Page 5 of The Royal Street Witch
“Hm. Seems you’re surviving because of the goods we buy from you. The mortgage for this place and your upstairs apartment seems a little high for selling twenty-dollar necklaces.”
My feet draw back while I place a dramatic hand across my heart. “My necklaces are not twenty dollars,” I scoff, but we both know he’s right. I couldn’t afford this building with what I make from my jewelry.
“Look, I have a proposition. I think you’ll find it financially beneficial,” he rasps, cutting to the chase.
“We aren’t supposed to make side deals. That’s part of The Agreement.”
“Fuck The Agreement. It’s antiquated and foolish. We could benefit so much from what you create, and you could benefit from what we’re willing to pay you for it.”
My mother’s face flashes in my memory. All the rules and guidelines she entrusted me with before she left for Europe. Sell the goods to the vampires, make your living, no fraternizing, and no side or secret deals. Secret deals can make things sticky, and this is very cut and dry. It’s well known that any side deals mean treason has been committed. We must never make ourselves vulnerable, and all deals must be approved by the coven and vampire leaders. That’s The Agreement, and it’s been enforced between my ancestors and the vampires of New Orleans for one hundred years.
This shop and my upstairs home were once my grandmother’s where my mother and I were raised. There’s been a lot of mismanagement of the money for a long time, but I’m in charge now, and I’m going to be financially secure if it kills me. Our family shop, family home was placed in my hands seven years ago to save, and it’s not something I take lightly.
“So what do you want?” I ask, surprised by his candor, the rules running through my mind.
He pulls an elegant hand over his mouth and looks out the window again. “My brother is dying.”
“Cassius is dying?” It comes out flat, disbelieving.
“Not physically, but mentally. Emotionally. My mother called me back from New York to save him. But I can’t save him, not if he has no reason to live. Last night, he threatened…” His jaw clenches as the memory of how undone they all seemed last night at Nightwalkers surfaces, the stake that seemed to appear and disappear. “He misses being alive. He yearns for it. And so, I thought you could help me.”
“I can’t make vampires mortal again.”
“That’s not it. I want a spell or a potion. Or whatever it is that you do. I want something he can take or chant that will allow him to walk in the daylight again.”
At first, it’s a tingle, that familiar sensation inside my wrists. But it slowly turns into a pull, as if each wrist has been invisibly hooked from the mention of magic and the desire to create it. This is my grimoire’s doing, tucked behind the counter, pulsing at the request, causing a tug on the veins inside my wrists. Spell work, magic, potions. They are always asked of me, and it’s my nature to create them and my grimoire’s nature to assist. I drop my hands to my sides in an effort to get the blood flowing again, to make it stop.
“No spell of that kind exists—allowing vampires to walk in the daylight.” I shake my head and meet his pleading eyes. They are as light green as aventurine, good for prosperity and luck.
“Then create one.”
It hits my chest, his request, and the blood in my wrists thumps. They want to do it. “No,” I whisper to both Bastian and my wrists. “I can’t. That’s forbidden. That’s big trouble. Does your mother know about this?” My voice goes up too many octaves, and I have to clear my throat.
“Hell, no!” he exclaims. “Only me and you. And eventually Cassius. It’ll be our secret. Cassius and I can leave, swim the waters of Fiji, watch The World Cup or go wherever the fuck he wants to go, and he can live again.”
I’m tongue-tied, shocked at what he’s asking me, how casual he’s going about it. I massage the inside of my wrist with my thumb, a desperate attempt to stop the pull for magic. I wish Bastian would stop talking, would leave, but he just goes on.
“Cassius suffers, he suffers so much. I want to alleviate his pain, to help him through it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him happy. Truly happy.” He looks out the window again and then turns back to me. “I know it was you that created the lip balm. That’s why I chose you. I know you can do it.”
The lip balm…the one I single-handedly created just for vampires. Once applied, a kiss anesthetizes the skin so humans won’t feel the vampire bite into their flesh. I think back to my mother’s surprise after I came up with the idea, her goading me to finish the balm so she could sell it to Nicola. And she did, and she made a lot of money on it in the beginning. Money that she spent on Chanel bags instead of the new refrigerator we needed. But it didn’t bring in the steady stream of cash my mother had hoped for, and that’s because humans usually aren’t too keen on being bitten while they are conscious even if they don’t feel it. It’s still used by vampires and human mates, but that’s a rarity.
“The lip balm was a novelty that wore off. You guys hardly use that,” I rub my other wrist, so uncomfortable with what he’s asking.
“It doesn’t matter how often we use it, it matters that we have the choice.”
“Listen, no. Within these walls is where this request dies. You can’t mess with magic like that. We don’t know what could happen. What if I killed him? Then I would have a swarm of vampires after my neck.”
“We’ll test it on me first. I’ll be the guinea pig.” He has thought this through, and I don’t like it.
“Absolutely not. My coven would burn me for it. Allowing vampires to be out during the day? You guys would be even more dangerous than you already are. No.”
“What coven? You’re the only true witch left in New Orleans. Why do you think we pay you so much?”
“I have a coven!” I say, crossing my arms in defense. But Bastian is mostly right. I am the last pure-blooded witch left in the city. The touristy witch shops stocked with a mixture of gris-gris recipes and spell books made in China don’t count. Witches only birth girls, we’re an entirely female species and we haven’t been breeding much in the past hundred years. We are few and far between, a dying breed.
Bastian leans in, so close I can smell his minty breath, his hand falling on my shoulder, and I feel its coolness even through my shirt. “I know what you owe for this place. A building with an apartment and shop is an expensive mortgage in the French Quarter, especially on Royal Street. I’ll give you enough to pay off this entire building. You would never have to worry again.”
It’s as though time stops. I make enough at the shop to eat and pay most of my bills, and what the vampires pay me takes care of paying the elders and most of my mortgage. Even though this was my grandmother’s home, my mother refinanced it so many times, we owe more than ever.
