The shop’s phone rang, and when the clerk excused herself, my mom sidled close, smiling as she touched the braid Jenks’s kids had put my hair in this morning. “That charm took me your entire high school career to perfect,” she said. “You think I’m not going to practice it?”

Worried now, I glanced at the woman on the phone—the one who obviously knew my mother. “Mom!” I whispered. “You can’t sell those! You don’t have a license!”

Lips pressed tightly, she took my basket to the counter in a huff to check out.

Exhaling, my gaze went to Jenks sitting on the rack, and he shrugged. I slowly followed in my mother’s steps, wondering if I’d neglected her more than I thought. She did the damnedest things sometimes. I’d talk to her about it over coffee. Honestly, she should know better.

Streetlights had come on while we had shopped, and the pavement glowed with gold and purple holiday lights in the evening rain. It looked cold, and as I went to the register, I adjusted my scarf for Jenks. “Thanks,” he muttered as he landed on my shoulder. His wings were shivering, and they brushed my neck as he settled in. October was too cold for him to be out, but with the garden dormant and Matalina in need of fern seeds, risking a trip in the rain to a charm shop had been his only recourse. He’d brave anything for his wife, I thought, as I rubbed my tickling nose.

“How about the coffeehouse down two blocks?” my mom suggested as the dull beep, beep of barcodes being read clashed with the earthy smells of the shop.

“Grab some air, Jenks. I’m going to sneeze,” I warned him, and muttering things I was just as glad not to hear, he flew to my mom’s shoulder.

It was a marvelous sneeze, clearing out my lungs and earning a “bless you” from the clerk. But it was followed by another, and I hardly had time to straighten when a third hit me. Breathing shallowly to forestall the next, I looked at Jenks in dismay. There was only one reason why I would sneeze like this.

“Damn,” I whispered, glancing out the huge front window—it was after sundown. “Double damn.” I spun to the clerk, who was now shoving things into a bag. I didn’t have my calling circle. I had cracked the first one, and the new one was sandwiched between spell books under my kitchen counter. Damn, damn, damn! I should have made one the size of a compact mirror.

“Ma’am?” I warbled, then accepted the tissue my mom handed me from her purse. “Do you sell calling circles?”

The woman stared, clearly affronted. “Absolutely not. Alice, you told me she didn’t deal in demons. Get her out of my store!”