“So, why a grocery store?” Dalton asked as he climbed out of the car.

Cornelius walked towards said grocery store, a brown and green building with a green-trimmed roof. “Because, my young apprentice, we need groceries.”

“Oh. Damn, we’ve been doing so much clan stuff that it’s melted my brain.”

“It happens to the best of us. You get so caught up in the chaos of the paranormal that you forget that things like grocery stores still exist.” Cornelius glanced up at the sign over the building. Barry’s Guns and Groceries.

“…Or a grocery and gun store in this case.”

He paused at the shop’s front door. A wooden sign hung in front of it with “WIPE YOUR FEET” written out in all caps.

He and Dalton obliged the sign and wiped their feet on the doormat.

The small doorbell announced their entrance. Cornelius was immediately struck by how…clean the place was. Not just the appearance, which was spotless, but even the smell. It wasn’t an antiseptic smell like a hospital either, instead, it was… clean. That was the only word he could think of.

The store interior was split in two, with one half a normal grocery store, while the other was the aforementioned gun shop.

It was a little odd, but that seemed to be the theme in this town.

They split off, and Cornelius headed for the deli section.

The spiders had expressed a desire for meatballs, and Cornelius had agreed to make some.

He was fairly certain that normal spiders couldn’t eat meat without liquefying it first. But normal spiders couldn’t grow to human size or speak in your head either.

He grabbed a pound of beef and turkey then paused. There were a lot of spiders.

…quite a few pounds of meat later, he moved on with a substantially heavier cart. Dalton passed him and tossed a can of sardines into the cart.

He gave his apprentice a pained look. “Why are you this way?”

Dalton glared. “Hey, do I go and criticize you for wearing that stupid raincoat all the time?”

“You do.”

“I only say a fraction of the things that come to mind.”

“Just how strongly do you feel about my coat?”

Dalton went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “So the least you can do is let me enjoy my food in peace.”

Cornelius eyed his apprentice, then slid the can further away from the rest of the food.

Dalton rolled his eyes and walked off. No doubt searching for another awful item to add to the cart.

Cornelius wandered with no particular destination in mind as he idly browsed the shelves.

Something as mundane as shopping had an oddly relaxing quality to it. It was simple. No doubts about whether he was wasting his time as a diplomat. No questioning if he was letting the clan down by not spending every spare moment as a good little soldier.

Or if he should agree to have a petty fight before they discuss open war.

He sighed and rested his head against the pickle aisle. The metal was cool against his scalp, comforting.

What kind of store even had a pickle aisle?

He straightened, then snatched a bottle of dill pickles.

The door rang, and Cornelius glanced up.

It spoke to just how clean the shop was that the first thing he noticed about the newcomers was their muddy shoes.

That mud stood out like red ink on a newspaper as they trounced in.

The second thing that struck him was that the strangers were werewolves. He recognized the signs; the muscled builds, effortless grace, and the way they walked in an unconscious formation. It screamed Were’s.

He turned his attention back to shopping but shaped his aura to follow them. He didn’t fully envelop them since if any of them could sense that, it would be a clear sign of aggression on his part. He just wanted to keep track of them.

Best not to leave your back exposed to unfamiliar spooks.

They made their way straight to the back counter, ignoring the two of them as they passed.

He made a whisper-soft “Tss” sound as the group passed. One of their gazes flicked to him at the noise—definitely a Were. A human couldn’t have picked up on a sound that soft from over ten feet away.

He kept magical tabs on the group of five, but aside from that, he put them from his mind.

This town had a lot of spooks already, and every day closer to the summit would cause that number to jump. A small pack in the grocery store was nothing to get worried over.

Fate immediately conspired to prove Cornelius wrong. As soon as the pack reached the back counter, they started yelling.

“Hey! Whoever owns this dump, come out here!”

Their words and tone made his back stiffen. He knew what someone spoiling for a fight sounded like.

Leaving his cart in the pickle aisle, he started moving closer to the group.

Their Alpha was a tall blond man built like a bear. He wore an expensive leather jacket. The rest of the pack wore matching pairs.

It wasn’t a bad coat per se, but he didn’t think the man, or any of the others, pulled it off.

After a few seconds of yelling, a shaggy man walked out from the back.

He was tall, probably around 6’1, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest. His hair was jet black and completely untamed, jutting out as if he’d just been struck by lightning.

His clothes were clean but mismatched as if he’d just grabbed the first things he saw.

Cornelius couldn’t make out his face behind his equally wild beard, but he was clearly unimpressed by the Were’s.

“What do you want,” he said, his words brusk.

The Alpha sneered. “Your voucher.”

The man blinked. “What?”

Cornelius stared at the werewolves. What indeed?

Who tried to get vouchers by being an ass? Were they that dumb, or were they doing it on purpose? And judging by his reaction, the man wasn’t even a spook.

“Don’t play dumb. I can smell the magic in this place.”

Both the shaggy man’s and Cornelius’s eyes widened at the Alpha’s words.

Magic? He hadn’t felt anything different in the store. Sure, the ambient magic was thick here, but it was like that in the whole town. He cast his senses along the shelves and walls but felt nothing.

If there was magic here, it was too subtle for him to pick up with a deeper scan.

But if the werewolf had the knack for it, he would be able to sniff out magic. Not every werewolf could do it, but those who could were incredibly useful to have around.

“Magic?” The man leaned against the counter. “I’m not from that side of the street. Look elsewhere if that’s the kind of things you want to buy.”

The werewolves growled. The sound was deep and bestial. And coming from so many chests at once, it caused the nearby shelves to rattle.

The man’s hand slipped under the counter. Cornelius got ready to step in.

The doorbell chimed.

Everyone turned to see a group of three walk in.

On the left was a tall, willowy woman in her early twenties. She had long black hair that fell over one shoulder in an intricate braid and wore a long brown coat over a black cotton blouse and long pink skirt. “Oh,” she said as they entered. “I don’t think we’re getting those chips.”

Even in this tense situation, Cornelius noticed how strikingly beautiful the woman was, even for a werewolf. She could have passed for a model.

To her right was a tall blond man around her age, maybe a year or two younger. He had a square jaw and bright blue eyes that sparkled with mirth. He had on a simple black t-shirt and jeans, which he stuck his hands in as he nodded.

“I think you’re right, sadly.”

The third was a slightly shorter man with short brown hair and large rimmed glasses. He clutched a bag in his arms as if he were holding it for comfort, and he said nothing as his dark brown eyes scanned the room.

And as they stopped in unison a few steps past the door, Cornelius realized they were also Were’s.

The muscled builds, the coordination. And the way the first pack stiffened at the sound of the newcomers’ voices made it clear.

“You!” The first Alpha said, spinning.

So the packs knew each other.

“George!” The smiling blond man said. “Why does it look like you’re harassing the locals! That doesn’t seem very neighborly to me!” His voice was aggressively cheerful, and Cornelius couldn’t hear an ounce of sarcasm in it. But the first Alpha— George— darkened at the man’s words.

He stalked closer, his muddy footsteps silent despite his bulk.

“Watch your tone, Bobby. That bitch isn’t here to keep you all safe, so don’t push your luck!”

The woman glared at George, the glasses-wearing werewolf stiffened, and Bobby’s smile gained a sharp edge.

“George, that’s so hostile!” Cornelius stiffened. Something in the man’s voice had shifted, and Cornelius felt a shiver of danger across his spine.

None of them were old as Were-kin went. He would have been able to feel the magic coursing through them if they were. But that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

And there was something about Bobby that made Cornelius’s instincts scream for him to pay attention.

“Hostile?” George spat. “You haven’t seen hostile yet!”

Bobby held up a hand. “Let’s slow down now!”

The woman spoke up. “The way it looks, George, we have two options.” She held up a pink nail. “We ignore your insulting Blair…for now. And continue with our shopping. Or,” she raised a second finger. “We take this outside and stop bothering the locals with our little spat.”

George’s gaze flicked between them, and specks of yellow began to swirl in his eyes.

“Those are the two options, huh?”

He reached over to a nearby shelf and snatched a can. “I think I’m going to make my own option.” He squeezed, and metal crumpled.

“We settle this ‘spat’ right here, right now.”

The pump of a shotgun echoed through the store, grabbing everyone’s attention as surely as someone shouting fire in a theater.

The store owner held a beast of a gun. Its massive barrel pointed at the first pack of Were’s.

They had advanced with their Alpha, and while they spun at the sound, they were too far from the counter to stop the man before he got shots off.

Now that a gun had entered the equation, Cornelius began to worry. While a fight between werewolves was dangerous, he was confident in his ability to keep Dalton safe.

A gun made that far trickier.

While he had several ways to stop gunfire, it was far harder to keep track of stray bullets than stray bodies.

He would need to keep Dalton close. He pulsed his aura, gathering a dense section of magic around his body then releasing it. He repeated that three more times before Dalton got the message.

Those pulses didn’t leave his aura and didn’t have any specific effect, but the quick fluxes of magic were eye-catching to anyone who could sense it.

Dalton stopped at Cornelius’s side. The boy looked frightened. Sweat beaded his brow, and his hands were balled into fists at his sides.

“I agree with them,” the store owner— who Cornelius assumed was Barry— said. “Why don’t you take this outside.”

While Cornelius respected the man’s balls, he wished he would just keep his head down. He highly doubted the man was packing silver bullets, and without them, the gun was a minor inconvenience to the werewolves.

Tension grew as the threat of violence hung in the air. Any second now, someone would act, and it would all go to shit.

I need to get ahead of this. Either throw the first punch or prevent it from being thrown.

“Are you okay!?” Dalton whispered.

He glanced at his apprentice. “What? Of course. Why-”

Dalton pointed at Cornelius’s hands.

They were trembling. He tried to make it stop. He wasn’t hyperventilating. Hell, he wasn’t even breathing hard. But no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get them to stop shaking.

Memories hung at the edge of his mind, pressing in like wraiths in the dark.

There was a reason he had wanted to become a diplomat.

He took several deep breaths as he tried to slip into a water shift. It took him over five seconds.

Jesus, it hasn’t taken me that long in decades.

His mind stilled, and the shaking stopped. But he had taken too long. George made the first move.

Snarling, his eyes gleaming yellow, he threw himself at Bobby, his own pack right on his heels.

“Stay behind me!” he snapped to Dalton.

George crashed into Bobby like a speeding car, and the two of them went tumbling.

The other four crashed into the other two.

Thankfully, Barry held off on firing since he didn’t have anything close to a clean shot.

The Were’s had descended into a mass of claws and limbs, which meant Cornelius didn’t have a clean shot either.

Luckily for him, he was a mage.

Deep in his water shift, Cornelius let fear, anger, and determination roll into him. He embraced them as they came and let them leave without trying to stop them.

He reached out with his aura, and the now azure blue cloud of power spread through the entire store.

He wasn’t an arch Flood, but he had trained under one.

He felt every source of water his aura touched, and after a second of searching, he found the drink aisle.

I hope this place has insurance.

He gartered his magic, packing the aisle until it was dense with deep blue power, then he pulled.

A thundering crash sounded through the store as the shelves between them and the drinks collapsed under a wave of water and plastic.

Plenty of the bottles had remained sealed, but the thin layer of plastic did nothing to stop Cornelius from commanding the liquid within.

The small wave hit the rolling ball of Were’s first, sweeping them towards the doors.

The plan was to send them right out of the store and hopefully avoid destroying the store further. But if werewolves were that easy to beat, they wouldn’t be part of the Pact.

The groups split apart, pushing against the ground and each other to hurl themselves away from the small wave. Two of them slammed into shelves, which promptly collapsed from the force.

The rest of them landed on their feet, skidding back several steps on the wet tiles.

Bobby’s pack had wanted to take this outside, and they hadn’t thrown the first punch, so Cornelius focused his attention on the others.

He pushed his magic, shifting it so that most of his aura was gathered around him in a roughly thirty-foot cloud.

He diverted some of that cloud to steer what was left of his wave at the two who hadn’t hit the shelves.

With the rest of his magic, he began to gather the water bottles to hang around his head.

A snarl sounded from across the store, and Bobby skidded into sight, his feet struggling for traction on the slick tiles.

George rounded the corner a moment later. His leather jacket had been ripped in several places, and his hands had shifted into black claws, their tips stained with red.

Bobby gave up on trying to stop, instead going with a slide. He reached a shelf and jumped, kicking off it and flying back at George. His spinning kick took the man in the head, and his feet flew out from under him.

One of the Werewolves that had hit a shelf sprang up. Whatever damage they had taken healed.

The woman pushed dripping red hair from her eyes and flung herself at Cornelius.

He rolled his eyes.

Without even lifting a hand, he sent a dozen water bottles hurtling at the idiot.

She had gone and put herself in the air where she couldn’t use her speed.

She tried to twist out of the way and moved an impressive amount for someone without any leverage.

But it wasn’t enough.

The water bottles slammed into her, and Cornelius kept pushing, throwing her straight through the store’s large windows.

It wouldn’t kill her, of course. Nothing short of decapitation or immolation would do that without silver. And even that wasn’t a sure shot.

But it would take her out of the fight for a few seconds.

The other shelved werewolf hadn’t gotten up yet, and the other two were fighting Bobby’s pack.

Dalton was still behind him, and Barry hadn’t moved.

Cornelius turned his attention to Bobby and George.

The smiling blond man seemed to be handling the situation fine.

Even at a glance, he could tell that Bobby was more skilled.

The man slipped past George’s furious blows like it was a rehearsed dance.

And the most impressive thing was that Bobby made it look accidental.

Bobby overextended with a punch that George sidestepped. The massive werewolf spun on his heel to deliver a backhand that whistled through the air.

Bobby slipped on the tile at just the right moment to duck under the swing. As he fell to the ground, he tried to catch himself, his feet scrambling for purchase, and he just happened to nail George in the knee hard enough to send a crack echoing out.

Yeah, he didn’t need the help.

He turned to help the other two.

The shorter Were fought defensively, dodging attacks where he could and blocking what he couldn’t. He only struck out when he had a certain opening, so he wasn’t swinging much, but it didn’t look like he’d taken any hits himself.

The woman moved like water, flowing past attacks and striking in the same motion.

On their own, they both outmatched their opponents, who were trying to make up for a lack of skill with ferocity. But the difference was really showing through with them fighting together.

They moved with an instinctive knowledge of each other, switching opponents and blocking attacks aimed at the other without saying a word.

While he was confident they would win, he decided to speed that up before the others joined.

He started shooting water bottles like bullets.

They zipped through the air and slammed into knees and feet with enough force to stagger.

With the targets on the ground, he couldn’t just throw them through the air nearly as easily. It would take more time to prepare something like that than the heartbeat it took him to launch a bottle.

The two didn’t hesitate to take the opening he’d given them, launching at the leather jackets before they could regain their balance.

The woman he had tossed through the window came flying back in. At the same time, the other leather jacket that had stuck a shelf sprang to their feet and took off.

But instead of joining the fight, they ran straight at Barry.

Cornelius shouted a warning and started shooting bottles. But this Were was slippery, and they weaved between the bottles, barely slowing down.

The man with glasses took off after the leather jacket.

Seeing help on the way, Cornelius switched tactics as he backed up. He was slightly to the side of the main walkway, but the Were could easily turn and go for him instead.

He reached out to the water on the floor and began to gather it up. Not having the time for any big effects, Cornelius pulled just a few cups of water to him.

He gathered it into a swirling ball in front of him, his power compressing in that area to keep the water-packed tight.

Once the ball was shaking against his control, he let it go. It rocketed at the leather jacket, screaming as it cut through the air. The man had seen the attack building and sidestepped it, only for Cornelius to clench his fist, detonating the ball right in front of the man's face.

The spray didn’t do much damage, but it went right into his eyes.

At the same time, Cornelius launched a volley of bottles at his legs. The blinded werewolf stumbled, then Glasses was on him.

They rolled past Cornelius to slam into the back counter.

He turned his focus back to the woman, who was outnumbered three to one.

She was doing well, considering the odds. She slipped attacks where she could and even found time to slip a few hits of her own in. But she was still losing.

Cornelius needed to step it up. Hopefully without destroying even more of the store.

He gathered the remaining water bottles around his head. They spun in a slowly accelerating circle as he pushed harder and harder.

While keeping the bottles spinning, he gathered a sizable chunk of his magic and shoved it in front of his face.

While in a water shift, his aura ignored everything physical that wasn’t water, but the exact way it affected water could change.

He pushed his will into the magic. His desires. He wanted water away from him.

It was difficult, less the act of magic on its own, but keeping the water shift up through it.

The water shift was a state of balance, to Cornelius at least.

And pushing so hard was threatening to break his shift.

The woman took a glancing kick to her hip and stumbled. She dodged the next punch aimed at her head only to take another kick to the side.

Cornelius firmed his will and set the spell into motion. The clump of power stretched, elongating into a barrel of blue light.

The first bottle slammed against the gathered magic, and the water inside was ripped forward, blasting away from Cornelius like a ballista bolt.

The air cracked from the force, and the bottle exploded against a leather jacket, knocking them clear off their feet.

The next bottle reached his improvised cannon, and another werewolf went down.

The remaining leather jacket hesitated. The woman didn’t.

Her boot lashed up, slamming into the remaining werewolf’s chin and throwing him back.

Cornelius focused on the downed werewolves, slamming bottle after bottle into them.

Bones broke, skin tore, and blood flow. But that was all temporary. If he let up, they would be back up in less than a minute.

From behind him, he heard Barry bark, “Toss him!” An instant later, the shotgun roared.

He couldn’t spare the second it would take to look back, but hopefully, that shot had gone into a leather jacket.

The last bottle blasted into the pile of broken werewolf, and Cornelius sighed. The bottles had been the least destructive method he had for dealing with the werewolves.

Bobby shouted from across the store and flew into sight a moment later. Hitting the tiles and bouncing, George was on him a moment later, slashing and tearing.

The woman took off towards the two.

Cornelius grabbed the water from the floor with his aura and started building a wave.

His instincts screamed at him that something was wrong.

He scanned the store, both with his eyes and his aura. The leather jacket that had taken a kick to the jaw, where had they gone?

He felt their presence with his aura a moment before the shelf next to them toppled over.

A wall of metal and pickle jars toppled towards them.

Cornelius pulled on his magic.

The wave he had started to gather slammed into him as he spun and wrapped his arms around Dalton.

The self dropped with a crash, barely missing the two of them. His back stung. He had spread the impact out over as large of an area as he could, but he’d needed to move the water fast.

He brought the water to a stop and quickly rolled to his feet, ignoring the sting in his back. Dalton stared at the ceiling, shocked.

The werewolf had paused at the sudden wave, but they had already recovered. Cornelius could feel them closing in with his aura.

A spark of anger entered his shift, and Cornelius didn’t stop it.

He was angry. Angry at himself for losing track of an enemy like that. Angry at the werewolf for endangering his apprentice. Angry at the werewolves for starting a fight here.

He took hold of that anger and used it. A pure water shift was a state of balance to Cornelius, but a pure water shift wasn’t the only one he could do.

He fed that anger to the calm pool of his shift. The waters weren’t always calm and peaceful. They could rage.

The blue of his aura tinted darker, and the water in his aura began to heat up. He focused on the effect, leaving everything alone except the water behind him.

Aspecting a shift like this was a skill that took years to master. If Dalton tried it, his shift would fall apart or blow up in his face. Just doing it once took countless hours of dedication, much less holding it during combat.

But there was a reason battle mages spent those hours trying to master it.

Cornelius felt the Werewolf leap at his back, like watching a dot move closer on a radar, only he could feel it.

He moved his hand, and his aura moved with him.

The water behind him surged up. The several dozen bottles worth of water compacted it into a narrow pillar. One that the werewolf crashed straight through. If it had been normal water, the werewolf would have been slowed, ruining their pounce, but nothing more.

But Cornelius hadn’t Aspected his shift for nothing.

The werewolf screamed as they crashed headfirst into the scalding hot water.

They passed through the pillar completely and collapsed as they hit the floor. Blisters formed on their face and hands, only to heal seconds later.

That was fine. The goal wasn’t to kill here. The goal was to end this fight.

Cornelius stared down at the werewolf, who was glaring at him with murder in their eyes.

He pitted the poor bastard. “Sorry. It looks like you drew the short straw.”

The werewolf lunged up at Cornelius.

He brought the pillar down.

Scalding water pounded onto the Were as Cornelius slammed it down faster than gravity alone would allow.

The werewolf was swept back down the aisle, thrashing and screaming but unable to escape the wave.

If they had been thinking clearly, they would have tried to push off the ground or grabbed onto a shelf, anything that would have forced Cornelius to put his magic against their insane strength.

But agonizing pain and rational thought weren’t often found in the same room.

Cornelius walked behind the wave and reached the main walkway a few steps behind it.

He didn’t want to make a wind split to enhance his voice, so he let the leather jacket get everyone’s attention for him.

He pulled the water away, leaving them in a dry section of floor surrounded by a ring of steaming water.

The man caught his breath, then let out an agonized scream powered by superhuman lungs.

Everyone froze, their attention drawn to the horrible sight.

The man’s countless burns were starting to heal before everyone’s eyes, but his soft sobs told the room that healing or no, it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Cornelius took in the room.

The man with glasses and Barry had one leather jacket pinned to the floor, with what looked like a gunshot in his leg.

The two leather jackets he had unloaded the bottles on were looking much better but hadn’t fully recovered yet.

And the last three fighters had all frozen in the middle of circling each other. Bobby looked rough, with his shirt torn and a bloody wound slowly healing on his face, but George looked like he’d gotten as good as he gave.

The tall woman had stopped with a frozen turkey raised to strike George.

He supposed you used the tools you had.

“I believe that is enough,” Cornelius said, his voice echoing through the store, which was silent save for the burned Were’s whimpering.

He met George’s eyes and spoke with all the authority and pomp he could muster. “You have instigated violence before a summit meeting, in open violation of the laws of the Pact. As a representative of the Knull, I demand you cease or have the weight of the Clans fall on your head.”

He paused and returned to his normal speaking voice. “Certain…scuffles are to be expected. But starting a brawl in a local grocery store? You have to know you can’t get away with that.”

He moved the water closer to the prone Were, who had started to get up. They got the message and went still.

“If you leave now and don’t cause any more trouble you’ll get treated like a troublemaker getting in fights when they shouldn’t.”

A flash of something hot and ugly went over George’s face, and he spat, “And if I don’t leave now?”

Cornelius stared at him, his eyes hard.

“I imagine being cooked alive is a very unpleasant way to go. So is drowning. And they only get worse if you’re a werewolf since you take so damn long to die. Do you want to find out if the scalding water or the lack of air would kill you first?”

The man tensed, and Cornelius could see the war going on inside him. Pride fought against his desire for self-preservation. It took a few long seconds, but self-preservation won out.

“We’re leaving.” He spat on the floor then turned to the door.

The rest of his pack limped after him, shooting hostile looks over their shoulders.

Cornelius let the hot water drop, and the werewolf slowly climbed to his feet, eying Cornelius with open fear.

“Go join your pack.”

He ran.

Once the hostile Were’s had all cleared out, Cornelius turned his attention to the store.

…it wasn’t great. Half a dozen shelves had been completely wrecked, and cans and shards of broken glass littered the floor.

His cart had somehow survived. It must have rolled away at the start of the fight.

He turned to Barry, or at least he assumed the man was Barry, and tried to give a reassuring smile.

“My company will cover all of the damages and any lost revenue. I’m sorry about all this. It was…”

Cornelius couldn’t really think up a good lie. The man had seen blatant magic during the fight.

“Thanks. But you didn’t start it.” The man’s robin’s egg blues looked over his store, and he sighed.

He didn’t look nearly as upset as Cornelius felt he should. He seemed more…put out than anything else.

The three remaining werewolves walked over.

“Thanks for the save!” Bobby said. His face was still stained with drying blood and grime, but the cuts had already healed.

“That would have gotten even dicier if you hadn’t been here.” The man paused, then gestured to the others.

“I’m Bobby. If you didn’t catch that before, this lovely specimen is Simon,” the man with glasses nodded. “And this is Laurel,” the woman extended her hand for a shake, and Cornelius accepted. “Cornelius,” he waved to his apprentice. “And this is Dalton.”

The boy waved but stayed quiet. Cornelius frowned. He was taking it well, but most normal, well-adjusted people were shaken after sudden violence

“Barry.” The shaggy man grunted.

Speaking of being unaffected by violence, the man looked like the brawl that had wrecked half his store was a mild inconvenience.

He turned to the werewolves and nodded. “Thanks. You wanted to take it outside.”

He scanned the piles of broken glass and the twisted shelves.

“And it looks like I was outgunned too.”

Laurel scratched her head. “Sorry, we didn’t actually manage to take it outside.”

Simon pointed at the shotgun, which was resting on the counter.

“Get silver bullets.”

Barry looked at him, then back to the bent metal shelves.

He sighed. “I swear, every time something from that side of the street comes here, my store gets wrecked.”

Cornelius quirked a brow. And while his curiosity quickly fled from the pool, he asked anyway. “This isn’t the first time?”

Barry shook his head. “Less water last time, though.”

Cornelius waved a hand. “I can take care of that.”

He moved his magic over the floor and started sweeping the water towards the broken window.

He wasn’t concerned with speed, so it took relatively little power. Dalton followed the magic with his eyes, so Cornelius slowed his motions, even more, making sure his apprentice could keep up.

He had spread his magic thin to gather the water, and once he was sure he’d gotten most of it, he started to narrow it into a stream.

The water followed suit, gathering itself into a stream. With slightly more effort, Cornelius lifted the stream and guided it out the window.

Barry watched with what looked like mild curiosity. It was hard to tell through the beard.

Cornelius was chalking the man's attitude up to the general strangeness of the town.

He was fairly certain the man wasn’t a spook, but he was obviously aware of the supernatural, considering his lack of reaction and mentioning the ‘other side of the street.’

“Thanks,” the shaggy man said.

Cornelius dropped the shift with the water taken care of, letting his aura return to normal.

He sighed in relief, a water shift was one of the easier shifts to maintain, but its locked state terrified him more than the others.

Bobby whistled. “Man, magic sure is handy. I’m jealous of the cleaning potential.”

Dalton spoke for the first time since the fight started. “You can eat anything and never gain weight. That beats cleaning powers.”

Bobby pointed and inclined his head. “True! The food is a pretty nice perk. I won’t lie.”

Barry spoke up. “About the costs.”

They all turned to face him.

“I’m not comfortable with your lot covering the damage. You stepped in to help. I’m not going to take advantage.”

The werewolves exchanged a look with Cornelius, and he stepped forward.

“This is…a matter of pride for my company, and it isn’t a burden on us, in the same way, it wouldn’t hurt Amazon to cover these costs.”

Barry raised a dark brow.

“And while we aren’t responsible for George’s group, him trashing this place makes all of us look bad. Plus, a decent amount of the damage was on me.”

Pulling all those bottles to him hadn’t been kind to the nearby selves.

Laurel stepped in. “And as for George, well, he isn’t going to get away scot-free. Starting a fight in public while…things are happening on our side of the street. Cornelius said what he did to get them to leave, but there will be consequences.”

Barry looked them over, his face unreadable behind the curtain of black hair.

After almost a minute of silence, he nodded. “If you insist.”

Cornelius relaxed.

Simon glanced at him, then looked down. “Why do you have a jar of pickles?”

Cornelius looked down and realized he hadn’t dropped the pickles.

“Well, I was shopping. And speaking of shopping,” he turned back to Barry. “Can I still check out? I need these groceries for dinner.”

He stared at Cornelius, his face blank. He looked around his wrecked store, from the broken and wrapped shelves to the shattered pickle jars.

His face started to twitch. Then he let out a deep, rolling laugh. It echoed through the store, and Cornelius found himself laughing with him. It felt good, and some of the tension from the fight slid off him.

Barry’s laughter died down, but traces of it filled his voice. “Go grab your cart.”