Dark Enchantment ☽ The Abridged Edition

☽ Mystery Man ☾ Part 1 ✩

I'd spent the night thinking about Adrian. Not in any particular sort of way, just confounded by the strangeness of it all. He seemed relatively nice, relatively calm and collected, but the way that he'd shown up in the middle of the night made me think.

I closed the book in front of me as a customer came in. Another tourist, I decided, making my judgement based on the fact they were wearing knee-length shorts in fall. Ravenswood got cold, and it got cold fast.

"Do you happen to have any books on the local history?"

I nodded and stood up, beckoning her to follow me down to the large collection of history books that I stocked. People came here, to Ravenswood, for a slice of history, for a slice of suffering. It baffled me just how many people wanted to learn more about witchcraft and vampires and the horrific acts during the war, but it helped me pay my bills - I wasn't complaining.

"Right here," I said, kneeling down to the middle shelf and picking out a large, out-of-print book. "This book is one of our best sellers, but it's out of print now so it's kinda expensive. There's a ton of other books, but this one," I said, tapping at it's brown cover. "This one covers all of it."
She nodded and took it from my hands, opening the cover and glancing through it's pages. 

"How much?"

"One-twenty."

She balked at the price and handed it back to me. "Okay, and what do we have that's more in the thirty dollars range?"

"Are there any particular parts of our history that you're interested in? Most people want to know about the vampire legends or the werewolf legends, some want to know about the witchcraft accusations and trials, others-"

"Vampire legends?"

I nodded slowly. She turned to face me and grimaced. "This place has vampire legends?"
Every inch of me was shocked that she didn't know - most people came here specifically to find a vampire, it seemed. Every other person believed they existed and wanted to know where to find them.

"Sure, Ravenswood has a long and rich history, and vampires, werewolves, hell, even fairies are part of that."

She shifted her weight to her left side and looked around the shelves with a furrowed brow. "Well, I wish I'd have known that before my last day here."

I reached up to the second-from-the-top shelf and pulled out a large, dark green book. "If you didn't know about the vampire stories, this book here is a good starter. It's got a whole bunch of basic information about the different types of monsters and legends, as well as how Ravenswood helped inspire popular culture. Well, popular culture of the nineties, I guess."
She took it from my hands and glanced over the blurb. "I'll take it. Do you have any little gifts I can take back? My cousin wanted something but she has no idea what."

"Well of course!" I took her back to the front of the store, and pointed to the rack of antiques from my desk. "Those over there are antiques, so they're on the pricier side. I get new ones in every couple of months, most of them are from around the country but some are from Ravenswood. And here we have keyrings, post-cards, and a pot of fake teeth."

"A pot of fake teeth?"

I began to laugh. "Read that book and you'll understand why. If your cousin doesn't know about all the legends, it might be best to just get them a keyring."

She nodded, and picked up a small one with the Ravenswood crest and placed it on the desk. As I was totalling up her items, the small bell above the door rang. I looked up to see Adrian perched at the edge of the room, a long, red box in hand and a smile on his face. I was surprised to see him.