Chapter Thirteen
In the morning, Bri and I made the journey to the shoppe together. We’d never gone to the shoppe this early when Da was alive, and I couldn’t say I was enjoying it. Argyle refused to get out of bed when I pushed back the covers, burrowing until he heard the rattle of his food dish.
“People weren’t meant to wake up this long before the sun,” I grumbled.
“I don’t like it any more than you do.” Bri’s face was still puffy with sleep, her voice an octave lower than normal. “But if we get everything done, we can go back to our regular hours next week.”
I could only pray she was right. Last night I’d tossed and turned, my mind going like a spinner’s wheel as I tried to work out exactly what was bothering me yesterday.
At some point well after midnight, I heard the faint, vibrating hum of a bow against a string.
Bri had said she practiced the violin every day, and it showed.
She only played for twenty minutes or so, probably afraid to wake me, but the low, mournful notes of a song I’d never heard before helped clarify my thoughts somehow.
For the last two years, everything I’d done had been to keep the shoppe open. I spent any free time I had trying to balance books that were constantly tilted in the bank’s favor. Then Bri had appeared, and it seemed all my problems were solved. Just so long as hers weren’t.
It had only been a couple of weeks since we’d met, but already I’d changed.
I had real, justifiable hope now, and maybe even a friend.
I was starting to see the appeal of having someone I could count on, someone I could laugh or commiserate with, someone who forced me to admit when I was being a total arsehole—without feelings complicating everything.
Even Finlay had never offered to take down Trystan Shilling for me.
And here I was, using her.
There had to be a way to save the shoppe and Bri.
I needed more magical objects so that we didn’t simply sell off all our inventory and find ourselves with an empty shoppe and no further source of revenue.
Da had never taken me on his acquisition trips, saying someone needed to stay behind and manage the shoppe.
But I’d known all along that trading in magical items was dangerous, that whoever he was meeting with and wherever his trips took him, it wasn’t a place for a little girl.
I hadn’t forgotten about the Sapphire Islander and his dragon bones. If I had enough money, there was no reason he wouldn’t sell to me as readily as he sold to the trader. Something like that could set me up for life, giving me the space to decide if running my shoppe was even something I wanted.
Finlay was waiting for us outside the shoppe, his long frame leaning against the door, breath coming out in billowy clouds.
My heart went a little squidgy at the sight of him, and I ground my teeth against this newfound softness.
Who are you? I wondered to myself as I unlocked the front door, trying my hardest not to inhale his warm scent and failing miserably.
“What about this fellow?” Finlay asked as we removed our coats, hanging them on the hooks next to the door.
He was pointing to the wolpertinger, which hadn’t moved from its pedestal since the day I turned it around like a melon at the market.
“What about it?”
“Are you still determined not to sell it?” Finlay asked. “Because I imagine it must be worth quite a lot of money.”
I joined Bri and Finlay, all of us staring down at the creature in various states of consideration: Finlay’s head tilted, hands clasped behind his back; Bri resting her chin in her hand; my arms crossed over my chest.
“It hasn’t spoken since Bri touched it,” I said. I turned to her. “If you touch it again, would that reignite its magic?”
“I don’t know. With the way it screamed at me, I’d rather not find out.”
“At the very least, we should probably put it away. People will ask questions.” I thought again of the trader. He may not have any genuine interest in a flying broom or a light sprite with a limited run, but anyone with even the slightest knowledge of magic knew how rare a real wolpertinger was.
I reached for it hesitantly, my fingers brushing the soft fur and feathers.
It was heavier than it looked, as though it weren’t stuffed with cotton but was in fact a real living creature.
“I’ll lock this up in the storage closet once we’ve cleaned it out.
For now, it can stay back here.” I tucked the wolpertinger onto a shelf on the side of the counter, next to the locked cash box that used to hold nothing but a few shillings.
“I’ll haul out some of the larger furniture,” Finlay said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal his muscular forearms. Sometimes I forgot he wasn’t the scrawny boy I’d first met two years ago. He’d filled out since then, his job at the print shoppe requiring surprising amounts of strength.
Bri nodded. “I’ll go through the cabinets at the back, see if there’s anything hiding that we haven’t noticed yet.”
“I guess I’ll take the middle,” I mumbled, realizing for the first time that I was the least essential person here.
I couldn’t recognize magical objects like Bri, and I wasn’t strong enough to move furniture by myself.
I started placing random articles into boxes and taking them outside for Bri to sift through later.
So far, the only genuine items whose use I could verify were not particularly practical, and might be difficult to sell with their shortened shelf life: a carpet that straightened the furniture placed on top of it; a vase that kept flowers alive for months; a self-cleaning pot; a mink stole that whispered poetry into your ear.
Every object I picked up elicited a memory of Da bringing it to the store, of the stories he told me about them. When I swept a large piece of cloth from a lumpy object, I found a rocking horse whose existence I’d completely forgotten.
“It’s from Blemont,” Da had explained. I was only eleven at the time, too old for rocking horses but young enough to wish I wasn’t. “The former owner said it was once a real horse. His favorite horse, in fact. When it died, he had a witch turn it into a rocking horse so he’d never be gone.”
I knew witches who crafted magical objects were called artificers, but that magic had never seemed sinister until now.
The horse was wooden, thank heavens, because the idea of an entire stuffed pony nailed onto rocking boards was horrifying.
The horse itself was painted black, but it wore intricately carved and colorful tack, along with a flower garland around its neck and ribbons woven into its mane.
“If he loved it so much, why did he sell it to you?” I asked Da, my hands tracing the curve of its back.
He’d shrugged. “He needed the money.”
I knew we were poor even then, and a little voice in my head had whispered that we needed the money, not another useless item. “What does it do?”
“It provides children with hours of delight!” he said, lifting me and setting me on its back.
I almost believed the magic would be real this time.
That the horse would carry me across the floor of the shoppe and out the door, right over the moors like a real horse.
It hadn’t, of course, but I’d rocked with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, so that Da could experience the magic I knew I never would.
“Are you all right?”
I turned to find Finlay standing a few feet behind me. A self-deprecating laugh escaped me as I wiped tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “Fine. A little dusty.”
“Do you want me to carry this one outside?” he asked, gesturing to the horse.
“That would be great. Here, let me help.” I knew he could do it by himself, but I wasn’t ready to be alone yet.
I gripped the horse’s tail while he took the head, backing through the maze of items with quick glances over his shoulder.
Bri was somewhere in the back, sifting through drawers that squeaked horrendously with every move, and I took the opportunity to study the way Finlay’s muscles moved beneath his shirt.
Once we were outside, we set the horse down and I looked up at the sky, grateful to see it was clear today. Otherwise, all the wooden furniture would be in danger.
Finlay pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. A few dark strands of hair clung to his forehead, and I found myself wanting to push them away. Instead, I dried my damp hands on my trouser legs, aware of Finlay’s gaze on me.
I closed my eyes, steeling myself. “Finlay?”
“Yes, Willow.”
I squeezed one eye open. “I wanted to apologize.”
His mouth quirked at the corners. “For what, Willow?”
I opened the other eye. “For treating you badly?”
He shook his head, but he didn’t look angry, only confused. “When did you treat me badly?”
A hundred times, I wanted to say. A million. In tiny ways, in big ways, every day since the day you met me. But I wasn’t remotely brave enough to admit those things. “When you tried to make the house nice for me, and I didn’t thank you. And the other day, when Argyle ran between us.”
His brow furrowed. “You’re sorry your kitten ran between us?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. I just…”
He watched me flounder with a faint smile.
“What I mean to say is, I should have come to your house before, when you invited me. I thought your mother wouldn’t want me there, but Bri said she likes the company, and you tried to tell me, but I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry about—”
He placed his hands on my shoulders and lowered his head to look me in the eyes.
I blinked.
“Willow, it’s all right. I know you care about me.”
A tiny, pathetic spark of hope lit in my chest. “You do?”
“Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
The spark immediately fizzled and died. “Right. Friends.” I wanted to place my hands on top of his, to step closer to him so he’d be forced to embrace me.
Instead, he lowered his hands down my arms, his grip firm. Warm. Friendly.
“Come on, we have a lot of work to do.” He ruffled my hair, and suddenly I knew exactly how I’d made him feel so many times before. Like a child. Like a playmate. Like a person he cared about in an entirely platonic way.
Between you, me, and the rocking horse?
I didn’t care for it at all.