“
I guess I’ll have to come back for my own school supplies,” he laughed quietly, shaking his head at the closed shop door.
“
School supplies?” I blurted. “You were here for those, too?” My heart leapt at the hope of meeting someone from my class.
“
That’s right.” He nodded.
Ever since I’d stepped foot inside that store one question ran through my subconscious and it had now bubbled to the top of it. I took a brief moment to formulate it and then decided to risk any ridicule my question might bring before asking, “Exactly what type of school are these supplies for?”
His eyebrows shot up then. “You don’t know?”
“
I wouldn’t be asking if I did,” I said a little abruptly.
Again, he laughed to himself. “Good point.” He drew in a breath, determining the best way to answer. “Why don’t you look in your sack? It might give you a hint.”
Suspicious, I pulled the string at its opening just enough to peer inside and my confusion grew. Piled in a heap at the bottom were clear bags of what appeared to be herbs, a jar of broken glass, and a cross.
“
I think I need a stronger hint,” I replied.
He swung his head from side to side, checking the street to make sure no one else was within earshot. Even while we were alone, he still lowered his voice. “Well, based on the fact that you’re here outside this specific shop, having bought a bag of those specific items, I’d say that you’ve enrolled in the school to practice the supernatural arts.”
“
What…” I started before having to swallow the lump in my throat. “Excuse me. What arts?”
He shrugged and then replied as if it were widely known; something that took me only a second to realize was probably the case within the circles that he spent his time. “Witchcraft and voodoo mostly but the professors will bring up other subjects to keep it interesting.”
My gaze quickly fell from his eyes to the cobblestone street as I absorbed this information. If I’d heard him right – and I was fairly certain given the solitude on the side street where we stood, that I had –
I was enrolled in a school to practice mystical forms of magic
.
“
I take it you didn’t know?” he asked, earnestly, his interest keenly on me now, something that made the flame in my stomach grow.
Considering what he’d said briefly, I realized that had I thought of it I might have figured it out. Over the course of my years at the academy, my mother had mailed me books at intervals, typically just prior to an upcoming holiday. It had always annoyed me because it interfered with studying for final quarter exams, compounding my workload. Then she would quiz me on the plane flights to our destination. I now understood why she’d done it. The books had all been studies of gems, stones, herbs, the Latin language, and cultural ideologies of mystical elements, and they had been preparing me for this point in my life without my knowing it.
“
Let’s just say I didn’t know much.” I shook my head, angry, finally verbalizing the words that had rung through my head several times over the last eighteen hours.
“
Hmm,” he mumbled. “Then how did you end up here?”
That is a long story, I thought, but I knew what he was really asking was how I’d found this indiscernible store. Still struggling to contain the irritation that had risen up, I pulled the shopping list from my hip pocket and showed it to him.
He gave it a quick glance before doing a double take. Then, his eyebrows furrowed inquisitively over those exquisite eyes before he dug out a similarly-sized piece of paper from his hip pocket and held it up next to mine.
The messages were exactly the same. His instructions to stop at this shop first, and then move on to several other shops were listed in the same order as my shopping list. Only the handwriting and the names at the top of the lists differed. Where mine said
Jocelyn
, his said
Jameson
.
“
The housekeeper where I stay…where I live,” I corrected myself, “gave me the list.”
He paused before answering guardedly, “So did mine.”
“
Maybe the school sent everyone the same instructions?” I offered, though I wasn’t convinced myself.
“
Maybe…” he said skeptically. “I guess we’ll have to ask them when we get home.” Then his demeanor changed to something more lighthearted. “Good thing we learned of this or I would have thought you were following me around, Jocelyn.” He emphasized my name making certain I knew he’d noted it. His mention of it was both charming and stimulating.
Nonetheless, my mouth fell open in offense. “And I would have thought the same thing about you, Jameson,” I retorted.
His eyes turned playful when he responded. “And you’d have been right.”
Completely unprepared for his comment, my subconscious kicked in again. “Good,” I stated before even realizing the word had passed my lips.
I paused then, considering what had just transpired between us. Had we just acknowledged, to a complete stranger, that we were intrigued by each other? While that seemed odd, he appeared to take it in stride. This, I was learning, appeared to be his typical approach to everything.
“
Mrs. De Ville, at the next store, isn’t as friendly as Olivia,” he made a nod toward the store we had just been in. “Don’t take it personally. She is the same way with everyone. Just giving you fair warning.”
“
Thanks,” I said and began following him down the street.
Without needing to openly discuss it, it seemed we’d just agreed to shop together. This was fine with me. Clearly, he had a better idea of where to go in this city than I did and as we walked he offered further insight, this time in regards to the school I’d be attending. “Mr. LaBarre is tough on grading. Ms. Boudreaux will attempt to intimidate you on the first day by pairing you with another student for an exploratory sparring lesson. You’ll learn quickly that she likes to test the boundaries of propriety. And be careful of Ms. Roquette. She’s just gotten off probation by The Sevens and is more wicked than usual. Can’t say I blame her. Being bound from speaking for six months has to be hard on anyone. Not that it wasn’t a relief for the rest of us.”
“
How can someone be bound from speaking for six months?” I asked, a bit skeptical.
He held back a smile while asking, “You’re completely new to this, aren’t you?”
“
Yes,” I replied, unabashedly. Besides there was no hiding it.
Jameson’s silence caught my attention and when I looked up I found him staring at me. He was reserved but fascinated.
We had just turned right onto a street named Chartres. It was just as quiet as the previous one so his silence made me feel like I was standing in a spotlight.
“
Where did you come from?” he asked almost tenderly.
The softness of his tone made my heart skip a beat, something I’d never experienced before. Thrown a bit, I drew in a breath before answering. “Upstate New York.”
“
I take it you weren’t going to this type of school there,” he said, motioning to the bag of mystical items I was carrying.
Chuckling under my breath, I shook my head. “No. But I would love to have seen my professors faces if I carried these into class.” Then I thought about it and added under my breath, “And if I’d known about them, I would have.”
He released a hearty laugh. “I take it you tested the boundaries of conduct there?”
I smiled, unable to contain it. “Oh…I think the headmistress would consider that an understatement.”
He nodded, convinced of something. “Then my assessment of you was right on.”
His declaration made me ask, “Which was…?”
He stopped in front of an unmarked gate, and one that I would have missed entirely if I’d been walking by myself. Beyond it was a courtyard covered in overgrown vines and tall, potted plants. But he paused there, choosing to answer me before entering.
“
At the other store back there…before things started flying off the shelves…Olivia was warning you to take it easy with your supplies because they could be dangerous. But I already knew you could handle it.”
“
Ah…” I replied, holding back a laugh because I was sure it would sound mocking.
“
That’s what I was about to tell you when something hit me in the back.”
I recalled that moment when he’d opened his mouth to speak but didn’t get the chance. I blinked, taken aback that he, being a stranger, had come to this conclusion about me.
“
How could you possibly know that?”
When he replied it was as if his explanation would bode no further questions, as if his response was common, a given understanding. He brushed aside a draping vine and pressed a corroding doorbell. “That’s what I do. I channel people.”
I opened my mouth to question him but deep inside the store a chime echoed back to us and a door groaned open at the end of the courtyard. An elderly, hunched woman wearing thick glasses and a distrustful frown appeared. She moved so slowly that I wondered how she’d reached the door so quickly, considering briefly that she may have been standing there waiting for us.
“
Mrs. DeVille,” he called out.
She had been looking to her left but at the sound of his voice she swung her head toward the gate where we stood.
“
Well come in,” she spat. “Come in!”
He pushed open the gate and allowed me to enter first so that I followed Mrs. DeVille inside the rather dusky, grungy room that housed her storefront.
While the other shop had some semblance of organization, this one had absolutely none. Mrs. DeVille wiggled her fingers around the room by way of a brief tour. “Voodoo dolls, gris gris bags, beads, floor washes, oils, candles…” As she went on, I noticed propped in one corner a frightening wooden statue of a crouched man screaming. Directly above him was a beautifully decorated cross. Interspersed around the room and settled next to cabinets and rugged wooden tables were striking displays of elaborately decorated altars. While all of that seemed odd, they weren’t what stood out to me the most. Candles, spotted around the room, flickered despite the lack of a draft and chimes mounted to the walls and hanging from the ceiling jingled even though nothing visible was touching them.
When Mrs. DeVille was finished, she headed for the back room summing up her tour with one final and unexpected warning. “Don’t play with anything! I know how you children are. Always wanting to touch and play. Not in this store. Not with my things. I have eyes out here and they’ll tell me if…” Her voice faded to a mutter as she left the room and we were alone again.
Jameson caught my eye and we stifled a chuckle at the woman’s expense. Then we withdrew our lists and headed for the first item on it.
A small sign denoted gris gris bags. Even though they were distributed around on various tables, the one beneath the sign had the largest abundance of them.
Still, they didn’t intrigue me as much as Jameson’s comment outside the gate. “What exactly do you mean - you channel people?” I inquired, sliding up beside him.
He shrugged. “Their abilities mostly.”
“
I’m still confused,” I admitted.
“
Right, I forgot you’re unfamiliar with all this…” He waved his hand across wall, motioning to the mystical items collected on it. “Everyone has a talent. My mother calls it their gift. Some people never cultivate it, some don’t even know they have it. But everyone’s born with it, that unique ability that sets you apart from the rest of the world. Mine isn’t so rare,” he admitted with a slight frown, “but it is powerful. I sense other’s abilities from the first time I meet them and, if I’m touching them, I can channel that ability to use as my own.”
“
I see,” I replied, holding back my laughter by picking up one of the bags on the table. “What are these used for?” I asked.
“
You don’t have to believe me, Jocelyn,” he stated, noticing my effort to hold back my disbelief. “Whether you do or not, you’ll start to witness it around you.”
His lack of insistence made me second-guess my judgment of what he’d said. Typically, when someone is lying they are pushy, unrelenting. The fact that he didn’t care if I believed him told me that, even if I didn’t accept what he told me as truth, he firmly believed it himself. I figured he could believe whatever he wanted as long as it didn’t affect me.
Nonetheless, it seemed he was finished with that revelation because he went on to enlighten me about something far less dramatic, the bold red gris gris bag I held in my hand. “They’re used for various purposes. Some are meant to beckon money, others peace, others success. Some are used for fertility.”
I shot a look at him and he chuckled. “Not that one.” Then he cleared his throat to hold back a smile before adding, “That one is for love.”
“
Oh,” I muttered, uncomfortable under his gaze.
Although I didn’t look in his direction, I knew his eyes lingered on me as I awkwardly returned the bag to the table. Then he burst into deep bellows of laughter.
“
Quiet out there,” barked Mrs. DeVille from the back room, coaxing another, softer, bout of laughter from him.
“
Are you teasing me?” I demanded in a lowered voice even as I broke into a smile.
“
Yes,” he said without the least bit of guilt. “You take it well.”