Oliver walked back to the house with Ms. Scaggs, wondering where Reuben would go, wondering if he had any sort of family, but how could he? Would he just spend the next year roaming the countryside, raiding pig farms?

  When they reached her front door, she handed him the bags. “Why don’t you go to the library and read for the day. I have an errand to run. I’d ask you to come with, but I don’t really feel like torturing you,” she grumbled.

  “What is it?” he asked, feeling ill at the thought of being left alone in her place, with all her valuables…

  “Well, this wizard, Tiamore, died a few weeks ago. He was old, had a good life, it happens. His widow is holding an estate sale. He always was a bit of a pyrophile, so I want to comb through his collection. Maybe he’ll have something I can use.”

  A wizard’s estate sale? Oliver’s eyes practically popped out of his head.

  Scaggs let out a chuckle. “It’s not today. It’s on the eighth. It’s just that a certain attire is expected for these sorts of things, and well, I burned my last fancy dress. It was being ‘pugnacious’… so I need to get fitted for another. I’ll be at the dress shop all afternoon.”

  With the excitement of the day, this caught him off guard. He instantly wanted to go—until a twist in his gut reminded him that he shouldn’t want to.

  “It’s not so bad.” She shrugged. “At least it’s a magical dress shop.”

  This really was too much. Oliver’s jaw dropped. He blurted out, “I could come along.”

  “Really?”

  Even if he was just torturing himself… he took a step back and tried to speak casually, “I mean if you want company? It’d be kind of fun—err umm useful—to see a craft mage. Even if it is…” he saw her eyeing him queerly, “girl stuff.”

  And she kept on eyeing him, considering something. Then, sounding like she was trying very hard not to sound too suspicious, she said, “All right, let’s just drop off the equipment.”

  A knot twisted in his stomach. She’d figured him out, hadn’t she? What would she say? She might be okay with it—or was that just wishful thinking?

  Scaggs was uncharacteristically quiet on the way over. She didn’t say more than a few words as they stopped by the bakery and picked up rolls for lunch.

  When Oliver had started this job, he’d expected a ‘wizardess’ to do things more formally, with afternoon tea and all that. But she wasn’t like that, she was... well, she was Ms. Scaggs. He wanted to ask her about this and a thousand other things, to strike up a conversation, but he was afraid the instant he opened his mouth, he’d blurt out, ‘I’m stealing from you’ or ‘I want to be a girl,’ so best to keep it shut.

  They approached the front of the shop. It was unassuming, adorned simply with a sign that read ‘Miss Fleming’s Fine Dresses for Fine Ladies,’ nothing obviously magical about it, but Oliver felt a tingle as he stepped inside.

  The dressmaker, a brown-haired woman maybe a few years older than Scaggs, came out from the back. She wore a brown skirt and an off-white blouse that wasn’t quite finished, still having a few rough edges held with pins, and a tape measure draped around her neck. “What did you do to my dress?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Nothing…” Scaggs glanced away.

  “The only time you ever come to see me is after you destroy my work.”

  “Hey, Thelemule destroyed that last dress, not me.” Scaggs cowered a bit.

  “It’s not like he jumped you. I was there. You chose to, what was it, ‘duel’ him?”

  “Just a friendly bout, I didn’t think it would go so far.”

  “You shot a ‘fire tornado’ at him,” the woman said, rising on her tiptoes.

  “Yes, well maybe I did get a little carried away.”

  “So, what did you do to the last one? The one you needed ‘rush.’ The one I worked on all night and all day. You know, I still have the scar.” She held up a finger. It bent slightly to one side.

  Scaggs shrunk back, trying to look innocent.

  “She said it was being pugnacious,” said Oliver.

  Scaggs kicked his foot. “Whose side are you on?”

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  “Pugnacious?” the woman asked.

  “Oh, it means, eager to quarrel, combative,” said Oliver.

  “Yes,” Scaggs said wryly, “I forgot, he reads the dictionary. But umm… no corsets this time, please.”

  “And who is this handsome lad?” asked the woman.

  “Oliver, Miss Fleming, Miss Fleming, Oliver.”

  Miss Fleming held out a hand. “It’s Mary to people who don’t incinerate my work.” Then she took Scaggs aside and started measuring, leaving Oliver to browse.

  There were several bust forms on display, some with complete dresses, others half finished. Large drapes of fabric hung from the walls and Oliver found himself examining each in turn. They all had a different texture, a different way of reflecting the light.

  But the wonder he felt came with a price. A year ago, he’d heard that male actors often wore dresses and took female parts. For months, he’d wanted to become an actor. He went to every play he could, which amounted to two. That’s how he found out the practice had gone out of style decades ago, now that women were ‘allowed’ professions. In his mind, he decided to feel good for ‘them,’ but in his gut, all he could feel was jealous, and cheated, and alone.

  Examining a roll of lace trim, he glanced up to see Ms. Scaggs being measured with her boots off. His eyes widened when he saw her legs, splotched with red, the rest of the flesh whiter than it should have been. It looked painful, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  She was comparing several swatches of fabric, one jet black, the other candy red.

  He neared so he could listen in.

  “Well, it shouldn’t look like a dress anyway,” Scaggs was saying. “It needs to look kind of like a wizard’s robe.”

  “Then… I suppose black would be okay…” Mary’s face twisted; she did not agree.

  “And red for fire. It needs to be symbolic.”

  Ms. Scaggs’ sense of style—or lack of it—she was describing something that might be used as a witch’s costume in a play. Horrified, Oliver stumbled forward.

  The ‘wizardess’ raised an eyebrow. “What would you do then?”

  He didn’t know what they were called, but he went over and pointed at a matte wine fabric and then to a shiny charcoal material.

  “Gray, not black?” Scaggs scoffed.

  “It um… well, black makes your hair look gray… grayer,” said Oliver.

  Mary smiled, holding back a giggle.

  “Fine,” Scaggs grumbled.

  “Really?” Mary asked.

  “Yes.” Scaggs eyed Oliver suspiciously, then turned to Mary, “You know what? Maybe we should get him fitted for a vest? I might want to take him along, so he shouldn’t look too unpresentable.”

  Oliver’s chest fluttered as Mary pulled him aside to measure.

  “So, what can I do for you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been fitted before.”

  She held up a very large needle. “Don’t worry, it’ll only hurt for a second.”

  “What?!” Oliver pulled away.

  “Kidding, I was only kidding.”

  “But it is magical somehow?”

  Mary tensed up, annoyed. “She told you that, did she?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “It’s just the wizards don’t like people making a living off of magic, not unless they get their cut, licenses and whatnot. Now pick a color.” She held out a handful of brightly-colored spools of thread.

  The blue was more vibrant than any he’d ever seen. He pointed to it. She cut off a length and nudged his arm up, then held the thread out and let go. It landed vertically on his sleeve, stopping frozen in midair.

  And then it twisted itself through the white cotton of his cuff, forming a pattern akin to both flowers and pure mathematics. When it stopped, there was a square, perhaps half an inch on each side with an abstract picture of the stars and the Moon.

  “Ah good, you’re a smiler,” said Mary. “Whenever I do that people either squirm or smile, but I had a feeling about you. I know it’s not much, but it’s something. I buy my fabric from the mill and embellish it with spark.”

  “That’s really clever,” he said.

  She nodded. “Could you take your shirt off, please? I need to measure.”

  When he did, Mary stopped cold. He looked in the mirror and saw remnants of the dull green bruise across his back, where the swivel-gun had landed on him.

  “How’d you get that?” she asked.

  A chill came over him. Talking about Messer was… not a good idea. “Oh, I—fell. It was a while ago. I was cleaning the ceiling. It was my fault,” he said without meeting her eye.

  Mary finished without a word, and when she was done, she silently handed Scaggs the receipt, waiting for them to leave.

  On the walk home, the silence stayed with them until Ms. Scaggs gently broke it, “It got quiet all of a sudden, didn’t it?”

  Oliver had been lost in thought. “Ms. Scaggs?” he asked. “That charm you used on Reuben, can you use it to fix people?”

  She gave him a curious glance. “What do you mean by ‘fix’?”

  “Say someone had something about them they didn’t like.”

  “Do you mean could I ‘fix’ Reuben? Make it so that he wouldn’t want to feed on human blood?” she asked.

  “Sort of, but with other things. Like could you make it so he wasn’t so lonely?”

  After a long pause, she spoke, “That’s not what I do… That sounds a bit like a love potion, and those don’t work, not the way you’d want them to.”

  He looked away. “What about other things? Say someone was unhappy, could you make them forget why?”

  “I do delusions not…” She sounded flustered. “Say someone was sad about losing a family member. I can’t make them forget that person. I can make a weak person feel strong, or a strong person feel weak, but that’s momentary.”

  “Could you make someone not want something?”

  “I might be able to scare them, like with Reuben, make them think that the consequences of their desires aren’t worth the risk. Is that what you mean?”

  “No… just forget it… I guess.” He dropped a step behind her.

  She spoke softly, almost to herself, “You know, I tried something like that once. It did not end well.”

  When they got back to the house, Oliver read in the library until the Sun went down. Then he removed the leather cord from around his neck, the one that held the key to Scaggs’ garden. He placed it on the kitchen counter, and left through the front door. As he was walking away, he turned to see her watching him from the window.

  After a moment she left, and a light came on in the library. Then, feeling as numb to the world as the world felt to him, Oliver dragged his feet and went round the back wall to dig up her silverware.

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  ACX, the company that handles recording audio books for Audible, suggests giving away a few copies in order to get reviews and raise visibility. So I've got some free keys for the audio book to give away. If you've enjoyed this story, and you'd like to review for the audio book, which I'll provide, either leave a comment here (preferred), or PM me.

  They don't give me a lot of keys, so please forgive me if you don't get one. And the keys are region locked to the US and the UK, so I can't guarantee that they'll work for anyone else. But I might be able to give more keys to UK people (half the keys they gave me are for the UK).