Chapter Five #2
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was lying,” I said after a few beats of strained silence. “I don’t think he had the grimoire in his shoppe.”
“Neither do I,” Bri said with a sigh. “But I do think he knew more than he was letting on.”
“Why lie about it? If he could help you, why wouldn’t he want to?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Like you said, not everyone thinks what I can do is a curse. There are people who would love to profit off someone like me.”
There was a gravity in her voice that made me pause. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t referring to me. Touching a wolpertinger was a fairly small price to pay in exchange for a chaperone. “Is that why you didn’t tell him you were the one with the curse?” I asked.
“I never tell anyone, though I suspect he figured it out for himself.”
“You told me,” I said.
She snorted. “I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I? That damned guinea pig gave me away the moment I set foot in your shoppe.”
“If you hadn’t touched the wolpertinger—”
“I didn’t,” Bri insisted. “At least not the first time it spoke.”
I was frozen with my mouth open, trying to process her words. “You’re right,” I breathed. “It spoke on its own. Which means…”
“It’s a real wolpertinger?”
“Aha! You do know what it’s called.” I chewed my lip in thought.
If the wolpertinger were really, truly the genuine article and not a badly compiled taxidermy job, did that mean there were other magical objects in my shoppe?
Had Da been telling the truth all along?
That seemed utterly impossible. Why bankrupt us if he had a genuine wolpertinger to sell?
Regardless … “It didn’t speak until you appeared, though,” I said.
“I told you. My magic only works on objects with magical potential. That creature was just waiting for an opportunity, which means it has to be real.”
“You touched at least a dozen grimoires in that shoppe, and I didn’t notice any of them doing anything particularly magical.”
Bri glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “That’s because grimoires are the one thing my magic doesn’t work on,” she said. “It’s why I took a job at a bookstore, as opposed to, say, a magical curiosity shoppe.”
“It’s also why you’re not having any luck finding the one you need?” I guessed.
“Exactly.”
A strange sensation was welling up in my throat. At first, I thought I might be about to cry, though I didn’t feel particularly sad. What I did feel was … generous? No, Willow, no, I implored myself. But my conscience had gone rogue.
“I’ll help you,” I blurted.
Bri seemed as surprised by my offer as I was. “You’ll what?”
It was too late to turn back now. And oddly, I didn’t want to. Maybe I was discovering some latent humanity in me after all. Or maybe I just wanted to know more about this Carterran girl and her bizarre curse. “I said I’ll help you. Find the grimoire.”
“Why? Your end of the bargain is fulfilled. I’ll come back to your shoppe and get the wolpertinger speaking long enough for you to sell it. I imagine you’ll get quite a bit of money.”
Neeps and tatties, she was right. Gold coins began to dance a lively jig in my mind’s eye.
If a dragon tooth could fetch two hundred, what could I get for the wolpertinger?
A thousand? More? My problems were solved.
The wolpertinger only needed to work for one day for someone to make a wish, so long as they were quick about it.
If the wish didn’t come true within a day, well, that could hardly be blamed on me.
Wishes weren’t always instantaneous. But I would have to find a buyer quickly if I wanted to get my rent paid in time and ensure the wolpertinger was still working when I sold it.
That wouldn’t be an easy feat. There weren’t many people in Ardmuir who could afford the price, and fewer still who would trust a Stokes.
If I found a buyer, and if it worked, I might be able to buy the shoppe outright. No more rent, no more debt. Anything I sold from there would be gravy.
I should have been breathing easy, but something was nagging at me.
“Do you still want to help me?” Bri asked, sparing me from spiraling in search of a conscience I was certain I’d lost nearly two years ago.
“I didn’t say I wanted to help you, only that I would.”
Bri clucked her tongue at Fergus, who had slowed his pace while we talked. “I told you, I don’t take gifts from strangers.”
“You really consider us strangers? We shared a room last night. We shared an encounter with a deranged bat!”
Bri laughed, and I felt a bloom of warmth in my chest. It wasn’t the way I felt when I made Finlay laugh, but it wasn’t entirely different, either.
“Perhaps not strangers,” Bri conceded. “But you already fulfilled your end of the bargain. You came with me to look for the grimoire. It isn’t your fault we didn’t find it.”
I nodded. She was right. I didn’t owe her anything. But for some strange reason, the thought of ending my adventure with Bri left me feeling a bit empty.
I shook away the unfamiliar feeling. Soon enough, I’d be able to fill all that emptiness with the cheerful jangle of gold coins.