Chapter 6 #
The bell above the door. A customer. The vision of Will with his mysterious case and those unsettling news reports has only just faded.
I look up.
Oh.
Oh!
Someone is standing in the doorway. A monster. A horned skull, sharp teeth jutting from angular jaws, some of them bloodied. And stars and moons, those eyes. No, not eyes: hollow sockets filled with darkness where his eyes should have been.
Lucky is on her feet at once. Her back arches, her tail bristles and she hisses softly at him. Then my reason returns. A mask. It's only a mask. So skilfully made, so lifelike that I fell for it for a moment. I let out my breath, quiet and slow, so as not to show that I'd been holding it.
The masked figure says nothing and does not move. He simply stands there, in my doorway. He wears a long black leather coat, neat dark-grey trousers and buckled boots. He's of average height, with a relaxed bearing, as if walking in with a monstrous skull over his head were the most ordinary thing in the world.
I force myself to smile. This is my shop. My domain. I won't be intimidated in my own sanctuary.
"Welcome. You've come to The Right Place," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Come in, if you dare."
He steps over the threshold. A single movement, fluid and soundless. The door swings shut behind him and the bell tinkles again.
Lucky leaps down from the windowsill and darts towards the back room in a streak of white. Clever cat. I hear her burrow in among the empty cardboard boxes, where she always hides when something's startled her. Sometimes it's a thunderstorm or a big dog in the street, mostly it's nothing at all.
The man walks along my shelves with his hands clasped behind his back, like someone touring a museum. His mask turns from left to right. Inspecting. Searching…
His leather boots make almost no sound on my old floorboards; only the scratch of my pen in the notebook fills the silence in the shop. I haven't stopped it, the pen. Not yet.
"Are you looking for something in particular?" I ask. I brush a few cat hairs from my fanned-out oracle cards and slide them back into a neat stack. To seem busy, to give my hands something to do. "Or just having a look around?"
I rise from my chair, as naturally as I can, not too quickly. The velvet of my dress rustles against my legs. "What an impressive mask!" I try to force a little lightness into my voice. It only half works. "Getting ready for the festival? Or just ‘cause?"
He turns his monstrous head towards me. He must have heard me, but grants me no response. No nod. No shrug. Nothing.
Then he turns away again and comes to a stop at the shelf of herbal blends. His hand, in a black leather glove, reaches for something. A jar? A pouch? I can't see what it is from here. He picks it up, turns it over in the light and sets it back.
His fingers trail along the edge of the next shelf, very lightly. At the bottles of moonberry liqueur he pauses. I watch his leather thumb stroke slowly over a label — up, down, up, down — and then he takes a few steps in my direction.
Towards the reading table. Towards me. My stomach clenches. Stay calm, Mira. Just a customer in a costume.
His head tilts slightly. The hollow sockets of the mask fix on the reading table. On the notebook. On the pen still writing away, undisturbed.
I never gave the pen the command to stop after the vision, so it's still dancing merrily across the paper, noting down everything I see, think and feel. The hollow eyes, the glove at the moonberry liqueur, the tilt of the mask. Him. He's on my pages now, part of the story without ever meaning to be.
The black hollows that hide his eyes stay fixed on the pen, as if he knows.
By the stars, does he know?!
The pen falters. The nib hovers above the paper for a moment, as if it feels it too. Just a second, and then it writes on, in thinner lines. Hesitant.
My heartbeat quickens. If I stop the pen now, he'll see it, and it's already too late to cover it or hide it away.
Why doesn't he say anything?
I bite my lip, catch myself, stop. Come on, Mira. Shoulders down, chin up. I open my mouth to say something — something clever, something disarming, anything — and at that very moment he turns his back on me and walks to the door. Taking his time.
He lays his hand on the handle and glances back over his shoulder one last time. That monstrous skull, the horns, those black sockets veiling his real eyes in shadow. And then he's gone. The door shuts behind him. The bell rings again, a little too cheerfully for what just happened.
And I'm standing in the middle of my shop, my heart pounding in my throat.
Lucky creeps out of her hiding place. She walks to the window, jumps onto the sill and peers outside with her ears pricked. I go over to her and look through the glass at the empty street.
He's vanished.
"Lucky," I whisper, my hand on her warm fur. "Who was that?"
It's not the first time. This shop draws unsavoury types every now and then. The darker side of magic in this world has a clientele of its own. I usually sense them before the door even opens: the air thickens and my skin starts to prickle. They want obscure spellbooks or dangerous ingredients I don't sell, and the moment they work that out, they leave again. Was this another one of those?
I take a deep breath. "Maybe not," I say aloud. "Just someone in a costume for the festival. Nothing to worry about."
Thanks for reading! #
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