Gypsy Magic - J.R. Rain Page 0,39

I managed to ask, as I faced her again.

“Yes, declare yourself,” she said with a reproving tut. “Which side are you on, Gypsy girl?”

It was more her tone than the word, itself, that raised my hackles. Traveller blood ran thick in my veins, calling to long ago magic and adventures. While I didn’t roam from place to place the way my ancestors had, their magic was still in me, as much a part of me as my skin, hair, or eyes. I was used to the word ‘Gypsy’, had grown tired of trying to explain why it was technically a slur. The contempt in that one word allowed me to find my voice at last.

“I’m a descendent of the Scottish Travellers, Ophelia. I’d appreciate it if you’d call me by my name, or at least by the proper name of my people. And I am forty-three years old. I haven’t been a girl in a very long time.”

She didn’t backpedal or apologize. Instead, one corner of her withered mouth curled upward in the barest hint of a smile, but that was all the outward indication she gave that my impassioned speech had gotten through to her. The smile shifted lines in her face, casting more of those strange shadows into the deep creases.

“Strange that you’d be offended by the word ‘gypsy’,” she said, taking one shuffling step forward. She stood on tiptoe to reach one of my best-sellers from the shelf above her head. She rolled the antique eyedropper between her fingers and a shimmering green liquid splashed the sides in a merry dance as it settled. “Gypsy Magic, it’s called,” she said as she looked up at me.

“For divination, or spellwork.”

“Right. So what?”

Ophelia shrugged, and the exaggerated movement made the ruffles at her neck flop to one side. Had she always been this prickly? Maybe that was why no one had staged an intervention regarding her fashion sense.

“I’m merely trying to point out the hypocrisy in your feeble defense.”

“It wasn’t the word that offended me… it was the way you said it,” I snapped, finding some volume at last. I was angry. Angry she’d cornered me in my own shop, and talked down to me.

I stalked over to her and snatched the bottle of Gypsy Magic from her hand. I set it down, none-too-gently, on the shelf above our heads. “I’m sure you didn’t come into my store to buy something,” I started.

It was then that I had to fight not to draw back. Beneath the overpowering chemical scent of musk was something worse. A note of sweet decay, like I’d smelled once under GG’s peach tree. The peaches had fallen early, and we missed our chance to gather them for pie-making. By the time we’d found them, they were rotting, brown sides caving in, drawing in flies by the millions.

That was what Ophelia smelled like.

And that wasn’t normal. Marty was right. There was definitely something bizarre going on with Ophelia. How did one even get to smell like decaying fruit? Maybe the rot had come from spoiled fauna, not flora. Was she hiding bodies in her basement?

I kept my face near hers out of sheer will, staring her down from only an inch away, waiting for her to blink. She did, after an unnervingly long silence.

“Be that as it may, Ms. Morton, but it doesn’t change the fact that you must declare yourself before Mabon ends. Your failure to do so before your peers has already been remarked upon in meetings.”

I had no idea what she was talking about—my peers in meetings? “Mabon?” I repeated. My neopagan knowledge was a bit rusty. My mother had married a Christian man and raised me to be a loose sort of theist. I’d dabbled in college, but that was about it.

Ophelia rolled her eyes heavenward like I was too frustrating for words. “You have four days left to decide, girl.”

“To decide what?” I barked back.

“Do you stand with those vermin out there?” she jabbed a finger at the open door of the shop. “Or do you stand with the old magic? The old world guard who have sheltered what others sought to destroy.”

I glared at her. “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Remember what the humans are, gypsy girl, when you ponder your decision.”

“My decision to do what?” I blurted, unable to contain myself an instant longer. I had to step away from her, had to get away from the reek coming off her skin. And then I realized