room. He'd occasionally raise his fingers and trail them over certain objects while keeping his opinions to himself. When he'd wandered through all the rows he walked over to the back wall to stand in front of the floor-to-celieng book shelves that were crammed full of books.
The books took up the most of his inspection.
Of course, he'd spend the most of his time in front of the books. He'd inherited a great library from my grandfather and I often times thought books were his first love. He never allowed himself to indulge in anything outside of reading. It was almost sad but I couldn't feel too bad for him because with knowledge came power and my Uncle was one of the smartest people I knew. He was also scary and most other covens would consider him to be powerful and no one dared go against him. Unless you were a family member, that is; we tried his patience as often as we could and said to hell with his beastly side that others pissed their pants when faced with.
He pulled out several books from each shelf, dusted them off and carefully thumbed through the pages. Some of them he'd gently put back in their original place. Others, he'd place in front of the other books on the shelf.
I would need to shake him down before he left the building to make sure he didn't steal any of my books without asking. He'd eventually return them, I was sure, but he wouldn't ask before taking them. Since I now owned the building and everything inside of it, he would see it as his right to "borrow" whatever he wanted because he was a firm believer in what's yours is mine when it came to the family. Unless it came to his shit, that is. Then he wasn't about sharing at all and he'd get pissed when I went in there and "borrowed" things. Of course, I rarely returned the things I borrowed from his room so I guess he had reason to feel that way, but, still, we were family so it was all good. Which meant when he stole books from my new building and returned them after he was done with them I wouldn't say shit to him about it and would look the other way.
Finally, and what looked to be reluctantly, my Uncle wandered away from the books. I counted six he'd pulled out of their places and left on their sides in front of the others. I shook my head but said nothing. If he wanted to take them, I'd let him.
The overhead lights continued their humming as Quint approached the small table covered in a black cloth where the ancient deck of tarot cards sat on top of it in a neat pile.
Without hesitation, Uncle Quint picked up the deck of cards, flipped it over and began thumbing through it.
"These are gorgeous, Ty," he murmured. "Did you look at these?"
