Charms & Clouds

by Emilia Spring

  Avery looked at us, furtive, and then gestured for Gianna to follow her. “I'll tell you where they can’t hear us.” Avery winked at me, and Gianna followed her closer to the corner of the warehouse.

  I looked at Sam, who was rinsing the pot in the sink that I didn't realize we had. “What are you doing?” I asked, keeping an eye on Avery and Gianna out of the corner of my eye.

  “Practicing.” Sam studied the pot, then scrubbed at it some more.

  “What will your exam be like, anyway?” I asked. What sort of kitchen testing would they do? I mean, obviously I’d never seen one. All I had was TV to go on, and Harry Potter had written exams. “Is there a written exam?”

  She rolled her eyes and pointed at me. “If you get my Mom started on that one more time, I'm just going to start living in your house.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Somebody else for Great-Aunt Mabel to drive crazy.”

  Sam bit back a laugh. “She still hanging out?” She picked up the pot and put it back on the stove. It was a camp stove, propped up by two high stands.

  I nodded towards Gianna. “She says that we’re not going to get rid of her.”

  Sam looked at Gianna. “Well, she would know.” She washed her utensils, her hands a bit too jerky.

  “You really are nervous, aren't you?” I asked.

  Sam smiled at me. “It's hard to explain since you haven't taken an exam.”

  “Is Clementine is doing practice exams?” Wasn't that a thing? If that wasn't a thing in the magical world, it needed to be.

  Sam nodded. “There's a written exam, a practical exam, and then a demonstration section.”

  I whistled. “How long is this test?”

  Sam sighed. “Written test is two hours, practical is an hour and a half, and the demonstration is three.”

  No wonder she was nervous. That was a hell of a test.

  “Are visitors allowed?” I asked slowly.

  She looked at me, her smile tight. “You'd better be there.”

  I blinked at her. “I mean, of course, for moral support and stuff –”

  “Not just for moral support,” Sam said, cutting me off. “The demonstration involves a four course dinner. I can't eat all of that by myself.”

  My stomach rumbled at the thought. Oh, speaking of, I’d missed lunch. I peered past Sam, looking at the fridge that contained the risotto. “Can I have one?”

  Sam clunked the spoon she was washing on her mini counter with a sigh. “Fine! Fine, eat me out of house and home.”

  Drama queen. I grabbed a container of the risotto and a plastic fork, and dipped into it. It was still warm, even though it had been in the fridge. It was even better than I thought it would be, especially now that it was finished. It had cooled off enough that it was decadent, the Parmesan cheese giving it a creamy finish.

  “This is a pretty basic variation,” Sam said. She was gathering some other ingredients now, flour and butter and milk and other baking things. Some type of biscuit or something, I guessed.

  “Are you going to make biscuits with heavy cream?” Gianna asked, popping up out of nowhere. Avery followed her, because apparently they were done with their conversation.

  Sam blinked and looked at her. “No,” she said slowly. “Why?

  “Grandma used to make them like that all the time,” Gianna said with a shrug. “Said Mom came up with the recipe.”

  I winced internally, as I always did when Gianna's mom came up. Too much loss for one kid in such a short time.

  “How did she do it?” Sam stopped, watching Gianna curiously.

  “Well, instead of using butter and milk, use heavy cream,” Gianna said. “They don't rise quite as high, and they're not going to be quite as fluffy, because they don't have all the layers, but it’ll work.”

  “Show me?” Sam asked.

  Much to my surprise, Gianna looked back at me for permission.

  “Show us your skills.” I winked.

  Gianna rolled her eyes, but I could see nerves in the way she held her shoulders. Then she turned back to Sam and started giving her instructions. Not technically bossing her around, but coming as close as she could get without being rude.

  “How about you just show me?” Sam nudged Gianna gently.

  Gianna sighed, but she was smiling. “I’ll do this one, then you do the next batch.”

  “Sounds good.” Sam crossed her arms over her chest, watching Gianna intently.

  I heard Avery come up next to me, a few feet away. “You're doing good with her,” Avery’s voice was soft, so Gianna couldn’t hear.

  “I'm doing what I can,” I admitted. “If she does well, well, that's a side benefit.” I wanted her to be happy, and I was going to do anything I could to make that happen. I thought Sam and Avery would, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Gianna?” I said hesitantly.

  She was sitting in the car next to me, her eyes focused out the window, but her attention not completely there.

  “Gianna.”

  She jerked back towards me. “Yeah?”

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eyes for a few seconds, most of my attention on the road. Was something wrong? “You doing okay?”

  She gave me that teenager look of hers, but I could read something defensive on top of it. Something was going on, that was for sure.

  “You know if there's anything –”

  “I can tell you, I know.” Gianna winced, turned and looked back out the window. Her tone had been snappish. “Sorry.”

  “You are allowed to snap at me,” I said wryly. Parental figure or not.

  “Yeah, but you're not my –” Gianna snapped her mouth shut. I pulled to a stop in front of her school, my foot on the brake, nerves twisting in my stomach. She got out faster than normal, her backpack slung over her shoulder. She raised her hand and half waved, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

  I looked at the steering wheel in front of me, my stomach sinking. “I'm not your mother.” I finished the sentence for her. I was quite aware of that. Things had been going so well that I'd almost forgotten that they could go otherwise. She disappeared into the entrance of her school, a large, brick building that never failed to look impressive.

  At least I had the pet shop to distract me. I needed to go through all the non-fish stuff, check what had expired, what may need to be ordered. If we were going to attract a broader clientele in the small town, we had to have variety, even if it was going to be primarily aquarium-based.

  I could at least look after the birds and keep Theodore company. He did get fussy if nobody paid attention to him. Not that I had ever expected a talking amphibian to exist in the first place, but in my wildest dreams I hadn’t expected him to be so vain.

  My mind kept skimming over the past few days, the past week. Gianna's quiet confidence, her actually talking to Sam, teaching her. Her weirdness this morning. Was it the case of an introvert who’d overextended herself? Or was it something worse? Grief could manifest in so many different ways.

  It could've been that she was testing boundaries, which was always a fun thing for new parents. Except instead of learning it with a two-year-old, I was learning it with an 11-year-old. One who had lost her whole world just a short time ago.

  I made a note to jot down when her birthday was. I had it in the paperwork the Council had sent, and I was certain Gianna knew, but I didn’t know it off the top of my head. I wanted to. She deserved to have a party thrown for her.

  I parked at Glass Oceans, feeling oddly weary. I got out of Ruth and tucked the keys in my pocket, pushing the door open. I was going to have to get a new decoration for the door.

  “I’m back,” I said, walking inside.

  “Why did you leave me here?” Theodore complained, swimming close to me on the edge of his tank.

  I looked at him, meeting his pinkish eyes as his gills fluttered. “I do have a life.”

  Theodore snorted. “No, you don't.”

  Ignoring him, be
cause he was as rude as he was right, I turned to the birds. A glance at the schedule I’d put on the wall told me that I had to clean at least one of their cages.

  That was so much easier said than done, given their size. That and the fact that Gianna was much better at handling them than I was.

  “So which one won't eat me?” I asked the birds.

  They seem to regard me for a second, as if seriously thinking over my proposal. Craig half turned away, as if he was looking towards Lemon and conferring. Apple came closer to the cage, sticking his head against the bars.

  Giving in, I started stroking his neck.

  “Clean baby,” Lemon chirped.

  By baby, I assumed they meant Apple. To be fair, that was probably easiest. He had the smallest beak, probably couldn't bite my finger completely off, and had a smaller cage. I made a note to check the toys, to make sure that he hadn't chewed anything off. Plastic could be dangerous, for birds, since if they bit a small piece off it could obstruct their breathing.

  Oh God. Was there a bird veterinarian in Pine Lake? I was going to have to find out.

  “How was your day?” I asked Apple. His cage was large, like one of those fancy chests of drawers that people kept in mansions with their clothes hanging up, but the tray on the bottom pulled out so you could clean it. I grabbed cleaning supplies and a pile of newspaper to make a new liner. The internet was a good teacher.

  He crawled down the bars of his cage until he was hanging from a couple of the lower bars, tilting his head at me and making a clicking noise with his tongue. “Gianna?” he asked.

  Warmth threatened to bubble up in my chest. The birds cared for her, and she cared for them. I had definitely made the right choice in keeping the pet shop and keeping Gianna involved in it. “She's at school,” I told him. He fluffed his feathers at this, and seemed to settle down. “Up.”

  My heart thumped in my chest. I had read online that birds needed a lot of time outside of their cages, I just hadn’t been brave enough to try. But the birds shouldn’t suffer just because I was afraid they would eat me. “Do you want out?”

  He bobbed his head, chittered some more.

  Okay, I was going to take that as the bird version of yes.

  “Are you going to bite me?” I was only half-joking.

  He bobbed his head some more, and then started making a clicking noise.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him or to me. Maybe these birds couldn't talk. Maybe they were nuts and everything had been a coincidence.

  Apple was still hanging onto the bars near where I was, tilting his head this way and that, his yellow eyes curious. “Go to your branch.” I pointed towards it.

  He studied me for a few seconds, bobbed his head, then started the climb, his long, nail-y feet and beak serving him well to reach the branch.

  “I prefer keeping my fingers attached my body,” I told him solemnly. Once he had reached the branch I opened the front door of his cage, my heart beating so fast I thought I was going to pass out. I was obviously crazy. Why was I doing this?

  But it was what was best for the birds, so I was going to. I held my hand out, fingers tilted to the side to form a pseudo perch for him. Delicately, he stepped up, balancing on my fingers. He was heavier than I expected, and his nails dug into my skin a little, but he didn’t bite me. Instead he just sort of stared at me, waiting. I was a bit busy having an internal crisis.

  I was holding a bird. A small bird, compared to Craig and Lemon. But, a bird nonetheless.

  “Shoulder,” Apple said, his voice imperious.

  Yeah these birds could definitely talk.

  Grateful that I'd worn a long-sleeve shirt today, I perched him on my shoulder.

  He reached over and gently nibbled on my earlobe, clicking it with his tongue. I tried not to shiver, very aware that he could give me yet another ear piercing if he wanted to. At least I had forgotten to put the lightning bangles in this morning.

  He made a satisfied noise, and then seemed to settle. It was like he was perched on my shoulder, content as a clam. Okay, content as a pointy clam, since his nails were dug tightly into my skin.

  I was probably going to need to get all of them to a vet at some point, and do things like getting their nails clipped. And wasn’t there something about their wings or something? I needed to spend more time on the internet.

  Theoretically they had to be used to something like that. They wouldn’t band together and plot my death if I got near them with nail clippers, right?

  I grinned, and then leaned forward slowly, so he could adjust to my movements. As I bent over to finish cleaning his cage, taking up the newspaper covered in droppings and replacing it with new, he settled on the back of my neck, and I could feel his weight shift as he bobbed his head up and down. His nails were sharp, but it wasn’t unbearable.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked, turning when I threw the trash out so I could see him.

  “Yes,” he declared.

  “He's looking at me like he wants to eat me,” Theodore complained.

  “Because you look delicious.” I looked pointedly at Theodore.

  He made a disgruntled noise. I could hear him sulking as he went to the back of his tank.

  “All right, cage clean now.” I said. Apple leaned closer, nudged my neck with his beak. It was pointy, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. No, the difficult part was his claws dug into my shoulder as he resettled himself while I straightened up. “Back inside now?”

  “Nope,” Apple said, walking away when I tried to get him to step up on my hand.

  I sighed. Apparently birds were like toddlers. You gave them one bit of freedom, and they wanted twenty more.

  “Come on,” I said, wheedling. “I'll let you out again later.” I would have to get a large perch for them or something. Maybe a few of them, so they could spend more time outside their cages. Maybe Emmaline had left something in her storage room.

  Apple paused, seeming to consider my offer.

  Then there was a knock on the door, and out of nowhere Apple burst off my shoulder, fluttering to the floor. Crap. There was a reason a lot of birds in captivity had their wings clipped. It wasn't painful, it just meant that they couldn't fly long distances or fly into things that could hurt them.

  “Yes?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm as I headed after Apple. He’d apparently decided it was his new right to explore, so was toddling down the aisle.

  The door opened, and Apple turned and started trying to race towards it. Well, as fast as a bird with feet only about 2 inches long could. “Please shut the door,” I called out, all of my attention on him.

  The door clicked shut, and Apple sighed. “Fine,” he muttered, bobbing his head and looking angry with his feathers ruffled.

  “Step up,” I told him gently, giving him my two fingers. He glared at me, and gently nipped my thumb. Well, I guessed it was gentle to him. It still stung for me. “Hold on a second,” I told the visitor, keeping a close eye on Apple. He was a nibbling at my hand, and I wasn't sure if that was normal or if he was being a jerk.

  Could birds be jerks? Probably. Everybody could be rude.

  Finally, he was carefully secured in his cage, and I shut it and slid the new tray back in. I let out a sigh of relief, taking a second to jot down the day I had cleaned his cage.

  Then I spun, startled to see it was Diane standing there. “How can I help you?”

  “I heard you talked to Oscar?” Diane leaned against the wall, her smile relaxed. She was dressed in a long black dress, sandals poking out underneath. What was it with people wearing dresses? It was like going back fifty years. Still, it did complement her ginger hair.

  I winced. “Yeah, I had some questions for him.”

  A long, manicured fingernail tapped her lower lip. “How was he?”

  I blinked. That wasn’t what I had expected her to ask. “He seemed okay.”

  She seemed to relax. “It was hard to hear a
bout his arrest.” She didn’t look at me. She exhaled slowly, leaving us standing there in silence for a long minute. Just when I thought I had at least part of this town figured out, it threw me for a loop. “Are you doing okay?” She lifted her head to meet my eyes, genuine worry there.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I was caught off guard. Had something happened and I didn’t know? Or was it another roundabout way of asking about Gianna?

  Her brow furrowed. “The threats against Marguerite, of course.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  Diane frowned, worry morphing into concern. How the two were different, I had no idea. Maybe she was concerned for my sanity. “I thought you knew.”

  “About threats?” I went to pull my phone out of my pocket and winced when I realized I hadn’t washed my hands. There was a sink not far from the counter, so I went and washed them, taking the time to absorb Diane’s words. “How did you find out about them?”

  “I am on the Council,” she said dryly. “We’re generally notified if there's a threat against one of our members.”

  I supposed that made sense. If there was a threat against one of them, it could apply to the others, too.

  “Any idea what they were about?” I asked, careful.

  She shrugged. “Generic threats so far. We’re going to find you, going to kill you. That sort of thing.”

  I laughed. Anyone who decided to threaten Marguerite obviously didn’t know her. “No leads on their identity?”

  She shook her head. “Envelopes were stuck to the door with a knife, Marguerite's name on them.”

  “So that's how you know it was specifically for Marguerite?”

  Diane smiled wryly. “That and inside they were addressed to ‘that bitch’.”

  I struggled to keep a straight face. “Could that have referred to anybody else?” If Clara hadn’t been well-liked, maybe it was her.

  A wry smile curved up the corners of Diane’s lips. “No, we got more creative in our nicknames for Clara.”

  I snickered and then looked down, trying to pretend I hadn't.

  “You're settling in well?” Diane asked, moving forward towards the counter. I stepped behind it out of habit, not sure why I was nervous. Maybe it was the cozy feeling of Glass Oceans. It was easy to feel trapped.