Chapter eleven

 P.O.V change - Lidia

          Since our miraculous escape from that elder vampire , all of us were very badly shaken. Elsie lost all confidence as an adventurer and quit the team to work with her father in their family business , banking. For his part her father, Thomas Rothschild , was happy she was done with her 'fanciful urges' and decided to settle down. As the owner of one of the biggest bank in the world, the ouroboros bank, he was always embarrassed that his only daughter became something so filthy and common as an adventurer. Now he just assumed it was teenage rebelliousness and that it had finished playing out. Elsie never spoke of the vampire ever again , she got an executive job at the bank and tried to forget it ever happened.

          Leo, full name Leonardo Sagittarius, went back to his clan ,the zodiacs , to arrange for a raid to exterminate the vampire. It took a while to sortie a decent raid party. When the party finally got to the cave all they found was what was left of a bear that was killed the previous day. Rangers figured out that the bear was killed with a clean slice that also fell a tree behind it. Everybody in the party had cold sweats down their backs imagining the power of the monster that did this. In fact most of the people were happy when they found out the cave was empty. Leo and his party were forced to go home empty handed.

       Thomas went back to the big streets of London and decided to lived his life as a thief. None of us opposed him, he wasn't from a big family like the rest of us so there was precious little he could do other than steal. I never heard from him again.

       As for me, my  family, the Zaqar family, one of the 13 pure wiccan families that ruled Europe called me back so I could marry an appropriate girl and have children to strengthen the family ( a.n. yup you heard right, all the members of the wiccan families are women , and they reproduce using rituals... more on this later.) I refused because without me the orphanage would be left in ruins. They cut off my allowance , and now the orphanage was bankrupt. The money lenders were getting more and more vicious and were threatening to do something violent to the kids unless we pay them what we owe. 

     I was sitting down on the stairs, nursing a headache while worrying about what to do about our money problems when I heard someone knocking at the door. Wondering who would come at this time of the evening, I opened the door. Standing there was a well built man suspiciously wearing a cowl. He was too finely dressed to be one of the money lenders so I tried to be as polite as possible.

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   "Hello, sir how may I help you."

    He seemed stunned for a second then politely replied, " um... Hello my friend Walter said I could find honest people to employ here."

     Something about the way he talked and his voice sounded familiar for some reason , but I just couldn't place where I knew him. 

     "What kind of work do you do sir?"

     "Oh  I'm the new  enchanter that opened shop recently."

      I had heard of the famous new enchanter in town, what was the name of his shop again? Ah right, John's enchantment emporium. Again that feeling of something familiar and important stuck in my head, but I just could not figure out what was wrong, so I chocked it down as another case of deja vu and continued our conversation. 

    "Are you talking about Walt the blacksmith, then you came to the right place. What kind of jobs are we talking about?"

    "I need someone to mind the counter at the store and take orders, so someone literate and good at maths and maybe two physically strong boys to keep customers in check and protect the store."

     I told him I would be right back and went to get the kids. I came back with 3 kids I thought would be perfect for the store. There was the pretty red head Cara and the burly twins Jamie and Fred.

  He seemed fine with my choices so I came to what I thought would be the hard part, wages. 

  "Sir, how much will you be paying these kids."

  "Oh , don't worry Lidia I will pay 1 gold coin for all three monthly. If everything is acceptable they can start on Monday, now if you'll excuse me its rather late and I want to get home before it gets too dark." And then he just left.

  I was so shocked by his generous offer I didn't even notice that he said my name until later. How did he know my name, did Walter tell him?