Almost

Chapter 30: Abbie's Orb

"So..." Katherine muttered, looking at him after staring around the room. "Are you going to murder me down here or..."

"They said it was... oh, dammit, I must have counted wrong..."

Katherine laughed and let her eyes fill with magic once more, immediately seeing the problem. Where he had been tapping was really just a metal rack, but across the room was a shelf of spray bottles full of cleaning products that shone with the same electric blue as the door. She pointed him in the right direction, and he crossed the narrow room quickly, repeating the tapping on the new rack.

Then, to her amazement, the rack began to turn. Ezra stepped onto the ground that moved, pulling Katherine with him. He took his mask off, then reached over and took hers too, putting both in his pocket.

Katherine was glad for it when they made it to the other side of the wall and her mouth dropped.

They were beneath the earth, that was obvious, but no one seemed bothered by that fact. Everything around them seemed to glow, making it bright as day even without sunlight or streetlamps save one large light fixture that stood in the center. It was a woman holding up a stick with a glowing sphere on the end, and it seemed to be providing all of the light the walls reflected. And they weren't really walls, but glass storefronts jam packed together and stacked on top of one another. But they didn't stand upright—the whole area was domed, as if they'd stepped into the snow globe Ezra had given her and filled it with a mall.

"What is this place?" she asked, watching men and women bustle past her carrying cauldrons and scales and broomsticks she knew would never be used to sweep the floor.

"They call it Abbie's Orb."

"And that's Abbie?" Katherine asked, pointing to the statute. "And her orb?"

"So, it's a little literal," he admitted. "But still, pretty cool. In the big cities, where witches and wizards have to worry about blending in so much and where there was more worry about being found, the stores are all separated. But, in smaller towns like this, things tend to cluster. Since this used to be Iowa's Capitol, the community never left."

Katherine couldn't help but agree. The globe was huge, yet no space was wasted. Her eyes danced as they fell across a storefront that said, in big black script, Pocus Portraits above windows brimming with framed paintings. She laughed at one in particular, which had the pencil outline of a woman with one finished and fully functional arm waving madly to get the artist's attention back on her. For his part, the tall, lanky wizard with short puffs of white hair sticking out of the sides of his head was more focused trying to shoo an owl out of his store, screaming "I don't want that paper today or any day! I'm sending a howler to subscriptions this afternoon, honest to Gordian—"

The owl flew out of the portrait store and landed on a balcony across the way, which stuck out from a store on the second floor bearing the words Abbiecus. Through the window, Katherine could see swirling silver instruments that could have come right from McGonagall's office. But something about the directions was wrong, like the store was slanted.

"The light must do something funny," she said to Crawley. "Does it look—"

When she turned and saw his face, it was as bright as the center fixture. "Come on, I have to show you this."

He took her hand and she followed him into a store called Bewitched and Bewizard that had racks and racks of clothes with everything from Illvermorny robes to the same leggings Katherine would wear to class. One pair in particular made her stop and look—the sign said "Extendable Pockets—No Bulge Guarantee."

"How extendable do you think these pockets get before your pants just fall down?" Katherine asked, but Crawley just tugged her arm forward without answering. Suddenly, the floor changed from carpet to hardwood, and the store was no longer filled with clothing, but candles that looked like they could have come right out of a Jane Austen novel.