Chapter 11

Truman

The truth of Truman’s work was that, thanks to some spreadsheet hacks he’d created, he could do his nine-to-five workload in about four hours a day, except during tax season, so he rose early, made coffee, and banged out the day’s work well before noon.

Not wanting to seem overeager, he headed to the Queen Bee before going to Thorn. He spent a pleasant half hour or so browsing the shelves, reading bits of this and that, before Maisey bustled in, arms full of packages. Truman rushed to grab a box that was teetering dangerously and slid it onto the counter.

“Oof, thank you, dear,” Maisey said, plopping the rest of her armload onto the floor beside the counter.

“Can I give you a hand with anything?”

Maisey waved away his offer with a flick of her hand but gestured him close. “Just picked these up from Maureen.” She didn’t elaborate on who Maureen was. “She saves them for me.”

Maisey opened the box Truman had saved from falling. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it certainly was not a box full of hundreds of eggshells.

“Oh, um. How nice.”

Maisey snorted, eyes sharp. “Eggshells are a tool of protection and nourishment. Ground into a fine powder, they can be used to cast a circle or draw growth energy to you. They’re also excellent for sigil work.”

Oh, dang, Maisey’s a witch!

“You just have to make sure you boil them first,” she instructed. “You don’t want any salmonella in your circle.”

“No, of course not,” Truman murmured. He imagined a magical circle vomiting from food poisoning. “My friend Ramona is really into magic and stuff.”

“Magic,” Maisey said, “is all around us.”

“I wish,” Truman muttered.

“You might be surprised, Truman. Perhaps you need to pay a little more attention to the signs you’re being given.”

“Signs?”

But then Truman remembered Ramona mentioning Agatha Tark when she told him Greta lived in Maine. And he remembered Ramona’s text telling him it would be raining possibilities. He had been inundated with a slew of ideas for Thorn and for his own potential business ventures since then…

“Signs, synchronicities, call them what you will. They’re an indication from the universe that you’re on the right track.”

Truman nodded, unsure how to ask what it indicates if you puke in your boyfriend’s flower bed after learning he led a double life. “Synchronicities like…?”

“Oh, like, if you’re talking with a friend about wanting to redo your kitchen, and later that day you run into another friend who is redoing their kitchen. That kind of thing.”