sense. No one really touched around this place, now that I thought about it.
“Things are a lot different here.” I crossed my arms so I wouldn’t accidentally make another gesture.
“There’s going to be a learning curve, I’m sure. Are you hungry?” He moved over to the back shelves, where he pulled a cover off a dish. “I was going to bring this up if you didn’t come down soon.” He put the dish and a fork on the other side of his desk, where I’d seen clientele sitting earlier in the day.
“Actually, I’m starving. Thanks.”
I took the offered food and seat as he continued to watch me, as if I were some freak of nature.
Pretending not to notice, I dug into the shredded meat of unknown origin. It was heaped over something that might’ve been rice, if it wasn’t red and twice the size. Whatever it was, it was tasty.
He sat on the other side of the desk, staring as I ate, waiting.
“It’s good. Thanks,” I said, smiling as he watched me.
“I wasn’t sure what to order you, coming from Rest. I’ve never even talked to someone from Rest before.” He planted his chin in his hand, watching me like he’d never seen anyone eat before. “So what’s it like over there?”
“The factory?” I asked between bites.
“No, in Rest. Do you like it there? I’ve never been. Heard it’s crazy, though. Lots of weird people and almost no one can do anything magical.” His lips parted as he shook his head.
“It would probably be as weird to you as this place is to me.”
The wall took that moment to grind into overtime, the candles glittering off its golden metal parts. Shelves lined the rest of the room, filled with bottles and books that looked old enough to belong in a museum. There were all sorts of other knickknacks as well, from lamps that looked like they’d spew smoke and strange dice carved of stone. It was an odd blend of what appeared to be antiques, toys, and machinery.
He looked around. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
“So what do you guys do here, exactly?” I spooned another couple of bites in while I waited.
He shrugged. “Broker magic. You know, the usual stuff.”
There was nothing usual about any of this. “How does this stuff happen?”
“It’s pretty simple, actually.” He pointed to the large wall of gears and machinery. “See this thing? It’s called the Helexorgomay. It runs on the energy created by the hopes, dreams, wants, and fears of the people in Rest. If they give them enough juice, so to speak, that request shoots out there.”
He walked over to the basket I’d seen earlier that was overflowing with slips of paper. He grabbed the first one off the stack and read, “‘Please let me pass my science quiz.’” He held up the paper. “This goes right in the shredder because there’s no payment offered.” He tossed it in another basket. “Lots of requests don’t offer payment that’s worth anything. If they don’t, there’s nothing we can do. Everything costs something.”
“What kind of payments are offered?”
He riffled through the basket. “Here’s a good one. This person is asking for their daughter to get better, and they’re tattooing something on their arm. That’s basically offering a pound of flesh. This we can do something with.”
He moved the slip to a basket beside his desk.
“So you take the flesh as payment?” I suddenly wondered what exactly I was eating as my fork hovered over my strange meat.
He let out a deep laugh. “We don’t take the actual flesh. That sacrifice is converted. The list of commodities we deal in is very long. Some pay in time, some in energy, happiness, you name it. See that board?” He pointed to the wall behind me on the other side of the room.
I’d been so busy taking in the things at eye level and the machine that I hadn’t looked behind me. There were all sorts of emotions, dates, lengths of time, and numbers jotted down on a huge gridded chalkboard.
“What does that all mean?”
“It’s exchange rates. If the request isn’t paying in a form the supplier is accepting, we can convert it for them for an additional three percent rate, unless it’s loneliness. No one wants to touch that, so it’s a twenty percent surcharge.
“We make the deal. I’ll call in a witch or wizard who can handle it. Once the order is filled, it’ll be fed back into the Helexorgomay machine—or Helen, as we