Chapter Five
I finally managed to get up from the road, still heaving deep, choking sobs. The four thugs were gone. My silvery chain was discarded on the ground by my bicycle. I scooped it up, and it coiled around my wrist, looping several times, creating an intricate bracelet. My bicycle seemed unharmed, and I righted it and pushed it to my store door, only a dozen yards away. Luckily, my key was in my pocket, and not my backpack. I took it out, unlocked the store, and shuffled inside, carrying the bicycle with me.
All I wanted to do was curl up on my bed in the back room and weep. The thugs had taken my backpack, and with it my money, some expensive ingredients and products, and my favorite coral red lipstick. I didn’t have the payment for Breadknife. I was lonely and hurt and…
And still under the effect of the sorrow fumes. I dragged my body, still full of self-pity, to the counter, where a few tiny vials containing a dark brown liquid stood. I unstopped one, drinking it in one quick gulp. It was oily, and tasted like pee. It was the most important tincture in my shop.
The first thing every alchemist learns is: Always have an antidote. Alchemy is a delicate process, and prone to accidents. Sometimes you might cook the llama’s saliva too much, sometimes you might spill some virgin’s tears into a vat of acid. Seriously, don’t get me started on what happens when you mix beetle dung with vampire dandruff. And, of course, as was the case now, you could accidentally inhale, swallow, or touch your own concoctions. It could get messy, and occasionally deadly. Always have some quick antidotes at hand.
I had more than thirty different cures and antidotes in my shop, but the one I’d just drunk, Margherita’s fix-it-all, was the one that usually worked best. It countered most of the poisons and effects created by alchemy magic. The only real drawback was its abysmal taste. I always carried a vial with me. I’d had one on me earlier, but it had been stolen with the rest of my backpack.
I sat down in the chair behind the small wooden counter, letting the antidote take effect. Slowly, the general weepiness and self-pity I felt dissipated. Tonight had been a shit-show, no doubt about it, but feeling sorry for myself would not help, and was something I preferred to avoid. I tended to ignore all the sadness and anger and guilt I felt, bottling them inside me and never letting them out, like any healthy person does. Let it fester, that’s my motto.
I leaned back into the chair, gazing around me. Tonight’s turbulent events made me look at the shop in a new light. The shop was safety. It was my home.
Quite literally, to be honest. I couldn’t possibly afford to rent two places, so the front room was the shop, and the two rooms in the back were my lab and my bedroom. But the shop was hands-down my favorite of the three.
It was the size of a small grocery store, and I had installed shelves on almost all the walls, going up to the ceiling. These were crowded with bottles, vials, jars, glass tubes, crystals, herbs, and cloth bags of all shapes, sizes, and colors. There was one window, and a shaft of pale moonlight shone on the wooden floorboards. The shop’s electrical light, coming from one dim bulb, wasn’t enough to really shine into the nooks and corners of the room, which gave the entire setting an aura of mystery. Though it hadn’t been intentional, I liked the effect, and had chosen to leave it that way.
My counter was by the wall directly in front of the door. Though the rest of the shop was crowded, the counter itself was always clean and empty except for a small cash register, and a black bound book in which I jotted down any customer orders I didn’t have on hand. My chair had been a gift from Sinead after she’d realized, aghast, that I was using a rusty bar stool. The chair was wooden, with light gray upholstery that already had a slight hollow in the shape of my ass.
Reasonably sure that my fit of misery and sadness had ended, I got up and opened the back door.
A large white shadow dashed at me from the darkness. It barked joyfully, then whined, then barked again, wagged its tail, ran three times around me, and finally, done with the spectrum of canine emotions, sat squarely down, tongue lolling in a permanent delighted grin.
“Magnus!” I said, theatrically raising my hands. “Did you miss me, boy? Did you miss me?”
He wagged his tail, barked, then got up, ears erect. Sniffing, he then ran around me five more times and sat down, which I interpreted as an affirmation that he had, in fact, missed me.
I’d deliberated before taking Magnus in. My list of cons was huge: A dog was a lot of work. I couldn’t afford to take care of him. I’d have to walk him three times a day, which was impossible. My tiny shop didn’t have room. He would ruin all my furniture. Dogs required attention, and I had no time. I was an alchemist, working with dangerous substances, and he might eat them. This would not be a wise decision.
The pro list was much shorter. It was, essentially: OMG, puppy!
This internal debate had taken place in the street as I’d stared down at the only yellow-white puppy in a large cardboard box. He looked up at me with his trusting puppy eyes. He wagged his cute puppy tail. He let out one short, soft whine. I was doomed. Not even Margherita’s fix-it-all could protect me from his wiles.
I named him Magnus, after Albertus Magnus, the famous alchemist.
Sinead, who knew a thing or two about dogs, told me he was mostly golden retriever. She also warned me that, taking into consideration the size of his snout and feet, he would grow into the dog equivalent of a rhinoceros. Whatever. He was cute, and he loved me unequivocally.
I crouched and scratched him behind his left ear. He narrowed his eyes, his tail thumping like a toppled metronome on the wooden floor.
“Mommy’s screwed,” I told him, in my high-pitched talk-to-Magnus voice. “Mommy’s payment to a psychopathic gangster is gone. Yes. He will flay Mommy alive. Who’s screwed? It’s Mommy! Yes it is! Mommy’s screwed.”
I’d become one of those women who call themselves “mommy” when talking to their dog. Sixteen-year-old Lou would have been mortified to see her future self.
Magnus licked my nose in response and then nuzzled his head closer to the scratching hand. He panted in a manner that would have been incredibly disturbing coming from an adult man, but was the epitome of cuteness in a seven-month-old puppy.
I’d had the foresight to walk and feed him before I’d left for my errands, which meant I could get about two hours of sleep before he would jump on the bed, licking me awake to demand his morning walk.
I stumbled into the shower, in a bathroom the size of a broom closet. Negotiating it meant I had to undress in the bedroom, open the bathroom door, and enter sideways, nudging Magnus out with my foot and closing it. Since the room was too small for an actual shower stall, the shower partly sprayed the toilet, which meant I had to wipe it clean afterward. Or, as was mostly the case, forget, and sit down on a wet toilet an hour later.
Rinsing off the sweat and the dirt from lying in the street, I took stock of my options, of which there was exactly one: beg Breadknife to give me a few more days to pay up. We went back a ways; surely he had a soft spot for me?
I prodded the back of my head, where Hardy the goon had hit me, and winced as I touched the bruise. It was swollen, and the pain made me feel slightly sorry for myself again. But this time it was natural self-pity, the type that is sometimes required and can easily be fixed with a shot of whiskey and a good, solid, two-hour night’s sleep. Which is what I did.