27. Sergey

27

SERGEY

S arah hands her shape chain to me. The last circle is more of an oval, and it has a charred edge, probably because the shape is off.

“Sorry. I fucked up,” she says.

I take a deep breath and remind myself that Sarah is trying.

“It’s fine. But we’ll have to start over with this one. You don’t want to remove a spell this far down the chain when you didn’t connect it properly. It may affect the other spells.”

She drags a hand through her hair. “Isn’t that the point of a shape chain? To isolate the spells?”

“No. It’s to isolate the connection of the spells. Otherwise, you could get really hurt fusing all this stuff together.”

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out, just in case it’s Heller, but it’s Cy. Since when does Cy call me? Technically, he owns this forge, and he also works for me, so you’d think he would, but he never does. I answer the phone.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Heller is officially nesting.”

I smile. “Really? That’s great. His doctor said he was a little late getting started. I was worried it was because of that house I bought him. He wanted to move in early, but I didn’t let him. Wait… how do you know he’s nesting?”

I warned all the jewelers in Anchorage Heller might be coming, and technically Cy owns a jewelry shop, but it’s not the right kind of jewelry shop.

“He took off with all of my pebble necklace chains. He cleaned Todd out too.”

I stop. “All of your chains?”

“Yeah. The fucker is fast, what can I say? Also, he did this thing where he offered Ben a credit card like he was going to pay for it, but then he took the card back before we could charge him, so technically, he’s still stealing, just in a confusing way. And he’s wearing a bandit costume, so his intention is very clear.”

I shouldn’t laugh. I really, really shouldn’t. But I do. Loudly.

“Yes, it’s all very funny, except I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow when the penguin shifters start knocking on my door.”

“You could just stop making necklaces for them,” I say. It’s what I’ve been saying for a while. The Gentoo lost their monopoly on the real estate market. Polar bear shifters don’t owe them shit anymore. Polar bear shifter magic can be used for far better things than a necklace that grows and shrinks with a shifter when they take their animal form.

“I pay you enough, don’t it? Do you really need the money?” I ask. “After you accepted the Ivanov estate?

There’s a long silence on the other end.

“Just think about it. And if you want to come to work tomorrow, I’ll let you rescind your time off request. I could really use your help. Todd’s too, if he has extra time on his hands and needs a reason to leave his shop while the penguin shifters are pounding on his door.”

If they stop making the necklaces, and the Ivanov forge has already stopped making them, that just leaves the hobbyists who rent out yurts in the jewelry district during those two weeks. They don’t have enough necklaces for every penguin shifter couple who bonds during Pebble Gifting Season, which would force some of the penguin shifters to figure out something else.

It’s a step in the right direction.

“Okay,” Cy says.

I don’t know if that means he’s coming to work tomorrow or not. Maybe he doesn’t know either.

Change is hard sometimes, even if it’s the right change.

“I better go track down my bandit,” I say.