If your magic requires my presence to stabilize, I suppose I should make myself available. For purely practical reasons.
Purely practical.
Entirely.
I was grinning now. Tequila opened one eye to judge me.
You’re texting the nice-eyes human.
“Go to sleep.”
You’re smiling at your phone like a teenager.
“I am not.”
You are. I can see you. I’m right here. My eyes work.
I locked my phone and shoved it under my pillow.
That doesn’t hide the smile,Tequila observed.
“Shut up and purr.”
He did. But the judgment remained.
And when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed about an antique shop full of humming objects, and a man with sad eyes who’d made me laugh, and the terrifying possibility that maybe—maybe—I wasn’t as done with hoping as I’d thought.
5
ALMOST
WHERE I ALMOST LET MYSELF WANT SOMETHING.
Itold myself it was just for the quiet.
Every morning for the past week, I’d walked the six blocks to Marcus’s antique shop, phone buzzing in my pocket like an angry hornet, matches climbing into numbers that had stopped meaning anything. 2,847. 3,102. 3,456. The universe was apparently very committed to showing me options.
And every morning, the moment I stepped through that old wooden door, silence.
Not literal silence—the shop had its own sounds. Creaking floorboards that seemed to announce visitors to no one in particular. The soft tick of a dozen clocks that didn’t quite agree on the time. The occasional crackle from the radio, which had graduated from Barry Manilow to what Marcus called “pointed jazz”—apparently it was making commentary on his mood through song selection.
But the phone stopped. The buzzing stopped. The relentless, insistent pressure that had been the soundtrack of my life since Cassie’s crystal touched my phone finally, blessedly, shut up.
I’d called in sick to the winery three times this week. Valentina had left increasingly pointed voicemails about“reliability” and “harvest season commitments” and “the geese miss having someone to terrorize.” I’d deal with it eventually. Right now, I needed the quiet more than I needed employment.
Marcus had stopped pretending to be annoyed by my presence somewhere around day three. That was when he’d set a cup of tea on the counter without me asking—two sugars, splash of milk, exactly right. That was also when I’d noticed he’d cleared a space in the back room: the old velvet armchair that looked like it had opinions, positioned near the window where the morning light was best.
He hadn’t said anything about the chair. Neither had I.
Some things you don’t need to say.
“These are wrong.”
I looked up from the box of inventory I’d been sorting—old brooches, mostly, the kind grandmothers wore to church and great-aunts wore to funerals. Marcus was frowning at his laptop with the enthusiasm of a man being forced to handle a venomous snake.
“What’s wrong?”
“The dates. Someone catalogued these music boxes as 1920s, but they’re clearly Edwardian. Look at the filigree work.” He held up a small brass box, delicate and tarnished. “This is pre-war craftsmanship. Someone just assumed.”
