The next day was completely and almost suspiciously uneventful. I hung around my shop half expecting every person who walked through the door to be Tess, but none were. My friends were all busy with unicorn fever, taking turns watching over the recovering stallion. There was a minor argument over the name to give him, but common sense had prevailed and we all agreed on Lir, after the prince who had loved the last unicorn.
Depressing thought, really, in some ways. As far as Yosemite knew, Lir wasn't the last, but he might be the last in this wilderness. Unicorns were very rare, the druid said, and only thrived where the wilderness wasn't overly damaged. That was precious few places in the world anymore.
Harper called me two days after and said she was running late, so I opened the store by myself. Alek had gone with Yosemite into the woods that morning, leaving our makeshift bed in the wee hours with a soft kiss and assurance he wouldn't do anything stupid like get himself hurt or killed. I tried to pretend I believed him.
I was tidying up things that didn't really need tidying and avoiding doing translation work, which is what I do to actually pay the bills that comics and games don't cover, when Brie walked in. The tall baker was without her usual apron, but she had a box in her hands that smelled like sugar, spice, and everything buttery, fattening, and delicious.
It had been exactly a month since she'd told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn't allowed in her shop, that she wanted nothing to do with me, and that she considered me and my kind the epitome of all that was wrong with everything, ever. Well, those weren't her exact words, but she'd been pretty clear she meant it. I had been shocked and hadn't the heart to tell her that she paid rent to me every month, though for a second I'd been tempted.
"Don't give me a look like that," she said, setting the box down on the glass display counter that ran down one side of my store. "Iollan told me what you did. I admit I might have judged too harshly and too quick."
For a moment I couldn't figure out who Iollan was. "Yosemite?" I said.
She nodded, bright red curls bouncing with the motion, and looked down at the box. "I brought those little cupcakes you and Harper like."
"This mean I'm allowed to talk to you again?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. I really was trying to be civil, but her outright rejection of me had stung. But I really did miss those damn cupcakes.
"I knew a sorcerer once," she said, her eyes meeting mine. "He talked a woman I loved out of her home, away from family, hearth, and all who loved her. When he tired of her, he took her heart." Her eyes were shadowed with pain and she swallowed visibly.
"Sounds like we might know the same guy," I muttered.
"I guess we might," Brie said. "I do not like losing the ones I love. Ciaran assures me that you are different, but it is hard to trust."
I flinched inwardly at that. It was difficult to trust, and I was feeling the full consequences of that these last two days. I wanted to cast my eyes skyward and tell the universe that it was okay, I got the freaking message already.
"I'm glad I could help the unicorn," I said instead.
"I am also," she said. "He would not have let you help if you were of an evil disposition, I don't think."
Remembering that wild rush of power, the pure joy, I knew she was right. I tried to take some comfort in it.
"I am not sure I am very good," I said. I brought my hand to my mouth, surprised. Damn out-loud voice, sneaking up on me.
"None of us are only one thing or another," Brie said with a gentle smile that made her look strangely ancient and almost painfully beautiful from one breath to the next.
I wondered what she was, revising my idea she was just a hedge witch. I made a mental note to ask Ciaran when he got back from his latest antique-buying trip. Not that I expected a real answer from the leprechaun. He had a way of keeping secrets.
Brie had to get back to her bakery, and I resigned myself to waiting for Harper before I opened the cupcakes. Harper would never forgive me if I ate them without her and it wouldn't be worth the whining and reproach. Besides, she'd be shocked that Brie and I had made up. I couldn't wait to see her face when I told her. So I turned to my computer and opened the latest work file, making my brain move away from the world of unicorns and mysterious red-haired people with ancient Irish names, and to Japanese car documentation contracts that needed to be put into English.
Harper's face was priceless when she showed up that afternoon and saw the box from Brie's bakery sitting on the counter.
"Did you check for traps?" she asked after I told her the story of my morning.
"Nope, I figured I would wait until the rogue got here."
"Maybe there's an invisible ooze or something," Harper said, poking at the box.
"Maybe it is poisoned. Should we call a cleric?" I sniffed the box, though I didn't really need to since the smell of sugar and lemon had been taunting me for hours now.
"Tell Max he can have my Game Boy," Harper said, pulling open the box and lifting a mini-cupcake out. She popped it into her mouth.
"It's a good day to die," I said, snagging a cupcake and following suit.
Harper replied but I couldn't make out a word of it around the mouthful of cake. Guess I'd finally found a language I didn't understand, har har.
"How's Lir?" I asked when we'd finished off all half-dozen cupcakes.
"He's standing, but still pretty weak. Max won't leave his side. It's kind of cute. But I get it, you know? I could almost like horses as much as he does if they all looked like a unicorn." Harper flopped into her usual chair and pulled her laptop from her backpack.
I almost told her about Tess, but she started humming and wasn't paying any attention to me at all, so I turned and went back to translation. The weather outside had turned blustery, and rain spat from the sky. It was a weekday, so there wasn't much traffic through the store. We worked in near silence, Harper playing Hearthstone and swearing about the RNG gods.
Possible conversational openers ran through my head. I wanted to share what had happened with her. She was my best friend. I trusted her more than anyone, maybe even more than Alek. I was afraid I'd made a horrible mistake with Tess, that I'd turned away someone in real need over stupid fears. I wasn't sure what I wanted Harper to say, how talking to her about it would assuage the guilt and doubt eating me alive, but it was getting messy to keep it inside. Part of not hiding anymore meant trusting the people around me with the ugly things as well as the good.
Besides, for all I knew, Harper would say good riddance, tell me in her best Mr. Torgue impression that Tess was going to betray the fuck out of me, and I'd find some kind of closure there.
"So," I said, "I had a visitor the other night."
Harper looked up from her game and tipped her head to one side. My face must have given away that this was serious because she slapped her laptop shut and set it on the counter beside where my phone was charging.
My phone buzzed, choosing the worst time, of course. I checked the text and saw it was from Alek.
"What's the word?" Harper asked.
"Nothing. He and Yosemite are doubling back; he says the trail keeps going in circles." I closed my phone after checking the battery level. I'd bought a cheap one this time, having lost the last two in pretty quick succession.
"So, someone came to see you?" Harper said.
The bell chimed as a figure pushed through the front door. This business would be so great if it weren't for the customers and their immaculate sense of timing, right?
Only it wasn't a customer. It was a bloody witch. Well, not literally bloody. Not yet.
"Hello, Peggy," I said to the head of the Wylde coven, putting a bit of frosty power into my tone so that my breath literally puffed with chill. I wasn't above theatrics, even if I couldn't turn her into a toad. Not yet, anyway, not before I heard her out. It would be impolite.
"Today is the thirtieth day," she said, no preamble, no pleasantries. Her hair was in its perfect bun, though damp from the rain, and she held a dripping umbrella in one hand which she pointed dramatically at me. "You are to be gone from this town by dawn, or else."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harper said. "Ms. Olsen, you are a total asshole, you know that?"
"Out of respect for your mother, young woman, I will ignore that you run with such a crowd and spare you."
"Spare me what?" Harper said, coming around the counter. "Plagues of bugs? Snootily looking down your nose at me? You are a fraud, all of you stupid witches. Jade could fry you like hotcakes into dust with a wiggle of her little finger, you dumb bitch. But you know she won't, which is why you feel okay threatening her, right? Cause you wouldn't be so goddamn stupid if she were actually dangerous."
Wow. I sat back, forgetting to be mad for a moment. I'd never seen Harper go after anyone like that, not even in the infamous flame wars on the net that she often found herself immersed in. I had to admit I was impressed and more than a little warmed by her profanity-laden defense and display of friendship. I prepared a shield, holding my magic tightly, my hands loose on my thighs, just in case Peggy the librarian got frisky when challenged.
Harper's jeans pocket began playing "The Imperial March" at the same time as my phone rang with "Bad to the Bone." It sounded like Max was calling his sister at the same time Levi was calling me. That couldn't be good. I froze, unable to decide between going for the phone and dealing with the witch.
"I will not be spoken to like this. You will rue this day, both of you." Peggy stuck her nose in the air in a bad high school drama way and shook her umbrella. "Hexen!" she shouted. The lights, my phone, both computers, and, judging from Harper's sudden leap sideways and subsequent outpouring of swearing, Harper's phone all flickered, crackled in spectacular sparks, and died.
Peggy fled as soon as it happened, making a very undignified exit out my door as quickly as she could.
I had no time to get a shield up, distracted by the ringing phones and more expecting an attack directly on Harper or me, not our poor innocent electronics. Summoning light into my d20 talisman, I held it aloft and surveyed the damage. The bulbs in my strategically placed lamps had all turned smoky black. Greenish, acidic smoke trailed off both computers. My phone was a useless brick of plastic. Light still shone from the street lamps and the bakery, so I had hope the hex hadn't damaged anything outside this room.
"She fried Cecilia!" Harper cradled her laptop in her arm, blowing at the smoke.
"I really hate witches," I said.
"We could go after her," Harper offered.
"Nope," I said. "We can't. One, she's probably in a car halfway across town by now, and two, you were right. I can't do shit about this without looking like a total asshole."
"I'm revising my opinion on that. This is, like, totally the gauntlet thrown, dude. So not cool." She opened her laptop and tried to turn it on, but we both knew it was a doomed act. "You would think she'd obey that threefold law thing. Bitch."
"Threefold law thing?" I asked.
"Yeah, I read it in one of the Wiccan books at the library. Supposedly if you do magic, it comes back to you three-fold, especially the bad stuff. So like you are supposed to avoid cursing people and crap, cause it'll just go like mega worse for you. Haven't you ever seen The Craft ?"
"Guess I missed that one," I said. Wheels in my brain started turning as an idea began to form, as ephemeral as the dissipating smoke from my dead computer. "We should figure out why the guys were calling us, and then you can tell me more."
We never got the chance to do either. Brie rushed through the door into the mostly dark shop, cell phone in hand.
"They are under attack," she said. "We have to get to the Henhouse."