Chapter Eight

Victor Tryvor helps Matt around his shop.

I was awoken the next day by a light tapping at my shoulder. I sat up to see Edwin was sitting next to me on the couch, using his beak to try and wake me up. I pushed him aside, and he alighted on the coffee table with a flutter of feathers. He nodded his head at the two sleeping beauties on the floor, and I nodded my head. They must have passed out sometime during the night. You would have thought they would have at least set up some sort of watch. Guess they were leaving that to the ones out in the cars patrolling my neighborhood. Hope they didn’t pass out as well. That would just be great. Under constant, sleeping surveillance. Was that even possible?

I got up to check on my other two guests. They were still sleeping soundly in my bed, and I went off without bothering any of them. I made a pot of coffee, and set most of it out for the others to drink once they had gotten up. After draining mine, I went down to the shop to set things up for the day. There was inventory to get done, and I had just gotten a new shipment of supplies the day before that I hadn’t managed to get out. I might have been under police protection, but I was not going to stop my life for that.

Edwin followed me down to the shop, which he usually didn’t do. I could understand him today, though. Who would want to stay up there with the dynamic duo today?

I felt for him. I really did. He just fluttered about the place until he found a spot to land on top of a bust. I had no idea who the bust was of, but an Edgar Allen Poe poem kept running through my mind.

A short while before I opened for the day, the kid skipped down the steps.

“Does your mother know you’re down here?” I asked, not wanting him to get into any sort of trouble.

He nodded his head, his light colored hair flopping about his face. “She said I could come down and watch you run your shop, as long as I stayed out of the way, and as long as it was okay with you. Is it okay with you?” he asked with such an innocent air to him that I just couldn’t say no even if he had been a problem, which I didn’t think it was. Judging by what he had written on the internet, he already had a good idea of what the stuff around the place was, and I didn’t think there was anything he could really hurt, as long as he behaved well.

“Sure. If you want, you can help me out a little.”

His face brightened up as if I had just made his day. “Could I?” he asked, so eagerly it was almost pathetic.

I smiled back at him. “Sure. I’ve got all these little packets of herbs that need put in their place, that bin right over there. Would you mind doing for me? I’ve got to open the store, and I didn’t have time to put them away yet.”

He joyfully bounced over to the bin I had pointed at, and started setting the herb packets neatly in their place as if he had been doing this sort of thing all his life.

I turned to see Edwin intently grooming his feathers, and knew that he was trying to tell me that he thought everything was as fine as it could be, for the time being.

I went over to the doors, and unlocked them before flipping over the open sign. Then I went back to stand behind the counter to await my costumers for the day.

The shop was rather a dark and dim place, not because I liked that sort of thing, but because a lot of people who came in expected that. That was one thing about marketing, you wanted to look the way people expected you to. If I had a brightly lit store with your typical signs and bargain racks sitting out, not as many people would be taken with it. Atmosphere. It all came down to atmosphere, and in a magic shop, you had to have a lot of it. There were bunches of various, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, There were several, wooden barrels set aside in one corner with various crushed herbs and powders in them. I had a couple of display cases sitting about in a few places with trinkets and amulets in them, claiming to do anything from help you find your true love to healing an old, emotional wound. I didn’t feel to awfully bad about selling these things. If you believed in something hard enough, it actually would happen most of the time. Power of suggestion, and all that, and the people who came to my shop were usually pretty desperate and ready to believe in anything.

I had a few regulars who really knew what they were doing, but most were just passersby who had seen my sign and were curious. I got anything from those who really wanted to believe to those that just walked in to mock and make fun of my wares. That was okay. I never took offense of them, and they usually ended up buying something in the end anyway, even if it was just to prove me wrong. I have never had anyone come in before to tell me that my products didn’t work. I assume that either they really believed in the item after a while, or they just felt too silly to come back. Either way, business was usually pretty good most days.

Today, it was better than I was used to.

The kid went about the place tidying up this or that, arranging things in their proper places and cleaning any mess he could find. He really did know his stuff when it came to magic, and I was almost shocked at how easily it seemed to come to him, how to set everything up in the proper way and such.

A number of my regulars saw the boy through the windows, and came in to ask about my new helper. He even helped out with a few customers who gave him quite a nice tip, I might add. A few elderly women gave him a few coins just for helping me out around the store, and a couple of the men what wanted to know how much I was paying the kid. It soon crossed my mind that I would probably have to give him at least a cut in my profits for the day, seeing as how he made a number of sales all by himself, explaining what certain items did and giving people information on what they wanted when they didn’t know exactly what they were looking for.

Edwin observed all this with a raised brow, as impressed with the boy as I was. I wondered where he could have learned everything he had so quickly. It was almost spooky, but I wouldn’t say that to the kid’s face. I didn’t even question him. It just wasn’t something I thought would be good to do, especially after what had happened to him. I still had no idea why he had been kidnapped, and didn’t want to trigger anything that might cause the boy pain before he was ready for it. Besides, he was a good kid, and I didn’t want to think about what my kind did to those that showed the public too much of our world.

Most of the customers that came in that day either knew their stuff already, or thought they did, so I didn’t see the harm in letting him have a bit of fun with it. So what if he did give away a bit too much information to a young teenage girl on how to make a love potion. He had left out one of the key ingredients, so I didn’t have to worry about having to come to her rescue when every boy at her school started throwing themselves at her. And the old woman who wanted to talk to her dead husband? Well, let her think that the amulet the kid sold her would do just that, even though she still needed a few ingredients for a potion he had neglected to give her. It was just how we worked, and he seemed a natural at it, giving just enough without giving away too much, even if he did give away a bit more than I would have.

The day ended with the last customer waving cheerfully to the boy as she left, and I locked the door behind her. Turning to the kid, who had a huge grin on his face, I said, “Well, that does it. It was a pretty good day if I do say so myself. Did you have a nice time?”

The kid enthusiastically nodded his head, and said, “Great. Can we do it again tomorrow?”
I laughed and ruffled his hair. “We’ll see. Come on, I bet your mother is just dieing to see you.”

We got upstairs, and the boy flew into his mother’s arms. “Mom, I had the best time today. Mr. Madison let me help around the shop, and I got to help the costumers and everything.”

“Did you?” she asked, looking over at me with a grin on her face. “Well, I hope you didn’t cause any trouble while you were down there helping out.”

“He didn’t,” I assured her.

“He even said I might get to help again tomorrow. Isn’t that neat?”

“Yes, it sure is. Now, why don’t you go and clean up for supper.”

He skipped off to the bathroom, and I moved over to her. “He really is a fine boy,” I couldn’t help but say to her.

She looked after her son, a strange look on her face. “Yes, yes he is,” she said in a tone that was distant and distracted, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was on her mind. Before she went any further with the topic, she said, “I made sandwiches for dinner. It was about all I could find to work with.”

I nodded, a huge, embarrassed grin on my face. “Us bachelors don’t have a lot of variety in our diets. I’ll see about going to the store in a bit and picking something up.”
“We’ll take care of that, if you just give us a list,” one of the cops said.

I glared at him, not wanting to be cooped up in my own home. “Are we under house arrest now,” I asked, snappishly.

The guy shook his head. “We just think it would be best if we kept all three of you together in the same place. Make it easier to protect you.”

Or make it easier to pick us off one by one, I thought, but decided not to voice that particular statement. It would only serve to upset Mrs. Tryvor and her son, and I didn’t want to do that to them. They seemed like such nice people, and there was no reason to let my foul temper get the better of me right now. It wouldn’t have made things better. Holding up my hands, and sighing, I said, “Fine. Let her make you a list of things she’s needing. I’ll just go with the flow…for now.”

The guy nodded, and he and Mrs. Tryvor got around to the making of the grocery list. The guy called something in, and a few minutes later, another cop showed up to take the list, and was off to the store.

“Is Michelle going to stop by anytime soon?” I asked, wishing for a member of the law I could actually stand being around for extended periods of time.

“She’s looking into a few leads right now,” the one said.

“What sort of leads?”

“The ones we wouldn’t need to be looking into if you had just called in the kid’s location when you found it,” the other guy said.

Oh, so they knew about that, did they? Was that why they seemed a little more irritable than I thought they should have? Maybe it wasn’t my good manners that were ruffling their feathers after all, but the fact that in their minds I had screwed up their case.

Author's Note

First Draft