Chapter Nineteen #2
“I’m afraid it was broken. But I have something I think you’ll love.” I walked over to the rocking horse. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes,” the woman breathed. “My children would love it.”
“Just one minute,” I said, scurrying over to get Bri.
We still didn’t know what the rocking horse did, and I couldn’t very well go around endangering children.
“What do we do?” I asked Bri. I would have taken it outside before she touched it, but we’d never get it through the door and past the waiting patrons without causing a riot.
“I suppose we’ll have to see what it does,” she said, leading me back to the horse.
If anyone noticed the connection between Bri and the fact that nothing exhibited magic until she was near it, they didn’t say.
As she ran her hands over the horse’s back, carnival music began to play, and the horse began to rock of its own volition.
I couldn’t say where the music was coming from, but it was eerie and beautiful and undoubtedly magic.
Even though it would only last for a day, a part of me wished I could keep it.
Instead, I explained the horse’s history and provenance to the woman, who eagerly handed over her money and shoved her way out the door.
By midafternoon, we’d sold almost half our inventory.
The line had petered out to a few stragglers, people who had little money but wanted to get their hands on something magical, no matter how small.
A few bought the talismans I’d spent so many years convinced were fake.
Someone even bought the unmagical ostrich egg, just to have something from our shoppe.
Finally, we were down to our last customer. I blanched when I realized it was Mrs. Shilling.
“Oh, good afternoon,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face.
“Good afternoon, dear. What a wonderful job you’ve done with the place.”
“Ehm, thank you.”
She smiled, baring her long white teeth. “I’m here about Trystan’s birthday present.”
I glanced at Bri helplessly. “Right, his birthday present.”
“I have it,” Bri said. “One moment.” She motioned for me to follow her to the storeroom.
“I completely forgot,” I hissed as I looked around the shelves. “What do we do?”
“I told you I’d take care of it.” She reached up to the highest shelf and pulled down a small parcel that was neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.
“What is that?”
“It’s hair pomade. I tested it out this morning for a customer. It makes hair fall out.” She showed me a small bald patch on her forearm.
“What’s Trystan going to do with that?” I asked.
“Put it all over his head, of course.”
My jaw dropped. “Bri! We can’t. If we tell Mrs. Shilling that it makes his hair grow and he wakes up bald, she’ll know we lied. She’ll ruin us.”
Bri grinned. “Nah. We’ll tell her its magic pomade. We won’t specify what it does. Besides, no one in this town likes Trystan, from what I can tell. His hair will grow back.” Her grin widened. “Eventually.”
I cackled as she tucked the parcel under her arm and left the storage closet. “It’s free of charge,” she said to Mrs. Shilling, handing it over.
Rather than being delighted, as most people would have been, she wrinkled her nose a little. “But is it…” She dropped her voice to a hiss. “Exclusive?”
“It is,” I assured her. “Trystan has always been so kind to me. I feel like I owe it to him.”
Literally anyone else in the world would have had enough sense to know I was lying; Trystan had never been kind to anyone. But Mrs. Shilling was either willfully ignorant or genuinely deluded. “That’s very kind, Willow.”
Bri and I smiled in unison. “Wish Trystan a very happy birthday for us,” Bri said.
“I will!” Mrs. Shilling waved as she walked out the door.
“I thought we were going to charge her an arm and a leg,” I said to Bri from the side of my mouth as we waved back.
“I know. But it’s not exactly as though we were going to sell it to anyone else. Besides, this way, she won’t have any recourse when she realizes what we’ve done. She could demand money back.”
“She’ll have a much harder time demanding hair,” I said with a snort, before we both burst out laughing.
We closed early, exhausted and half delirious at the amount of money we’d made.
“That was beyond even my wildest expectations,” I breathed, leaning against the counter.
“I know,” Bri agreed, wiping sweat from her brow and taking a long sip of water.
“I think you were right about shopping by appointment only. We’ll anger some people, but we need to spend more time with each customer. And we need time to replenish our inventory.”
Seeing the look in Bri’s eyes, I hurried on. “Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to participate. But I have to acquire more stock, or we’ll be through by the end of the month.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You heard Finlay. No scheming, Willow. The point was to get you out of debt.”
“The point was to keep the shoppe open. Alive. You saw the wonder on those people’s faces.
” I’d felt closer to my father today than I had since he died.
For the first time, I understood how much he truly loved magic, so much that he was content to sell the idea of it as much as the reality.
He wanted to share that passion with other people, even at the expense of his own livelihood. His own reputation.
Of course, that had also been his downfall, his commitment to hope and possibility.
Bri watched me, still suspicious. “How exactly do you plan to get more magical objects?”
“Not every magical item has to be touched by a magic practitioner to work, right?”
“As I understand it, they lose their potency over time. If something goes sleepy from lack of use, like my violin, the magic needs to be reawakened.”
“Exactly. So once we’ve saved enough, I’ll be able to use some of our profit to invest in newer items. Ones that won’t stop working after two days, that are clear in their purpose and attractive to buyers.”
“You plan to do that how, exactly? I thought you wanted to make an honest living, but I don’t know anyone who trades honestly in magical items. They’re too rare, too valuable.”
I reached for a cloth to dust the counter, trying to decide if I should tell Bri the truth, when I accidentally knocked Mr. Wexley’s business card to the ground. Before I could reach for it, Bri stooped to pick it up.
“What’s this?”
A cold, uneasy feeling washed over me. At this point, I had no reason to keep Wexley’s identity from Bri, but something about his empty eyes made me shiver. “Mr. Wexley saw our advertisement. He’s a collector.”
“What does he want?” Bri asked, still staring at the card.
“I’m not entirely sure.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Should we reach out to him?” she asked, looking up at me with her guileless brown eyes.
“I will.” I owed her that much, after everything she’d done for me. If Wexley was dangerous, at least I’d be the one to find out.
She nodded and turned to fetch our new, nonmagical broom, but I stopped her.
“Can I ask you something?”
She cocked her head. “What else can you possibly want to know about me?”
It was too blunt, what I was going to ask, the kind of question Finlay would chastise me for. But before I went to Wexley, before I risked my own life pursuing magical objects at the source, I had to know.
I was probably being selfish as usual, but I could have sworn I’d seen real joy in Bri’s eyes today. At some point, she’d stopped being shy with customers, stopped hesitating before touching items. With enough time, with enough success, perhaps this could be a real life for her. For both of us.
“If your parents didn’t despise magic,” I asked, “if they accepted you just as you are, would you still consider your magic a curse?”
She was silent long enough for me to regret asking.
Finally, with a weary sigh that made her seem much older than her eighteen years, she said, “I stopped dreaming about ifs a long time ago, Willow.” She glanced down at Wexley’s card again, her lips pressed into a resolved line.
“I will find the grimoire and break this curse, even if it kills me.”