“Wedid it,” she corrected. She plucked a tomato off the vine and bit into it. Juice dribbled down her chin and, laughing, she caught the drips in her palm. It was the sweetest, most delicious tomato she’d ever eaten.
“Hooray for the human not starving!” Caz said.
She swallowed the bite of tomato. “It’s more than that,” she said, wanting to shout and dance and sing. She settled for waving the tomato in the air. “I know how we can do better than just survive! I know how we can live here.”
“How?” he asked.
“In exchange for bread and soap and the things we need that we can’t grow, we’re going to give magic to the people of Caltrey.” There would be challenges, of course. Risks, definitely. If the exemperor’s people heard about this, if they guessed what she was doing, there could be trouble. She thought of the librarian who’d been turned to wood and the young thief who’d suffered so horrifically for his crime. She had zero proof that the laws had been changed. Besides, no matter who was in charge, the powerful always wanted to keep power for themselves. But the islanders of Caltrey . . . the fisherfolk, the farmers, the merhorses, even the winged cats . . .And me. I need this. We all need this.
Caz rustled his leaves at her. “Say again? We’re going to what now?”
Kiela smiled broadly at him. “We’re going to open a spellshop.”
Chapter Eight
“Nope,” Caz said.
Kiela blinked at him. “Nope? What do you mean?”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Caz said. “I am assuming you threw it out there to soften me up for your real idea, which I won’t like but will at least be better thanthat.”He crossed his leaves like a professor preparing to listen to a student’s wildly incorrect theories. All he needed was a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his root ball to complete the look.
“That is my real idea,” Kiela said.
“A spellshop. An illegal spellshop. A shop so illegal that the emperor himself—”
“He splatted,” Kiela interrupted before he could wind himself up into a full-blown rant. “You don’t know what’s changed since we left. Laws could’ve been rewritten.” She held up a hand. “Or not, I know. But we aren’t in Alyssium anymore, and it’s unlikely that anyone official would have ever heard of Caltrey, much less show up here. Besides”—she plowed on before Caz could argue back—“I’m not saying we should call it a spellshop.”
“Good,” he said, “because ‘Kiela and Caz’s Really Illegal Spellshop that Will Likely Get You Killed or Cursed’ would look ridiculous on a sign. You must as well just invite an imperial investigator in for tea.”
“That part will be hidden, a shop within a shop,” Kiela said. “And we don’t have to admit we’re selling spells at all. We’ll call them ‘remedies.’” She was sure she could extract a few useful spells from the wealth of arcane knowledge in her possession. She already had the quick-plant-growth spell, though it wasn’t ideal—it looked an awful lot like magic, plus it was more of a one-time emergency-use spell. She was certain she could find another equally useful spell that wasn’t so flashy, with a bit of research. If there was anything in the world she was good at, it was research.
Caz snorted.
“On the surface, the shop will sell . . .” Looking for inspiration, she scanned the cottage. She doubted anyone would buy cobwebs or old chipped plates or . . . Her eyes landed on the pantry with its rows and rows of glass jars that her parents had left behind when they’d abandoned their island lives and moved to the city. They’d used them to preserve fruits and vegetables, as well as nine-year-old Kiela’s favorite: “Jam.”
“Jam?” Caz squeaked.
Kiela hurried across the room to the jars. She picked one up and blew on its top. Dust plumed up in a mini-cloud. Yes, this would do nicely. Clean them up, fill them with jam, wrap a ribbon around them, and they’d make lovely merchandise. She’d already noticed the lack of jam and fruit items in the bakery, which meant there was a market for it. “We’ll sell jam. Raspberry jam. Blackberry jam. Blueberry jam. Apple and berry jam.” She’d seen lots of berry bushes in the garden—they’d begun to corral the brambles into the Journals of Scientific Papers section, near the back fence. She didn’t know what kind of berries they were, but surely they were something that could be jam-ified.
“Jam,” he repeated. “You want us to build a new life based on . . . jam?”
She pulled out the jars, counting them as she went.
“Do you even like jam?” he asked.
Twenty, twenty-five, thirty . . . Ooh, there were smaller ones on the third shelf, easily several dozen of them. Her parents had canned lots of food. Everyone on the island did. It was a way of life here: grow as much as you can in the summer, harvest in the fall, and preserve for the winter. She could offer a discount to anyone who returned a jar when they finished so that she wouldn’t run out of them. “Of course. Who doesn’t like jam?”
“I don’t.”
“You’re a plant. I imagine the bulk of our customers will be non-plants.”
“It makes my leaves sticky.”
“Then maybe don’t put your leaves in the jam?” She lined the jars up on the counter, filled the sink with water, and began to wash them.
“Jam? Really?”
“We don’t need to make a fortune from the jam—it just needs to sell well enough to serve as a cover for our real product.”
