Page 31 of Wicked

That still leaves the question of what to buy him. I’ve never bought a gift before. On the compound, they were forbidden, and even after we left, birthday and Christmas gifts were never a thing with Timber, H, and the other guys.

“What would you buy if it were you?” I ask.

“Tortoise shifters don’t ever leave their mates. We live for a hundred and fifty years. You don’t wanna mess with that kind of life expectancy without your mate by your side. But if I ever pissed off my omega, I’d get him strawberries. The guy’s a sucker for fresh strawberries. We made our twins after I bought him a whole box of them.”

That is information I did not need to know.

The cabbie continues to tell me about how he romanced his omega the night they made twins together until we get to Manhattan where the name Animalistic is above the entrance of a store with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Just by looking at it, I can tell it’s expensive.

Can I afford something expensive?

“Do they have an ATM here?” I ask.

The cabbie points to an ATM at the end of the block.

“Thanks!”

I pay the driver with my personal debit card, along with a generous tip, and climb out onto the sidewalk. It’s already bustling with pedestrians, and I have to weave my way through a crowd of students to get to the lone ATM just outside a convenience store with bagels displayed in the window. I follow the instructions step-by-step, inserting the card and then inputting the pin. It gives me an option to withdraw or check balance, and I choose the latter. The number doesn’t seem right: $1,566,782.00.

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it? I fumble for my phone, forgetting the time and the whole reason I’m here as I press Anne’s name. She answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Why do I have over a million dollars in my bank account?”

There’s a pause on the other end. “You’ve been working for me for twelve years. Your entire salary, except taxes, is there.”

“But the house in upstate New York…”

“My family owned that land. It was part of my inheritance. I wanted you to have it.”

She never told me any of this. I assumed I had purchased it with my money.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why didn’t you double-check that I wasn’t stealing all your money? If you want control over your finances, then you need to take responsibility. Good Christ, Manny, it’s five thirty in the morning. What the hell are you doing out at this hour?”

I hang up, not sure how to handle what she just told me. Last night, she said she was a mother to me. Isn’t that how inheritances work? I shouldn’t be upset, but if this spell is going to cost all this money, shouldn’t I pay for it if I can?

I should have been paying Judith a lot more for my clothing, that’s for sure.

The ATM prints out a receipt showing my balance, which is extremely awkward. The last thing I want is to be found with that on my person. With trepidation, I approach Animalistic. I was worried about becoming materialistic last night just from wearing clothing from a broken-down closet. What will it be like to shop in an upscale store?

I remind myself why I’m here. Candlewick deserves the world. I can’t give him that, but I can give him a nice gift. Or possibly a house wherever he wants to live, maybe a nice car, and so many strawberries we’ll conceive a whole litter of children.

If he wants kids. I don’t know if he does.

When I walk into the store, I discover the entrance is more of a hallway than just one shop. The first shop sells jewelry, and the saleswoman doesn’t even bother to stand up on my behalf. Probably because the second set of clothing I packed has ragged hems and holes in the knees.

The second room is more practical. There are skin hydration kits for aquatic shifters who have to stay on land for long periods of time, weighted blankets for shifters who normally sleep in family groups and are adjusting to living alone in the city, and artificial alpha pheromones for different species of shifters stuck on their own during a heat. I spot a board game with two foxes on the cover called Burrowing Bliss. The back panel promises “questions to ask your burrowing partner if you want to build a bond that will last forever.” A smaller font on the bottom warns that “Burrowing Bliss does not guarantee a successful bond. For a better chance at bond formation, refrain from asking questions in the sexual category until you’ve completed your first week of burrowing.”

I’ve heard about fox shifter mating customs. Instead of bonding through a bite, they hole away with their intended mate during a full month of winter in complete seclusion. I guess this is a game they play together.

The price is a hundred and fifty dollars. I can afford that. It isn’t flowers, but maybe this will be a better gift.

The last shop in Animalistic sells food. It’s all organized according to shifter species, which is interesting. I scan through the labels, wondering what they have in stock for red wolf shifters. I’m surprised to find a designated shelf with homemade root beer and spruce-tip jelly. I haven’t had that jelly since I was a child. Later, I learned red wolf shifters ate it to avoid scurvy during the winter months based on advice they got from the Tlingit tribe in Alaska. But as a kid, the flavor of spruce jelly simply meant the snow was too high for our alpha parents to work, and they had time to sing silly songs and tell us stories.

I buy three jars of the jelly and a jug of the root beer.

---