peeked over Joy’s shoulder. “How about a dermal, fourth-circle glamour with a subvocal charm?”
Mr. Vinh’s eyes lowered under his deep epicanthic folds, but he kept speaking to Joy as if he hadn’t heard Inq. “You are together?” he asked.
Joy nodded as Inq squeezed her shoulders. Mr. Vinh rang up the total for the lot.
“Eight dollars and seventeen cents,” he said. Joy handed over a crisp twenty. Mr. Vinh rubbed it between his fingers and held it up to the fluorescent light, all but rendered moot by the bright summer sun. Joy twisted her fingers. She felt like she was being carded. He finally nodded and made change, punching a number into the nearby phone. He spoke in rapid-fire something-ese, then hung up.
“My son will be here shortly,” he said. “Please wait over there.” He pointed to the lonely stack of morning papers in their thin wire display. Joy took her plastic bag, which sported a yellow smiley face and Have a Nice Day!, and stepped to the side. Inq grabbed a paper and flipped to the entertainment section.
“What are we doing?” Joy whispered as Inq turned pages.
“Waiting,” she said. “It’s a power thing. The Bailiwick does it all the time.” Inq flipped to the back of the paper and sighed. “Men!”
A tall man in his mid-twenties wearing a blue button-up over a black tee and jeans opened a back door and loped to the counter, exchanging a few words with Mr. Vinh before taking his place at the register. He nodded to the next customer with a smile and said in English, “Next person, please.”
Mr. Vinh shuffled out from behind the counter, feet scraping against the floor in black socks and worn Birkenstocks. He led the way to a sign marked Storage: Employees Only and pulled back the heavy door. Clicking on the light, he gestured for Inq and Joy to follow.
The storage closet was packed with flats of juice drinks, boxes of snacks and plastic-wrapped rolls of paper towels. A lunar calendar was tacked up on the wall above a small electric-lit altar propped with photos of dour-looking people and tiny bowls of seeds and sweets. Mr. Vinh brushed past them and ran his hand along the back of one of the shelving units, his arm disappearing up to the shoulder as the back of the closet swung open with a click.
“Less magic,” he said matter-of-factly. “More secure. Come in.”
He pushed the hidden door wider and beckoned them inside. Wondering what she’d gotten herself into, Joy stepped forward. Inq strolled after them, nearly skipping into the dark.
“What did the nix want?” Inq asked conversationally.
“Bah,” Mr. Vinh grunted. “Modern maladies. Drink this to wake up. Drink this to go to sleep. Eat this to get fat. Eat this to get thin.” He turned on a light. “It’s like doing business in a Lewis Carroll novel.”
Joy tiptoed into the small room lined with bamboo slats. There was an enormous armoire composed of rows of tiny drawers, each one labeled with dark red paint. Bundles of dried herbs and wrinkled things were stuffed in heavy glass jars, ceramic jugs and urns, and a large, tinted-glass mirror hung on the wall in a chunky wooden frame. A glass cabinet full of strange instruments glinted in the light of oddly twisted bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Overlapping grass mats covered the floor, shushing underfoot and swallowing sound.
Mr. Vinh shrugged on a long black robe, the edge of it catching on his C&P name tag. He tugged it loose and buttoned it closed under his left armpit. After placing a simple flat cap on his head, he drew out a long stylus, dipped it in a small bowl of water and swirled it with quick strokes into a pot of black paste. He spoke offhandedly while he worked the bristles in. “You don’t really want a glamour, do you?”
“Of course not.” Inq spoke first. Joy frowned at her but kept silent. “What would she do with one? She’s human.”
Mr. Vinh stopped swishing the brush and said nothing. He smoothed the soft bristles against the edge of the pot, creating a fine point. “Well then,” he said. “How may I be of service?”
“She asked me about glamours,” Inq said. “So I brought her to you.”
“I don’t do tutorials, demonstrations or free samples,” said Mr. Vinh crisply.
“How about a sales pitch?” Inq said.
Joy stood to one side, trying to be as polite as possible. This was a different Mr. Vinh from the one she knew from the C&P. He was brisk, efficient, a little bit perturbed and a little bit scary. He was clearly in his element here in the secret wizard’s back room, a place very different from the fluorescent-bulbed store.
Mr. Vinh painted himself a note in liquid script, his pen dancing in quick, soaring strokes on a roll of ecru paper. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Joy swallowed. “I’m...”
“She’s lehman to Indelible Ink.”
Joy and Mr. Vinh both glanced at Inq. She held their stares. Joy frowned. Was she? Did Mr. Vinh know what that meant? Joy felt a blush light her cheeks and twisted her fingers around her purse strap. Mr. Vinh laid his brush gently on the pot lid, balancing its length across the lip, and crossed the room to the cabinet. He withdrew a small apparatus made up of many lenses; some were tiny microscope circles and some were giant magnifiers, others were milky half domes or tinted glass or bowed optics framed in twists of wire and wood. There was even a smooth stone with a hole in its center tied to the rim with copper wire. Mr. Vinh lifted the thing like opera glasses and made some adjustments with a rotating dial.
“Remove your glamour, please.”
Inq made a motion with her hand and...nothing changed. At least, not as far as Joy could see. Inq looked exactly the same.
“Thank you,” Mr. Vinh said crisply. He lowered the apparatus, squinted in Inq’s direction, then fitted the lenses back over his eyes. Joy got that he couldn’t see Inq without them. He made a few more adjustments in silence.
“Please reinstate the glamour,” he said. Inq swirled her hand again, and the wizard gave a grunt of satisfaction. He turned the multilensed thing at Joy. “Now you.”
“I’m not wearing a glamour,” she said.
“Of course not,” he said, tweaking a lens into place. “But I cannot see their handiwork without assistance. Hold still please.”
Joy tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. One of the lenses tilted. Another clicked into place.
“I am fascinated by the marriage of magic and technology,” he explained as he squinted through the rock with a hole. “How it overlaps, where it repels and attracts, like two polarized magnets. It’s a hobby of mine.” He lowered the device and frowned. “She hasn’t the Scribe’s signatura,” Mr. Vinh said. “She is no lehman.” He shook his chin at Joy. “You have no part in this.”
“But she did,” Inq lilted.
“Did?” Mr. Vinh shut the thing back in its cabinet. “Nonsense. She is not what you claim. She is not a lehman. End of story.”
“Well, I was,” Joy said quietly. “But I guess now I’m just his girlfriend.”
Mr. Vinh paused as he stepped behind his desk, staring at her for a long moment.
