Sylvia had left the bookstore owner with a few words of gratitude for her patience.

Marie had smiled in kind for she too was grateful. So many would be magic practitioners would drop in to peruse her collection, but so few entered more than a few steps much less hang around and let her touch them. It was usually investigators following adulterers that occupied her cushy, window seat. They didn’t provide the woman with access to the energy that was so revitalizing to one’s psyche like the unprotected magician. The old woman massaged her hands and watched the swelling slowly decrease and the wrinkled skin tighten. If someone with The Sight cared to look, he or she might see the filament of a connection, the old woman had sealed into a bond with her touch. She chuckled smugly as her reflections around her revealed the slow tightening of her skin erasing years away. “Oh yes,” she murmured over and over.

“Grand’Mere,” a young masculine voice emerged from the rear of the store called. The tall boy was no boy. He was probably a year or two younger than the lady who had just left. His hair styled with a graduated trim within centiimeters of his scalp. His features gaunt more from genetics rather than from lack of nutrition. He narrowed is piercing blue eyes upon the older woman in the store. Then, he gasped when he saw the woman for whom he’d been calling was the lady before him with years cut from her appearance and stance..

“I found the answer,” she murmured, then laughed musically remembering the symbol the young woman in orange had touched. The notes might have been lovely to many ears but would have wrung so wrong with a few others; the few who’d know what she’d become.