I went farther in. There were bins with tumbled and raw gemstones, cases with wands, crystal balls, Tarot decks, and jewelry. There were Goddess statues, small animal statues, gauze bags, bells, and spools of ribbon in all colors. Laden bookshelves dipped in the middle like swaybacked horses, displaying a few dozen titles as well as stylish journals ready to be filled. Near the register was another clothing rack, taller, with a dozen empty hangers and a single rather gaudy orange velvet cape lined with a fabric showing owls and bats in flight. Something smelled like peaches.
A hand parted the pair of purple curtains behind the register, but whoever it was remained shadowed within. “May I help you?” A male voice, deep and commanding.
What was the line from The Wizard of Oz? “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” “Are you the owner here?”
“You come to make a sales pitch?” he asked grouchily. “ ’Cause we don’t want no coffee machines, no free magazine displays, and no scouting cookies, either.”
I blinked stupidly for a second. “No. None of that. I was told to talk to the owner.”
“By who?”
“I’m not about to reveal that to someone who won’t even show me his face.”
A small-statured man with a long gray beard and hardly a hair atop his head stepped from behind the curtains. His moustache was curled up on either end like the villain in cartoons. He wore a blue button-down-collar shirt, a bulky gray cardigan, and black pants. Thick glasses, oblong and wire-rimmed, sat on his round nose. The left lens had a crack running low across it. They made his eyes look blurry.
My mind was trying to figure out how such a short man could have such a deep voice. “Are you the owner?”
He laughed. “So you were sent to ask something of the owner of Wolfsbane and Absinthe, were you?” His voice and chin lowered. He pointed at me with a single long finger bearing a long ring of yellow zircon. “You’re after the wyrd,” he said slyly, as if his words affirmed him as a mystical guru.
I really hated it when salespeople of any kind stereotyped a customer. That kind of thing had no place in true witchery and yet too often I found playgans (my term for people “playing pagan” for all the wrong reasons) using the sagely soothsayer persona to make a sale. “Obviously, the person who sent me was wrong. You’re a fake.” I headed for the door.
Just as I neared the clothing rack next to the door, I heard, “He may be, but I’m not.”
I knew that voice. It stopped me. “Beau?”
He came into view, buzzed white hair seeming brighter for all the rich wood tones and dim lighting here. Not unlike the first time we’d met, he wore a plaid flannel shirt with rolled sleeves revealing thermal underwear beneath. This time, the flannel print was blue and green. He tapped the ashes off a little cigar and put it back to his lips. He punched a button on the register and the drawer popped open. “Maurice, go have a cup of coffee.” He provided the bearded man a five-dollar bill. “And drink slow.”
Maurice took the bill and seconds later passed me as he left the store.
“What do you want, doll?” Beau called as the bell on the door stopped clanging.
I slowly made my way toward the register again. “Do you remember me?”
“Yeah. Johnny calls you Red. What do you want?”
“Do you own this shop?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I was sent to ask you something.”
“Johnny send you?”
“No. Not him. And I had no idea I’d find you here.”
He brushed the ashes off the end of his cigar—I think it was the source of the peachy smell—and laid it beside the register. Taking his cane from somewhere just inside the purple curtains, he moved stiffly along the counter toward a stool. “You need some kind of . . . herb?”
Something about how he said that made me think he was asking if I was here to buy pot. “Um, no.” But I didn’t truly know what I was here for. “Or at least I doubt it.”
“What?” He squinted at me as if the sun were in his eyes, the way Clint Eastwood did in the spaghetti Westerns before he drew his gun. “Who sent you?”
“Menessos.”
“So you run with waerewolves and vamp-execs?” He dropped his head down and shook it. Then something seemed to occur to him that made him still. He looked at me, and from under the bushy white eyebrows, it wasn’t quite friendly. “What did he tell you?”
“That you were the only one who can instruct me in what I must do.”
Beauregard didn’t ask the obvious. He just kept staring at me.
“I need to protect myself against being Bindspoken.”
He laughed, the irritated, I-bet-you-do kind of laugh, and jabbed at something behind the display case with the tip of his cane. “I’ve seen the news, doll.” He continued poking his cane at whatever was on the floor. “And I’ve seen YouTube.”
I leveled my chin and said nothing.
“I know why WEC wants you Bindspoken. I know what you are, and what you’re here for. I even know what you’re trying to do.” Beau stared at me. “The Lustrata is a promise and a threat. The promise of justice and balance, but there’s also the threat of making things worse by failing in her task. Twice before the Lustrata has failed. They’d rather keep things as they are than risk them getting any worse.” Beau shifted on the stool. “Are you going to fail, doll?”
“If I’m Bindspoken, we’ll never know.” It wasn’t an answer, so it didn’t surprise me that he didn’t comment. “Help me, Beau. Tell me how to protect myself.”
For an interminable minute he sat unmoving, thinking, studying me. Then he laughed. He rose from the stool and returned to the curtain, pausing to glance at me before pushing through, still chuckling.
He wasn’t going to help. I started for the door. Again I made it as far as the clothing rack.
“Where are you going?” Beau called, holding the curtain open.
“You’re not going to help me.”
“But I am.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“If you only knew, doll. If you only knew.” He waved for me to follow him into the back and let the curtain fall.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The back room of Wolfsbane and Absinthe was dark and had aisles created between rows of industrial shelving filled with boxes and small crates. There were two dark doors to the right, both shut. My tongue seemed immediately coated with dust—before I even opened my mouth.
“Marco,” I said softly.
“Polo,” Beau shot back.
I caught sight of him then, like a shadow, moving down the left row, and followed.
“Help me.” He leaned his cane against the back wall and started lugging a crate from the bottom shelf into the pathway. “The lid.” Together we hefted the wooden lid up, but when my hand slipped and touched his, Beau recoiled and lost his grip. The lid crashed down on his foot. He didn’t so much as move his foot, he just wiggled his fingers and then made and unmade a fist as if I’d shocked him.
“Beau . . . are you okay?”
“Yes, hell, just don’t touch me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” The memory of his reaction to my handshake hadn’t left me.
“Is your foot okay?”
“Yes, why?”
“The lid hit your foot. Hard.”
“Did it?” He shook his hand in my direction as if waving me off. “Prosthetic. Don’t worry about it.”
He had a fake leg. No wonder he used a cane and walked stiffly.
He dug around in the crate. Packing peanuts cascaded over the edge. “Here it is.” More packing peanuts rained to the floor as he lifted out an antique jewelry box. He opened its glass door, pulled on a drawer within, and removed a key. He offered it to me. “Hold this.” He replaced the jewelry box as he’d found it then relieved me of the key. “Pick up those peanuts, will you?”