Page 33 of Geoffrey the Very Strange
"Okay. Great. That'll be a hundred gold pieces."
"What?" Geoffrey stared at the miniscule book in disbelief. "For this? I don't have that much."
"It's fine. We can do a trade thing. What's the word? Barter. Yeah." Twinkle pointed to Aspic's head. "The jewel kestrel. She'd be a good trade."
"She's not part of negotiations." Aspic actually growled, by his expression, shocking himself as much as anyone.
"Fine." Twinkle pouted. "She would've been an awesome friend. Anyway. Necro man. Those purple-lensed glasses in your robe pocket would work, too."
Geoffrey put a hand over the pocket in question. "How did you…?"
"Magic shop, idiot. Come on. You gotta cough something up. Work with me here."
"Be nice to the customers, Twinkle," a white-haired elf called from the end of the counter. "You're still on probation."
"Yes, Pree," Twinkle called back sweetly, though under her breath she said something rather rude. "You see what I'm dealing with? Help a girl out, here."
"Fine." Geoffrey pulled the glasses out with a sigh. They'd been so useful over the years, and he had no idea where he'd find another pair anytime soon. But. Needs must.
Twinkle zipped the glasses under the counter, handed him a receipt forBook, 1, World's Smallest, Verifiedand gave them a cheerful wave. "Okay, bye. Have a nice life. Go get the zombies or whatever. Tell your friends about Marden's."
"Thank you." Aspic swept her a bow, took Geoffrey's hand, and hurried them to the exit.
Geoffrey could've sworn he heard her mutter as they were leaving,cute couple, but thick as drying mud.
10
Bring The Eggs In
"That flower fairy must have been from somewhere else." Aspic shook his head when they stood back on the street in Merseton. "I didn't understand half of what she was saying."
"Different plank, I think." Geoffrey was staring fixedly at the tiny box in his hand.
Plane. "Hmm. Yes." Aspic found him far easier to understand than Twinkle had been. What waso ksupposed to mean? Bub? Perv? Had she been speaking the same language the whole time?
Grandma Tutti hurried up to them. "Did they have an answer?"
"They gave us something." Aspic nodded to Geoffrey's outstretched hand. "But we have no idea how it could possibly help yet."
"I need a loupe," Geoffrey said slowly. "And tweezers."
The request startled Aspic. Grandma Tutti simply nodded. "Let's go to Frida's, then. I have a magnifying lens in my bag, and Frida will have whatever tweezers you need."
Geoffrey sighed. "I hate to wake them."
Grandma Tutti looped her arm through her grandson's and got him moving. "This is an emergency. You're supposed to be able to wake family for an emergency."
Family… Aspic hesitated. Maybe he would be invading family sp—
"Come along, Aspic, dear. Don't stand moonstruck in the street in the middle of the night."
Only a few minutes of Grandma Tutti pounding on the bakery door and shouting up at a bedroom window later, Aspic found himself seated with a family of witches at one end of the long kneading table in the bakery's kitchen. A little goddess statue stood beside him—earth goddess, baking goddess, perhaps—but she was plump and smiling and made him feel at ease. Naturally, he was also being fed—again, bakery—and Aunt Frida had also hurried down to the cold cellar to retrieve lemonade.
Welcomed into an extended witch familywas not how Aspic had envisioned his evening.
Aspic was also surprised to discover that Geoffrey's cousins, Lila and Marta, had nonhuman blood. They had the family nose, the family's thick black hair, and the same eyes as Geoffrey, though Lila's were blue and Marta's brown. But they weren't entirely human. Not only did the scent of a magic being he couldn't identify drift after them, but Lila floated as much as she walked, and Marta's control of fire as she lit the lamps was on an elemental spirit level.
"Djinn," Aunt Frida said to him as she set a glass of lemonade by his plate of honey biscuits. "Their father, that is."
