Gilda looks a tad unnerved. “What a charming imagination you have.”
My face colors. “You’re not supposed to be in my room without permission.” She has a penchant for “borrowing” clothes. “Or know what bodice rippers are.”
“I only went up there because I heard Grandma. She was talking to herself.”
It’s a flash up my spine, the horrible, wonderful, too-good-to-be-true imagery of my grandmother lingering, watching over us. “Aisling, it iswrongto make up stories like that.”
Her face crumples. “I’m not making it up! She wanted me to tell you, uhh…” Ash squints, pretending to recall something. “Remember what I told you.”
“That is a step too far,” I say sharply.
“All right, everybody settle down.” Luna throws me a severe look.
I exhale through my nose. Damn this family and their delusions of magic and prophecies and ghosts. It is painfully clear why I stayed away for so long. Whenever I’ve gone on vacations with my sisters and niece, they’ve still behaved peculiarly, but it wasn’t the full-blown charlatan experience like it is here, in this building, where our town’s cumulative idiosyncrasies embolden them to live their best lies.
“Andyou’re wearing my shirt,” I add. My biggest, comfiest black sweater, with the faded outline of a pirate ship. She’s paired it with one of her mother’s tie-dye scarves, pinning back her straight brown hair. She looks adorable, though, so I soften. “Just don’t spill anything on it, all right?”
“I would never,” she declares dramatically.
Rominapfffts. “You wouldalways. My clothes come back from you stained so badly, they look like old-world maps.”
The bell chimes as Gilda swans out the door, and, consumed by my thoughts, I drift from room to room.
As if memory is a ghost, I can fixate on any spot in this shop and see myself and my two sisters, many years ago, when Grandma still ran it all. There weren’t any books or flowersthen—she sold only candles—and dementia hadn’t begun to take her from us piece by piece. She was strong, whimsical, bejeweled; dragonflies in her long white hair; wrapped in a purple, gold, and green apron; a folk saying for any occasion ready at her lips. Stories galore, which watered my creative spirit, shaping me into the storyteller that I am today.Did you know there’s magic in Moonville?she’d whisper, swishing across the creaky floor in her long skirts with bells at the hem, humming to old Celtic songs playing from our bulky CD player.It’s in our trees. It’s in our waters. In your very bones. Can’t you feel it?
Dottie would place my hand against her ear, like a child listening to the ocean in a seashell.I can certainly hear it. Runs all through you like music in a wind tunnel.
She made magic seem…not merelyreal, but as if it were alive with a beating heart, like it belonged with our family, and we were its guardians. I idolized her, gobbling up this belief that I was part of something bigger. I believed there was magic in my bones.
Dottie’s favored music still plays, although not from a CD player anymore. I meander through the sunroom porch, called the Garden, where Romina is at work braiding a floral crown for a customer who wants to get over their ex-girlfriend. Their past lover has already moved on, and loving them is a torment. “To let love go,” Romina says softly, piling plants together. “Cyclamen. Blue iris. Snowdrops.” She pauses, hand hovering over a pot of drooping white flowers. “Not snowdrops, it seems. The magic wants…honeysuckle.Yes.This is the combination that will help you. Wear the crown while you sleep tonight,and you’ll wake with a lifted heart. Tomorrow, spread the flowers out to dry. Then crush their petals and keep them in your pocket until you feel the heartache easing.”
I shake my head, passing all the way back around into the Candleland section of our shop, high shelves crammed with wax artworks: pumpkins, acorns, trees, blooms; meltable mages and knights and dragons inspired by Luna’s favorite fantasy series, Tributales. The competing scents of coffee, patchouli, caramel black tea, amber, sea salt, and raspberry should be migraine-inducing, but they calm me instead, evoking the strange feeling that I am standing at the center of the universe, where everything started. Exactly where I need to be.
Ahead, a man leans against a hallway wall papered with torn-out book pages, lit by electric torches. This corridor curves down to a landing of sorts, then ramps steeply down again, leading to the Cavern of Paperback Gems. The Cavern was my idea, as I wanted a way to imprint a little of my own personality into the shop. Luna had candles, Romina had flowers, and the obvious choice for me was books. If I’m not writing a book of my own, then I’ve got my nose in somebody else’s. Even when I didn’t live here, I still operated the Cavern, ordering stock and making myself available to customers for recommendations. There’s an old-fashioned telephone on the wall downstairs, and if you dial 3, my cell rings.
The man sees me coming and straightens, slipping his hands out of his pockets. He looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with soft brown hair that curls at the nape of his neck, light gray eyes, and my biggest weakness: glasses. It’s dishonorable, how fast I can go to pieces over a man in glasses.
“Hi,” he says, clearing his throat.
I glance at his shopping basket, a plastic gold cauldron with a wire handle, which contains one copy ofCave of a Thousand Crystal Wings, the third book in my There’s Magic in Villamoon series. He sees me looking at it and picks up the book, flipping to read the synopsis on the back. A receipt is sticking out of the pages like a bookmark; I wonder how long he’s been lingering after he made his purchase. “Vampires, huh?”
“Among other monsters. If you’re new to the series, it might help to start with the first book, though. That one is number three.”
“Ah, butthisis the one that you forgot to sign.” He smiles, a wry sparkle in his eyes, and I can’t help but smile back. “I had to search through thirty books before I found a copy you skipped.”
“Youwantedone I hadn’t signed?”
He holds my gaze. We’re close enough to the basement entrance to hear my playlist, which is separate from the music that plays in the rest of the shop. Down in the Cavern, I like to knit the atmosphere with stormy midnights and spooky film scores. At this moment, “The Incantation” fromBeetlejuiceis creeping around the landing.
“I wanted you to know who you were signing it for.” He opens to the title page and uncaps a pen, handing both the pen and the book to me. “Dylan.”
I give him an assessing look as I Zorro a great bigZacross the page. “You a fan of paranormal mysteries, Dylan?”
He shrugs. “We’ll see.” A mock frown pulls at his lips. “Couldn’t have added your phone number?”
At that, I have to laugh.
He takes the book from me, then begins to turn. “By the way, I overheard you talking to Miss Halifax. An auction sounds fun.”
