On the outside, Vicki Newson appeared perfectly calm. But on the inside, she was becoming a full blown tornado. She tapped her foot impatiently as the man in her flower shop looked over the bouquets at the front of the store for at least the dozenth time. He asked her a constant stream of questions about which arrangement she thought would be most likely to make his girlfriend accept his apology for the fact that he’d lied to her. Vicki tried to smile and be helpful. This was her business, after all, and her job was to make her customers happy. But she didn’t like liars, and she also didn’t like people who came in two minutes before closing time and then spent thirty minutes trying to pick the right damn flowers.
Vicki glanced up at the television on the wall, which was playing the local afternoon newscast from Torch Lake Today. She watched this show every afternoon when her shop closed at five, which was perfect timing since the newscast started at five. She had turned the volume down now out of respect for her customer, but she was about to turn it back up in hopes he’d get the hint.
Vicki frowned, slightly ashamed of her poor attitude. There had been a time when she would have gladly kept the shop open late to help a customer. Times hadn’t been easy when she first started building this shop. Everyone had still been recovering from the war, and luxuries like fresh flowers hadn’t been on most people’s radars. After a while, though, life had settled back into a normal routine, as it always did. Vicki’s little business had grown and grown until it was the most popular little flower shop in Torch Lake.
And now she found that she didn’t enjoy it quite as much as she thought she would. She loved the flowers, yes. And she considered arranging her precious blooms into bouquets to be an art form of sorts. But she had grown weary of the dating scene in Torch Lake—the scene she herself never took part in, but that all of her clients were obsessed with. The man in her store wasn’t exactly an outlier. There were always guys in here thinking that the right bouquet would cover over a multitude of asshole moves on their part. Or that a woman who clearly wasn’t interested in them could be won over by a dozen roses.
She wanted to scream at all of them that flowers weren’t a substitute for being a decent human being to your partner, or that flowers should be a beautiful accent in a relationship, not a cheesy tool to make a girl fall head over heels for you.
Vicki would never say any of this, of course. She knew many girls appreciated the “cheesy tools” her bouquets served as. And what had she expected when she opened a flower shop?
More than this, she thought as the man once again began asking her whether the deluxe farmhouse bouquet or the supreme city blooms better served his purposes. She answered him on autopilot, since he’d already asked the same question twice.
What she would really love to do was special events flowers for weddings and the big wizard banquets. But that was a hard market to break into, and even though her shop was popular, another shop across town had beaten her to the special events market when the city of Torch Lake was first getting started. The guy who owned the shop was even more of an asshole than the guys who came into Vicki’s shop to try to cover up cheating with a bouquet, but it didn’t matter. The other shop owner was good at what he did, and knew how to pretend to his clients that he was the charming sort of man they wanted in charge of their big events. Vicki frowned. Maybe she needed to work on her charm a little. She was nice enough, sure, but no one had ever accused her of being charming.
Just be grateful for what you have. At least you get to spend the whole day making bouquets, even if you do have to deal with the city’s sleaze balls now and then.
The man finally settled on the deluxe farmhouse bouquet, and Vicki breathed a silent sigh of relief. She was going to close up shop and go to the Winking Wizard. She needed a pint, and she needed to drink it somewhere unpretentious. Her favorite laidback bar was calling to her.
The man paid and left, seeming to be in a hurry now that he had chosen his flowers. Vicki locked the door behind him and flipped the sign in the front window to “Closed.”
“Finally,” she said aloud to the empty shop. She turned the volume on the television up and then went to her cash register to begin closing out for the day. The shop had been relatively quiet today, so she should be able to finish up here quickly. She could already taste the Charmed Star ale she was planning to order when she got to the Winking Wizard. That thought lifted her spirits, and she began to whistle as she half listened to the news.
“And finally, we will end our broadcast tonight as we always do, with a report on the activity of the Dark Warriors.”
Vicki looked up, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume up a little. This was the part of the broadcast she never wanted to miss. Like most wizards and shifters, the idea of a group of dark wizards and evil shifters gave her chills. After the horrors of the last dark war, which had ended only a few years ago, Vicki worried constantly that history was going to repeat itself. She knew the Torch Lake High Council took threats of evil and dark magic seriously, but it was still hard to stay calm. News of the Dark Warriors grew more worrisome every day. The group seemed to be spread out in decentralized clusters, which made them hard to track. It wasn’t clear whether keeping themselves so widespread was a strategic move by the Dark Warriors, or just the way things were among the group. In fact, much of what the Dark Warriors did was a mystery. They would launch series of big attacks for weeks at a time, and then disappear for months. One never knew what to expect, and that frightened Vicki. She had a feeling that war was brewing.
“The news today is mostly good,” the news anchor was saying cheerily. “There have been no reports of any Dark Warrior activity today. Our allies in Falcon Cross also report that a small outlying faction of Dark Warriors near that city was found and destroyed in a surprise attack this morning.”
Vicki let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. They were safe, for another day at least. But then the news anchor’s face turned grave, and he continued in a somber tone.
“There have, however, been some concerning reports from some southern California clans.”
Vicki’s ears perked up.
“A mysterious virus has been sweeping through a few of those clans, and the doctors there think it may be a manmade virus. This would not be the first time in the history of wizards and shifters that an attempt was made to do battle using a virus, so High Councils everywhere are on high alert. The virus appears to affect only wizards and shifters, not full humans, but can be lethal. Several members of these clans have died already, and the authorities there are recommending that everyone take extreme precautions to protect themselves, including wearing a face mask when out in public and staying home as much as possible. The disease appears to be highly contagious. We’ll keep you updated as we get more information on this developing story. Until then, this has been your weekday afternoon edition of Torch Lake Today, the premiere news broadcast in the city of Torch Lake. Have a good evening, and thanks for joining us.”
The familiar end-of-broadcast music started to play, and Vicki hit the power button on the remote to turn the TV off. She frowned as she stared out the front window of her shop at the crowds passing by.
Was it really possible that there was a deadly virus out there thanks to the Dark Warriors? It seemed a little farfetched. The Dark Warriors were so disorganized. Sure, they could band together and launch attacks now and then, but developing a virus would take a lot more than banding together on a whim. They would need experts, and some sort of scientific lab, wouldn’t they?
Vicki shrugged at the now black TV. She appreciated the High Councils’ vigilance, but this seemed like an ordinary virus—which hopefully would not make its way from southern California all the way to Torch Lake in northern Oregon. There wasn’t a lot of inter-clan travel these days, so Vicki wasn’t too worried. As long as this was just a normal virus, and not a biological weapon, Torch Lake wasn’t likely to be at risk.
She finished up her closing duties quickly, and then left the shop to head to the Winking Wizard. She felt badly for the clans dealing with the virus, of course. But she couldn’t live her life freaking out over every little thing, right? She would do her part to be a good citizen and remain vigilant against the forces of darkness, but there wasn’t much she could do about a faraway virus, especially a virus that she doubted was as sinister as the newscast had made it out to be. With a spring in her step she got into her car and headed to the bar. It was time to relax.
Or so she thought.