Penny drags me to the door behind the counter, knocks on the door three times. “To activate the spell,” Penny says, and then opens the door and steps aside so I can go in first.
My jaw drops as I enter the second room of the shop. I thought she was leading me toward the storeroom, where I’d see boxes of CBD supplies, shipping containers, and maybe a fridge for employee lunches. This is an entire laboratory. There’s a table in the center of the large room, with a pair of hot plates. Beakers bubble atop them, letting off plumes of coiled smoke. Ingredients—and more mortars and pestles—are scattered all over the table in various piles. The wall behind Penny is nothing but endless row after endless row of tight cubbyholes. I walk toward it and take a small plastic bag from one of the cubbies. There are a few dots of something in the bag, and a white label on it reads “Excrement of Field Mouse.” I quickly put it back. “You guys really . . . cater to this sort of thing?”
“Of course we do.” Penny blinks at me. “Why wouldn’t we? Witchcraft is a good business, and we ship all over the country for those that aren’t local. Now, what’s on your list?”
I can’t stop staring at the walls of components, the sheer number of things here, hidden behind a perfectly normal storefront. I force myself to glance down at the list, and Ben’s number glares at me as if to mock me. I put my finger on the page to train my eyes away from it. “Um . . . debris from a shipwreck?”
Penny moves to the far end of the wall and pulls out a small bag from one of the cubbies. “This for necromancy or something else?”
“I—I don’t know.” I give her an overwhelmed look. “Do you get a lot of necromancy requests?”
“We’re not supposed to, but yes?” Penny shrugs. “It’s not my job to ask, just to supply.” She holds the bag out to me.
I take it from her and give it a little shake, stirring the contents. It looks like . . . splinters from a piece of aged wood. “How do I know this is from a shipwreck?”
Penny giggles. “I asked the same thing, and I’ll tell you what my boss said to me. You can tell by the price tag.”
I look at the sticker on the bag and nearly faint at the price. Five hundred bucks? For a bag of splinters? “Jesus Christ. I hope Dru has an account here, because that’s out of my price range.”
“Oh, of course she does.” Penny picks up a small shopping basket and holds it out to me. “Drop that in here, and I’ll get everything else. Also, you don’t have to worry about whether or not it’s legit. The owner of this store has pickers that acquire things all over the globe, and he double-checks everything before it enters the store. No one wants to defraud a witch or a warlock, trust me.”
Excellent point. If these people really do think all this crap is real, they don’t want to fuck around.
I mean . . . not that it’s real.
I put the bag of splinters in the basket and glance at my list again. “Um . . . dried horse balls.”
“Testicles or scrotum?” Penny asks without blinking an eye. “They’re two very different components.”
“Scrotum.” This is the weirdest conversation ever.
She bends over to glance at my list. “Is that Ben Magnus’s number at the top of the page? Are you guys friends?”
“Absolutely, positively not friends.”
Penny nods, a knowing expression on her face. “He’s a dick, isn’t he? Most warlocks are asses, but he really takes the cake. I’ve heard nothing but awful things about Ben Magnus. No one likes him.”
For some reason, that almost makes me feel sorry for him. Almost.
9
REGGIE
I really like Penny. Her personality is all bright sunshine, and I sit on the stool in the back room of the shop for nearly two hours while she chatters my ear off. She gathers all the components I need, then makes us coffees and tells me all about herself and asks about me. I manage to deflect most of the questions, but it doesn’t stop Penny. She continues talking, oblivious to my reticence.
Penny tells me she comes from a long line of familiars—always the familiar, never the witch, she says. She’s been in the Society of Familiars since she came of age, and is still waiting for her first assignment to a witch or warlock. “Sometimes you have to wait a while,” she explains. “Most veneficae are long lived, so it’s a buyer’s market, so to speak.” Her expression turns wistful. “Which is why you’re so lucky.”
I suddenly feel guilty. Penny is all in on this witch stuff. She should have my job, not me. I should offer it to her, let her be Dru’s assistant . . . but the thought of all that money keeps me silent. That, and the thought of crawling back to Nick and proclaiming I’ve lost another job. He’d just smile and shake his head, but we’d both know it’s because I’m controlling. I clasp my hands in my lap, because I’ve been quietly arranging things on the table while Penny talks. “I’ll ask Dru if she has any friends that need a familiar. Maybe I can put in a good word for you.”
Her hands fly to her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course.” It feels like the very least I can do. I’m actually tempted to invite her to card night tonight, but something inside me holds back. I want to talk to Nick. I want to tell him all about my job’s weirdness. How everyone truly does think they’re witches.
And I’m starting to grow concerned. Because it’s one thing to dismiss Dru as a nutty old auntie. It’s one thing to ignore Ben, who I could totally see doubling down just to make me feel stupid. But Penny seems sincere, and this shop . . . I look around. Penny’s been filling orders as we talk, stuffing most of them into mailing envelopes. If everyone’s in on this charade, there’s a lot of people involved, and that seems like too much work for a joke.
So I don’t know what to think.
We exchange phone numbers with a promise to get together for coffee to talk about the “familiar life” and witchcraft. There’s something about Penny that’s so very disarming that I find myself saying yes, despite the fact that she’s part of this charade that I’m no longer certain is a charade. It’s hard for me to make friends sometimes, and I like that talking with Penny feels . . . normal. Natural. Maybe I’ll invite her next week.
I call another Uber and study the small bottle of sludge that Dru gave me. If witchcraft is real, is she going to know that I didn’t deliver this? If it’s not real, am I going to feed an old lady a slurry of bugs and leaves? Ugh. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I do know I want to keep my job, so I end up having the driver take me to the grocery store to finish shopping, then on to the woman’s house. I leave the potion with the housekeeper that answers the door, along with a hasty explanation.
Guilt riding me, I take the Uber to Nick’s apartment, the bag of spell components in my arms. I head up, and even though I lived there as of last week, I can hear male voices inside. I knock, and my heart sinks a bit. Nick isn’t alone. Something tells me this isn’t going to be a regular Friday night round of cards.
Nick opens the door a moment later, his short, kinky curls mussed and his shirt untucked. “Reg! You’re early!” His eyes swim with gratitude that I knocked first, and he clears his throat, hovering in the doorway and blocking my sight inside. “Guess what? My friend from the gym wants to learn how to play, so he’s coming with us tonight.”
I force a surprised smile onto my face. “How lovely. Fresh blood is always welcome. Is he here?”
Another person appears behind Nick. It’s Sergeant Hotness, all right. I’d recognize that tan and those bedroom eyes anywhere. Nick moves to the side, and I can’t help but notice the other guy’s collar is open and he looks flushed. “Hey there. I’m Diego.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Diego,” I say, juggling the bag in my arms and sticking out my hand. “I’m Reggie, former roommate.”
He shakes my hand, his grip strong and firm, and I decide I like him for Nick. Diego glances at my bag. “Did you bring dinner?”