Chapter 18
Eighteen
Ipush Caleb into the shop and shut the door behind us, locking it just as quickly because Silverlight Shore’s not ready for what’s happening inside my shop.
Hell, I don’t think I’m ready for what’s happening inside my shop.
I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.
There are tentacles. Practically everywhere.
Well, that’s not entirely true, but one tentacle is a lot of tentacles when you’re used to seeing your candy shop with no tentacles in it.
“What in the world?” Caleb says.
“My thoughts exactly.”
I have no words. I simply look around in complete shock, trying to figure out what the hell it is I’m seeing.
A dozen, maybe more octopi cling to the window sills. Another sits at the base of the door. Towels in hand — the same towels I keep on hand for Gunner in the back room.
Well, I guess they’re not towels in hand. I suppose they’re towels in tentacles, and they’re slowly mopping up the floodwaters.
The huge fan I keep on hand in the back room during the summertime to help the heat of the kitchen dissipate out the back door sits between the counter and the front of the store, turned on and drying off anything that’s left inside.
“I knew octopi were smart, but I didn’t realize they could do this,” I say.
It’s a woefully inadequate expression, but it’s just about all I have because my brain has short-circuited.
I take a long drink of my latte.
Gunner plops down next to me, tongue lolling out as he surveys the strange scene before us.
“So you don’t usually have octopi working as flood cleanup crew?” Caleb asks, leaning against the wall.
He is a bit paler than usual under his beard, but I have a feeling my skin tone isn’t much better because I’m just about as shocked.
“No, I can’t say that I normally have octopi doing anything anywhere, ever.”
“So this isn’t like a witch thing. You guys don’t just have, like, an army of octopi waiting to hang out and clean up?”
“If it were, my life would be a lot easier,” I say.
The octopus closest to us — the one mopping up the water on the floor with the towel— puts a tentacle around my leg underneath my sweatpants, and its voice echoes in my mind, reminiscent of the same one I heard last night but not nearly as loud.
“Queen Annabelle sent us,” it says simply.
“The ward may not be up and running, but she wanted you to know that she’s here in good faith.
She wants you to focus on getting the ward back up to bring order to our kingdom, and she knows that if you have more time to concentrate on the ward and you’re not worried about the candy stuff, then you’ll be more likely to help out again. ”
“Huh,” I say. “Well, can you tell her I said thank you?”
The octopus releases its tentacle and goes back to scrubbing.
Caleb’s giving me an odd look.
“Did it tell you something?” he asks.
“You know, you’re taking this all really well,” I tell him. “And yes. Annabelle, that’s the ah, kraken from last night, uh, she sent them over here to help.”
“I’m not sure how else to take it,” he says, stretching out tall. I try not to drool at the sliver of skin exposed.
“I think you’re taking it better than I am.”
“I’ve always been the more calm and collected of the two of us. It will make us a great parenting team, in a few years. So you communicated telepathically with that octopus?”
I blink, wondering if I should be treated for verbal whiplash.
“Um,” I say. “Can’t say that’s something I normally do. Like I said, my magic is just candy. Some of the candies make you feel better. They fill that little space in your heart when you’re craving something that’s not just chocolate.”
“That makes sense. As much as anything else in this store makes sense,” he says.
I can’t help but laugh at that.
“This is incredible,” I say, watching an octopus scrub the glass countertop clean. “It could have been so much worse.”
“It almost was.” Gunner’s tail wags, and he leans forward, sniffing the head of an octopus before a tentacle rears up and slaps him on the nose.
“I wasn’t gonna bite it,” he says. “Or even lick it. I just needed a sniff.”
“Don’t sniff the octopi,” I tell him. “I don’t think they like it.”
“Wow, Sherlock, what an amazing deduction,” Gunner says dryly. He stands up, padding toward the candy counter. “Come on, let’s see the rest of it.”
“I never thought I’d be taking advice from a dog,” Caleb says.
“I’d say you get used to it, but you really don’t,” I tell him.
Caleb’s lips quirk up in a grin and he reaches for my hand, and we walk to the back of the store holding hands, watching out for octopi and rogue tentacles, and somehow it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
The damage isn’t too bad. The worst is the back room, and that’s only because some of the cardboard shipping supplies are soaked and irredeemable.
Gunner noses the stereo, the same one I had in my bedroom as a kid, and the radio comes on. We all work in time with the music to remove the ruined packaging and ribbon and tape and take it out to the dumpster in the back.
“How much damage do you think that is?” Caleb says.
“I’ll check my inventory spreadsheets and see how many boxes we had on hand and file the insurance claim for that,” I say.
Sweat drips down my temple and I rub it off with my shoulder.
“Thanks for letting me borrow your clothes,” I tell him. “This would have been a real pain in the ass in my dress.”
“You want to go back to your house and change?” he asks. “Not that you don’t look great in my clothes. In fact, I’d prefer if you wore them all day. But you might be more comfortable for the rest of the cleanup wearing something of your own.”
“Yeah,” I say, grateful. “I absolutely do. But these clothes are already messy, and as much as I’d like a shower and my own clothes, let’s just get my store sorted out before I ruin my clothes. I’ll feel better having this taken care of.”
“You trying to say you’d rather have my clothes get ruined than yours?” Caleb says, arching an eyebrow.
“You caught me,” I tell him. “I’m on a secret mission to destroy all your clothes so that you have to walk around naked for the rest of your life. It’s my evil plan and you’ve found me out.”
An octopus who’s been inching slowly into the room stops, swiveling its eyes toward me and giving me a long look.
“That was a joke, for the record,” I tell the octopus. “Just in case. I don’t want Queen Annabelle thinking that I’m some sort of evil mastermind when in fact I’m just an overworked candy shop owner who happens to be a witch.”
“All right,” I say. “Do you think there’s any damage to the sheetrock?”
Caleb looks around with an expert eye.
“It looks like it dried off pretty well. Do you have any idea how long these little helpers were here for?”
“I should probably install cameras in the store,” I say.
“So you’re saying you don’t have cameras in your store?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I tell him. “I’ve never had a reason for them. But I suppose if I’m going to have random sea creatures show up… cameras are probably a bad idea all the same, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, I don’t think you want evidence of this,” he says. “Your insurance company might have a lot of questions if you’ve got about twenty octopi hanging out in your store repeatedly during massive storm events.”
“It’s a good point,” I say.
The octopus nods as if in agreement and then slithers farther over.
I don’t know how they found all the cleaning supplies and all the towels I had stored here, but they’re doing a good job, and I quickly decide that sometimes not asking questions is the best method when it comes to sentient octopi who can communicate telepathically.
The less I know, the better.
The only thing I need to figure out is how to get that ward back up and running to protect our town.
I sigh, exhausted.
“Come on,” Caleb says. “We’ve been here for a few hours now. Your store’s OK. I know you say you don’t want to change, but let’s go ahead and get you back home, get some food in you, and then we’ll head back out to help everybody else when you’re ready, OK?”
I nod in agreement.
Gunner barks.
“I’m hungry too.”
“Gunner, we cannot keep feeding you like we have been,” I say, laughing. “You don’t need three meals a day. You’re a dog.”
“I’m a very intelligent FAMILIAR and I’ll have you know that my cognitive resources also require fuel.”
“Right,” I tell him. “Would you settle for some fudge?”
“You know I would,” he says.
Groaning to myself, I walk over to the counter where I store the special dog-friendly peanut butter fudge that’s not really fudge at all and is just a dog treat that I’ve named fudge.
I take a piece down and Gunner gobbles it up, and I pat him on the head. Just touching him helps relieve some of my stress, and I bend down and give him a big kiss on his forehead between his eyes.
“Love you, buddy,” I say.
He gives me a doggy grin, his breath smelling like beef broth and peanut butter and all the things that I use to make that special recipe.
“I love you too,” he says, licking my hand for good measure.
No sooner have we decided to head home when the doorbell over the front of the store jingles and I hear a sharp intake of breath.
“What in the world?”
Rose’s voice echoes through the otherwise quiet store, loud enough to be heard over the stereo playing softly in the background.
“Ivy? Gunner? What the hell is going on?”
“Shit,” I say, racing toward the front of the store where the octopi are still cleaning like the world’s strangest post-storm cleanup crew.
“Hey,” I say, dragging out the word. “Hey, Rose. Hey, Posey. Didn’t you guys lock the door behind you?”
I say it in that strange high-pitched voice that always seems to come out when I’m feeling overwhelmed and uncomfortable.
“What is going on?” Rose says. “I thought your magic was only for, like, baking and food.”
Her eyes are stuck on the absolute union of octopi scattered around the store, scrubbing furiously, eight tentacles going at a time.