“Four thousand five hundred crowns!” the auctioneer shouted, pointing at Cal. “Four thousand five hundred from young Cal Markwyrth in the third row! Do I hear any advance on four and a half thousand?”

Cal squeezed his lips tightly together. He couldn’t go any higher. He had 2000 crowns in his savings vault at Goldhammer’s Royal Bank, and 2500 in the legacy account he’d inherited from his uncle. Aside from the three crowns in his pocket, it was all he had in the world.

He’d bid it all on the Northwood Enchantery. The bidding was still open, so it would only take a single bid for him to lose the opportunity of a lifetime.

He glanced to his left, where his best friend Jason sat, scribbling frantically in a grubby little notebook balanced on his knee. Cal couldn’t make out what Jason was writing. He remembered what Jason had said as they’d tramped through the snow on their way to the auction house after work earlier that evening.

“You want that shop, Cal,” Jason had said. “I know you want it more than anything.”

Jason was right. Cal wanted nothing more in the world than to have his own enchantment shop. He was on the brink of getting it.

The auctioneer raised the gavel, a smile beginning to spread across his face as he looked straight at Cal. “Going… Going…”

“Five thousand!”

The voice came from the front row, from the tall, thin, dark-robed figure of Lord Mephisterion, one of the best known property developers here in Jutlyn City.

Disappointment washed over Cal like a wave of cold water. He felt his heart skip a beat and his stomach clench. The beautiful, exciting future he’d allowed himself to imagine for a moment was whisked away like the misty remnants of a dream.

An enchanter’s shop. His own enchanter’s shop.

Oh, the auction listing had been very honest. There were a lot of problems with the Northwood Enchantery. There were problems with the windows, problems with the doors, problems with the roof, and problems with the floor. The enchanter’s seal - that crucial piece of equipment built into the fabric of the building which made enchanting possible - was old-fashioned, badly worn, and would need replacing, and the enchanting equipment that came with the shop was old and outdated if it worked at all.

But Cal knew his own abilities. He was a good fixer, he had a knack for repairing enchantment gear, and his instinct for enchanting was second only to his immense self-taught knowledge about the subject. And his best friend Jason, who sat next to Cal, scribbling in his notebook, was an excellent stone singer and color weaver. He’d encouraged Cal to go for the shop and had promised he would help with the renovations.

Cal was confident that if anyone could have fixed up the Northwood Enchantery and turned it into the shop of his dreams, it would’ve been him, but now Lord Mephisterion had out-bid him. The beautifully situated little premises would probably end up being turned into another faceless coffee emporium, just another asset in Mephisterion’s sprawling property portfolio.

“Go to six,” Jason suddenly hissed frantically into Cal’s ear.

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“What?” Cal said. “I don’t have six, you know 4500 was everything I had.”

“Go to six thousand, I can lend you the rest. Go on, quick, before the auctioneer completes the sale!”

“Can you afford it?”

“Yes, yes, I’ve worked it out,” Jason said, waving the little notebook, which was now covered in figures. “So long as you try to pay me back before All Gods Day, it should be fine. Go on, I know how much it means to you.”

Time seemed to slow down.

Cal thought of the little shop as he had seen it at the rushed viewing. Dusty and bare, with the old-fashioned enchanter’s seal glowing dimly on the floor of the dark, shuttered workshop space at the back of the shop. He knew that after 5000 crowns had been passed, the rules of the auction decreed that new bids could only increase in increments of 1000, so there was no point trying to go any lower. All God’s Day was only three weeks away. 1500 crowns was a lot to pay back. It was an amount of money that seemed totally out of reach for Cal, but he would have a shop. If he got the shop going and did well, he would at least have a chance of paying the money back.

And Jason was urging him on.

The auctioneer was looking at Cal, and there was a glint of sympathy in his eyes as he called out the last opportunity for more bids. He raised the gavel. Lord Mephisterion sat back contentedly in his chair.

“S… six thousand!” Cal gasped out, half rising from his seat as he held up a hand to catch the auctioneer’s attention.

A startled mutter went through the room, and Lord Mephisterion turned in his seat, looking to see who had unexpectedly out bid him at this point.

“Yes!” Jason muttered, slapping his thigh.

The auctioneer’s eyes widened in surprise. He looked at Lord Mephisterion, who shook his head and sat back, crossing his arms to indicate that he did not desire to continue the bidding.

The auctioneer grinned suddenly. “Sold! To the young man with the big dreams in the third row!”

He brought the gavel down with a sharp crack and began to call out the next bid.

* * *

“He’s coming over,” Jason said.

“Who?” Cal asked.

“Mephisterion.”

Cal gulped. The well-known property magnate was nine feet tall, with skin the color of bleached linen and eyes that glowed with a faint, red radiance. He wore an impressive robe of jet-black, and as he moved through the crowd toward Cal and Jason, he drank from a small silver flask then dabbed a spot of red from his lips with a white handkerchief. His secretary, a small, wizened creature with gray skin and four arms, hurried along beside him.

“No hard feelings, young fellow,” Lord Mephisterion said in a deep, gravelly voice as he approached, and to Cal’s surprise it seemed that he meant it. For all his forbidding appearance, the undead vampire lord was friendly and genial.

“No?” Cal said. “I’m glad. I didn’t mean to get in the way of your plans, but I just really wanted that shop.”

The vampire lord waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, no need to worry,” he said. “I don’t hold grudges; life’s too short for that. But I was surprised. Why do you want that shop so badly? You’ll need to remove the enchanter’s seal before you can turn it into anything else, you know, and removing those things does not come cheap. That’s why I wasn’t prepared to bid any higher.”

“Oh, I don’t want to remove the enchanter’s seal,” Cal said. “I want to renovate the shop and run it as an enchantery. I am an enchanter, you see.”

The vampire lord was very polite, but he couldn’t completely hide his surprise. His eyes flicked down to Cal’s heavy engineer’s boots, then up past his hands - stained with bronze-strengthened zephyr oil from his afternoon’s work at the railway yard - and then back up to meet Cal’s eyes.

“An enchanter, indeed?” Mephisterion murmured. “How interesting. Well, I wish you the best of luck with your new acquisition. I own a good amount of property in that district; it’s a good area and there are plenty of customers there. I’m sure you’ll do well. Goodbye.”

He bowed deferentially, and then, with a final interested glance over his shoulder, he strode off out of the auction house and out into the darkness of the winter night, with his strange servant scuttling along behind him.

“Nice fellow,” Cal said.

“Yeah, that’s a bit surprising, isn’t it? I thought he would be meaner.”

“Oh, no, he’s got a good reputation. Very generous, always supporting the temple guilds. Not his fault he’s a vampire.”

“I guess not,” Jason said thoughtfully.