Page 10 of The Spellreader and the Phoenix

Rory chirped at him, not at all worried. His body didn’t really work like that, so it was fine. If he shifted into his natural form, he could go without food for ages. The bird and human forms would require sustenance eventually, but it wasn’t urgent.

Once the man finished breakfast and cleaned up, he sighed.

“We’d better go downstairs.”

He left the cat in the apartment, which she was not happy about, but the man ignored her.

Rory enjoyed the ride down the stairs into the bookshop. They passed through a beaded curtain that made a pleasant clicking sound. Where the apartment had been full of books, the bookshop was stuffed with them. They weren’t disordered, exactly, but it looked like there were maybe twenty percent more books than there was really space for, so some of the piles were a bit haphazard.

The man strode past all the books to the front door, flipped the lock, paused for a moment and drew in a deep breath, then pulled open the door and marched through.

Rory looked around himself, wondering what the man was bracing himself for. Rory was totally willing to help. Only there… didn’t seem to be anything?

He chirped and looked around again, but really, it was a quiet morning on a street filled with small commercial shops. A few fallen leaves made a rasping sound as they skittered by on the sidewalk. In the distance, a few other birds chirped. There was a bit of coolness in the air, but nothing that Rory had to worry about.

It was a nice day, as far as he could tell.

And then the man said, “Uh, is there a reason you’re not flying off? Birds normally fly off, don’t they?”

Oh, right. Rory had forgotten about the man’s plan since it ran so contrary to Rory’s own. The man thought that he was releasing Rory back into the wild, and he had no idea that Rory’s intention from the moment he’d found the man was to stay with him forever.

How best to approach this when he didn’t have human vocal cords right now?

He cuddled into the man’s neck again, rubbing his feathers against him, and the man’s fingers came up as though on automatic and stroked him a few times.

“Well, I guess it would be okay if you stayed for a little while. The hardware store opens at eight, and they probably have birdseed. I’ll get you something to eat, and we’ll see if you feel better in a few hours, okay?”

Rory cuddled into him again, not thinking he was imagining the tension was lessening in the shoulder that he was riding on.

Most witches and shifters had lost the knack of attuning to the Magic and actually paying attention to how it directed people in the world. Rory’s witch was likely unaware that he’d just found his mate. But perhaps he felt a desire he couldn’t explain to keep Rory.

Rory fluffed up at the idea, feeling very proud of being attractive to his mate, even if that was silly.

They headed back inside, returning to the apartment to let Nōwē out. She yowled her displeasure at her human, who didn’t seem at all fazed by this.

“Come on,” he said. “Red’s going to stick with us for a little while. They’re not food, Nōwē, okay?”

The cat shot him a scathing glare which he didn’t seem to notice.

“We don’t open until 11 on Sundays and Mondays,” Max explained. He didn’t actually seem to expect Rory to understand, but he appeared to be used to giving commentary about what he was doing. Maybe he often spoke to his cat? “Gives me time to get errands done and do some work in the back room. That’s where all the spellbooks are.”

Rory chirped in agreement. That was a very sensible way to do it. Normal people were doubtful and unobservant, but there was no reason to strain the World Spell unnecessarily.

“Please don’t poop on the books,” the man said.

Rory chirped at him indignantly, and Nōwē hissed in amusement. Rory could practically feel the superiority coming off her since she hadn’t been accused of pooping on books. Rory pecked at the man’s neck, making him startle and reach up.

“Ow, okay, sorry. I just don’t want anything to happen to the books.”

That wasn’t unreasonable. Books were important.

The man headed into his back room, Rory along for the ride, and he felt the magic wash over them as they entered. His mate had some excellent spells protecting the room, and when Rory saw how many spellbooks there were, he understood why. Some people would pay a lot to get into a room like this.

Witches could only use their magic by casting spells. And since Spellsmiths were rare and expensive, already-created spells were protected—and in some cases, hoarded.

Rory found this behavior bizarre—but he routinely died, burst into flames, burned to ashes, and then was reborn. He didn’t tend to be invested in material possessions.

He did understand that normal people, witches, and non-mythical shifters lived much shorter lives, and they needed a way to preserve their knowledge and pass it down. Books were sensible inventions. Rory was quite proud of people for figuring that out.