Chapter 11
“Exactly how much longer is this war between you and my brother going to go on?”
Gwyn was sitting at the kitchen table with Rhys and Vivi, having their traditional weekly dinner. Sometimes they did it at their place, sometimes a restaurant, but mostly, it was back at the cabin, and tonight was no exception.
And if Gwyn felt a little guilty thinking about Wells eating alone in that big house just up the road, she reminded herself that just yesterday, she’d found out he’d applied for a liquor license, which meant that soon that stupid, fancy store of his would start serving drinks, probably for free, and she wasn’t sure even Sir Purrcival could compete with free booze.
“Until I win,” she told Rhys now, reaching for more salt.
Rhys groaned, tipping his head back. “Fuck me running.”
“What?” Vivi asked, and her husband sighed, sitting up straight again.
“That’s exactly what Wells said when I asked him the same question.”
Sipping her wine, Gwyn hid a smile behind her glass.
Business had never been better at Something Wicked. Sir Purrcival only made Saturday appearances, but that was enough. Videos of him were spreading on social media, and people who stopped in just to see him inevitably bought a few things, too. The website business had picked up as well, and she’d gone ahead and officially hired Cait and Parker to help with that.
Wells Penhallow was a pain in her ass, but she couldn’t deny that competing with him had been good for business.
“He might as well pack it in, then,” Vivi said, refilling her own glass. “Gwyn won’t lose.”
Rhys looked over at her, surprised. “I thought we were conscientious objectors in this.”
“You can conscientiously object,” Vivi retorted, then lifted her glass, clinking it against Gwyn’s. “I’m Team Gwyn for life.”
“Hear, hear,” Gwyn replied, and Rhys looked between them before pulling his own glass closer.
“I think Wells is a prick ninety percent of the time, but I find I cannot toast to his failure.” He screwed up his face. “Is this what familial love feels like?”
Ignoring that, Vivi turned to Gwyn. “We leave really soon. You two are going to be all right while we’re gone, right? I mean, this is just some friendly competition. It’s not going to lead to . . . I don’t know, curses and vengeful ghosts?”
“Just for example,” Rhys added dryly, and Gwyn shook her head.
“You can leave us unsupervised, I promise. Besides, I’ll be too focused on teaching Sir Purrcival some new appropriate holiday catchphrases. It took forever to get him to say ‘Happy Halloween,’ but now that he knows he gets treats after it, he won’t stop saying it.”
As if to prove her point, Sir Purrcival sauntered up just then. “Halloweeeeeen happy happy halloweeeeeen treatstreats dickbag?”
“Well, that’s worth at least a thousand likes,” Rhys offered, and Gwyn sighed as she reached down to feed Sir Purrcival a bit from her plate.
“We’re working on it.”
Next to her glass, her phone began to buzz, and Gwyn picked it up to see her mom was calling. “It’s Elaine,” she told Rhys and Vivi, then pointed at both of them.
“Don’t tell her I exploited her grandchild for financial gain.”
The next day was a fairly slow one at Something Wicked (and if Gwyn peeked out the window a few times to note it was also pretty dead at Penhallow’s, what of it?).
That was fine with Gwyn, though. They’d made more in the last weekend than they had in the last month, and she needed to restock, plus the Baby Witches had wanted more tarot practice, so by the time a customer came in near closing, Gwyn was almost surprised.
The girl looked vaguely familiar, which meant she was probably a local but definitely not a witch. Gwyn would’ve been able to sense that.
“Hi!” she said brightly. “Anything I can help you with?”
The girl moved toward the counter, her long blond hair brushing the glass. “I was interested in tarot?”
Ah. Gwyn’s bread and butter.
“Well, you are in luck because we have a ton of decks. What kind of vibe are you looking for? Classic Rider-Waite, something more contemporary . . . ”
Gwyn reached underneath the counter to pull out one of her favorite decks to sell to humans, and just as she did, she felt it.
There was a sort of electric feeling in the air, a slight sizzle that made her hair feel like it was standing on end.
She straightened up, the cards still in her hand, and tried to focus in on that feeling. It wasn’t coming from the girl. Or not exactly from her, but . . .
“Are you okay?”
Gwyn looked back to the girl, who was waiting for the tarot deck, and her eyes zeroed in on her neck.
There, swinging from it, was a stone on a leather cord. Just a hunk of quartz, nothing particularly special, but something must have been done to the stone because it was practically pulsing with magic, setting Gwyn’s teeth on edge.
She made herself smile as she placed the deck of cards on the glass countertop. “That is such a cool necklace!”
The girl smiled back, her fingers going to the crystal. “Thanks. I bought it over there.”
She gestured toward the window.
Penhallow’s.
Now Gwyn didn’t have to fake a smile.
Oh, I’ve got you now, Esquire.
Making fun of her plastic pumpkins and cartoon cats while he was selling powered up artifacts to normal people. She was going to rub this in his face so hard, he might not even have a face by the time she was done.
But first, she had to do her Witchy Duty.
Glancing around, she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Okay, I don’t normally do this for amulets that aren’t purchased here, but that one is so pretty, I have to at least offer.”
The girl’s eyes lit up as Gwyn rattled off a bunch of words she knew would do the trick—“full moon,” “salt,” “cleansing,” “powered up”—and the next thing she knew, she had the stone back in the storage room, sitting on a small silver plate.
She placed the palm of her hand on top of the crystal, breathing deep and concentrating.
After a moment, she felt the quartz stir under her hand, and then, with the faintest hissing sound, a rune rose up in front of her, wavering like smoke.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing major or scary, just a simple clarity spell. Hold this, focus on a problem, and you’d know what to do, the path opening up before you.
For a second, she considered just leaving the crystal enchanted. Didn’t normies deserve some clarity?
But no, there were rules about this kind of thing, and while Gwyn really, really hated following rules, she broke the enchantment with some muttered words and a sprinkle of water collected from a flowing stream under a full moon.
When she was finished, the thing sat in the palm of her hand, just as pretty as it had been but no longer radiating any kind of magic.
Satisfied, Gwyn returned it to the girl with a bright grin and a coupon for 10 percent off the next time she came into Something Wicked.
Since that was her last customer and it was already closing time, Gwyn followed her to the door, locking it behind her. She only took a few minutes to straighten up the shop, clearing the register and securing cash back in the storeroom, and then she was out on the cool moonlit street, wind whipping her hair as she hurried across to Penhallow’s.
Gwyn had spent the last fifteen minutes plotting exactly how she was going to confront Wells about selling real magic, and had thought she would probably start with something fittingly dramatic. Fling open the door, point a finger, maybe a nice J’accuse! for some flair.
She’d been waiting to have one up on Llewellyn Penhallow for thirteen years, after all; this was no time to be subtle.
But when she grabbed the handle of the door, it didn’t fling at all. In fact, it was stubbornly locked, which meant that instead of storming in in a glorious, righteous whirlwind of justice, she sort of pathetically rattled the door, then tapped her fingernails on the glass while he scowled at her from behind the counter.
“We’re closed!” he called out, and she put her face closer to the glass, fogging it up just to annoy him.
“I need to talk to you!” she called back, and he stood there for a beat, drumming his fingers on the counter before finally coming over and unlocking the door.
“Yes?”
Of course he didn’t let her in.
Of course he just stood there in the doorway, looming, looking down that long nose at her.
And of course Gwyn shoved right past him, stepping into the dim store, one hand in the pocket of her coat.
“You,” she said, pointing at him with her free hand, “screwed up.”
Gwyn hadn’t meant to sound quite that gleeful, but she couldn’t help it. This was too good not to enjoy.
Wells’s brows drew together, and he folded his arms tightly over his chest. “What?”
“You sold a human a magicked crystal.”
“The hell I did.”
“The hell you did, too,” Gwyn countered. “A quartz blessed with a clarity rune. Not a bad spell, thank the Goddess, but it could have been. That’s why we have to be so careful with what we sell.”
Wells crossed over to the counter and pulled out a large black leather book, the cover flopping open as he scanned through the pages.
Gwyn watched him, her own brow wrinkled now. “What is that?”
“Every item in this store that gets sold appears in this ledger,” Wells told her, not looking up. “So if I did indeed sell a quartz today, it will be in here.”
“You know we have computers for that kind of thing, right? Inventory apps on our phones? I’m all for using magic, but you have to admit technology beats us occasionally.”
Wells ignored that, his finger running down one of the creamy vellum pages.
It was, Gwyn had to admit, a very nice finger attached to a very good hand. Long, elegant, but still masculine, a signet ring winking dully in the dim light of the shop.
And she also had to admit, yet again, that Wells was definitely pulling off this whole . . . thing he had going on. Proprietor of a classy witch store, his white button-down neatly pressed, the deep navy waistcoat he wore accentuating his trim waist and broad shoulders.
You are checking out Llewellyn Penhallow, girl, please grip yourself.
This was why she needed to go on more dates. Too much time on her own, and she started admiring waistcoats, for fuck’s sake.
Clearing her throat, Gwyn moved away from the counter, looking back out toward the front window. Her own little shop glowed happily in the night, the display maybe not quite as tasteful as Penhallow’s—the giant broom was maybe a bit much—but cute in its own way. Unique.
Hers.
“Here it is.”
Wells’s voice was surprisingly flat, and Gwyn whirled around, marching behind the counter to lean over his shoulder and see for herself.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, triumphant as her finger landed on the words “Quartz (Clarity Rune).”
“I don’t understand it,” Wells muttered to himself, flipping back through the pages. “Everything else I’ve sold has been perfectly harmless; how did this one thing get through?”
“Maybe you didn’t check well enough,” Gwyn said, and then leaned closer, ignoring how nice he smelled. “Maybe you were . . . irresponsible.”
She gave the word a little spooky shudder, wiggling her eyebrows, and Wells closed the book so hard her hair actually puffed back from her face.
“I got a new shipment in two days ago,” he said, turning away and heading for a door behind the counter. “I hadn’t thought I’d put anything on the shelves, but I must have missed something. Or it got put out by accident.”
“This is why you need someone else working in here,” Gwyn told him as he opened the door. “You mocked my Baby Witches, but—”
“I do fine on my own,” he replied, and with that, he disappeared down the dark stairwell.