Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

gauge who should and shouldn’t get to purchase items that would be dangerous to mundane humans.
    Additionally, since Beau was Bindspoken, he couldn’t personally touch the merchandise without causing himself physical pain.
    Maurice was pretty close before he noticed us waiting by the door. He paused a few paces away. “I remember you,” he said to me. “But I don’t know your name.”
    “Hi, Maurice. I’m Persephone.”
    “Yes, yes. Are you here for the priapean wands?”
    “No. Just some supplies. What is a pre-a-pee-an wand?”
    He chattered a laugh and shoved his newspaper under his arm so he could dig the keys from his pocket. “I’ll show you.” Zhan and I parted so he could access the lock. A brass bell chimed as the door swung open, and he flipped on some lights. We followed him in. Aromas mingled, pungent incenses and spicy oils mixed with the earthiness of dried leaves and flowers, all merged with scented candles and old books to form a smell that only another witch shop could produce.
    The wooden floor creaked under our feet as Zhan and I followed him past racks of pagan-oriented Tshirts and around displays of brooms and cauldrons toward the bins with loose gemstones and the display cases with wands and crystal balls.
    Maurice rounded behind the counter and we waited on the customer side of it while he plodded into the back and engaged the rest of the store’s lights. He brought something wrapped in tissue paper with him. “These just came in.” He laid the item on the counter. “I tell you, they’re going to be all the rage.”
    He whisked back the tissue paper, and it took me several seconds to accept what the old man had laid before us. It was a wand, sure enough. It had a six-inch wooden shaft, ending with a crystal tip secured by a metal band. The thick handle, though . . . it was a good ten inches of supersized phallic replication.
    I blinked. Repeatedly. “That’s—um.” I squinted at Maurice and struggled for the right words.
    “It’s solid jade,” he said, tapping the detailed tip on the counter. “Don’t you think it would enhance the Great Rite?”
    “I . . . I think you’re a dirty old man.”
    He winced and tugged at his beard.
    The bell chimed behind us and Beauregard entered the store. He had buzzed white hair, bushy brows, and walked with a cane. Under his brown sheepskin-lined bomber jacket he wore a black-and-red plaid flannel. His trademark cigar was not absent. The scent of peach and tobacco wafted as he neared. “Hey, doll. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
    “Supplies.” I passed him the list I had written up on the way here.
    He scanned it. “I’ve got all this.” He pushed the paper at his employee and noticed the priapean wand on the counter. “Maurice!”
    Maurice wadded the paper, mumbled, and ambled off to collect the items.
    Beau jerked the cigar from his lips and blew the smoke, staring irritably after the short old man. He flipped the tissue paper to cover the wand. “I think I know what ritual you’re doing,” he said quietly.
    “Oh?” I wasn’t worried. Since being Bindspoken, he’d forged a friendship with the wærewolves of Cleveland. He was even a regular bartender at The Dirty Dog.
    “This way.” He put the cigar to his lips again and parted the curtains to the back room. A small office was off to one side, separate from the warehouse area. He pulled the string on the forty-watt overhead light. I sat in the folding chair while he removed his coat and draped it on the padded wooden seat. He set about unbuttoning his flannel shirt cuffs and rolling them up to reveal the white thermal underwear shirt he wore beneath. It was his trademark style.
    This was the room where he’d given me the amulet that amplified my own power and befuddled other power, making it hard to hit me with magic.
    He put the cigar on the ashtray—the glass ash receptacle was fashioned like a busty woman, and the cigar lay right between her breasts. “I’m calling in my favor,” he said.
    In exchange for the amulet, I’d promised to come back before the full moon and hear what favor he would ask of me. I owed him. The amulet had saved my life, but I already had enough on my plate today. Steadying my voice I said, “Okay.”
    “I want you to include my son in your forced-change spell.”
    That wasn’t an add-on to the to-do list, just an inclusion to the task already on it. Whew. “Sure. I didn’t know you had a son. Does he live nearby? I’m