have been gifted with any decent amount of power, oh no. Instead of being able to channel social magic into intricate knots that drew people to me and made me friends and allies, I could see dead people.
I rested my chin on my fist and met my father’s translucent gaze. “Mr. Ashwell doesn’t spend enough here to cover the monthly cost of sticky notes.”
His sour expression didn’t change. “He deserves respect.”
Foxy, still growling, slipped back around the corner, staring in my father’s direction. He seemed to be able to actually see Dad, and while seeing the dead wasn’t the rarest ability for a mage, it wasn’t common either.
“And why is that creature in my store?” He turned to foxy and pointed at the front door. “Out, you! You don’t belong here.”
Foxy stopped growling, and for a second, I was convinced he’d comply, leave, and I’d never see him again. I gripped the edge of the counter, as though I could vault over it and put myself between the fox and the front door. I was more likely to fall over it and break a leg, but you know, either way it was likely to distract everyone, so win-win?
Instead of leaving, though, foxy yawned, stretched, met my father’s eye, and then sauntered right through him and over to the couch. When he got there, he stopped and looked at me. I gave him a smile. It felt brittle and breakable, but foxy stuck out his tongue and grinned his very foxy grin. He turned and looked up at my father.
“Don’t you dare get on that couch, you disgusting, tick-infested—”
As though inspired by my father’s anger, foxy turned, hopped up onto the couch, and sat there, tail curled around his feet and staring at my father with an expression I could only call smug.
“Sage, get this creature off my sofa,” my father insisted, turning to me. Somehow, even now, even dead, his cheeks and nose were going red, as they always did when he was angry.
He clearly expected me to do exactly what he wanted. I always did. It was why I put up with Mr. Ashwell treating the shop like a library. Why I was almost thirty with half a college education and one meaningful friendship.
I looked at foxy, who looked at me, all big brown innocent eyes. I’d known he was going to cause trouble. That bringing him to the shop was going to make things difficult.
I sighed, grabbed my scanner, and turned toward the back of the shop. “Come on, foxy. I need to inventory the westerns. Let’s leave Dad to his precious sofa.”
Foxy gave a motion that approximated a shrug and followed after me. I tried to pretend I wasn’t putting off calling the familiar registration office. His mage could live without him for one morning, couldn’t they?
Heck, maybe his mage was dead, and he was just as adrift as I was. Maybe we really did belong together, foxy and me.
Chapter Three
Maybe it was the fact that I’d never seriously considered getting a pet and now had a full grown fox to worry about, but I realized sometime in the middle of the morning inventory, that not half a block down the street was a pet shop. It was a tiny independent place, much like my dad’s shop—like most of the businesses on the street, in fact.
We were half a mile from the local university, and our little area was full of independent shops funded by half broke college students. It was why a few years ago, I’d started keeping a ready supply of cheap used copies of the classics, to draw in students from the university. Or at least, the books that universities called classic.
Dad hadn’t liked it, had railed about how we weren’t a used bookstore, but he’d shut up pretty fast when the students who’d come for beat up two-dollar copies of Ulysses stayed for full price novels. He still hadn’t let me make other changes, like cutting out some of the slow-moving hobby magazines in favor of graphic novels, or enlarging the sitting area and adding tables, but it had been something.
Ironically, he’d said if we attracted too many college students, they would sit around and read our books but not pay for them. Maybe that was only okay if the deadbeat was someone he personally liked. The truth seemed to be that he didn’t want customers under thirty.
The pet shop was a tiny place called Fetch; its understated sign bearing only a hint