“So you don’t usually have octopi working as flood cleanup crew?” Caleb asks, leaning against the wall.
He is a bit paler than usual under his beard, but I have a feeling my skin tone isn’t much better because I’m just about as shocked.
“No, I can’t say that I normally have octopi doing anything anywhere, ever.”
“So this isn’t like a witch thing. You guys don’t just have, like, an army of octopi waiting to hang out and clean up?”
“If it were, my life would be a lot easier,” I say.
The octopus closest to us — the one mopping up the water on the floor with the towel— puts a tentacle around my leg underneath my sweatpants, and its voice echoes in my mind, reminiscent of the same one I heard last night but not nearly as loud.
“Queen Annabelle sent us,” it says simply. “The ward may not be up and running, but she wanted you to know that she’s here in good faith. She wants you to focus on getting the ward back up to bring order to our kingdom, and she knows that if you have more time to concentrate on the ward and you’re not worried about the candy stuff, then you’ll be more likely to help out again.”
“Huh,” I say. “Well, can you tell her I said thank you?”
The octopus releases its tentacle and goes back to scrubbing.
Caleb’s giving me an odd look.
“Did it tell you something?” he asks.
“You know, you’re taking this all really well,” I tell him. “And yes. Annabelle, that’s the ah, kraken from last night, uh, she sent them over here to help.”
“I’m not sure how else to take it,” he says, stretching out tall. I try not to drool at the sliver of skin exposed.
“I think you’re taking it better than I am.”
“I’ve always been the more calm and collected of the two of us. It will make us a great parenting team, in a few years. So you communicated telepathically with that octopus?”
I blink, wondering if I should be treated for verbal whiplash.
“Um,” I say. “Can’t say that’s something I normally do. Like I said, my magic is just candy. Some of the candies make you feel better. They fill that little space in your heart when you’re craving something that’s not just chocolate.”
“That makes sense. As much as anything else in this store makes sense,” he says.
I can’t help but laugh at that.
“This is incredible,” I say, watching an octopus scrub the glass countertop clean. “It could have been so much worse.”
“It almost was.” Gunner’s tail wags, and he leans forward, sniffing the head of an octopus before a tentacle rears up and slaps him on the nose.
“I wasn’t gonna bite it,” he says. “Or even lick it. I just needed a sniff.”
“Don’t sniff the octopi,” I tell him. “I don’t think they like it.”
“Wow, Sherlock, what an amazing deduction,” Gunner says dryly. He stands up, padding toward the candy counter. “Come on, let’s see the rest of it.”
“I never thought I’d be taking advice from a dog,” Caleb says.
“I’d say you get used to it, but you really don’t,” I tell him.
Caleb’s lips quirk up in a grin and he reaches for my hand, and we walk to the back of the store holding hands, watching out for octopi and rogue tentacles, and somehow it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
The damage isn’t too bad. The worst is the back room, and that’s only because some of the cardboard shipping supplies are soaked and irredeemable.
Gunner noses the stereo, the same one I had in my bedroom as a kid, and the radio comes on. We all work in time with the music to remove the ruined packaging and ribbon and tape and take it out to the dumpster in the back.
“How much damage do you think that is?” Caleb says.
