Page 7 of Tyson (Ariel Kimber 4.50)

That made things slightly more difficult for me and now Ireallydidn't want the others to know of her presence here.

What would Damien or Julian think were they to know that someone they had been intimate with was now sleeping with more than one member of the Council? Would they be upset? Disgusted? Or, would they feel something along the lines as to what I was feeling right now?

Empty, and glad it wasn't my dick she had her mouth wrapped around.

Chapter Four

Fortunes for the Unfortunate

A bell jingled over head as I pushed the door opened wide and stepped into the warm, candle lit room. I always thought it weird that there weren't normal lights turned on hanging over head but instead the room was filled with the dull, light glow from the flames of the candles that were strewn half-hazardly around the stuffy room. That’s not to say that there weren’t over head lights on the ceiling because therewere,they were just never in use when I came here. Though, I wished they had been.

It had been a long time since I'd walked through that door and into the shop. Not since before the summer had started. It had once been owned by an old, decrepit blind woman who saw things almost better than I did despite the fact she was fucking blind.

Her picture had been in the paper recently in the obituaries and I had been curious as to what was going to happen to her shop now that she was no longer alive to take care of it, so here I was. TheFor Sale By Ownersign hanging in the window was not exactly what I had hoped to find when I got here and, for some stupid fucking reason I wasn’t going to think too hard on, had hurt to see.

My father used to bring me here when I was a little boy and then when I was in my early teens. The old lady had never seemed to age or change and she'd been so familiar with my father that after the first time he'd brought me here I had asked him who she was to him, thinking they'd been friends of some sort. My father had told me that no, sadly they weren't friends.

He'd said, "That woman doesn't have any friends, son, and not because I have tried to befriend her. And it's not for lack of trying on my part, trust me, I've tried and been turned down flat on my ass every time."

"But," I said, not understanding what he was saying, "she's like us, I can feel it. And she's female, I mean, she's an old lady, but she's still a lady. Doesn't that mean we're supposed to take special care of her?"

My father had sighed heavily before kneeling down in front of me. "You're right," he’d told me, "she is just like us. But, for whatever reason, and that reason is hers alone and not ours to try and force out of her, she's hiding what she is from the world. We have to respect that and we have to respect her. And we should never tell anyone that we know she's like us, we need to keep that secret for her."

I remembered I had been confused as to why she'd want to hide herself from her own people and I had told my father as much.

"Sometimes, my son, the Council isn't always as it appears to be and sometimes there are reasons some of our females have to hide in the world away from them and away from their own people. If we come across one, we mustn't ever breathe a word aloud about them to anyone, do you understand me?"

I had nodded even though I really hadn't understood him in the slightest. It had seemed odd to me that I had been told from the age I could understand the meaning behind the words that all female witches were precious in every way and were needed to be treated as such and coddled to within an inch of their lives. To be told to now let this one hide herself away from the Council and to never breathe a word of her existence to anyone didn't make sense to me. But my father’s word was law, and I took what he said to heart.

I now had a better understanding as to why female witches would want to hide from the Council and I knew that the crippled old blind lady who’d owned the shop had been a witch in hiding from them, that there were more of them out there in the world that we had no knowledge of, and they were hiding from the rest of us.

Did that really make the ones who were out in the open to the Council and the rest of the covens as special as we thought them to be? I didn't know, nor did I care. It didn't change how I felt towards Ariel and I knew that the rest of the guys would feel the same way as I did.

My father and I had continued to come to the shop and spend money here even when we really didn't need to buy anything in particular, we did it because we were doing our part for a fellow witch and wanted to help her out in any way she was willing to allow us to, and buying her wares had been the only option available to us. After my father died, I continued coming here and buying a bunch of shit I didn't need to help out an old blind woman who didn't want anything from me simply because she had magic and my father had told me to do so.

And now she was dead.

The good news was, I no longer needed to spend a bunch of money on shit I did not need. The bad news was, I felt absolutely fucking horrible for being relieved a woman had finally kicked the bucket and riddled with guilt because I hadn't stopped in in fuckingmonthsto check in on her and now that I had I got to confirm what I'd read in the newspaper that she'd died and that tacky for sale sign in the window had been what confirmed it for me.

Guilt ate at me from the inside and I wanted to turn around and walk right the fuck back out of this damn place and never turn back. Knowing what my father would do had he still been alive stopped me from getting in my car and driving away, that and I thought Ariel would really get a kick out of the shop and would love spending time here.

Would it be weird to buy not only a store but an entire building for my girlfriend? Yeah, more than likely it would be. Did I give a shit about that? No, definitely not. Would Ariel be happy when she found out what I did? Absolutely not, but I was hoping she'd walk in here, fall in love with the place and get over her angry snit as she took in all the dust covered bullshit that had probably been sitting on the shelves since before I’d been born and decided she just needed to have it all.

Without taking in the sights of the rows of shelves stuffed full of shit I did not need, or the black cloth covered table with an ancient deck of cards stacked with care on top of it, I made my way to the middle-aged man standing behind the front counter.

An hour later after making phone calls to both the real estate agent and my bank and questioning the man who'd been employed by the old blind lady for over a decade, I walked out of the shop with my own set of keys to not only the shop but the entire building seeing as there was an apartment upstairs with a back entry and an empty office space next door.

I was now, unfortunately, the not so proud owner of all of them.

At the curb where my Audi was parked I couldn't help but turn around and take a look at all I had bought.

A run-down building that had seen its fair share of better days likely eighty-five years ago stood proudly before me.

A rusty sign hung above the door.

Fortunes for the Unfortunate.

A great fucking name for a fortune tellers’ shop where they sold magical paraphernalia and you could get your cards read by a decrepit blind woman. I remembered what Ariel had told me about going on a date with some douche bag who wouldn't pay to get her cards read at a fair. She'd always wanted her cards read and, to my knowledge, hadn't had it happen yet. Here, I could teach her to not only read her own but others as well.

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