Charming the heart of a man is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Especially when it's already bewitched by somebody else - literally!
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All that former witch-in-training Avalon wanted was a simple job to get her life back on track and forget abo...
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The next few days found Avalon taking care of "boring grown-up" business like she'd told Davi. She'd looked for and found a new tenant for her tiny but nice apartment fairly quickly. The housing market in Barcelona was high on demand, after all. She'd also quit her waitressing job at the restaurant which she couldn't have been happier about. Working hours had sucked majorly but one had to pay the bills when one didn't get a well-paid nanny job.
Packing up her stuff hadn't taken long at all either considering that "Casa Neymar" had all the furniture and equipment one would need. If one was 100% human, that was. But that was a problem for later. The few boxes with her stuff fit into the Drummer - otherwise known as her old blue Renault Clio - just fine.
Once she'd closed the door for the last time and handed the key over to the landlord, there was only one thing left for Avalon to do. Apart from driving to Castelldefels, that was.
"I can't believe you're moving away," Lars, the current manager of the magic shop, said. "I'm losing one of my favourite customers to a brat!"
Avalon counted the money out of her wallet, harrumphing at his words. "You're just saying that because you and your coven aren't on speaking terms right now, so you're stuck with the odd independent witch or curious tourist to buy your stuff."
Lars packed her purchases into a brown paper bag. The letters "VME" forming a head in profile wearing a black pointy hat smirked back at her. The cliché witch-face was the logo of the magic shop "Various Magical Equipment". The tiny shop sat in a dead end between a little gallery and an antique bookstore in Gracía and could easily be mistaken for a New Age esoteric store - which was the whole point of a disguise.
The small room was mostly packed with the obligatory "New Age" esoteric human nonsense. At first glance, tarot cards, candles, dream catchers, incense and sticks as well as New Age literature waited for ignorant tourists. But VME offered a wide array of magical supplies in plain sight that humans had no clue about and every witch worth their salt needed to have in their kitchen. A display of glass containers with herbs, leaves and roots of all sorts sat on a tall shelf behind a dark wooden cashier counter, conjuring up the image of a Chinese apothecary. Other stuff was kept in a back room out of sight of the humans who wouldn't be able to handle it. The eyes of a lizard - three pairs for the prize of two - would call up animal protection programmes in a heartbeat, after all. Never mind they'd been taken from already dead animals.
An old cash register took up most of the dark counter's surface. Tiny copper bowls filled with tasting samples of magical drops and biscuits took up the rest. They weren't corporate products but handmade by Lars himself and - thanks to their ingredients - tended to have a slight and harmless effect on the person. Zelo couldn't get enough of his Catnip Happy Toffees and regularly begged for her to make them herself. But there was just something in them that Avalon hadn't been able to get right whenever she'd tried to copy them at home. Not that Lars would ever give her the recipe just like that. She would know; she'd tried for the last couple of years. Avalon pursed her lips at the empty bowl. Dammit; there weren't any samples left.
