by Tegan Maher
With just under two hundred thousand in its city limits proper, Little Rock was still the most populous city in Arkansas—and minuscule compared to Los Angeles where I grew up.
“Have you lined up financing yet?” Barbara asked as she followed me around the dusty, stale building. Outside, dozens of people wandered in and out of the surrounding shops smiling and laughing. It was just three days before Christmas, and the town had done the square up in bright, twinkling lights. “I know a great loan officer at the Mystic’s End bank, and I’m sure I could get him in the office even though it’s the holidays.”
“I won’t need it,” I told her as I opened up a cupboard and peered in. “I’ll be paying cash.”
“I’m sorry, did you say you’ll be paying cash?” the woman said in a choked voice. “Where on earth did you get that kind of money?”
I pulled my head out of the cabinet to look at her sharply.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” Barbara said as she placed her hand over her mouth and blushed slightly. “That was terribly rude of me. Awfully rude of me. I don’t know what came over me, Mrs. Delphi—”
“Ms. Delphi,” I corrected her. “Not Mrs., I’m not married.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh, my goodness, I just assumed that you and the mister over there were married,” Barbara said, her eyes practically popping out of her head at Gunther and I being unmarried and shopping for real estate.
I wasn’t in the paranormal world anymore.
Or California, for that matter.
“Gunther is a close friend’s husband, Mrs. Jordan.” The real estate agent had already informed me she was quite married, and her husband was a prominent attorney. “He’s just here to help me take a look at the place and assist me with any plans, so I’m not doing this completely on my own,” I told her, cursing myself for making it sound like I needed a man to buy a building. “Not that I couldn’t.”
I should have brought Anya, the skin-headed, tattooed naiad, for help. Gunther was so conservatively dressed and polite that he fit right into this small southern town. He looked like a husband.
Just not mine, thank you very much.
“The building will just be mine, Mrs. Jordan,” I told the nosy real estate agent. “Gunther and I are not buying it together. Just me. And as I said previously, I’ll be paying cash.”
“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Jordon nodded frantically. “I’m sure the seller will be thrilled. Cash purchases make for speedy closings. In fact, you could be in this place by next week if you wanted to be!”
“Fortuna,” Gunther said, reaching his arm around my shoulder and gently steering me away from the over-eager real estate agent. Once we were in the backroom area, he leaned down and whispered, “This place is a dump. You know that, right?”
A thump crashed loudly from one floor above us. Gunther eyed the direction of the sound suspiciously.
“Sure, maybe it needs some work,” I said, lowering my eyes from the ceiling once I was sure chunks of it would not start falling on my head. “But this room would make a great workshop for art classes.” I walked toward the stairs and took a careful step. “Mrs. Jordon, we’re going to check out the second and third floor.”
“I’ll be right there!” she hollered, her heels clicking loudly.
“That’s all right,” Gunther called back. “We’d like some privacy to discuss it.”
The clacking heels halted, and a wave of frustration rolled over me. I stifled a laugh.
“What?” Gunther asked as we began our ascent.
“She’s very frustrated,” I whispered.
The handsome witch shrugged. “She gets her commission either way.”
“Look at this place. This place looks like it’s been empty for years.” Gunther opened the door to a closet on the third floor. The rusty hinge creaked, then broke, leaving my friend holding a stained wooden door. “The amount of work you’ll have to do—”
“Okay, you’re right, so it’s going to be work. I get that.” I stared out the window toward the old courthouse in the center of town. A large Christmas tree twinkled brightly as carolers dressed in red sang an off-key rendition of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. “But I want this building for a reason.”
“Why? What could possibly be so special about this place that you want to buy this decrepit old building?”
“Come here.” I motioned to Gunther, and he crossed the empty, dusty room to stand next to me at the dingy window. I pointed toward the street. “You see that old courthouse down there?”
Gunther nodded.
“You see those steps?”
He stepped forward and shifted his head to get a better view through a less filthy patch in the window. “Yep, I see them. What about them?”
“Someone left me there when I was an infant. Right there.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a folded up newspaper article. Unfurling it carefully, I laid it down on the wide windowsill and cautiously smoothed it. “See?” I pointed. “That’s me. And those are the steps. I’m not just from this town, Gunther. This town…it’s integral to my story.” I gazed out the window at the townspeople. “And I know nothing about it. Or my connection to it…well, other than this.”
Gunther motioned as if asking for permission to touch the paper, and I nodded. He picked it up gently and scanned the story I knew by heart.
During the night on Christmas Eve, an infant wrapped in a blanket—me—was left on the old courthouse's third step. Back then, the police department was in the basement of the old building, and authorities believed someone left me in hopes I would be found quickly. Since I was in good health and not ill from exposure, they assured the public that was likely the case.
No one came forward to claim me. No one reported seeing a pregnant woman in the months leading up to my abandonment. No family reported a child missing. There was no DNA back then, so social services swooped in and took possession of me. Within weeks, it was reported that I’d been adopted by a wealthy family in California that could have no children of their own, and I would have a very happy life.
Which was anything but the truth, I thought to myself wryly, because my life with my adoptive mother was anything but happy.
“How did you wind up in California?” Gunther asked, frowning.
“I don’t know.”
“How come—”
“Look, Gunther, any question you ask me? My answer’s going to be that I don’t know, so let’s just cut your inquiry short,” I told him, my voice tight. “You’re holding in your hand everything I know about myself from before they adopted me. Everything. If it’s not in that article, I don’t have the answer.”
He held out the paper, and I accepted it with a nod.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t. But now you know why I want this place. Why I need to be here.”
Another crash. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the walls.
“Okay,” Gunther said reluctantly as he turned away from the loud noise. His eyes were kind, but uncertain about the wisdom of my plan. I could feel the conflict within him—he didn’t think it was a good idea, but he understood why I thought I had to do this. “But I have some conditions. You’re letting me teach you some reparation magic,” he said as he enveloped me in a friendly hug. “I’m not letting you move into this dump until we shore it up. Charlotte would kill me if I helped you buy a building that collapsed around your ears.”
I smiled widely. “Deal.”
2
“This is the drive out price?” Gunther asked as he scanned the bid provided by the contractor. “No hidden charges, no hidden fees?”
“Well, now, there, Mr. Makepeace, ya’ll know that in a remodel of this magnitude, things can go over sometimes,” Egbert Knight, the foreman of the project, said with a friendly smile. “And we’re going to have to contract the plumber, so I can’t promise that’s exactly what it will come in at. He hasn’t even looked at the issues, and this building’s been sitting
here empty a long time.”
It was just two days after I signed the papers and handed over earnest money. The owner of the building—a company—had agreed to rent us the place while we were going through the closing. I was grateful—it allowed me to get a head start on the construction.
Which would be even more significant than I expected.
Gunther had tried to talk me out of it, saying it was too great a risk to sink money into a property not legally mine yet. But I knew it would be.
I was sure of it, as sure as I had ever been of anything.
I scanned the bid again, my stomach tightening into knots. The proposal was eye-popping—though, to be fair to Egbert, the place wasn’t in great shape. “It’s beginning to sound like this paper’s more of a suggestion than a quote,” I said with a nod toward Gunther’s hand.
Egbert Knight, a grizzled man in his mid-forties, cast a sour look at me—as if the fact that I opened my mouth at all was a pesky issue he couldn’t quite get around.
When he didn’t respond, I asked, “Can we build in a ceiling?”
Egbert blinked and then looked up. “You want us to build you another ceiling?”
“Not up there,” I said with exasperation. “Into the quote. I’ll approve overages up to ten percent, but anything over that amount, you’d need to come and get my approval.”
“Your approval?” Egbert asked, surprised. Turning to look at Gunther, he asked, “Why would I need to get her approval?”
Before I could explode with indignation all over the guy, Gunther reached over and placed a hand on mine. “Because this is her building, Mr. Knight. And her money paying for the construction.”
Again with the shocked face. It was as if the concept of a woman owning her own business hadn’t quite reached this town in its nineteen-fifties bubble. He covered it quickly and smiled.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I just assumed,” Egbert said, tipping his head. “We don’t get a lot of women running projects like this in this town. In fact, only one I can think of is Evangeline Laroux over at the track, and I think Martin did most of the construction talking for her.”
“She picked the colors,” Virgil Fairbank, Egbert’s assistant, called as he tapped the exposed brick wall with a metal bar. “I worked on that job. She picked the colors for the club, but other than that, she hung all over Martin—”
“Virgil!” Egbert snapped.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Roger that,” Virgil answered without turning around. The sound of metal tapping against brick never missed a beat.
“Sorry about that,” Egbert nodded. “So, back to the matter at hand. Can we go ahead and get a deposit? We can start on Tuesday, right after Christmas.”
“Wait a minute, a deposit? Aren’t we going to get other bids?” I asked Gunther. Before he could answer, Egbert burst into laughter. I glared at the foreman. “What’s so funny?”
“Ma’am, we are the only construction company in town. I don’t mean the biggest. I mean the only company for private hire in Mystic’s End. You could get someone from Little Rock, sure. Still, the travel and time costs would balloon your expenses up far beyond what you seem comfortable paying,” he continued, speaking with the self-assuredness of a man sure I had no other options. “If you want to get this done for a reasonable price, we’re the ones to do it. And if you want us to start Tuesday, we need a deposit for materials today.”
“You have no competitor at all?”
Egbert smiled. “You’re not used to small towns, are you, ma’am?”
“I guess not,” I admitted. Turning to Gunther, I raised an eyebrow. Before he could meet my eyes, a streak of gray caught my attention outside the front window of my shop. I strained to look, but whatever was there before was now gone. Refocusing, I asked, “What do you think, Gunther?”
“The town’s still standing. It’s only this building that looks like it’s falling down around our ears, so they’re probably decent enough,” Gunther observed. “And you’re the one that wants to get up here quickly, Fortuna. It’s your shop, your new home. So, it’s your decision.”
I bit my lip and looked around at the drab building. It was quiet, dank. The air was stale, and it had an aura of…uncertainty. Like the building itself was unsure of its purpose, holding its breath to discover a decisive direction, an unequivocal identity.
Or maybe that was just me.
I looked at the bid, pulled out a pen, and signed. Without comment, I reached into my purse and wrote a check for the deposit. Wordlessly handing it to Egbert, I tried not to wince at the pain of watching my reserve funds deplete at such a rapid rate.
“You won’t regret this,” Egbert assured me, folding the check in half and pocketing it. “Now, let’s talk about this kitchen on the second floor. You really don’t want us to put in an oven?”
“That was a delicious hamburger,” Gunther said, his mouth full. Mayo slid down the corner of his chiseled jaw. “You should have tried it.”
I sat across from him in a booth at the Mystic Diner, a local eatery the construction workers assured me was better than anything the fancy tourist complex at the edge of town could serve up. My tuna melt on multi-grain bread was as good as any I’d ever gotten in Los Angeles. “My sandwich was good. I will steal a fry, though,” I told him, snatching one before he could object.
There were two dozen townsfolk seated around the establishment—an eatery on the other side of the town square from where my building was.
Which would be convenient when I moved here since I don’t cook.
Despite tourists wandering the square here, there, and everywhere for the Mystic’s End Annual Festival of Lights, the diner gave off a distinct locals only vibe.
Gunther and I hadn’t settled into the booth for over two minutes when we felt eyes on us from all directions. Discussions taking place openly had lowered to whispers.
“You’re causing quite a stir,” my friend observed.
“Actually, we’re causing quite a stir. And yet not one person has come up to us to say hello,” I pointed out. I glanced out over the room with a mixture of bafflement and genuine curiosity. As eager as the townspeople were to know more about us, I was just as inquisitive about them. “There are times I wish I hadn’t committed to being more ethical with my telepathy,” I admitted to Gunther before taking another bite of my sandwich. “I’m dying to know what they’re all thinking.”
“Priestess Goodfellow really made you think differently about who we are, huh?”
“I never thought about who we are, Gunther, because I’ve only been what we are for a few months. When I was just some random human with telepathy, ethics didn’t seem hugely important.” I tilted my head. “I don’t know why. Honestly, it’s kind of weird. That I’d be more concerned about humans now that I’m not one anymore.”
“Do you regret becoming a witch?” Gunther asked, his voice low, his eyes inquisitive.
“In what way do you mean?”
“Do you wish you had picked something else when Charlotte was trying to keep you safe?”
Gunther always had the most laid back way of describing things. Charlotte wasn’t just trying to keep me safe. Charlotte was trying to keep me from being executed by the Witches Council for breaking their rule. The one that said humans—even half-humans—could not live in paranormal cities or towns. The punishment on the books had always been death. Still, the paranormal circuses had forever broken Council rules with impunity behind a bubble of protection the Council couldn’t breach.
Eventually, a confrontation over those rules ensued. Charlotte and Gunther, the last two paranormal ringmasters in the entire world, defeated the Council.
Like, hardcore.
Council was gone, the seat of paranormal government upended.
But the consequences of that magical fight—like Gunther and I both being turned into full witches to keep us from being killed—remained. For Gunther, it had been a dream come true. For me? I didn’t
know what it was, really.
Necessary, I guess.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t know what else I would have wanted to be. Honestly, it kind of seemed destined in a weird way. Even though I don’t really believe in destiny.”
Gunther’s eyes widened. “You don’t believe in destiny? After everything we just went through?”
“That wasn’t destiny,” I waved my hand. “That was an inheritance. Charlotte inherited her powers. The Witches' Council inherited their seats. We inherit the problems of the people who came before us—like the Capulets and the Montagues. You and Charlotte were like Romeo and Juliet bringing the circuses together. Your mother and Mercy were kind of that for the circuses and Imperatorial City.”
“Who are Romeo and Juliet?” he asked, confused.
“I keep forgetting how cut off from the human world you were.” I smiled at him. “Have Charlotte take you to a Shakespearean play. I think you’d like it.”
Before Gunther could answer, all hell broke loose.
“Did anyone see what happened?”
“How could someone run off with the projector?”
“No lights tonight? But Mama, I want to see the pretty lights!”
Now, I’m psychic, and I still don’t know how on earth the people eating their dinner knew some drama was taking placed out in the square—much less understood enough about what had happened to begin conversations about it.
But they knew.
The lot collectively dropped their utensils with a clatter, pushed themselves out of the booths, and moved toward it like lemmings marching toward a cliff. Gunther and I followed the diner patrons as they rushed out the door.
“You sure this isn’t a paranormal town?” Gunther whispered as we spilled out onto the town square. “How did they know what was going on?”