Page 1 of The Bookseller and the Alpha
Chapter 1
Calypso
I only had to light a candle. Everyone else I knew could do it.Ihadto do it.
I stared at the fat white candle, concentrating on its creamy smoothness, the small depression where the wax had melted around the base of the wick, still pooled from the last time the candle had been lit. In my mind I built the image of a flame at the top of the wick: forming the picture of the cheerful yellow glow, concentrating on how the heat of the flame would feel if I put my hand over it. I projected the vision at the candle, letting everything else fall away.
I no longer noticed the examiners, sitting in a half circle in front of my chair, the healer at my side, or my mother in the chair reserved for family behind the examiners.
After five minutes a headache formed behind my eyes, throbbing in time with my pulse, but the candle remained unlit. I pushed harder, projecting my will onto the candle. Icoulddo this. I knew the power was inside me. My fingertips had begun to tingle with the signs of magic months ago.
When the ten-minute warning was given, pain was a steady beat in my skull and the candle was a blurry outline through unshed tears. To my left someone shifted in their seat.Without moving my eyes from the candle, I waved them away. I wasn’t giving up yet. If I failed today, I was out forever.
The shrill bell of a ringing telephone interrupted my concentration.
Why was there a telephone in the Testing chamber? It was strictly prohibited to have a phone in the room while a candidate was in the middle of their trial.
The sound continued, a strident complaint in the silence and the room started to blur around the edges, the examiners melting into smoke. I clung to the image of the candle, willing the wick to burst into flame before the room disappeared.
I woke up. The dream had been so real that it took me a couple of seconds to figure out that I wasn’t in the Testing chamber but in my own room, almost twenty years later. The shrill noise of a telephone continued. Finally, my brain booted up. The noise was my phone. I’d chosen a spectacularly strident ringtone so that I could hear it from the other end of my shop. I had a habit of putting it down when I got distracted. It was usually under a book or two.
Groping on the nightstand, I tried to force open my eyelids. The room was still dim, no sunshine leaking around the edges of the curtains.Who was ringing so early?There was a thump as the book I’d been reading in bed last night fell onto the floor. I must have fallen asleep while reading… again. I remembered trying to puzzle out the cramped handwriting on the old journal. I couldn’t make anything sensible out of the letters written on the ageing pages. They didn’t even look like words. Just long strings of letters. Maybe it had been written in code.
My fingers found the edges of my phone case and I grabbed it just as the ring tone cut out.Bugger. Maybe I could still get back to sleep.
The phone chimed. My caller had left a message. I fumbled open the case, bringing the phone closer and into focus.Unknown number.I sat up and played the message. Nothing, just the sound of someone breathing on the other end of the line.Great, a crank caller. Just how I wanted to start my day.I deleted the message and slumped back onto my pillow.
Now I was wide awake before the crack of dawn. The only consolation was that the call had saved me from reliving the rest of The Dream. I didn’t have to repeat the painful end: my insistence on trying for another half an hour, until I collapsed; my failure and the look on my mother’s face when I was classed as “Null.” Pity. Horror. She wiped it away as soon as she saw me looking, but it was too late. I’d seen her honest reaction.
My mother still loved me, I knew that, and it wasn’t like we hadn’t seen this coming. Unlike my twin sister Electra whose power had demonstrated itself spectacularly six months earlier, I’d never magically lit a candle before the day of my Tests. Rationally, I understood that the declaration that one of her daughters had insufficient magic to be trained as a Witch was a hard blow for her. But it was harder for me, at twelve, to realise that everything she’d said in the lead up to my testing was a lie. All her reassurances, “Don’t worry, I’m proud of you no matter what. I won’t care if you’re not a full Witch, I love you for who you are,” meant nothing when I failed my Tests. To her credit, she never let me see that expression on her face ever again, but we both knew I’d seen it.
I shoved the memories away. My failed Test was ancient history, so ancient it belonged with the dinosaurs. I’d long since come to terms with the fact that I would only ever be a kitchen witch, able to do tricks and cantrips, but unable to work as a registered Witch (it was that capital letter that made all the difference in the magic world). The candle Test showed my skills with fire and lightning were non-existent, I’d barely registeredany talent in air and water and my telekinesis stopped at the weight of a full cup of coffee and gave me a headache when I even attempted it. I was happy,no,I was proud of what I’d done with my life and it was years since I’d even had The Dream. I had a degree, with majors in Magic Theory and English Literature and I had my own business; a bookshop where I was my own boss and could set my own hours. Sure, it wasn’t going to make me rich, but the building was owned by the Council and they subsidised my rent because I was the Council Approved Bookseller for students at the College of Witches. When business was quiet, I could sit on one of the couches I’d set up in the store and knit. It was the perfect job for me. Currently, I was making a Baby Yoda hat for the baby my friend Julia was due to have any day. Last year all my friends started announcing pregnancies. This baby was the last of the lot. After this, there was only me, the only single friend in the group. I smiled at each announcement, said all the right words to my friends and their partners, promising to be a good Aunty Calypso to each one. I told them I wasn’t ready to have a baby; that I was too busy with my business. Each word was ashes in my mouth, but I wouldn’t be an object of their pity; the only single friend who had no chance of having a baby any time soon. I hadn’t even had a man in my bed in two years, and that had been disappointing.
Right. I wasn’t going to dwell on that unhappy memory either. I wasn’t going to dwell on how Javier had been really cute. “Just your type,” my sister had said when she suggested we go on a date together. She’d been right. Hehad beenjust my type: dark hair, blue eyes. He was tall, over six foot and lean, but well-muscled. I’d been nervous, fumbling for conversation, but he’d kept up a gentle patter of talk at dinner that first night until I relaxed. It didn’t hurt that I’d caught his gaze on my chest before it moved back up to my eyes. After a couple of dates, I was starting to think we had a real connection. Plus, he was agreat kisser, who knew not to rush things and after I’d sat in his lap on our third date it was clear from the tent pole in his pants that he was very, very interested. I invited him back to my place, with the understanding that he wouldn’t have to go home till morning. That was where it all went wrong.
It had started off so well. We were both on the way to being hot and sweaty. I’d pulled off his shirt to run my hands over the muscles on his chest, my shirt was unbuttoned all the way down and he’d tugged my bra down to get to my breasts. My nipples were standing to attention and a hot throbbing had started in my core when he rested his chin against my forehead and said, “Helen, I’ve missed you so much.”
We both froze, then he groaned and dropped to the sheets beside me. “Fuck. I’m sorry,” he said, just as I blurted, “Who’s Helen?”
Turned out Helen was his ex-wife and Javier had agreed to go on a date with me because I looked a lot like his ex.Ew.
Javier had dressed in silence, while I re-buttoned my shirt, my face beetroot red. He muttered an embarrassed, “I’m really sorry. Bye,” before he scarpered. That had been the last I’d ever seen him. I heard later that he’d reconciled with Helen about a month after our date.
Still in bed I mentally slapped myself.What did I say about not dwelling on this? I would. Not. Dwell. On. It.Lying in bed, feeling sorry for myself because I hadn’t had a hot date for years wasn’t going to solve any of my problems. It was time to get out of bed and face the day.
I would….
Any minute now…
By the time I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, the glowing numbers on my bedside clock said 6.45. My French bulldog, Madame La Pompadour (Pompy unlessshe was in trouble) watched me from her side of the bed, her tail thumping on the quilt as I walked past. From Mrs Singh’s apartment next door, I could hear the morning news, the announcer droning on about the upcoming summit. My neighbour was elderly and a little deaf, and her TV was always turned up too loud. I didn’t mind. I got to listen to the news in the morning, and I was in the shop the rest of the time while she watched daytime TV. She went to bed early and slept through my evening Netflix binges. It worked.
Half an hour later I was clean, my hair was dry and I was dressed. I’d chosen jeans, boots, a button up shirt in my favourite deep raspberry, and an oversized cardigan. It was well worn, but it was comfortable and double thickness, which was what I needed in the shop in winter. The heater was over fifty years old and temperamental. I grabbed my coat on the way out the door. It wasn’t warm enough, but it was better than nothing.
I waited in line to place my order from the little hole-in-the-wall café that I stopped at every day on my way to the shop. Wrapping my almost useless coat around me, I shivered against the chill of the wind, waiting until the young, tattooed person behind the counter looked my way. Today the barista had teased their hair in an electric blue mohawk and wore bright eyeshadow to match.
“Hey sweetie,” they said. “Just your regular coffee?” I ordered the same coffee every day (latte, double shot, soy milk, extra hot).
“I need something for breakfast. What do you recommend?” Normally I ate at home and just bought a coffee to reduce my eating-out expenses, but today was grocery shopping day and there was nothing to eat in the cupboard, not unless I wanted a can of tuna, a cup of rice and a tin of tomato soup. While I could possibly turn that combo into something edible foran evening meal, the idea of it for breakfast made me shudder. I’d taken one look, Pompy peering into the pantry hopefully from behind my legs and shut the door.
