Vases floated in the air behind Mr. Carson, moving slightly as if rustled by a breeze. Mingled in with the vases were glass spheres of varying sizes along with a variety of knives and vials holding strange-looking things.

When I could finally tear my eyes away from all the objects, I asked, “Are you a wizard?”

Mr. Carson laughed. “Heavens no.”

“A caster?”

“No,” he answered and then paused for a moment. “Well, yes, but not in the way you mean. I’m a scryer.”

“A scryer?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Carson said. “Closer to an adept than a caster. We’re really only able to do one thing.”

“What's that?”

“We're able to read a person and determine how old they’ll be when they die.”

I frowned this. “You can tell me when I’ll die?”

“It's a little more complicated than that.”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “Why wouldn't it be?”

“I can tell you at what age you would die of natural causes if you lived a perfect, healthy life. So, if you start smoking now, I'll still give you the same age, but you'll end up dying earlier because of your smoking.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, the age thing doesn't take into account random events. Car accidents.”

“Correct.”

“So…” I chewed on my lip. “I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm a stick, you understand that, so if my question—”

“Out with it. I've been asked far worse by far better people.”

I laughed at this. “Right. So, what's the point of knowing the age I’ll die if it doesn't matter.”

“Witchstones,” Mr. Carson answered. “It's mainly for calculating witchstone usage.”

I frowned at this. “I don't follow.”

“Well, let's say I scry the age that you die. Let's say for whatever reason you die at eighty years old, given perfect health.”

“Right.”

“So… you're, what, twenty right now?”

“Twenty-one,” I corrected.

“We'll just say you're twenty to keep the math simple. You’re twenty and given perfect health you’ll die at eighty. The baseline of years you will instantly age for using a witchstone is ten. So…”

He raised his eyebrows at me

“So…” I did the math. “I can use six witchstones before they kill me.”

“You can use six witchstones with extremely basic spells. If you start using anything powerful, that number six changes drastically. You might only be able to use one medium strength witchstone, and then start on the second one when halfway through you hit your natural life span and die.”

I nodded. “So really, this is less important to me and far more important to regular casters.”

Mr. Carson shook his head. “Witchstones don't really affect the lifespan of casters. Magick does. You're thinking of adepts. If adepts use witchstones and if sticks use witchstones, it affects their lifespan.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“Would you like me to tell you the age at which you'll die?”

I smiled. “I'd rather not.”

“Very well,” Mr. Carson said. “I believe you have a package for me?”

I handed him the pouch Grey Eyes had given me and stood there waiting. He opened it and dumped several witchstones out into his palm. After examining them in the light, he slipped them back into their pouch.

“This will do. Now that our business is complete, did you want to sit down, have a bite to eat maybe?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I have school in the morning.

Mr. Carson's eyebrows lifted at this. “Where are you taking your schooling from now, Hexana?”

I laughed. “Bristlebloom. I'm training to be a vanisher.”

“That's an important job. Are you enjoying your studies thus far?”

“They’re okay. I just started yesterday.”

“And already you're working. My, my, my. Prices for Bristlebloom must've increased since I attended.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

I shrugged. I still didn't know how much it cost, but I didn't want to think about it.

“Well,” Mr. Carson said. “If there's nothing else.”

I'm not sure what made me ask it, but something about how easily Mr. Carson blended into the stick world bothered me.

“Why do you run the regular shop?”

“The antique shop?” Mr. Carson asked.

I nodded.

“Well… I run the antique shop more to collect things than as any sort of service.”

“But why?” I asked. “The magick world has so many other things you could collect. I would think they would be more interesting than anything from of the stick world.”

“That's where you'd be wrong,” Mr. Carson said. “The things made, antiques especially, are made with a delicate craftsmanship the likes of which magickkind cannot achieve.”

“I don't follow. I thought you could make just about anything you wanted with the right spells.”

“You can,” Mr. Carson agreed, “but magickkind isn't hands on. Almost all of them have lost the taste and ability to craft things, to make things by hand. You'll see a great many things, a great many trinkets that are perfectly cut out, but they're all cut out in the same way.”

So the things in the magick world were mass-produced, lifeless things, not given to any sort of personal care or love or even attention. Just blindly produced. “Your antique shop is really closer to a trophy room than anything else?”

“I wouldn't say it's a trophy room,” Mr. Carson said. “I'm not celebrating anything. Like I said previously, it's more of a collection. It's a place where I can go and enjoy the silence, enjoy the quiet of the stick world’s own magick. I think that's the magick of sticks. That silence.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but instead of trying to get to the bottom of it, I asked him something else. I asked him something closer to my heart.

“What do you know about Blackhart?”

Mr. Carson smiled at me. “I know that your father owned it. I know that his father owned it before him. I know that a Covington has always owned Blackhart and that Blackhart only opens for a Covington.”

“How does the store stay there though?” I asked. “My father's been gone for so long. How can the store still be there? How has it not been sold?”

“Properties in the magick world don't exist as they do in the stick world. When you buy anything, you own that thing. Just because you're not using it or you're not alive, doesn't mean it is no longer yours. It follows bloodlines. Blackhart is as much yours as it is his. By the way, didn't something happen over by Blackhart the other night? I heard grumblings.”

“Yes,” I said. There were plenty in the area who knew a shop had been destroyed. I didn't have to tell him anything that they wouldn't already know. I wouldn't tell him about the core of red lume my class saw.

“What happened?” he asked.

I shrugged. “The building at the end of that street was destroyed. It looked like it been flipped over and pushed down.”

Mr. Carson nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that's what I'd heard. What sort of magick was used? A spell of that nature must've left some sort of residue, I assume.”

I shrugged. “Yesterday was my first day,” I said, trying to come off as wanting to be helpful but mostly oblivious. “I'm not really sure. I'm new to all this.”

Mr. Carson smiled. “Of course, you are. Forgive me for prying.”

“No, it's no problem. I did have a question about my father.”

“Ask away.”

“What did he sell at Blackhart?”

“Witchstones and arcana, I assume.” Mr. Carson shrugged. “I never stepped foot inside the place, so I don't really know. I do know that he worked for the Austerium in addition to working in the private sector, but I don't know what he did.”

“Neither do I.”

“You know… there were only two things, three things if you include yourself, but two things, he really talked about. He talked about Blackhart, how much he loved the place, loved working there; and how much he loved the theatre.”

“the theatre?” I asked.

“Yes, I know he passed ownership to your aunt and that she sold it, but that theatre seemed to be his crown jewel. That surprised me. It always seemed like such a heap, such a wreck of a place.”

Something about the way Mr. Carson spoke of the theatre raised my hackles, made me want to defend it, made me want to slap the words from his mouth. I stomped my feelings into the ground.

“You know,” Mr. Carson said, chewing his lip, “Nightsbridge Realty is selling it, right?”

“Right.”

He winked. “That company is owned by a local who’s magickkind. I believe he mentioned that it's come up for public sale.”

I nodded.

“I’m good friends with one of the agents,” Mr. Carson said. “I could always call him and see how much it's going for, if you’d like…”

My eyes widened at this. “Could you? I would really appreciate it.”

Mr. Carson pulled out a cell phone, tapped the screen several times, and put the phone up to his ear. After a moment or two of waiting, he smiled.

“Jake,” he said. “How are you doing this morning?”

I still didn't know what time it was, but it had to be at least three or four in the morning based on how dark it still was.

Mr. Carson nodded at whatever Jake said from the other end of the phone.

“Yes, yes. Everything's fine. I was wondering… how much is the theatre going for?” He rolled his eyes at me. “No, simply curious. I might have a client for you. Just checking for them.”

Mr. Carson ended the call and smiled at me. “Well, that was surprising.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Jake said it's only going for $50,000. Surprising, is it not? Seems cheap, right?”

Mr. Carson had no idea how cheap it actually was. All the other times it had gone up for sale, the price had been in the hundreds of thousands. Now it was only $50,000? The price of a brand-new car? I was getting $10,000 per job from Geist, which meant it would only take me three more jobs before I'd have enough money to pay for the theatre.

It’s within my grasp. I’m almost there.

“Are you okay, Hexana?” Mr. Carson asked. “You seem to have lost some of your color.”

“I'm fine.” I was not fine. My heart raced.

Mr. Carson prattled on about Nightsbridge and how good it was to know someone else from the area that was in the magick world. Ten minutes of this small talk went by before I heard strange tones playing from Mr. Carson's pocket.

He pulled out his phone and frowned when he read the display.

“Jake's calling me back,” he said. “I wonder why.”

He glanced at me and I shrugged. I had no idea why Jake would be calling him.

He brought the phone up to his ear. “Hello there, Jake.”

He listened to what Jake had to say for several long moments before he sighed.

“Okay. I understand. Thank you for letting me know.”

He hung up the phone and looked at me.

“Someone just put in a bid. Apparently right after I got off the phone with him, someone called and placed an extraordinarily high bid.”

I closed my eyes. I’d been so close. The theatre was nothing more than sand in my fingers that had just washed away in a torrent.

“How much?” I asked, my eyes still closed.

“$400,000,” Mr. Carson said. “From a development company. They're gonna knock the theatre down and put in a high-rise condo.”

I felt as though I was sinking into the earth and into an early grave. I took in a deep breath and let it out, refusing to allow tears to fall from my eyes. $400,000 was far more money than I had. I would have to take too many delivery jobs from Geist to make an amount high enough to outbid the development company.

You came this close to having the theatre and look how quickly it slipped away.

At the back of my mind, something gently poked and prodded.

Reminding me.

Whispering to me.