The Avramovs owned the Arcane Emporium on Hyssop Street, a sprawling megastore of all things occult, including magical tools and herbs, divination sessions, séances, and even an adjoining haunted house. I couldn’t really imagine Talia’s mother, Elena, the imposing Avramov matriarch, allowing the taint of anything so plebian as PayPal and Square and URLs to creep into her eldritch domain.
“Maybe she has a point,” I said with a shrug. “I can’t tell you how many ‘magical artifacts’ I’ve come across out there, but none of it’s the real deal. There must be witches beyond Thistle Grove, but if any of them happen to be in Chicago, they’re keeping well to themselves.”
What I didn’t tell her was just how oppressive living without magic could be, after having grown up with it running through you like a current, the absence of it a deep and relentless ache that sank its roots into the chambers of your heart like some encroaching weed. That part of the reason I wound up at Enchantify in the first place was that a （reasonably well-paid） excuse to seek out even instruments of fake magic satisfied some deep yearning inside me I couldn’t otherwise seem to quell.
But I wanted her to know I was happy and thriving out there, regardless. Because I was, in a way I never could have been had I stayed here.
Talia nodded thoughtfully, her eyes a little distant. “And you’ve been away, what, almost ten years now?”
“Closer to nine.”
“Must get pretty rough sometimes. I took a few years of finance classes at the university in Carbondale,” she added, naming the closest decently sized town near Thistle Grove. “So I could keep the Emporium’s books better—which is what I do these days, along with some of the fun touristy shit. I even thought about committing to a master’s program, but I just fucking hated the way the magic fades out there. Being weak like that . . . I couldn’t stand it, not for long.”
“Eh, you get used to it,” I said, which might have been one of the baldest lies I’d ever managed with a straight face. Though to be fair, compared to Talia, I’d been weak all my life. “And there are a lot of upsides, like actually good sushi and killer pierogies. And being valued for something besides your bloodline.”
Talia flicked me a doubtful look, but before she could say anything, Morty deposited three flamboyantly garnished mini cocktails in front of each of us with a flourish.
“May I present Demonic Decadence, Pumpkin Pandemonium, and the Flirty Mermaid, for miladies’ tasting pleasure.”
“Speaking my language, sweet pea,” Talia said, scooting her cocktails closer with both hands, like an animated dragon hoarding treasure. Morty flashed her a grin and a saucy wink, then ducked out back again.
“Where does one even begin, when all options inspire equal fear?” I pondered aloud, gaze shifting skeptically from the Flirty Mermaid’s glitter-speckled surface to the Pumpkin Pandemonium’s neon-orange froth.
“Don’t be precious about your cocktails, Harlow.”
“Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with a taste for liquefied gummy worms, Avramov.”
She held up a commanding finger. “Not born with—acquired, through hard work and sacrifice.”
When I burst out laughing, she gave me that wolf’s grin again, her eyes narrowing above it. “Just suck it up and trust me, okay? Upon my honor, I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
She scooped up her Demonic Decadence, which came in an admittedly adorable coupe with a devil’s tail wrapped around the stem.
“To fucking Gareth Blackmoore,” she pronounced, lifting the glass toward me, “whose heart is darker than even his ancestral name. May he step into a puddle and ruin his uninspired and overpriced Italian footwear every day for the remainder of his life. Which will hopefully be as brutish and brief as the poets promise.”
“To a toast that literally can’t be improved upon,” I agreed, clinking my plastic pumpkin to her coupe, then taking a devil-may-care swallow of my drink. It was richly creamy but not at all cloying, with notes of bourbon and maple bitters and only a hint of sweet pumpkin pie.
It was also so strong that I could feel a smolder catch in my belly, the heat radiating upward to my chest like smoke off a fresh-lit bonfire.
“Tasty, right?” Talia said smugly, catching my startled expression. “Told you. Morty’s this town’s best-kept secret. I mean, besides its generations of real-life witches.”
“I’ll allow that it tastes way less like a Chili’s seasonal special than I feared.”