“Oh, come on,” Luna said with a grin. “Your face was hilarious.”

“I’m getting a vision,” I said. “It’s my mystical diviner’s powers. I foresee myself suddenly assigning you many more shifts at the shop.”

“No, you won’t,” Luna said with perfect confidence.

“Oh, really?”

“You’re not going to make me do it on my own,” Luna said. “The only reason you keep the shop is so you can run the counter yourself.”

I blinked and looked at her. “How do you figure that?”

When I first met Luna she was twenty-one. She’s twenty-three now, a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, wavy-haired half-English-half-Italian girl whose life’s been trending steadily upwards over the past two years despite occasional interludes of danger and violence. Luna’s always been fit, but lately she’s turned into quite an athlete—she was introduced to azimuth duelling last winter and took to it like a duck to water, and she’s been practising hard ever since. “Well, it’s not like you do it for the money,” Luna said. Her hair was damp, the water darkening it from its usual light brown, and as she spoke she started untangling it with the aid of a hairbrush.

“It makes a profit.”

“Not much.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I used to get your stock, remember?” Luna said. Before Luna had been my apprentice she’d worked for me part time, searching for magical items. I’d bought them from her and divided them up; the weaker ones I put up for sale in the restricted section, and the dangerous ones I kept for myself. “You hardly ever sell the expensive stuff.”

“Have you been going through my records?”

“You don’t have any proper ones; I checked. Anyway, if you cared that much about it you’d keep regular hours.”

“I have regular hours.”

“Unless something comes up.”

“Stuff does keep coming up.”

“But you could hire an assistant,” Luna said. “If you really wanted to dump the work on someone else you could have done it by now.”

“Well, yeah.” For years I’ve had vague plans for getting someone to help run the place, but I’ve always put it off. For one thing there aren’t many people I’d trust with the job, but even if I could find someone I’m not sure I’d do it. The people in the magical community whom I feel closest to aren’t the established mages but the have-nots—apprentices, adepts, lesser talents, and all the other small-time practitioners out there—and those are the people that my shop lets me meet.

Luna finished brushing her hair and started tying it back in a ponytail. “So who are Anne and Vari seeing this time?”

“Her name’s Dr. Shirland,” I said. “Mind mage. She’s an independent.”

“If she’s a mind mage, how’s she going to teach Anne and Vari?”