“You’re not infallible, mind you, but you do have my seal of approval, which is no small thing. Congratulations, you are officially the longest-employed, assistant receptionist Moonlit Shores Manor has had since Ziah was promoted.”
Wide-eyed, Lorelei stared back at her, a smile breaking on her face.
“Well, don’t look at me like that.” Arista waved both her hands. “Go on, you have plenty of work to do, and I can still fire you if I really want.”
Lorelei jumped up and left before she changed her mind. Back out in the blustery afternoon, she wrapped her arms around herself, but grinned up at the manor. She had seen the records, in fact she’d been the one to organize the damn things; Ziah had been at Moonlit Shores Manor for five years and in her current position for three. If she didn’t know better—and to be fair, she absolutely didn’t—it was almost as if the manor had been waiting for the right person to fill the long open and rotating position. But person was a relative term in the charmed world, and while the manor was smart, timing certainly had something to do with it, and the meddlesome nature of magic in general was likely the biggest culprit.
She wanted to tell Ziah first, of course, and sprinted to the foyer, but found the woman wasn’t alone. Ziah leaned against the front counter, arms crossed under her breasts and squeezing them together in that way she tended to when she wanted something. Ren, the manor’s groundskeeper and creature caretaker, was standing across from her and not noticing at all in that way he tended to, the way Lorelei assumed most elves probably were: constantly stoic and pragmatic and largely uninterested in anyone else even if they did have really good boobs. The alalynx was strutting across the counter between them, crying for attention.
“Again, Ziah, I do not understand the purpose.” Ren’s length of silvery hair was tied back so that his long, pointed ears poked out on either side.
“Well, neither do I, but it’s a big part of it, there are even songs about it, so can you please just do it?” She leaned forward a bit more. “For me?”
The elf’s face was nearly always bereft of any emotion, but the corner of his lip twitched at that. He stood stiffly, yet when he folded his hands before his face the movement was graceful and effortless and made all other hand folding look clumsy and impossible. “If I must.”
Ziah reached out and touched the tip of her long finger to the tip of his equally long nose. He did not move under it, but she scrunched up her face and fluttered her lashes. “I’ll make it worth—Lore!” She noticed her then, redirecting her hand to scoop up the alalynx and cradle her like a baby. “I’m so glad you’re here, I have a job for you!”
Ren left the desk then, nodding succinctly at Lorelei as he passed. She watched him go, pursing her lips, then opening her mouth, but Ziah was having none of the questions she was about to ask.
“We need our business license renewed before the end of the year.” She pulled a thick stack of papers from the inside of her planner and waved Lorelei over with them, balancing the alalynx in her other arm as it batted at one of her shimmering earrings. “I’ve filled everything out, but they need to be filed with city hall. It has to be done in person, but I’ve just,”—she sighed and every part of her drooped—“I’ve had it up to here with warlockian bureaucracy for one lifetime, so I’m bestowing the honor on you.”
Lorelei’s eyes widened. “You want me to go to city hall? In town? Off the grounds?”
Ziah nodded, handing over the papers. The pages had a hundred or so lines that Ziah had filled in meticulously with her steady script. “I made you an appointment already, and I had Conrad fix up my old bicycle, so it should be a really quick trip. You can ride a bike, right?” She glanced around the foyer a moment to make sure no one else would overhear. “That’s something humans can do?”
Lorelei chuckled. “Of course.” Then she frowned. So, Conrad had time to work on that too, but he still couldn’t even say hello to her, huh? Not even a how are you or a so, how about that near-death experience we shared?
“Great! So, you’ve got about two hours before you need to be there, but you’re definitely going to want to arrive early because if you’re even a minute late it’s a whole debacle to reschedule. I mean, you have to make an appointment with the Rescheduling Department just to make a new appointment for the original appointment, and if your excuse isn’t good enough, they send you to the Bad Excuses department first, and those witches just love to give you disapproving looks like it’s their job. In fact, it might actually be.”
Lorelei folded up the papers. “Today? Do you think Grier could come with me?”
Ziah pulled her phone out as it vibrated. “No, he’s got to run the desk while I take a client. But don’t worry, it’s simple, just boring: you wait around, hand the paperwork off, wait around some more, then get a new, stamped license and bring it back here.”
Lorelei bit her lip. It sounded simple, but so did cleaning up green goop from a hardwood floor, and she’d started a fire the last time she tried that.
Ziah read the hesitation on her face and placed Aly back on the counter. “Trust me, it’s fine. And listen, do this, and I’ll give you whatever you want when you get back.” She put a hand on each of her shoulders and set honey-colored eyes on her. “Seriously, whatever you want.”
A warmth dripped down Lorelei’s arms and across her chest, lovely things crossing her mind like warm chocolate chip cookies, and bright, white canvases, and fresh, strong-smelling pine needles and far-off spices. She blinked—wait, where’d that last one come from?
Ziah pulled her hands back, looked at them with her lips twisted up, then grinned. “Lore, is there something you’re not telling me?”
Well, that list was way too long to start if she was going to get to her appointment on time. “No,” she lied, then scrunched up her nose. “Hey, did you just try to enchant me?” It wasn’t that long ago Ziah had promised to not use her talents in gentle manipulation on her unless she really had to.
Ziah clapped her hands together and attempted to look innocent, the one thing she could really never pull off. “I would never. And it didn’t work anyway, your mind’s already clouded with thoughts of something else good. So, spill it.”
“Arista took me off probation.”
Ziah squealed. “I can’t believe you were still on it! And look, taking charge of the business license is the perfect way to celebrate.” Her eyes flashed a friendly warm fire deep in their honeyed amber. “Maybe you can do it every year.”
“So, this is what a promotion is like.” Her time as a barista hadn’t prepared her at all.
“With great power comes great…” Ziah looked far off into the foyer, struggling for something inspiring to say. “Well, great paperwork. But also, a bicycle!”
Outside in the cold again, Lorelei hopped on the bicycle that had been propped against the trellis, undoubtedly better transport than walking or even riding in the back of a bumpy cart all the way into town, but she hesitated before setting off. The manor grounds were safe, Arista had just confirmed, and though she couldn’t know about the world outside, she reminded herself that Byron was probably still stuck in the trow’s labyrinth where Conrad had sent him. Really, her only concern was that warlockian bureaucracy Ziah seemed so desperate to avoid.
It can’t be that bad, she thought, starting off down the worn path into the woods that separated the manor from Moonlit Shores proper, They have magic for crying out loud—lines shouldn’t even exist around here. Unfortunately, Lorelei underestimated the innate ability of any creature, human or otherwise, to bung things up with paperwork.
CHAPTER 3
VERY IMPROBABLE
Moonlit Shores was a place of color even as winter crept in at its edges. A seaside village, though Lorelei had yet to see the beach, it smelled of salt and sounded of gulls and the occasional fishing boat bell. The shops were sided with shiplap and painted in pastels with the rare, dark and menacing nook here and there selling something that the owner didn’t feel the nee
d to put up a sign for. And the whole place just felt of magic. Lorelei knew it now when it strummed the air so thickly, and she liked it.
She took the main road straight into town, past the more sprawling residential homes on the outskirts, through the closer-placed buildings and narrower streets to avoid traffic, typically slowed by a lumbering, stubborn diregoat pulling a cart or a poorly-landed gryphon, and meandered back into the main square.
Winded and lungs burning from the cold, Lorelei locked up the bicycle outside Moonlit Shores City Hall, a two-storied rectangle of a building with a domed clock tower rising up out of its center. With white, Roman columns out front and symmetrical, colonial windows lining the facade, it would have looked marvelously average for any municipality, but the statue of a winged horse that appeared to be landing just outside but somehow not visibly touching the ground at any point was a bit of a giveaway. That, and the clock had fifteen hours marked with runes and four hands, none of which seemed to be pointing in the right direction for the time on Lorelei’s phone.
In actuality, she had plenty left before her scheduled appointment, and hoped it would somehow sync up with whatever time the local politicians were on. Once up the stairs, the glass doors swung out toward her nearly knocking her back. She gave them a proper frown then hurried inside, hit with a blast of hot air that made her shrug off her coat and pull at the neck of her sweater.
The open space of the hall’s entry had a marbled floor, gold with a green vein running all through it, and the glass ceiling above allowed the late afternoon sunlight to filter in, sharp and bright. She fanned at her face and looked about for anyone, but it seemed deserted. Her footsteps echoed on the marble as if no one had been there for centuries as she crossed the empty space.
In the middle of the grand room stood a tiny sign. The thing was simple, cheap even, especially against the ornateness of the trim running along the crown molding and baseboards. A serpent wrapped around the banisters of the staircases leading upward, flanked by candelabras lighting the middle of the room rather uselessly under all that sun.
She leaned toward the board and squinted, but there wasn’t much to see. It was perhaps two foot by two foot and had sad, little plastic letters pushed into a ridged board that spelled out Directory only the O was clearly a piece meant to be the number zero. There were no other words, but a small tray holding a plethora of more plastic pieces was attached at its base.
Lorelei stood back and cleared her throat, the sound echoing all around her. Nothing else echoed back.
Then the letters on the board popped themselves off and plunked into the tray, swapping around and lifting back out all on their own to stick back into the board with a smattering of sharp clicks.
What are you loo ing for?
Lorelei pursed her lips as a small, plastic K bounced off her shoe. She picked it up and stuck it in the board where it belonged.
A few more letters picked themselves out of the stash and popped onto the board below the question. Thx.
“Um…” She fished out the paperwork from her bag and held it up. The board might not have eyes, but the possibility it could see wasn’t out of the question. “Licensing office, I think?”
The letters hopped off the board again and started mixing themselves up, this time in an even wilder frenzy. The words began to form at the very top of the board.
Most Common Licenses by Type, Alphabetical:
Alchemy, Commerce
Alchemy, Practicing
Alchemy, Teaching
Astral Travel, Construction
Astral Travel, Operation
Astral Travel, Destruction
Aviation, Animals, Charmed
Aviation, Animals, Nether
Aviation, Vehicles, Charmed, Domestic
Aviation, Vehicles, Charmed, Wild
The words scrolled up on the board, letters popping off as they hit the top and catching onto one another, filling in where needed. She nearly missed Business, Hospitality as she’d been so distracted by Blood Craft, Theoretical Study, but announced to the board before the right department disappeared, and it all came to a stop. The letters fell into the tray, and they shuffled around until Office 1709, Seventeenth Floor plunked itself up onto the board.
Lorelei glanced up at the ceiling again and could see the balcony of the floor above her at the head of the stairs. Where floor seventeen was, she had no idea. She checked her phone again, thanked the board which responded with a colon and a closed parenthesis, then trudged up to the next floor.
On the landing, there was a hall and a long line of offices with windows into each one, some with open blinds, others covered, and all but one with the lights off. In the only lit, occupied office, there were two people, a woman behind a desk, and an older man, balding with only a single tuft of hair sticking up as if he had been yanking at it. Lorelei walked up to the open door and knocked on the frame. The sound of typing did not stop, but the woman did pull her hands away from the keys. She looked at Lorelei pointedly over her glasses, her thin face as sharp as her stare.
“Sorry.” Lorelei hesitated, glancing at the man whose face was turning from pink to red. “I’m just looking for office 1709.”
“Seventeenth floor,” said the woman. “That’d be the seventeen part.” She huffed and went back to typing, her fingers falling into where the keys were already depressing themselves.
Lorelei frowned—that’s not how the manor numbered rooms, but then the manor was unique. And regardless, there was no floor seventeen as far as she could see. “It’s just—”
“Upstairs.” She said, pointing vaguely to the left.
Lorelei glanced back down the way she’d come and was surprised to see another staircase, only instead of headed down, this one was headed up. She wandered over to it, every sign of the first floor below and its massive, sprawling space now gone. Instead, she was simply at the end of a corridor, the sunlight replaced with fluorescents, one of which buzzed and another blinked in and out.
She shrugged and took the stairs up to an identical corridor. She passed more identical offices with their lights off and most of the shades drawn until she came to the end and another set of stairs leading upward. When she looked back to the other end, her way back down had gone once again. With a sigh, she continued to ascend.
By the time she got to the seventeenth floor, she was out of breath and had stripped off her sweater, yet she was still uncomfortable in just her t-shirt. Her boots and flannel leggings were nice against the freezing breezes outside, but in the blasting heat of the municipal building and after her long climb, she was beginning to understand Ziah’s hatred of the place.
Floor seventeen was just as deserted as the others save for one office with its light on near the end of the now grossly familiar corridor. She pulled out her phone and saw she still had four and a half minutes before her appointment and hurried down to the open door, but her mouth fell open. Inside sat the same woman typing away across from the same man, the only difference being that his face had progressed all the way to magenta.
“And here you are!” the woman said with a cheery clip as she slapped her hand onto the screen of her computer, an ancient hunk of beige machinery, and pulled off a long set of papers connected with perforations between. She handed the newly-appeared pages off to the man who took them with some violence. “Pop on over to the Scheduling Department on floor thirty-eight, and they’ll get you set up for some time next week for the overview.”
He grumbled and swept past Lorelei. The number on the office read 1709 which Lorelei was both pained and elated to see. “Um, is this—”
“Business Licenses, Hospitality.” Her voice was pitched high and produced almost exclusively through her nose. She tapped the placard on her desk, and the letters scrolled around to rearrange themselves to state just that. “Are you my three o’clock for Moonlit Shores Manor?”
Lorelei nodded, stepping in and handing over the paperwork.
“Well, cutting it a little clos
e, aren’t we?” She smirked toward the calendar. It wasn’t even December yet, but Lorelei didn’t know the cutoff date and just shrugged. “Thank you!” She plucked the paperwork out of Lorelei’s hands and held it up, examining each page up close before offering the stack to the computer screen. There was a flash, and then the pages were gone. “Now, let’s see.” She flicked a finger over the mouse, and it gave a little squeak. “Oh, sorry, hon.” Then she clicked again more gently.
As the woman read off the fields in her nasally inflection, Lorelei sat in silence, looking around at the almost-yellow-but-not walls. There was one piece of artwork, an abandoned canoe on a grey shore, hanging behind the woman’s head. Everything about it made her sad, and she thought it looked a bit like it was melting, but not even in that interesting, Dali way.
“Did I hear someone say Moonlit Shores Manor?” A weighty voice came from the hall, and a hand grasped the door frame. The man there smiled from under a light-colored brow, blond but peppered with silver and ruddy strands. A thick mustache fell over his grin, but it emanated all over his face in how his eyes and forehead crinkled. His suit was sharp, navy blue with a golden tie, and while he could have walked in a human’s world or here, he stood out in either place, magnetic and arresting.
“Mayor Blackburn!” The woman practically popped out of her chair, forgetting about the screen as she rested her chin on her hands and elbows right on the keyboard.
“How’s my favorite department head doing this fine afternoon? Almost quitting time,”—he pointed to his watch, then back to her—“or are we already off the clock there, Cind?”
She tittered and put her hands back on the ever-moving keyboard. “You silly, you know I got another hour, at least!”
The mayor came into the office, a hand extended toward Lorelei. “Well, if it isn’t the new girl from my favorite little B&B in town.”
We’re the only B&B in town, she thought, taking his hand and shaking. “Lorelei Fischer.”
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 3