What was I supposed to say? He was old and had a prosthetic leg.
When I’d scooped up the peanuts and replaced them, I hefted the lid into place.
“Missed a few,” Beau said.
He was right. Several had hidden between the lid and the crate. So, when I was certain I’d gotten every last piece of the crackly foam stuffed inside where it belonged, I dropped the lid shut and proceeded to shove the crate back under the shelving by myself. It wasn’t easy and he didn’t offer to help.
Smacking my hands together jarred most of the dust from them and, hopefully, it indicated “job done,” too. “What’s the key to?”
“This way.”
We revisited the public portion of the store. Beau opened a case and flipped up the felt liner on the bottommost shelf, revealing a lock. He inserted the key, lifted the shelf up, and pulled out what could only be described as a wooden briefcase. Punching the register, he dropped the key into the drawer and shut the register again. “In the office.”
I hoped this rigmarole would be over soon.
He twisted the knob on the closer of the two doors, yanked the string hanging from the overhead lamp, and a murky forty watts did little more than illuminate the dust floating in the air.
Beau put the briefcase on the desk. I studied the item before us. The hinges were rusting, and the wood had a nice patina to it. Then Beau reached into his pants pocket. He brought out a key ring that any janitor would have been proud to carry. There were at least forty locks in this world that Beau could open. Planting my backside on the rusty metal folding chair across from the desk, I hoped he knew which one he needed.
After the first three keys didn’t unlock it, he confided in me that he hadn’t opened this briefcase in over ten years, and that he’d completely forgotten about it until I’d brought up protecting myself. Beau hadn’t struck me as the absentminded type, but as the seconds relentlessly ticked by, I found myself willing to reconsider.
Three full minutes later, I heard the lock click and Beau mumbled, “Of course that’s the one.”
He spun the case a quarter turn, then opened it. I expected both sides to lie flat on his desk and reveal two traylike halves, but my guess was wrong. This “briefcase” opened flat, but more like a pop-up book. Fragile paper of brilliant colors created a scene of unicorns, griffons, phoenixes, and dragons.
Beau rotated the base slowly so I could see every side.
I had never seen such a beautiful pop-up piece of art. In the center, four larger images of the legendary creatures stood posed as if they were on family crests, each supporting a portion of paper that created an origamilike cube. I realized from the colors and art that each beast stood for one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.
“Do you like it?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. I knew of various symbols used by witches to represent the four elements, but never have I seen these creatures used as such.”
“They are more than representations. They are earth incarnate, air incarnate, fire incarnate, and water incarnate.”
I shook my head, disagreeing with him. “Elementals are spirits.”
“Why?” Beau challenged. “Because that’s all you’ve ever known them to be?”
“Yes.”
He harrumphed. “The spirit of an element is an elemental, and elementals are embodied in the flesh in these creatures. Haven’t you talked to the vampire who sent you here about this?”
“No.”
His surprise was genuine, but faded quickly. He grumbled, “Of course he leaves it to me to tell you. Bastard.”
“Tell me what?”
He gestured at the pop-up. “That’s what all this is about.”
I knew he didn’t mean the art itself.
“The fairies really came here for one reason: to steal this world’s elementals. They’d destroyed their own. That’s why they made the deal with Menessos and his buddies way back when. Fast-forward a few thousand years; the fairies are sick and tired of being at the witches’ beck and call. They offer up elementals to guard the magic circles. WEC agreed.” He shook his head. “He was behind the Concordat, too, I’m sure of it.” He paused. “The elementals are there, in the fairy world. So long as the door’s open, witches can still access the elementals—like your spirit in astral travel is just a spirit and not your body, so is the spirit of these elementals when they guard your circle here, from afar.”
I wasn’t sure I believed this. “Unicorns, dragons, griffons, and phoenixes were all really real and were of this world?” And Beau knew Menessos’s secret, too. Maybe not the part about being alive, but he knew enough.
“Once upon a time.” His smug look grew more self-satisfied as he added, “That’s how we know of them, but what we know is all screwed up. They’re gone so there’s no proof except what people used to know, data passed from person to embellishing person over millennia.”
“That’s fascinating, Beau.” But what’s this got to do with protecting me from being Bindspoken? I plastered on my politest expression. “Did you make this?”
“No. But it’s been in my family for generations.” His voice quavered just a bit at the word “family.”
“You okay?”
He nodded, studying the paper spectacle between us.
It was an opportunity, so I asked, “Why does my touch hurt you?”
“You’re a witch.”
“And you run a witch’s supply shop. You are a witch, too, aren’t you?”
His whole face seemed to harden into stone. “Not anymore.”
Sweet Goddess. “You’re Bindspoken?”
“Going on sixteen years.”
No words came to mind other than “how” and “why,” but neither of those were any of my business.
“I keep the shop just to piss the wrinkly old bitches off.”
A laugh tumbled out. I couldn’t help it. It fit: crotchety old man with a cane, running a witchy shop with a fake front man to basically give the finger to WEC.
“And helping you, doll, will gall them even more.”
“So you will help?”
“This ain’t no tea-party centerpiece.” He indicated the paper between us, then placed his elbows on the desktop and leaned into the display, his stony eyes sparkling. “And you’re going to owe me for helping you.”
“What do you want?”
“Before the next full moon, you come back here and we’ll discuss it then.”
“I won’t commit to anything—”
“You don’t have a choice if you want to avoid what WEC is planning for you.”
Couldn’t say I liked having my nose rubbed in it.
“And I don’t have a choice, either,” he admitted. “I have to help you. If you’re Bindspoken you can’t help me. Reach into the paper box at the top,” Beau said. “Take what’s inside.”
Only one side of the box was attached. My fingers delved gingerly inside, brushed something.
A flare of heat rocked me, and I withdrew. It wasn’t sensual heat like Menessos sought to enflame me with. This was like what Nana had described as a menopausal hot flash. I wasn’t touching the stone anymore but the reaction continued, heat growing, spiking, rolling up and down my body. Sweat beaded on my upper lip. “Whoa.”
“What is it?” Beau asked.
“It’s hot.”
He laughed out loud and slapped his thigh. “It likes you.”
“Likes me?”
“That’s how it used to greet me. It’s had a long time to be alone, I thought it might have lost some zing, but apparently not.”
“Some ‘zing,’ you say?”
“Just take hold of it. It’ll calm down.”
I wasn’t convinced. My expression told him so.
“If it didn’t like you, you would have felt nothing.”
I reached in again, more determinedly. What I came up with was a dazzling pendant the size of a Reese’s Cup, but if it had been chocolate, it would have melted in my hot palm immediately. “Fluorite?”