I arrived just after ten the next morning. Only problem was, the way Lucien scraped his gaze hotly across my breasts when I walked in, told me that Jeff’s boss didn’t have an ounce of gay in him.
When a few possible customers came into the store Jeff and Lucien left Jen and I to look around or, as Lucien put it, “meander their metaphysical retail establishment.” I was quite content to meander since I had no idea what the hell I was doing there in the first place. Jenny, on the other hand, was having a hard time taking her eyes off the proprietor.
“Did you get a load of that guy?” she whispered in my ear.
“Yeah, I did. He’s good-looking.” I picked up a crystal dangling from a long silver chain and held it up for examination. “Do you wear this thing or hang it as a decoration?”
“Good-looking?” Jenny slapped my back so hard I stumbled forward and nearly dropped the crystal. “The guy isn’t good-looking he’s friggin’ gorgeous!” Jenny insisted. “Under that black turtleneck you can see washboard abs!”
“Well, sure, but he’s got a bum-chin.”
Jenny rolled her eyes, “You mean a cleft chin? If I could stick my tongue in that cleft I’d die a happy woman.”
I glanced across the shop to where Lucien was showing a collection of tarot cards to a balding middle-aged man. Lucien looked up and his carbon eyes gripped mine and held. I felt my toes curl.
I tore my gaze away. “I don’t know, there’s something weird or strange about the guy.”
“It’s probably the fact that he’s six feet tall with broad shoulders, a smooth olive complexion, thick dark hair and those bottomless eyes,” Jenny sighed. “We’ve heard of male perfection, we’re just not used to seeing it away from a GQ cover.”
“Sorry to leave you,” Jeff offered when he returned. “Our pentagram stuff is over here.”
Jeff brought us to another section of the L-shaped store that was floor-to-ceiling glass shelves.
“This is our Wicca section.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Look, I gotta go fill an order in the back room so take a look around. There are a number of good books in our witches library that you might find interesting and, if you want, I’ll give you my twenty-percent employee discount.” He turned and scuttled in the opposite direction.
Jenny and I stared at the massive quantity of items surrounding us.
“Wow,” Jenny said. Wow just about covered it.
“No eye of toad or hair of newt,” I observed, but there certainly were shelves containing everything else you would expect your modern witch to have. There were spell candles, witch balls, incense sticks, intricately carved wands and, of course, crystal balls in your choice of green, blue and black. One shelf held a weighty selection of scrying mirrors that gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“Well, I’m definitely getting this,” Jenny announced holding up a book titled Red Hot Love Spells. “Maybe I can find a spell to put on Tim tonight.”
“Is Tim the one who’s Lara’s cousin?”
“No, that was Todd.”
“So he’s your neighbor’s nephew?”
“No, that’s Terry. Tim is my cousin’s neighbor’s stepson.”
I just shook my head clear and changed the subject.
“To own this kind of a store this Roskell guy is either very strange—” I fingered a brass chalice and gasped at the price tag “—or very smart.”
“I see you’re interested in The Craft,” a deep voice sounded behind us. “‘All the wild witches, the most noble ladies, for all their broomsticks and their tears, their angry tears, are gone.’”
We turned to look into Lucien’s smiling face.
“I don’t know what that means—” Jenny giggled “—but it sure sounds nice. Was that Shakespeare?”
“Yeats,” Lucien replied. He flashed a wide smile at Jenny then focused his obsidian eyes on mine. “Jeff tells me you’re interested in pentagrams.”
I didn’t answer. It felt as if his cavernous gaze was extracting my ability to speak. I controlled my urge to fidget and my other urge to run.
Jenny stepped closer so that she was shoulder to shoulder with me. “Yes, Tabitha has had a rather interesting few days, pentagram speaking.”
“Really?” His eyebrows rose in amusement, his gaze still securely locked on mine. “It sounds like an interesting story, perhaps one that should be told over dinner? Tonight?”
“Um, sorry. Actually, I’m working tonight.”
“Oh? Jeff told me you work in a law office, is there an emergency legal matter to attend to?” The corners of his mouth twitched.
“I have a second job at a movie theater.”
“But she’s not busy now,” Jenny piped in and I would’ve pinched her if she hadn’t sidestepped out of pinching distance. “You could always go for coffee.”
“Splendid idea.” Lucien grinned. “I’ll just let Jeff know that he’ll be running the store.”
He turned on his heel and then I did pinch Jenny.
“Ow!”
“What the hell did you do that for?” I snapped. “I don’t want to go out with him!”
“You’re the one who is always saying that coffee with a man is the perfect predate test,” Jenny reasoned thumbing through the pages of her love spell book. “What’s so awful? So you spend a few minutes together. Big deal. You can determine whether or not there’s a spark and whether or not he’s capable of stringing a few words together, then if he passes the predate test you’re safe to attempt dinner.”
I hated having my own lecture tossed back in my face.
“Well, you’re coming with us.”
“No way! The man doesn’t even look at me when I’m standing right next to you.”
“I don’t care. I need a buffer because he’s just so—” I groped for the word “—intense.”
Jen rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you can handle him on your own for a few minutes. I’ll be right across the street at that discount shoe place. When you’re done having coffee with Mr. Intense you can meet me there.”
Before I could protest further Mr. Intense was at my side and shrugging into a black leather jacket and within minutes we were at a coffee shop next door cozily sipping steaming lattes.
“So tell me about your pentagram escapades,” Lucien urged.
“Jenny likes to be a little dramatic,” I replied, and after taking a deep drink of my coffee I relayed to him all about the purse snatcher, the following cat yukiness and then the incident at the Dumpster.
