Coastal towns like ours were always the foggiest in Maine, but Silver Mist was a little bit different. The faint mist that covered our streets all year round was a glamour spell, and it prevented human strangers from seeing what they weren’t supposed to see.
Like Panda’s, for instance.
Humans would only see a dilapidated, burnt-down motel, but in reality it was a sprawling, well-kept diner with the wordsNON-HUMANS WELCOMEflashing in rainbow colors on its LED display.
Panda’s was unsurprisingly full by the time I made it to its doors, with most locals in the habit of coming in early so they could take their time chatting over pancakes and homemade brews before heading out to queue for the 8AM bus.
A quick glance around the panda-wallpapered-diner showed one vacant seat left at the end of the counter, and luckily for me it was also right next to Mr. Handsome.
I shoved my guidebook back into my bag before walking up to the counter, not wanting to appear like some neophyte witch (which I was, unfortunately, but nothing wrong about keeping that to myself, don’t you think?).
“Mornin’, Sleeping Beauty.” The diner’s owner greeted me in his usual booming voice, and I made a face as I slid into the high-backed stool and hung my tote bag on one of the hooks under the counter.
“Very funny, Mr. P.” P stood for Pan, as in the famed satyr from the Greek myths. His human form was a large, mustached man with moss-green eyes, dressed perpetually with a chef’s hat and apron over his striped shirt and pants. Nix – one of the diner’s regular waitresses – once told me that both the chef’s hat and apron were spell-protected. The former was to keep his horns away from sight, and no amount of headshaking would ever dislodge the hat off his temple; the latter, on the other hand, was a magical armor, just in case Mr. P had to protect his diners from supernatural trouble.
He was a nice man, really, but he’d be much nicer in my opinion if he would stop reminding me of the first time I had come to his diner. I had just moved in to Silver Mist that day, and I had been so tired arranging furniture that I had found myself falling asleep in one of his booths.
And I might have snored once.
Well, okay, twice, but it wasn’t polite to count.
“So what are you having?” Mr. P’s gaze slanted towards the man seated beside me as he spoke.Want him, for instance,the owner mouthed with a wink that had me choking and hastily shaking my head.
“Just the usual.” Picking the menu on the counter, I casually lifted it to hide my face from Mr. Handsome so I could glower at the satyr without being seen. That was another not-so-nice habit of Mr. P: he had sort of guessed about my embarrassing crush at Mr. Handsome, and he loved to torture me about it every once in a while.
The ancient satyr looked like he was in the mood to prolong my torment with more irreverent winking, but one of the other diners called out to him then, and I breathed a sigh of relief as Mr. P bustled off. I stole a look at the man seated beside me – his concentration remained fixed on the sheaf of papers he held in his hand – and I found myself releasing another inner sigh.
I had taken to calling him Mr. Handsome for good reason, believe me. His looks strongly reminded me of Robert Redford in his younger days (thinkBarefoot in the Park) with his thick blond hair, chiseled features, and tall, lithe frame that was as elegant as it was powerful. Add to that his unmistakable airof mystery, and can anyone blame me for being just a little obsessed?
You see, everyone in town was either non-human (like Pan) or a human (like me) employed by the former, and majority of the local men of Silver Mist were either small business owners (non-human) or daily commuters with blue-collar jobs (human) at the city.
Most of the time, it was easy to figure out who was which – with the glaring exception of Mr. Handsome, who fit neither bill. He kept mostly to himself unlike the other locals, and I only ever see him talking to Mr. P. There were also other ways he stood out, such as his penchant for beautiful, tailored suits, for instance (Savile Row, not Italian), and the irregular times he would drop by the diner.
Thanks to Mr. P, everyone working at Panda’s Diner also knew about my ridiculous infatuation, and most of the staff had taken to sending me real-time photos of Mr. Handsome whenever he dropped by.
4AM on a Tuesday, 1PM on a Wednesday, and even 11PM on a Sunday, which was unheard of for the respectable, hardworking townsfolk of Silver Mist. What kind of work could one possibly do to have so much flexibility with his schedule?
It was possible, of course, that he was simply a man of leisure, but I didn’t think so. There was the state of his hands, you see. I’m a great believer of a person’s hands saying a lot of things about its owner (it’s probably why CSI had placed me in the Palmistry Training Protocol), and Mr. Handsome’s hands certainly said a lot about him.
Prior to moving to Silver Mist, I used to be one of your run-of-the-mill, overworked, and underpaid workers trapped in a concrete jungle in California. Office guys were a dime in a dozen back in those days, and trust me when I say that none of them had hands like Mr. Handsome’s. Those guys had weak-looking hands and manicured nails, hands that looked like the most physical thing they did was carry a cardboard tray of Starbucks coffee every time they needed to buy their way into their superior’s good graces.
Mr. Handsome’s hands, though...
They were large, rough, and callused, the kind that men who knew what real work meant would have. Was he that type of man? I suppose I could just ask him, but—-
“Morning, Blair,” Nix sang out as she emerged from the kitchen. Tall and slender, the younger girl was at that rebellious stage in her life where she equated hair color to an assertion of her individuality. Last week’s color had been ash gray. This week’s was cotton candy pink.
“You look beautiful as always,” Nix gushed as she reached me.
“Nix!”My voice was half-pleading, half-hissing (I’m not sure how I managed it, but I did). I loved that she and Mr. P were trying so hard to get Mr. Handsome to notice me, but at this point he would have to be an idiot not to know what was happening.
Nix’s eyebrows shot up in feigned surprise. “But you do look beautiful. Honestly, I can’t believe you’ve been living her for over a month—-”
Oh no.
“And you’re still single,” the younger girl finished triumphantly.
Cast it!
