only powerful. I couldn’t even absorb enough social energy out of the people around me to make one teenage boy look at me.
Temporal magic was too distant and abstract, pulling something from the appearance of nothing. Maybe the future objects came from somewhere, but unless a person could see it, they didn’t trust it.
All that to say that however many tarot-card readers claimed to be temporal mages, it was unlikely that literally any of them were. Beez wasn’t a mage of any kind, she was just good at what she did.
And after spending years getting her education in the field of psychology, dealing with the backbiting and publish-or-die mentality, I was starting to wonder if maybe Beez wanted to use her expensive doctorate to read tarot cards forever.
“You don’t have to,” she said, biting her lip.
I guessed I’d been quiet too long, and she thought I was trying to find a nice way to say no. I shook my head. “You don’t have to work in the shop for that, B. I’m fine with you doing readings out of the back room. Should we, like, paint it?”
Even if I had disliked the idea, the grin that broke across her face would have been worth my agreement. “Really? Oh, but no, I want to work for it. You can’t let people take advantage of you, Sage, not even me. This way it’s a win-win. You get some Sage time, and I get a real job.”
“Parents bugging you again?”
She groaned and almost collapsed against the table. Beez’s parents were convinced that her extended time in school, without either getting a “real job” or married, was a phase. She blamed the fact that they were first generation Chinese immigrants. I figured there were a lot of non-immigrants who thought the same way, but no one knew Beez’s parents better than her, so I didn’t argue the point.
I let her wallow for a few minutes, eating my lunch. Foxy went and put his head in her lap, giving her a pitiful whine that earned him a head scratching, the little attention monger. Then I remembered—“Hey, if it makes you feel better, I got ordered to dinner on Friday by my grandmother.”
Her head flew up, eyes wide as she stared at me. “Like, Iris McKinley, your grandmother?”
“I don’t have another one that I know about.” I sighed and took another bite of my sandwich. “I don’t know what she wants with me, but the invitation amounted to ‘get your ass here or else,’ so I guess I know where I’ll be on Friday night. She’s sending a freaking car for me.”
She started eating again, staring off into space with wide eyes as though picturing the horrors that awaited me. Another whine from foxy grabbed her attention. Foxy, who was staring at her sandwich, with big sad eyes. “Oh! I almost forgot.” She reached over to a bag on her lunch tray, filled with what looked like frosted animal crackers, opened it, and handed one to him.
He didn’t wait to be offered twice, just scarfed the thing down.
“That’s awesome,” she told me as she handed him a second one. “You’ll have to tell us all about it while we’re cleaning out your dad’s apartment on Monday. Mal said we can borrow them and their truck, by the way. Even though we’re not dating anymore.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “You’ll be dating again by Monday.”
She flipped me off, then pulled out another frosted animal cracker. “I wonder what the frosting is made of, that it’s okay for dogs?”
“Thinking about trying one?”
With a glare, she fed my gluttonous new not-familiar a third one. “He seems to like them.”
“He’s a fox. He’s not exactly discriminating.” My phone buzzed with a notification—I’d set an alarm for a quarter to one, to remind me to get back to the shop. With a sigh, I stood. “Gotta get back to work.”
She stood as well, gathering what was left of her lunch while I disposed of my empty tray and used napkins. “So it’s not a bad idea, right?” she asked. “I mean, if you want to sell the shop, I get it. It’s not like you have nice memories there. But me working there would be cool, right?”
She held out the bag with the remaining fox treats to me.
“Yeah. It could be fun, working with you. Heck, even if I’m still in the store, at least I can spend more time in the back, organizing and dusting.” The more I thought