by Robin Hale
“I could never do those Magic Eye puzzles,” I agreed and lifted one of the pendants into my field of vision. “But I think I’m getting better at these.”
The silence stretched between us until I realized that I was sitting on the floor staring at jewelry in front of my boss, who had paid me — theoretically, anyway — to stock shelves, not to play with the merchandise. I jolted upright. “Sorry! I’ll get this display finished up and then I’ll work on redoing the inventory in the poetry section.”
“I guess that’s my cue to get back into the office and finish those receiving ledgers,” Jean said with a miserable groan. “You sure you don’t want to just sit here and talk?”
I laughed and watched Jean roll up onto her feet.
“Hey,” I said before Jean could get back to the office. “Why is it that this section gets so little foot traffic?”
“What do you mean?” Jean asked. There was something strange about the way she looked back at me, about the carefully casual way she asked the question.
I hummed wordlessly. “Lots of people come in here and browse, but it’s like they don’t even see this part of the store. It’s bizarre. All of the shiny things are over here — are people in Cincinnati really that into William Blake that they bee-line past it right to the poetry?” I finished picking apart the nest of silver chains in my hands and looked up at Jean while she considered her response.
“I think people see what they want to see,” Jean said at last. “If they want poetry, they’ll find the poetry. If they want a crystal, they’ll find it.” Her voice got firmer as she went along, convincing herself as well as me. “I think for most people, this is just a bookstore and they don’t need any of my folks’ more…eccentric offerings, you know?”
“Oh, totally.” I nodded from my place on the floor.
And with a grin and a thumbs up, Jean retreated back into the dust-covered cave that the back office had become.
No, I certainly did not know. I frowned at the shimmering silver pendants in my hand and set about arranging them on the display tree. I’d never been so focused on a particular book — and I loved books — that I would’ve missed the lure of the strange, glowing silver necklaces.
With a shrug and a sigh, I clambered to my feet and wandered over to retrieve another box. Whatever it was, Jean didn’t seem too bothered about it. Maybe it didn’t matter to her how many crystals she kept around. She probably maintained the stock of that stuff for her parents’ sake.
In the few days I’d been working at the Wyrm — which was what all the regulars called the place, not only Rhea the Disapproving Hot Gardener — I’d notice that the rush times worked on a rhythm. There was the usual trickle of customers throughout the day, often professors, college students, or people who had non-traditional work schedules, and then there were two more peaks.
One came at about three PM when the nearby high school let its students out of classes and extracurriculars. There would be a flood of teenagers who wandered through looking for a new release or an old edition of a favorite play. The girls wore charms on their backpacks: silver things that wouldn’t look out of place in our necklace display, with the same sort of shimmery optical illusion that Jean had described.
(How did that even work? I’d spent ages staring at the necklaces looking for the piece that would cause the effect and I was completely stumped. I had to remember to ask Jean when we both had a minute.)
The boys didn’t have charms on their backpacks, but instead came in with new markings on their skin every day. If I had to guess, I’d say there was some sort of trend at the local high school for writing lines of poetry or something on your arm in class.
It was kind of neat.
For me, high school — fully a thousand years ago — had been a sort of ‘who spends the most at the local mall’ death match. Even when I had tried to play, I never bought the right things.
After the teenagers cleared out, headed either across the street to the instantly-addicting indie coffee shop or to their homes, there was a pulse of activity in the post-dinner hours. That was when I saw most of our regulars. They came in twos or threes from dinner or a couple of happy-hour drinks at one of the neighborhood bars. If there was one thing Cincinnati had in spades, it was neighborhood bars.
That night, in amongst the pairs of now-familiar laughter and smiles, there was a new face. A petite black woman, neck draped with beads and gemstones in peacock tones that matched her tailored slacks and shimmered against the cool cream of her silk blouse, stopped cold in the middle of the shop floor. She caught me in her dark brown gaze like a searchlight on rough waves, and an eternity stretched between us before she spoke.
“Olivia,” she breathed, her voice reedy and thin under the obvious weight of the name.
“No?” I chirped with an apologetic smile. “Laurel. I’m new.” I shrugged.
There must have been another girl who had worked for Jean’s parents. A tendril of curiosity unfurled in my belly and I wondered what had happened to her that every time I heard her name it sounded so full of shock.
“Celia!” Another woman called from the back of the shop, drawing those eyes away from my face. “Celia, honey, we’re back here. We’re getting everything laid out and we’ll catch you up.”
Celia flashed me an apologetic smile. “My mistake, Laurel. Welcome to the Wyrm!” In a rustle of silk and beads, Celia joined the group gathering on the soft couches and chairs in the back of the shop, passing Jean as she made her way to me.
“Hey,” Jean said, her voice low enough not to be overheard. “We’re getting ready for a — well, calling it a book club is probably overstating it,” Jean chuckled with a roll of her eyes. “But a meeting. Could you do me a huge favor?”
“Sure. What is it?” I asked.
“Someday you might start saying that second part first,” Jean said with a wink. “But I just remembered that there’s this autumn tea order that Rhea had been putting together for me. I want to start stocking it soon. Do you think you could go pick that up from her? I’d love to have it for this weekend’s rush.”
My smile froze and I tried to cover the familiar sting of rejection. Obviously, Jean wanted me out of her hair. She wanted to spend time with her friends and that was entirely normal and okay. It was only that I hadn’t expected that I needed to leave while she did it. I swallowed down the sudden, acrid tang of hurt and nodded. My mom raised me better than to make someone else uncomfortable, after all.
“Sure thing,” I said weakly and tried not to think of the look that would be on Rhea’s face when I showed up again.
Hopefully the pitchforks would remain metaphorical.
4
Rhea
The sun sank behind the hills, covering Barleywick in a dark shroud that turned the estate from the scene of childhood laughter and nostalgia into the setting of my every lingering nightmare. I had barely managed to light the alchemical lamps in the shed when an oily voice came from behind me, sliding beneath my skin and along my raw nerves.
“I see you’re still keeping the old house sealed up like a tomb. Pity. The Barleywick seat had always been such a warm, welcoming place.”
Muscles twitched in my hands, my shoulders. Electrical impulses raced up and down my spine, begging me to fling myself through the window to my left or to turn and face the…thing that lurked at my back. I hated having him in my space. Hated that, once again, my cozy little shed had become a trap.
I bit back the sharp retort that wanted to escape from my mouth. That Barleywick had never been welcoming to him. That my mother had once told me to come running if I saw him so much as set foot on our land.
There was no one to run to, anymore.
“You’re here for the Clan Leinth order, then?” I kept my voice even through sheer force of will and made myself keep my back to him. I would be calm. Unaffected. And if I tried hard enough, I might be able to forget that he could hear the thrumming of my heartbeat as easily as the words I spoke.
<
br /> “Mm, yes,” Absalon — I hated that I was familiar enough with his voice to know it was Absalon — murmured lazily. “Thought I’d pick it up myself this time. Get out. Stretch my legs. It’s been too long since I’ve walked these grounds.”
Power sprang unbidden into my mind, hummed and grew beneath my skin, coiled in my bones. The air crackled in my ears and I forced my eyes shut. Damn it, Rhea. Keep it together. Fear colored the anger that swept over my mind and I bit down hard on my tongue, letting the pain sap some of the wildness from my restless power.
When my hands finally unclenched, I opened the cabinet and pulled down the packaged order.
“Careful, girl.” Absalon’s voice was a mocking rebuke. “Clan Leinth has been ordering from Barleywick for generations. It’s only out of respect for your sainted elders — Power preserve their souls — that we didn’t drop the arrangement after your little...outburst all those years ago.” There was half a heartbeat of silence and a gust of foul breath whispered across my neck. “It would be a shame if the Council caught wind of your temper, hm? You know I spoke on your behalf when all that unfortunate business occurred. One might expect you to be grateful.”
Instinct had me freezing up and a rush of self-loathing washed over me with the bitter taste of bile. I should’ve said something. I should’ve had some scathing retort lined up that would let me regain my lost ground and give me back my pride. But I didn’t. I stood there, eyes screwed shut to hide from the monster in the shadows until Absalon drew back, a throaty chuckle the only sound of his passing.
“Your order,” I said in a tight, painful whisper. I passed the box over to him, taking care not to touch any part of his body, and watched him go with an ironic salute of his unnaturally pale hands.
The breath caught in my chest only left when he did and I pressed my forehead against the cabinet door until my heartbeat slowed to a normal rate. I clutched the silver pendant around my neck, thumb worrying at the face of it with the weight of more than a decade of habit.
Goddess spare me, but he was right. If I couldn’t keep control around that bastard, he would keep pressing and pressing and pressing until I blew up. Until the Council would have no choice but to bind my powers. Or worse.
Fuck.
Chopping, stripping, grinding, and drying herbs did its best to draw me out of the tension migraine clinging to my skull. The chores lured me in with their calming rhythms and measurable progress but it didn’t take. Every tiny noise outside the shed, every small sound of fluttering bat wings or late-summer insects calling their lonely, futile mating calls snapped my attention from the piles of plants I laid in their careful arrangement on the worktable.
He’d rattled me.
It was what he’d set out to do and he’d managed it. I scowled down at the rosemary I crushed in an unforgiving grip and clenched my jaw against the need to scream and rage and vent my frustration.
Control. It was all about control.
The rasp of the doorknob in the near-silence of the shed was a blade slipping from a sheath, and I finally found that scathing tongue I’d needed five minutes before.
“You’ve got your order, now get off my property, Abs — Oh. It’s you.” I’d turned to face the doorway this time and the words died while I took in the sight of Laurel sheepishly stepping through the opening.
“Sorry, is this a bad time?” She asked and I wanted to say ‘yes’. I wanted to chase her off the grounds and go back to hiding in my solitude but I couldn’t. The terms of my probation were clear: I had to be a useful member of society, demonstrate that I was safe to be left to my own devices away from Council scrutiny. Chasing off an outsider because I wanted to throw a tantrum wouldn’t do me any favors.
“No. You’re fine. What do you need?” I asked, clipped tones the only semblance of calm that I could find.
“Do I look like an ‘Olivia’ to you?” Laurel asked and I had the sudden thought that I must have lost time. That maybe Absalon had succeeded in placing a thrall on my mind and it was hours later than I’d thought. Hours in which that question might have made sense.
“At first I’d thought it was just Jean, but a customer at the Wyrm said it and then that guy outside — well. I don’t know. Maybe the universe is telling me I should change it. I kind of like ‘Laurel’, though.” Laurel gave a small, self-deprecating smile and shrugged. Some of the tightness left my shoulders.
It was difficult to brood in the face of that kind of rambling.
“‘Laurel’ is nice,” I said roughly while I tried to find my feet in the conversation. “It suits you.”
That sheepish smile turned into a beaming grin that put my alchemical lamps to shame and I froze — instantly aware that I had wandered into dangerous territory.
“Why are you here?” I tried again. Business. I needed to stick to business.
“Oh, Jean said she has some sort of autumn tea order that she’d talked to you about? Wanted me to pick that up.” Laurel’s eyes slid away from mine and she traced a finger down the edge of the cabinets nearest the door.
It was the third time we’d spoken. The second time she’d been to Barleywick. But she already looked as comfortable there in that tiny shed with me as she had when she’d first rescued her scarf. She’d already settled in at the Book Wyrm like she’d been there for years. How the hell did a person do that?
Admiration welled up alongside longing for a skill set I’d never managed to pick up. How would it feel to be able to find a way to fit where it shouldn’t have worked?
Belatedly, I replayed her request and frowned. “Jean doesn’t have an autumn tea order in.”
A wince preceded the resigned nod that said Laurel had expected as much. “Yeah, I don’t know. I think there’s some sort of book club meeting happening at the shop? I got the impression that Jean mostly wanted me to leave and this was something she could send me to do.”
Great. Jean was hosting a Greenhollow meeting and wanted me to keep an eye on her outsider for her. Perfect.
“Fine.” My teeth clicked together after I bit off the word. “But if I’m going to be babysitting, you’re going to help. There are gloves on the hooks to your right. Grab a pair and come over here.”
The corners of her hazel eyes wrinkled and Laurel produced a hair-tie from somewhere mysterious before combing her fluffy waves into a braid. She pulled on a pair of gloves with no small amount of enthusiasm, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell it took to make a person so happy to do grunt work.
She looked up at me expectantly and I quickly looked away, focusing instead on the notebook of orders propped up in hooks on the wall in front of me.
“Start by crushing three vials of this one,” I placed a bundle of dried lemon verbena in front of the section of workbench that Laurel had claimed and reached for the drawer of glass vials. “Three of the large ones.”
The sound of crunching leaves and tumbling buds filtered through the air between us, wearing away the barbed edges of my mind that had clung to the night sounds outside.
“How do you like working at the Wyrm?” I asked after a few minutes of companionable silence. I could feel Laurel’s expectations drifting from her and it seemed safer to get her talking than to risk having to come up with acceptable responses to small talk myself.
“Oh, it’s great!” Laurel grinned.
She was easy with her smiles. They obviously came more naturally than keeping her expression placid. Someday she would have laugh lines around her mouth, the corners of her eyes. She’d be the sort of older woman whose lifetime of joy was written on her skin. My stomach clenched at the memory of those lines on my mother’s face, my aunts’.
My own lines would be entirely different.
“I was texting my mom about it earlier — I really need to remember to call her tomorrow — and everyone at the Wyrm has been super friendly. Well, except for not wanting me around for book club, but hey, it’s not like I’ve probably read what they’re discussing, right?” There was
a tinge of hurt in the tail ends of her sentences and I caught the impulse to explain that they weren’t keeping her out of their social hour. I tamped it down where it had come from.
Then my mind caught up again. Her scarf was draped across a hook where she’d grabbed her gloves. Wasn’t that supposed to have been her mother’s? The only thing she had from her? She hadn’t said it exactly, but didn’t that imply that her mom was dead?
Laurel looked up from where she was carefully tipping crushed leaves into the little glass jar and caught the direction of my stare.
“Oh! That — yeah.” She nodded as if that had been a sentence. “That’s from my mother. My bio-mom. My mom adopted me when I was a baby. There was a car accident and when they found me, I had that scarf wrapped around me. It’s the only thing of hers that they could recover. They couldn’t ID the body, couldn’t figure out who we were or if anyone else might be looking.” Laurel swallowed hard and the slim column of her throat danced in the shifting light of the alchemical lamps. “Mom says it’s a miracle I survived. And I get it — don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be alive! I just don’t want to think of it as a miracle…”
“That you lived when your family died,” I muttered to the bunch of chamomile buds I’d stripped from their stems.
“Exactly,” Laurel breathed.
Her voice was soft, the air scented by our work, and suddenly the warm light of the lamps was romantic rather than practical. The shed filled with a closeness I hadn’t felt in years, and Laurel’s warmth dragged my eyes from my work to her face. Wisps of hair had escaped from her braid and brushed along her cheeks, her neck. It would be nothing to reach out and push them behind her ear. Nothing to close that distance.
I forced myself to look back at the stems in my hand while guilt simmered in the back of my mind. I pushed it away. I could have the quiet. It was allowed.