Ivy
My dreams last night were full of strange sounds. Cracking and snarls and whistles.
I get dressed and wander down to the kitchen to find—nothing.
The cupboards, the fridge, everything has been emptied and deep cleaned besides a small box of chamomile at the back of one of the drawers.
My stomach growls loudly. I need coffee.
Need doesn’t even feel like an adequate word for how much I crave it in the morning.
“Okay, I have to go into town anyway,” I murmur to myself.
I’ve been muttering to myself more lately, which feels sad but necessary.
The silence—no cars, no horns, no shouts from a crowded street—all underscore how far from the life I knew I really am.
Of all the things to miss from the city, the people noises are not what I expected to be at the top of my list.
I head out, grateful I brought my favorite tennis shoes for the long walk down. The keys Claw and Law sent me clink together in my pocket. One for the cottage and one for the store.
That’s what really pulled me to Moonfall Isle.
After losing everything in the divorce, receiving a paid-off home and a business in a will feels as close to a fairytale as a thirty-year-old woman is going to get.
I already built a life around someone else once, and when that collapsed, it took everything with it.
Now I'm here to rebuild something that belongs only to me.
After yesterday, though, with the strange people, the strange noises at night, and a still-dead phone even after plugging it in before I went to bed, I’m not at all sure this was the right decision.
I'm concerned about my younger sister, Ella's, reaction.
She'll be wondering why I haven't called yet. Hopefully her college classes will keep her so busy she won’t have time to worry.
The walk down the bluff is considerably better than the walk up was. The address for the store was in the envelope left on the table last night. I look more closely at each of the shops and businesses as I come into town.
The Alexandria Book Nook is a black building with silver trim. The name of the shop is written in several languages across the sign. The display window holds tomes of every shape and size, including black ones, leather ones, scaled covers, and even scrolls tied with ribbon.
A woman sweeps the front walk with short, careful strokes.
She’s tall and takes her time, moving with the ease of someone who could be anywhere or nowhere at once.
Her dark hair is pulled back, her deep brown skin and kohl-lined eyes give her the look of a portrait you might see in a museum. She sweeps as if it’s a ritual.
As I walk by, her eyes meet mine and linger a moment longer than feels comfortable before she looks away.
The Cozy Charm Café across from the bookstore has a line that stretches halfway out the door.
The specials are written on a chalkboard in big, looping letters: Fish Espresso, Blood Barista Special, and Fairy Dust Decaf, alongside matcha mocha lattes and chai tea.
Even from here, the air is thick with cinnamon and dark roast. I like a good theme as much as anyone, but it’s not even Halloween.
Maybe this island is one of those New Age cult towns.
Great.
The rest of the street feels like the kind of small-town main drag that makes you slow down, even if you don’t mean to.
There’s a grocery store with produce spilling onto the sidewalk, a post office barely bigger than a closet, and a woodworking shop.
I pass a clothing boutique with something draped in the window that I can’t quite make out.
The flower shop has buckets of stems crowding the front step, petals nodding in the lake breeze.
Everything is a little mismatched and a little too charming, as if someone built a village from memory and got most of it right.
My shop, the one my aunt left me, sits near the roundabout where the statue still stands on its pedestal, watching the street.
I get in line just as it’s finally short enough to get inside. The walls are painted a sunshine yellow, the same shade as the outside of the building. Every table holds a small bouquet of flowers. I hope beyond hope that they have breakfast sandwiches. Or at the very least, muffins.
For a few moments, the menu above the counter keeps my attention.
When I glance back at the line to see if it's moved, several people are already looking at me—more than half the line and a few people at the counter.
When I catch them, most look quickly away, except a woman with glitter on her face and an older man with exceptionally large ears who take a few moments before finding something else to look at.
“New in town?” a deep voice asks behind me.
I turn and my stomach drops. For a moment the sun glints behind the tall, broad man behind me and catches him in shadow, making him look very much like the figure I thought I’d seen by my gate last night. He shifts and I'm less sure. Honestly, I'm not even sure I saw anyone. So I let it go.
He's at least a head taller than me, wearing a backwards baseball cap with dark hair beneath. Sharp green eyes move across my face and his jaw clenches.
"Yeah, I'm Ivy." I hold out my hand and he takes it.
A shock runs up my arm and a small spark of green ignites between our palms. Gone in a blink.
I jerk back, yanking my hand from his grasp.
"What was that?" The spark is gone but the warmth isn’t.
It spreads up my arm and settles low in my belly, heavy and pulsing.
I give myself a little shake and try to push the feeling aside, but it stays lodged there, warm and insistent, just under my ribs, curling lower.
"What was that?" I repeat.
His face is a cool mask of indifference. "Static." He shrugs. “I'm Conall."
Something twists in my gut, tight and unwelcome.
I turn back and it's my order. I get a breakfast sandwich and a black coffee no longer interested in the strange man behind me. Which is good because, when I glance back, he's gone.
I leave the bright café and make my way to a postbox on the corner, dropping in a letter I wrote to Ella, my sister. Hopefully I can call her soon, but if not, I want her to know I made it here and why I haven't called. Then I make my way to the address of my new shop.
The store—my store now, I guess—is light brown with white shutters and a sign above it labeled “Shipton Shop”. In smaller letters beneath are the words “General Store”.
For a moment I rummage through my purse, but then I stop, eyeing the gleaming copper knob.
No fucking way, right?
I try it, and it turns easily. A small bell above the door tinkles as it opens.
It isn’t locked.
Ridiculous.
But as I step in, I realize all the lights are on.
It looks like an old country store. Wooden shelves run floor to ceiling, tightly packed with jars and books and various knickknacks.
Baskets hold knitting yarn and crochet needles.
Handmade soaps sit on a low table wrapped in twine and brown paper.
Pegboards hung with artsy mugs and little cast iron pots and pans cover the walls between shelves.
Old wood floors and burlap fill the shop, underscored by something faintly herbal, like dried lavender or sage. A potbellied stove sits at the center of the shop. It’s cold now, but I imagine it’s the main source of heat in the winter.
The floor creaks under my feet as I step deeper into the shop.
That’s when I notice some of the items are not quite as typical as they first appeared.
A few of the jars on the shelf contain thick purple goo, and as I stare, I swear something shifts in one.
Some handmade candles sit on one shelf. A few of them are black with silver markings I don’t recognize.
And as I pass a mirror hung on the wall, I stop and stare.
I look just a little strange, and I can’t figure out why.
My hair is the same, shoulder length, brown and curly.
Freckles still scatter my nose and cheeks.
The sun dress I chose today is the same shade of blue.
Still, something is not quite right. The more I stare, the more an icy feeling climbs up my spine. So I blink and purposefully look away.
There’s a counter at the back of the store with a door behind it. The door suddenly yanks open, and a woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt with platinum blonde hair steps through. She looks a little younger than me, and when she sees me for one crazy second, her eyes look purple.
What the fu—
She blinks, and her eyes are now definitely green. They’re green. Were they green? Maybe it was the light slanting in from the front windows.
“Ugh. You’re the niece, aren’t you?” she asks. The irritation in that one statement straightens my spine and puts me immediately on guard.
“My aunt was Ursula Shipton,” I confirm.
“Yeah. Laz warned me he saw you come in yesterday,” she says, moving behind the counter and leaning over to grab something from underneath.
“Warned you? Why would he need to—I'm sorry, who are you?”
She straightens, holding a leather-bound, ancient-looking book thicker than my ass, and drops it on the counter with a crash that makes me flinch.
“I’m Amy. I was your aunt’s assistant, and I manage the store.”
I approach the counter cautiously, half expecting Amy to clock me with the giant book. It looks like it could do some damage.
“Oh. I thought my aunt worked alone.”
Amy shoots me a puzzled look. “You thought a woman as old as her ran a whole store by herself?”
Now that I think about it, it does seem absurd.
“I’m… I actually don’t know how old she was. I didn’t even know I had a great aunt until the inheritance notice came in from Claw and Law.”
Amy bites her lip. “You know, I wasn’t actually sure how old she was either.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Really?”
Amy smirks. “She was very stubborn, your aunt. I had to wrestle her birthday out of her, and that took two years, and she never told me her birth year.”
She smiles, and I smile. It occurs to me that this woman might be the best person to tell me about my only recently living relative. Maybe I should try not to piss her off right away.
“She also made it clear in her will that she wanted me to help you run the store. Train you on the books, inventory, finances, everything,” Amy goes on, irritation creeping back into her voice.
I get it a little more. She’s having to train the person who will be her boss. That has to suck.
“I really appreciate it,” is all I say. Because what else can I do? I’m here now. And I need this store. There’s nothing left for me on the mainland.
“Not sure I see the point.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
A sharp stab of panic runs through me. I cannot afford to have the one person available to help me learn and run this business leave.
“Just because you’re probably going to sell, right?” Amy says. “I mean, you don’t know anyone here, and this is a pretty tight-knit island. I’m sure you want to get back to your life.”
The words sink into me.
My life.
Yeah, that’s all pretty much gone at this point.
“I’m sorry. I thought my aunt might have told you. I can’t sell.”
She freezes and turns.
“The terms of my inheritance say I can’t sell for the first year.”
Her eyes close as she takes a deep breath in through her nose, then lets it out through her teeth.
She moves on. “I can start by showing you inventory and how to balance the books.” And so begins hours and hours of work learning a store I've only just stepped inside.