Outside the coffee shop, Morgan pulled her cashmere cardigan out of her handbag and buttoned it around her body, turning up the shawl collar against the slight chill now in the air.

Surely there had been no harm in what she’d just done. Surely this magical injury was preferable to a coffee shop full of dead people and a witch-phobe with a screw loose.

Surely.

Morgan put all this ugliness out of her mind and got out her shopping list. She sipped on her coffee and made her way down the charming block of Rose Street, past the hand-carved wooden benches and the small marble fountain with the family of ducks, past the stacks of straw and carved pumpkins, past lampposts decked out with gourds and vining plants. The place could use more pumpkins, she thought.

There it was again, the urge to flick her wand, utter a simple phrase and make the world suit her tastes.

It would be so easy.

But…consequences. And then guilt. And then fear of the magic being discovered.

She turned left down Ashmond Street instead of crossing Rose Street and continuing down the next block.

Why? Why am I turning left? Josephine’s Old Things was on the next block. So why were her feet taking her the wrong way? Part of her fought this urge, and the rest of her did not. Morgan wasn’t fully surrendered to this direction, but she went with it.

And then she arrived. Her feet stopped in front of a squat, square redbrick building. Birchdale Police Department. So on the nose, she thought. What, no cute name to fit with the rest of the town? No “Headquarters of Protection and Detection”? “Sorting Out Your Misadventures Since 1892?” Surely a name change would go a long way to building trust between a police department and the general public, she mused.

Maybe she should offer her services as a designer or a marketing consultant.

Enough stalling, get yourself inside, Morgan.

Oh, the inside. This place definitely needed a makeover.

How had this place been allowed to wallow in filth for so long while the charm of the rest of town had made it into a destination for historians, ghost hunters, shoppers, coffee aficionados, exotic musical instrument enthusiasts, classic movie buffs? The town had charm coming out of its sewer grates, but the police station? First of all, the far wall was layer upon layer of industrial gray high-gloss paint on top of ancient plaster. The front desk looked like it came out of a factory in 1994 and wasn’t even real wood. Where were the old mahogany detective desks, separated by the same wooden front counter surrounding a vestibule, like you see in the movies? This looked like a severely understaffed, over-lit, front office of a mediocre warehouse. This simply won’t do, she thought.

“May I help you, ma’am?”

Morgan greeted the woman at the front desk, glancing at her badge. “Yes, hello, Sergeant. I was wondering if they brought in the man with the gun from the coffee shop. He was about this tall”—she motioned slightly taller than herself—“and his name was Hank, I think? He was wearing this really hideous shirt that I can’t even describe to you unless I have a pen and paper. Do you perhaps have a pen and paper?”

The sergeant blinked at her. “He’s here.”

“Wonderful,” Morgan said.

“OK,” replied the sergeant.

The police sergeant and Morgan stared dumbly at each other for a beat.

“May I see him?”

The sergeant looked at her, unreadable. “He’s in the holding cell. We’re charging him with brandishing and improper exhibition of a firearm. Resisting arrest, for shits and giggles. Maybe more charges to come but we’re still interviewing witnesses. Are you a witness?”

“Are you asking if I was there? Yes, I was. I didn’t see exactly what happened,” she said. “Can I see him now?”

“Yeah, no,” said the sergeant. “You’re going to give a statement first.”

“What’s a statement?”

“The detective in charge will be right with you,” she said.

The sergeant motioned her over to a private office to have a seat. She sat down and waited. This place simulated those Dilbert cartoons, and not even in a funny way.