Aven
The next morning, I find myself standing behind the counter at Soren’s shop, trying to look like I belong here and not like a man who recently traded his entire theological education for a room in the back of a boutique that sells cursed candles.
I've decided to be useful. Useful is a safe category.
Useful people don't get asked existential questions about their celestial bloodlines or their mother's cryptic journals.
"If you touch that shelf again, I will turn your fingers into actual carrots," Soren snaps, not looking up from a ledger that he's currently treating like a personal enemy.
He's wearing a loose black sweater that keeps sliding off one shoulder like it has better places to be, and his reddish-orange hair is standing up in peaks that suggest he's been vibrating at a high frequency since dawn.
He's currently locked in a silent war with a fountain pen that seems to be leaking essence rather than ink.
"I'm just organizing by utility," I say, ignoring the way my palm tingles when I move a jar of what looks like pickled eyeballs.
The jar is cold, but the liquid inside is swirling with a faint, rhythmic pulse.
"Currently, you have the 'protection from spite' salts next to the 'attract a minor demon' incense.
That's a workplace safety hazard, Soren.
It's like putting bleach next to the orange juice.
One wrong grab and your customer goes from warding off an ex-boyfriend to hosting a tea party for a Duke of Hell. "
"Well, your ecosystem has the people skills of a feral raccoon with inherited trauma," I mutter, sliding a stack of leather-bound notebooks into a straight line.
They're made of a skin that feels too much like vellum and too little like paper, humming a low, discordant C-sharp.
"I'm the least qualified haunted cashier in the city, and even I know that customers shouldn't have to dodge a biting plant just to buy a smudge stick. "
As if on cue, the semi-sentient fern on the corner of the counter snaps its leaves at my sleeve, its serrated edges catching on the silk of my cuff.
I swat it away with a rolled-up flyer for a missing cat.
It's the third time this hour the greenery has tried to taste me.
I'm beginning to think the shop doesn't want to be organized; it wants to be left in a state of beautiful, expensive chaos that only Soren understands.
Ira emerges from the back room looking like a military solution to a domestic problem.
He's carrying a toolbox and a gallon of water, which he sets down next to me with a thud that vibrates through the floorboards.
He doesn't say anything—Ira treats words like a finite resource he's saving for a national emergency—but he checks the wards on the doorframe with a practiced, clinical focus.
He's a massive, judgmental survival instinct with tattoos, and every time he passes me, he adjusts his trajectory just enough to make sure I'm still within arm's reach.
His presence is a physical weight, grounded and silent, a sharp contrast to Soren's frantic electricity.
"Eat," Ira says, sliding a protein bar across the counter. It's not a suggestion. It's a command disguised as a syllable. He lingers for a second, his eyes tracing the line of my jaw as if checking for signs of spectral exhaustion.
"I'm fine, Ira. I had toast. Or what Soren called toast before he threatened the toaster with generational violence," I say, but I take the bar anyway.
The way Ira watches me eat is both comforting and deeply weird, like being monitored by a very large, very protective grizzly bear who's concerned about my caloric intake.
He waits until I've taken a bite before he moves to the back to repair a sagging shelf that looks suspiciously like it's trying to melt into the wall.
Cain is draped across the velvet couch like an ancient predator pretending stillness is the same thing as leisure.
He's reading a book on seventeenth-century cartography, his long fingers turning the pages with a grace that makes me want to look away and stare at the same time.
He doesn't look like he's paying attention to the shop, but I see his ears twitch every time the bell over the door jingles.
He shifts his weight, moving a fraction of an inch closer to the counter whenever the spirit noise in my head spikes, that high-pitched ringing that sounds like a thousand distant radios, his presence a heavy, cool anchor that keeps the room from spinning. He doesn't intrude, but he's constant.
The bell rings, and a woman in a power suit walks in, looking like she's lost and very unhappy about it.
She eyes the biting plant with suspicion, pulling her leather handbag closer to her chest. Soren sighs, a sound full of theatrical suffering, and slams his ledger shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the small space.
"We don't do psychic readings on Tuesdays," Soren says, his voice dripping with bratty exhaustion.
"And if you're looking for the 'love potion' kit, we're out of stock.
Try the place down the street that smells like patchouli and desperation.
They'll sell you some pink water and tell you it's destiny. "
The woman blinks, her mouth falling open. "I... I was actually looking for a warding stone for my office. My assistant said this place was... discrete."
"Soren's just joking," I interject, stepping forward with a smile that I hope doesn't look as forced as it feels.
I've spent three years behind a bar; I can handle a confused customer better than a witch who thinks social cues are a personal insult.
"He's very passionate about his inventory.
The warding stones are right over here, next to the bells that don't scream.
Are you looking for general protection or something specific to the workplace?
We have some excellent obsidian for cutting through corporate toxicity. "
I lead her toward the display, feeling Soren's burning gaze on the back of my neck.
I can practically hear him pouting, the air around him crackling with minor sparks.
I smooth the interaction over, explaining the difference between obsidian and black tourmaline with a confidence I absolutely don't possess, improvising based on the labels I'd just reorganized.
The woman relaxes, her shoulders dropping an inch.
By the time I ring her up, she's actually smiling, and she leaves the shop without being cursed or insulted.
"You're terrible at this," I say to Soren as the door clicks shut. "Truly. If you were a bartender, you'd be fired before the first happy hour ended. You have the bedside manner of a migraine."
"I don't need to be liked," Soren snaps, though he looks offended that I handled his customer better than he did. He's rearranging the ledger I just straightened, purely out of spite. "I need to be respected. There's a difference. People come here because I'm the best, not because I'm charming."
"One of them pays the rent, Soren. Charm is just currency for people who don't want to get hexed."
I turn back to the shelves, my hand reaching for a bundle of dried herbs—mountain sage and something dark and sticky—that's been sitting in the shadows near the back.
The moment my skin brushes the twine, the shop around me vanishes.
It's not a vision. It's a memory flash, vivid and terrifyingly domestic.
I'm standing in this exact spot, but the air is warmer, smelling of lavender and old paper.
A woman with grey hair and hands that look exactly like Soren's, long-fingered and restless, is grinding herbs into a stone mortar, humming a low, tuneless melody that vibrates in my chest. Vera.
The flash is so sharp I can feel the grit of the herbs under my own fingernails.
I can feel her satisfaction, a quiet, humming pride in the work, and a sudden, sharp pang of love for a grandson who was always too loud for his own skin.
It's not my memory, but for three seconds, something opens through me without asking.
I drop the bundle as if it's made of live coals, the dried leaves scattering across the mahogany floor in a messy arc.
"Aven?" Soren is at my side in an instant, his manic energy replaced by a sudden, sharp stillness.
He reaches out, his hand hovering over mine.
He doesn't touch me, not yet, but the air between us is thick with the weight of what just happened.
He knows. He feels the residual echo of his grandmother clinging to my skin like static.
I can see the flicker of recognition in his eyes, the way his pupils dilate.
“I saw another piece of her,” I whisper, my heart trying to climb out of my throat. The humming is still echoing in my ears, a ghostly vibration. “Not like before. This was a memory. She was grinding herbs and humming, and she looked happy, Soren. She was thinking about you.”
Soren's fingers brush the back of my hand as he kneels to pick up the herbs.
The contact is electric, a flicker of Vera's presence passing between us like warmth through a cracked door.
Soren goes still, his jaw tight, his bratty defenses stripped away until he just looks like a man who misses his grandmother more than he knows how to say.
He holds the bundle with a reverence that breaks something small inside me.
For a moment, the sharp-tongued witch is just a boy in an empty shop.
"She liked that song," Soren says softly, his green eyes fixed on the floor. "She used to sing it when the shop was quiet. It's... it's an Essren ward. A small one for peace. She always said the walls here were too hungry for their own good."