12. Jeffrey

Chapter twelve

Jeffrey

O dai blinded a man.

Odai is dangerous.

Odai didn't even recognize he had done something wrong until I called him on it.

And in Mattie's journal, I found multiple entries of her discovering that Odai did similar acts of violence in her time. All in the name of protecting Mattie's wishes.

I try to not berate myself too much for not continuing to read the journal right away. If I had and discovered these things sooner, I might not have allowed myself to get to know Odai better. To learn about what happened to him. Or to fall for him as hard and as fast as I did, calling him boyfriend after… ten days? Is that all?

But I like him. I like him so much. He does not deserve what happened to him. He deserves freedom, and I don't want to regret getting here, even if now, the burden to prevent worse things from happening is on me .

In Mattie's entries, what begun to happen was just as brutal.

July 12, 1885

Mr. Harrington Williams was missing a hand the last time he came to our establishment. Couldn't remember how he lost it. Given that was the hand he used to slap Charlene the week before, I have my suspicions about where it went.

After all, I wished for nothing to be capable of harming my people. Ever. And the incubus grants all, everything I ask from him that is within his power.

She didn't seem to mind at first, but over time, it escalated.

July 28, 1885

I cannot say plainly whether this town is or is not better off without Mr. Ernest Pembroke, but the bastard bled out and died after his mysterious accident that cost him the inadequate tool between his legs that he had taken out after my tailor, Maurice, told him no, because he hadn't bothered to pay yet.

The incubus admits to his involvement. He always does. He has never lied to me. But he also told me he cannot grant my newest wish that he be less vicious in his methods. He seems detached from it, which is frightening, to say the least. I have known him to be a good partner, and I thought a good man, but perhaps I only saw what I wanted and willfully ignored that this creature, from the very beginning, had horns.

I noticed then that Mattie only ever calls him "the incubus". She doesn't use his name. I don't know if that was to distance herself or to protect Odai somehow, but she sounds reluctant to be rid of him, and I don't think only because she was selfish and wanted to succeed. She cared. About Odai. About her community. About her seamstresses and tailors.

But as the entries continued, Odai was becoming more and more demanding of fulfilling desires Mattie couldn't seem to keep up with. When I could barely stand to read more was when Odai came in and almost caught me with the journal.

I haven't had the chance to go back to it, but it doesn't matter now. I know enough. There is a catch to having Odai in my life, and like he tried to warn me, I need to ask the right questions to get the right answers. I have no idea where to start, but the only mystical element in my life besides Odai sprung to mind this morning.

The Magic Shop.

It's Tuesday, so while I don't usually have the day off, there is rarely much for me to do before lunchtime. After making sure Cas and Mr. Bevilaqua didn't need me for anything, I headed across the street.

Inside, met with the usual incense and old book smell, I start by scouring through the mythology section for anything on Babylon and Mesopotamia. Finding the origin of what we eventually dubbed incubi is in this section, because one of the very first depictions of one is Lilu, the father of Gilgamesh. As in probable king, possible deity, epic hero Gilgamesh .

I know Lilu wasn't Odai, but that story is as old as he is, so old that everything from that time is best guesses anyway. It's in the mythology section for a reason and has so many conflicting accounts of pretty much everything that I realize quickly I am not going to find actionable answers in old Sumerian texts.

Or through Google, which I tried last night and this morning.

Worth a shot!

Maybe if I ask—

"May I help you with something, young one?"

The Owner makes my heart leap into my throat— again —just there, right as I am about to head out of the aisle.

He looks the same, dressed in the same suit and top hat, like every time I see him. As if he were Batman or something, I wonder if he wears the same thing every day or has a closet full of identical outfits.

"Um… maybe?" I inch my way toward where he is effectively blocking my exit. "I'm looking for something. Answers to something. But I don't actually know where to start or how to find those answers. Which probably isn't very helpful for you."

"On the contrary," The Owner says. "I know exactly what to do in cases of seeking elusive answers. In fact, I am surprised you do not, young one, given our last encounter."

I frown at him. Our last encounter is when I traded him Mattie's tarot card .

Tarot.

"You mean, like… a Tarot reading?"

The Owner produces a deck, seemingly from nothing behind his back. "Precisely."

"How much?"

"Oh, for a simple reading, we can consider it on the house. We are neighbors, after all."

Somehow, following The Owner out of the book stacks to a more open area still feels like being led into a den of hungry wolves. There are patrons around besides me. There are never any other salespeople or workers here that I can tell, but he doesn't seem concerned about that as he focuses on me and leads me to a table near a door into the back.

I've always wondered what was through that door, but I envision a warehouse like the one where they stored the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark —impossibly endless.

We sit across from each other at the table, and The Owner shuffles the deck. He could be a Blackjack dealer in Vegas, he's so seamless at it.

"May I ask you something?"

"You have a question before your question?" He grins at me.

"Who are you?"

"Why, The Owner of this establishment, of course."

I scowl.

"I thought you were working on asking the right questions, young one. "

Meaning it's too broad of a question, I figure—and he definitely knows more than he would ever admit. I need to get specific, so first, I say, "You're not normal."

He quirks an eyebrow at me, still shuffling, now with one of those perfect arcs of the cards passing from hand to hand through the air like a bridge.

"I just mean, you're something else. Something maybe not even… human. Because this place, it really is magic, isn't it?"

"You are in The Magic Shop." He smiles again, cryptically as ever.

I guess asking the right questions is harder than I thought, which is exactly the problem. "If you do a reading for me, can it help me find the right questions?"

"Yes. But how will be up to you. Is that your question for the cards? How to find the right questions to ask?" He places the deck face-down in front of me.

"Or, if we can maybe not be cryptic for two seconds," I say, "how do I help Odai escape from his punishment?"

The Owner doesn't comment on my choice of question but nods and taps the top of the deck. "Cut it once."

I do.

He picks up the deck again and deals three cards face-down, centered between us. "I will read the cards as they are in relation to you. Past." He taps the one farthest left from my perspective and continues right. "Present. And finally, Future." He flips over the first card .

My past is the Eight of Swords, upright with how it faces me. Given this card shows someone tied up and bound, I get chills from how much it is clearly meant to represent Odai.

"A past of imprisonment," The Owner confirms.

He flips over the next card.

My present is The Lovers card but upside down. The woman on this card looks like Persephone again, like the woman from The High Priestess card, and her lover has long dark hair that makes me think of Hades.

"Upside down is... bad?"

"Not necessarily," he says. "There is a disconnect in this case. A present filled with imbalance."

Because Odai serves me. We can't really be equals.

I hold my breath as The Owner reaches to flip the final card.

" Hey ." It's my card, as in that same High Priestess card, upright like the Eight of Swords. The rest of the deck matches it because this is its deck. This is Mattie's deck!

"The deck was missing a card previously," The Owner says. "Hence its value to me."

He didn't swindle me exactly, but it still somehow feels like he did. "Fine, whatever. You said it meant intuition, right? And… duality?"

"Embracing duality. To achieve the future you seek, young one, you must find yourself first. You must trust in yourself and in your subconscious mind." The Owner sweeps the cards up and returns them to the deck .

"That's it? That's not specific enough!" I lean forward with hands poised on the tabletop. "That is just as vague as everything else, and… and finding myself or trusting in any part of me, isn't easy."

"I see." He waves his hands, and the deck disappears behind them as if it never existed. "I would work on that then."

"You said—"

"That how your reading leads you to the right questions is up to you." A bell rings, the one at the checkout counter, and he stands from the table.

I really kind of hate this guy.

The Owner stares at me, hard, like he heard me think that.

"Sorry," I mutter.

He smiles. "Thank you again for the card. I hope you are enjoying Madame Mattie's journal." He leaves, and I get that I am supposed to help myself here, that the answers—or rather, the questions I need—are possibly in that reading somehow, but my head needs something stronger than silence and reflection to help clear it.

Like alcohol.

I push my chair back to make my way home to Odai.

"Mattie?"

I look up, not having stood yet. At the end of one of the nearby aisles is… College Boy.

It's College Boy , the super cute and flustered one who I flirted with as Mattie the night I discovered Odai, and who was very likely planning to ask me out if I hadn't ditched him .

"Uh… sometimes?" I say like an idiot.

" Wow ." He moves closer to me, and I feel like hiding inside my sweatshirt. Most of me is pretty hidden, between the oversized clothes and the size of my 80s style glasses, but he somehow still recognized me. "You look really different."

That always makes my heart sink. "Yeah, well, it's just a performance."

He frowns. He wasn't frowning before. He wasn't trying to make me feel bad. I just do, because "different" is usually code for "schlubby" or "disappointing."

"Outside of being Mattie, I'm just… this," I try to say a little softer. "Jeffrey. My real name is Jeffrey."

"Chance." He holds out a hand to me.

The fact that I am still sitting feels awkward, so I stand as I shake it. He's taller than me but not by much. He's built really nicely too, and is really cute, with dark hair and blue eyes.

"It's nice to meet you, Jeffrey," he says with the same sweet smile I found so enticing that night and why I kept singling him out. I liked seeing that smile. "I was pretty bummed when you vanished after the tour. You do a really good job leading it. Hilarious, but it was also fun learning all that."

Oh, he needs to stop. He liked the history part of the tour too? "Thanks," I say, but it's not good enough. Actually faced with him and having him recognize me out of Mattie-wear, I owe him an apology and an explanation for why I ran. "Listen, um… I'm— "

"Chancey!" An absolute femme fatale of a person hops into view from out of one of the aisles and latches onto Chance like he's a plushie to squeeze. The person's smile drops as their attention shifts to me. "Oops, sorry. Who's this?" They wrap their arms tighter around Chance's. I'm assuming they , but whatever the truth, this person is seriously femme, like me in a corset level femme, complete with glam makeup and glitter on their eyelids.

"This is, um, the really talented actor from that tour I told you about," Chance explains. "Jeffrey, this is Avery."

"His SO, as in significant other ," Avery adds, clearly possessive as they look me up and down. "You are not what I expected from Chancey's description."

"I rarely am," I try to say jovially, much as it probably sounds as self-deprecating as I feel. I turn to Chance. "I'm glad you enjoyed the tour that night."

"And the rest of the night afterward," Avery says. "That's when we met. Come on, Chancey." They pull Chance back toward the aisles. "You have got to see this."

I guess ten days is plenty of time to go from meeting someone to being significant others.

"You really were amazing that night, Jeffrey," Chance says. "It was nice seeing you again."

"Yeah," I say. Then, once he is out of sight, I mutter, "Doubtful."

College Boy has a type.

And this me isn't it .

Because this me is still wrong .

How can this me possibly save Odai? Find myself? Trust in myself? How? It was a good thing The Owner took the deck with him, or I might have wrenched that High Priestess card back and torn it in two.

Squeezing my eyes tight a few times to stay any stupid, pathetic tears from falling, I cannot get out of The Magic Shop fast enough.

Odai

I look up from the work I am doing on the office computer. Jeffrey has exited The Magic Shop. I know because what connects me to him, my sense of him, is completely cut off when he is in that place.

I cannot read his thoughts exactly, but it hits me like having my chest struck in its epicenter that he is upset. Knowing Jeffrey went there to find leads to help me makes the ever-present need in me to fulfill his desires crescendo to a cacophony .

I must fulfill his wishes, but I also want to, and it is to that end that I am continuing to investigate Mrs. Sherman. There is something quite scandalous I discovered using the resources of the internet. What an invention, connecting nearly everyone on earth to the dirty laundry of everyone else. It seems Mrs. Sherman has a very specific reason for disliking this establishment. She has a vendetta, a personal one, and such crusades are rarely deflected without a long and grueling war.

I must take the next battle to her.

"Hey, Mr. B!" I hear SJ through the open office door and peer over the top of the computer to see her approaching Mr. Bevilaqua at the checkout counter.

"Hello, dear," he says. "Taking Cas to lunch today?"

"That I am!"

"She shouldn't be long. I'm just waiting on Jeffrey to get back from an errand, and I'll be headed down to the gift shop. The current tour should be finishing up shortly."

Two people weren't required until the tour neared its end. A third was only needed during midnight tours. No one grabbed any patrons hands through the "incubus hole" when Jeffrey wasn't the one telling the tale.

"You can head down now if you want," SJ says. "I don't mind watching the counter for you."

"Are you sure, dear?"

"Of course!"

"I suppose that's all right. Odai is in the office if you need anything. "

Mr. Bevilaqua heads into the tunnels, and SJ takes up his place behind the counter, just as Jeffrey enters the building.

"There's our star!" SJ giggles. But her voice shifts to something somber. "Hey, who kicked your puppy today? Is everything okay?"

"It's nothing," Jeffrey says.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yes! Really . I just ran into someone I didn't want to see."

Who ? I wonder.

"I still hate seeing such a glum expression on that gorgeous mug," SJ says. "I know! I've been meaning to take in one of your midnight tours again. It has been forever! I need to see that swagger in action! How about I come to one of the Friday shows? I can bring some of the Fluid Fashion crew. Assuming there's enough room with how awesome you champs are doing lately."

"Sales are good, but not that good." Jeffrey chuckles.

"Speaking of Fluid Fashion, have you worn that smashing zip-up Odai bought for you yet?"

I feel as well as hear in Jeffrey's voice that his mirth sinks again. "Not yet."

"Tell me when you do because I am sure you will look killer in it. Odai seems great, by the way. And cuuuuute." I sense her lean back from the checkout counter to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the screen .

"Yeah," Jeffrey says softer, likely remembering that I am within hearing distance. There is genuineness in his tone but sadness too. "He is pretty amazing. And he really likes you and Cas. You two are, like, the dream couple, something to aspire to. Perfect complements."

For the first time since I met SJ, her answer sounds listless. "Yeah. Don't think you need to copy our pacing or anything."

"You mean like how long it took you two to move in together?"

"Exactly! I made one ‘picking out China patterns' joke last night, and Cas flies off the handle, bringing up the move again, defending her choice to not rush things. Like, old news, babe, we're already living together. I wish the long-term commitment stuff didn't spook her so much."

"Shoot, um… that may be my fault."

"What do you mean?"

"I brought up the move thing the other day. Cas got me so mad about something totally unrelated, and I called her out on dragging her feet with you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

"Aw, don't beat yourself up about it. Believe me, with the way she reacted, I think the fight would have happened anyway. That's why lunch today. Trying to placate the wildebeest."

"Wait…" Jeffrey suddenly sounds calculating. "Long-term commitment stuff? China patterns?" I hear a sharp intake of breath. "Do you want Cas to propose ? "

"Don't tell her that!" SJ hisses, almost too low for me to keep eavesdropping. "She would freak even worse. I can wait. And I need to wait for her to ask me. If I try asking outright, she might cart my stuff right down to the sidewalk. I just hope I'm not waiting for another two years. I don't need any more time to know I never want to be with anyone else, ya know?"

"Cas loves you," Jeffrey says earnestly. "It'll happen. I think, like you said, she just gets spooked sometimes. And you two really are perfect for each other. Don't worry about me and Odai either. Slow pacing is not how we have been doing things."

SJ giggles. "Good."

"I am starving !" Cas's voice filters up as she ascends the stairs. "Ready to go, babe?"

In a flurry, the conversation ends, and once Cas and SJ are gone, Jeffrey peeks his head into the office. "Odai?"

"Yes, Jeffrey? What do you desire?"

"I wish—"

There is the elation again, but it is muted, proving our timeline continues to shorten. I need more—and more, and more . SJ might want a faster pace for her relationship, but with ours, we have no choice and might be doomed to have our time run out.

"—for lunch? Maybe a turkey and Swiss sandwich on white bread?"

"Granted." I place an immediately conjured plate with the wished for sandwich on the end of the desk .

Jeffrey comes forward to claim it. "Thanks. I skipped breakfast, and now I'm paying for it." He takes a large bite and hums in enjoyment. I made certain it is the best of its kind he has ever tasted.

I can tell something is still bothering him, and though he did not give specifics to SJ, I wonder if it is about more than the situation between us. He said he saw someone he didn't want to. I do not think he meant The Owner, but then who?

And can I grant for him to never see that person again?

"Was your search productive at The Magic Shop?" I ask.

Jeffrey swallows, and as delicious as the sandwich may be for him, he scowls. "Not really. But I will figure this out, Odai. I promise."

"Even if you do not, please know that it means the world to me that you are trying."

His eyes flick up from staring distantly to meet my gaze. He smiles and some of his tension fades, enough that some of mine does too. "What are you working on?" he asks.

"Come. Allow me to show you."

"People are going to start coming up from that last tour." Jeffrey glances at the checkout counter. There are no new patrons at least, since there isn't a noon tour to better accommodate the lunch hour. "But… sure. Show me what you've got."

I do not show Jeffrey the window on Mrs. Sherman but one with new ad designs. I do not want him worrying more than he already is, and what I might have to do to her to fulfill his wishes would definitely be worrying.