Either way they were busy, with people milling outside in the street. A few sets of eyes landed on us, more specifically the petite woman in our midst. We hurried past, and I heaved a sigh of relief when a display of crystals beckoned us inside a cute shop a few doors down from the brothel. The wooden door was propped open but a bell jingled when we entered, a spell put in place to alert the shopkeeper of company.
Nolan stayed outside the shop, pretending to look at the crystals placed on the table there, but truly keeping an eye out for danger. People had noted where we’d gone. We needed to get this carneliclase rock and get out.
“Excuse me,” Freya called out to the shopkeeper, a grey-haired woman with her back turned. “I’m looking for a specific stone. Would you be able to assist me? We’re in a bit of a hurry.”
The shopkeeper stopped fiddling with the crystals she was shining at the back counter, turning slowly to look at us. When she faced us head-on with a wide smile, my jaw dropped, and so did Freya’s.
It was Joanne.
Not a similar-looking person, but Joanne herself. A deep breath confirmed her scent was brown sugar and that peculiar perfume often found in old lady’s houses. It was the same I’d caught when I met her outside Hex Sisters Kitchen. Her clothing was different, in keeping with the typical clothes Zemterrans wore, and her hair hung loose instead of pulled up, but the facial similarities were impossible to ignore as well.
“Joanne?” Freya asked, her eyes wide. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Nolan poked his head into the shop behind us, eyes widening when he saw who we were chatting with. He quickly retreated again, posture more stiff than it had been before. I could safely say none of us trusted this. What I’d told Freya about never trusting what she saw was true.
Though this would be a difficult con to pull off, complete with Joanne’s scent and mannerisms.
The matronly woman smiled, turning to snag a stone off the counter behind her. It was oval-shaped, hard and solid in colour. One half was pitch black while the other was a dark, muddy brown. It barely fit in the palm of her hand and was attached to a bronze keychain. She held it out to Freya.
“Here, deary. This is the stone I sent you for.”
Freya glared, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can’t ignore my question.”
Joanne sighed, a twinkle of mirth in her eyes. “I suppose I can’t, not when it’s you. I live here.”
“No, you don’t,” Freya denied. “You live in a suite above the diner. You should be there right now, helping protect my family.”
“I also live there,” she said with a nod. “I have many homes, Freya.”
I was trying to connect the dots on what that meant, but it was hard to come up with anything. No person could be in two places at once, let alone more than two.
Or could they?
Her presence had felt oddly omnipotent and disconcerting when I’d met her. I thought it had been because of how she knew things she shouldn’t, but maybe it went deeper than that.
“That’s ridiculous,” Freya said, eyeing the stone warily. “You work too much to have a completely different life here.”
Joanne shrugged, not disagreeing. Oswald was the one who gave in and took the stone she was offering, turning it over in his hands. “Ozzy!” Freya said, snatching the stone and putting it on a table. “You don’t know what’s touched that.”
“We need it,” he said, reaching past her to grab it.
She let out a soft growl and it slipped from his fingers again. “Freya,” he said soothingly. “She’s clearly not anything we understand, but Joanne has never felt malicious.”
Our mate rounded on me, her hands on her hips. “You’re the one who told me not to trust anything here. Do you think we should be trusting this… illusion?”
I glanced around the shop, noting it looked fully functional. Sensing magic wasn’t my strength, but if Freya hadn’t noticed the second we walked in, I had to assume there wasn’t any heavy magic here. “You can usually tell if something is an illusion,” I said slowly, hesitant to take back my earlier words. “Something will be off. From what I can see, the shop is real. Whether that is Joanne or not is another story entirely, but we need the stone and we don’t know where else we can get it.”
She softened as she felt my anxiety over it, her gaze scanning the shelves of crystals and trinkets as I had. Her conclusion mirrored mine. The shop was functional and true. She spun back to Joanne, who Oswald had been nervously watching the entire time. “Show me where you keep the stones. I’m not taking a piece that’s tainted, but I’ll take a piece you haven’t touched,” she said.
“I would be offended, but your cautiousness will serve you well on your journeys to come,” Joanne said cryptically. “The piece I prepared is the best I have, but there are plenty of other suitable ones in my stores. Come along.”
She stepped beyond a curtain. I grabbed Freya’s hand and followed. Oswald hovered in the middle of the store, not wanting to leave Nolan out of his sight and I nodded to him. Then to the stone. I tried out our newfound telepathy, barely trusting myself to know how to keep Freya out of the loop.“Take it,”I said.
Ozzy reached out and grabbed the discarded keychain of carneliclase, shoving it in his pocket, and then I vanished behind the curtain. Freya didn’t outwardly react, so I assumed I’d been successful in keeping my suggestion out of her head.
This was useful, as much as I hated knowing they could feel everything I felt, to an extent. I’d never had to have mental shields before, so mine were practically non-existent. Privacy no longer existed between us.
Their pleasure washed over me when the two of them were having sex, which was the weirdest shit of all. At least it wasn’t as prominent as Freya’s.
