Page 14 of The Fantastic Fluke

The shop was mine, and I would be justified doing anything I wanted with it.

If I sold it, I wouldn’t have to see my father ever again. It wasn’t as though he would follow me to my house, where he’d never lived. His apartment would be empty in a few days. Hell, maybe me selling the shop, letting someone bulldoze the lot in favor of a superstore, was what Dad needed to move on.

Ghosts didn’t have unfinished business. That whole thing was romanticized fiction made up by writers with overactive imaginations and no practical knowledge. No one knew exactly what it was ghosts crossed over into, but the vast majority chose to take their chances. Most didn’t even seem to make a conscious choice, just died and crossed. My father had to be the annoying, stubborn exception, and I had no idea why. No one seemed to know.

So just like the rest of me, the ability to see ghosts was unique, but not particularly valuable for that fact. Sure, not many people could see ghosts. What did it matter, since there weren’t many ghosts to be seen, and no way to help those who existed? The only people who could help ghosts were the ghosts themselves, by choosing to move along.

“I promise, the place isn’t going to implode without you there for half a minute,” Beez told me as she set a plate in front of me. “You should do this more often. Get people used to the shop not being open eight to six, seven days a week. It’s too much for one person.”

“I spend half my time there reading.” It was a weak protest, and she was right. Even if I only worked half of the hours I spent at the shop, it was a lot of hours. I didn’t mind working a lot, but it would be nice to have days off. Just one or two a week; not even as much time as before Dad died.

“You could hire an employee. Someone to give you a day off. You need more Sage time. Even if you use it to sit at home and read a book, it’ll be better than being at the store all the time.” She took a huge bite of her own sandwich, as though she didn’t want to have to go on.

That did sound nice. A day off, sitting in bed, reading and eating cheese and crackers.

I set my food down. “You have an actual idea. Something to do with what you wanted?” Her cheeks went pink and she wouldn’t meet my eye, toying with the pile of potato chips on her plate instead, so I blurted out what I’d been thinking. “I thought I might sell the shop.” I glanced around self-consciously, but didn’t see anyone listening.

“What if you let me do readings in the back?” she asked, the words tumbling out almost faster than I could understand. “I could work a couple days a week so you could have time off, and we could redecorate the break room so I could use it. You don’t use that room anyway.”

That was true enough. Dad hadn’t used it either, so to be honest, I wasn’t sure why it even existed. By readings, she meant tarot-card readings.

Beez wasn’t precognitive at all. She didn’t have any special magic related to the tarot. What she did have was mounting college debt for a doctorate in psychology. Beez knew people, and she knew the tarot cards, and the two combined made for an uncanny ability to read the cards in a way that helped people. If I didn’t know her so well—know that there was no magic involved—I’d have assumed she was a temporal mage.

Well, except that temporal mages were incredibly rare, even more than people who could see the dead, and tended to be snapped up to serve either the Aurora Aureum or the government. The result was that public information on the specialty was sparse. There were stories of a woman who had been able to see the place she stood at any point in history, a man who could reach into the future for objects he needed. Time was too random, too powerful, and it scared people.

They liked nice simple magic that they could see or feel. A fire mage who could absorb the energy of a house fire, slowing or redirecting it in order to save lives. A body mage, who depending on their specialty, could manipulate the energy in their own body or other people’s. The kind who controlled other people’s bodies almost invariably went into medicine, and they made the most sought-after doctors.

Or like me, a social mage, who could absorb the energy given off by people to boost moods, calm anxiety, or in the case of unethical social mages, even incite riots. At least the riots were something people could understand. Okay, well, like me, 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.”

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