The whole place smelled of herbs and age.
If at any point, some classic Old West town had had a shop like this, this is what it would have looked like. Then again, maybe there had been shops like this, full of books and herbs and esoterica, the equivalent of a New Age apothecary and fortune-telling emporium but with a historical patina. Maybe they hid in plain sight, that unassuming tea parlor or what not. Amelia had traveled the world, looking for magic, and had found it. Maybe it showed up in places just like this.
Amelia would love this.
A young-looking man stood at the counter, reading a book lying flat on the counter. He had brown skin, short-cropped curly hair, and wore a long-sleeved, button-up shirt, a vest, wire-rimmed glasses. As old-fashioned as the rest of the place. He had a leather cord wrapped twice around his right wrist, which might have been jewelry except it didn’t much go with the rest of his outfit. Might have been a spell.
Cormac didn’t waste time and went up to the counter, putting his hand on the varnished wood. The guy looked up. His smile was perfunctory, the bland face of a customer service professional.
“What can I get for you?” A chalkboard on an easel listed a menu: tea in three sizes, prices for the pastries.
Cormac said, “Judi Scanlon said I should look you up. Might be able to help me with a problem.”
The young man regarded him a moment. Sizing him up, and Cormac put up with it. Considered what he’d do if the guy denied knowing Judi, played dumb about the whole magic thing. But eventually he turned up half a grin. “She did, did she? I didn’t think you looked much like a tea drinker.”
Amelia was. He drank it for her, when they couldn’t get coffee. “Don’t seem to be too many tea drinkers around here.” Through the windows, people passed by and never even looked at the shop.
“Folks have to really want to find the place.” Which meant maybe Cormac was supposed to be here. That seemed to be enough for the guy. He closed the book and slipped it under the counter. Cormac caught just enough of a look to see that it was bound in stained leather, no title, no other markings. “And you are?”
“Cormac,” he said. “You must be Gregory?”
“And Judi thinks I can help you.”
“You can call her and get her to vouch for me.”
“That’s all right. You don’t go around dropping a name like that for the fun of it.” Cormac realized he really had no idea what Judi’s reputation was outside of the nice old lady who gave ghost tours in Manitou Springs. He wondered if he wanted to find out. Gregory continued. “What’s the problem?”
“You know her?” He unfolded the sheet of paper with Isabelle Durant’s blurry, security camera picture and lay it on the counter. The man studied it, and his gaze narrowed in what might have been recognition. Cormac waited to see if he would deny it or dodge the question.
He lifted his gaze. “Why are you looking for her?”
Cormac’s lip curled. “I just have a couple of questions I need to ask her.”
Gregory’s lip curled as well, a mirroring half smile, just as cynical. “That right?”
“She’s probably laying low at the moment. She’s been working some powerful magic over the last couple of days. Or she might have hired someone to work the magic for her. Judi says you might have a sense of who around here might be capable of that.” Or that it might have been you. . .
“Let me ask you a question. If you know enough to know about that kind of magic, and Judi Scanlon trusts you enough to send you to me, why can’t you find this person yourself?”
“That’s just it, normally I would. And now I can’t. That’s what I need to ask her about.”
The implications sank in—that Durant had done something to Cormac’s magical abilities. It wasn’t a lie, per se. Gregory raised a brow and blew out a breath.
“Why don’t you step back to my office?” He went to the front door and turned over a painted wood sign from “open” to “closed.” In the back of the shop, Gregory gestured Cormac to a chair at a small, linen-covered table. “Yes, I’ve seen her. I don’t know her name but she’s been in a couple of times, picking up odds and ends. It’s not my place to ask my customers what they do with what I sell them.”
“I’ve heard the same argument at gun shops,” Cormac said.
“Yeah. Well.” From a nearby shelf he retrieved a silk bag and drew out a deck of cards, which he began deftly shuffling.
“Tarot?” Cormac asked, smirking. “You think this will track her down, give me an address for her?”
“This isn’t about her. I want to know what you’re about.”
Cormac leaned back and crossed his arms. He didn’t much feel like being tested. On the other hand, he was kind of curious what the guy would come up with. This was just parlor tricks, though Amelia would say that in the right hands tarot could be more. And he wished he could stop thinking about Amelia. “If I pass your test, you’ll help?”
“What’s your connection to this woman?”
“Old grudge,” he said.