Quill Me Now
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Date: 2019-02-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Fantasy; Romance; Contemporary; Mystery
Description: What if the words you wrote came true?Spellcraft isn't exactly a respectable business, but it does pay the bills. At least, it should. Unfortunately, Dixon Penn failed his Spellcraft initiation. Instead of working in his family's shop, he's stuck delivering takeout orders in his uncle's beat-up Buick.Winning a Valentine's Day contest at the largest greeting card company in the tri-state area would be just the thing to get his life back on track -- but something at Precious Greetings just doesn't add up. And despite numerous warnings to quit pestering them about his contest entry, he simply can
Publisher: Smashwords

Contents

1. Book Info
2. 1 DIXON
3. 2
4. 3
5. 4
6. 5 YURI
7. 6 DIXON
8. 7
9. 8
10. 9
11. 10 YURI
12. 11 DIXON
13. 12 YURI
14. 13 DIXON
15. 14
16. The ABCs of Spellcraft Series
17. About this Story
18. About the Author

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Start of Content

QUILL ME NOW

The ABCs of Spellcraft 1

Jordan Castillo Price

Find more titles at
www.JCPbooks.com

Quill Me Now. ©2019 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Quill Me Now originally debuted in the Bad Valentine collection, with Love Magic by Jesi Lea Ryan, Hidden Hearts by Clare London, and Temporary Dad by Dev Bentham.

ISBN 978-1-944779-03-0

Electronic Version 1.3

1

DIXON

“Nothing good ever came of a valentine,” Sabina declared with great vehemence and utter conviction. “You hear me, Dixon? Nothing.”

I love my cousin. I do. But there’s opinionated…and then there’s Sabina. I said, “You haven’t even heard the details.”

“I don’t need to, either. Everyone knows those contests are a bunch of baloney.”

“Who’s everyone?”

She ignored the question. “And this ‘big prize’… what’s it even supposed to be?”

I squinted at the fine print. It was smudged with barbecue sauce, but if I held it up to the light, enough came through for me to get the gist. “A thousand dollars.”

Sabina waded through the furniture we were saving for someday. She squeezed between two heavy oak dressers, veered around a massive roll-top desk, climbed over a pile of boxes, and worked her way into our kitchen. It was really just an old utility sink and a microwave perched on top of a mini fridge, but both of us liked to keep up the illusion that we still lived in an actual house, not just a hastily converted attic. She attempted to clatter some dishes to demonstrate how ridiculous she thought my idea was, but we’d sold the maple kitchenette on Craigslist to keep creditors off our backs. And since the only flat surface to slam her mug against was a vinyl card table, it just gave off an unsatisfying thwack. She filled the mug with water and stuck it in the microwave, then crossed her arms, turned to me and said, “A thousand dollars for a few lines of schmaltzy poetry?”

“The verse doesn’t have to rhyme.” I slid the ad across the table for her to look at.

Sabina ignored it. “There’s no possible way anyone could afford to pay that kind of money to produce a valentine.”

“But Precious Greetings is the biggest card company in the state.”

“Even if every lovestruck dope in the city bought one, they’d barely recoup their outlay. Plus, who spends money on paper cards anymore when everything’s digital?” She slammed down a box of hot chocolate with an even quieter thwack, then glared at the microwave as if it would heat her water faster. “You’re just the type to fall for this kind of scheme, too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A soft touch. You’re always giving your spare change to that wino down by the underpass. And he probably lives in a cushier place than we do.”

Well, no argument there.

No one would ever take Sabina for a soft touch. As we were growing up, strangers usually thought she was a boy. The weird, too-short haircuts from my Aunt Rose and hand-me-down clothes from me didn’t help. Nowadays, the ratty denim vest and bleach-tipped fauxhawk tomboy look were entirely deliberate. Plainly female…and no one pegged her for a pushover.

Not like me.

Trustworthy. Sensitive. Nice. This was the opinion strangers formed of me before I even said hello. I guess I just had one of those faces.

“Who sends valentines these days, anyhow?” Sabina went on. “Obligated spouses? Sappy girls swooning with unrequited love? Slimeballs looking to get in someone’s pants? Screw valentines. The world is better off without them.”

My cousin wasn’t usually so negative—though I’ll admit, she was never really a happy ray of sunshine—but the two of us always had each other’s backs, and I’d been counting on her support. I was pretty sure this argument had nothing to do with valentines. She was just upset that I’d finally given up on the family Spellcraft business.

The microwave beeped, and she savaged open a cocoa packet and dumped it into her mug. “If you’re so hell-bent on writing something—”

“Sabina….”

“—then maybe you should write something that actually matters.”

She gave her hot chocolate a vicious stir, and a slurry of hot water and half-dissolved powder slopped over the side and splattered on the ad. I tried to yank it away, but too late. It was one of those local ads you find printed on the back of a sales register tape, along with coupons for oil changes and ads selling more ad space, and the ink from the front was already bleeding through.

Luckily, before I said something I’d regret, my phone chimed. Saved by the bell…or in this case, the WheelMeal delivery app. “Gotta go,” I said, and left my cousin fuming in the kitchen.

Write something that matters…talk about a low blow.

I jogged down the stairs, lost in my own thoughts, not stepping as carefully as I usually do. Our downstairs neighbor pounded on the wall so hard, the pictures hanging in the stairwell rattled. Mr. Greaves didn’t like hearing footsteps. Or music. Or especially laughter.

Technically, Mr. Greaves was our tenant, so you’d think Sabina and I would be in charge. But because the apartment we’d cobbled together in the attic wasn’t exactly legal, Mr. Greaves used our situation to his advantage to throw shade a normal tenant would never get away with.

All the artwork that used to decorate the main house now hung in the stairwell, stacked railing to ceiling, four or five pictures high, up one side and down the other. It was the easiest way we could figure to store them while we rented out the downstairs.

I paused at the bottom step and looked up at a picture of Uncle Fonzo. It was a Sears portrait taken sometime in the early seventies when hair was side-parted, sideburns were bushy, and fashionable clothing was plaid. Uncle Fonzo wouldn’t let Mr. Greaves walk all over him like we did. But he wasn’t around to put the guy in his place, was he?

Not that Uncle Fonzo was dead or anything. Just that nobody knew where he was. And yet, he was everywhere. From the house, to the car, to the crippling debt.

Since Sabina could walk to work, I drove the car, a powder blue Buick with bald tires and an unfortunate tendency to stall at stoplights. But it was the only car I had, plus it was paid for. And it started, mostly, so I didn’t complain.

While I waited for the engine to warm up, I thumbed open the WheelMeal app and checked the delivery. It was on the east side of Pinyin Bay at the very edge of my zone, and normally I’d let someone else pick it up. But not only did I need the money…I needed time to cool off. I couldn’t afford to snap at Sabina. She was my most solid ally.

The thing was, she knew I was sensitive about my writing. Our whole family knew—and it was no big secret. In fact, if there were people living on the moon, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t heard about the giant fiasco.

My whole life, I’d had a way with words. Not spoken, but written. I’d always known how to set just the perfect tone and evoke any emotion I chose with a well-turned phrase. Everyone held me up to be an aspiring Scrivener, the golden boy, the one with all the talent—the one who’d finally help the Penn family make their mark in the Spellcraft circuit. And then…to be the only one I’d ever personally known to fail the Quilling Ceremony?

Beyond humiliating.

Even worse than the lime green WheelMeal visor I wore to make the deliveries.

I stopped off at Bam Burgers to pick up the order, which was supposed to be ready by the time I pulled up…but of course, it wasn’t. Bam Burgers usually ran late, but tonight, they were in rare form. I opted to wait inside. I burn through less gas that way.

As I crammed myself into the sea of hopeful diners waiting for a table to open up, I glanced up at the ill-conceived piece of Spellcraft that was responsible for all the congestion. To the Handless—the uninitiated—it would just look like a kitschy little piece of artwork—a quick painting of a table with burger, fries and drink, and arched over the top of the scene, the words “Come for the Food, Stay for the Atmosphere.”

But I knew it for what it was. Spellcraft.

Poorly worded Spellcraft, at that. Because of the words the Scrivener chose, no one ever wanted to leave. The waitstaff got stuck refilling drinks all night, and regular customers resorted to carryout. But even the carryouts felt compelled to linger, chatting with old acquaintances or striking up new ones in the lobby. And amid the chaos, harried staff handed out orders seemingly at random. The customers who got home to find the popcorn chicken where the cheese fries should’ve been came back to fix their orders and got sucked right back into the fray.

Could I get away with knocking that failed bit of Spellcraft off the wall and “accidentally” stepping on it hard enough to smudge out the image? Maybe. But it wouldn’t get me my order any faster. Plus, all the Handless would wonder why the WheelMeal delivery guy was flailing around.

I sighed. Funny, how I still thought of myself as a Spellcrafter. Even now that it was obvious the Penn family’s Scrivener talent skipped me entirely.

I’d spent the last year doing my best not to think about it, but sitting there staring at the lousy spell, I couldn’t help but mentally re-Craft the words. Come Hungry, Leave Happy had a nice ring to it. Not only would it encourage repeat business, but once people were done eating, they’d actually make room for more customers.

But what did I know? I was just the guy in the lime green visor.

I got the order with no time to spare and high-tailed it out to the car, half expecting to be caught stepping too loudly and hear Mr. Greaves pounding his complaint somewhere in the distance. On paper, WheelMeal didn’t pay too bad, a guaranteed ten dollars an hour, plus tips.

Unfortunately, you only got that ten dollar guarantee if you met a number of criteria, and one of those was delivering the order in half an hour or less. Not a problem…if the food is waiting for you when you get to the restaurant, like it’s supposed to be. But, like a failed piece of Spellcraft, the “on paper” bonuses were nothing more than a colorful idea and a few nice words.

The tips weren’t really all they were cracked up to be, either. “You’d make better tips if you flirted a little,” Sabina always told me. “You’re cute—you should definitely flirt.”

As if wearing a lime green visor wasn’t awkward enough.

I found my delivery address without too much backtracking and hurried up three flights of stairs. By the time I got to the top, I was winded, but I’d made it, by the skin of my teeth.

Until I stood there in the hallway for nearly three minutes waiting for the customer to open the door.

I gave a polite tap and called out, “WheelMeal!”

“Just a minute,” came a man’s reply—directly from the other side of the door. I didn’t think much of it, initially. For all I knew, he was naked and needed some time to pull on a pair of shorts. Although I didn’t hear any sounds of shorts rustling. But they could be very quiet shorts.

Although, the more I pondered it, the more I thought…wouldn’t you put some clothes on if you’d just ordered food? Maybe the customer had his evening routine down to a science, I decided. Maybe he put in his Bam Burger order and had just enough time to get home and shower before the food showed up.

But if that were the case…why was he right there on the other side of the door? It must be Sabina’s flirting idea that had me convinced I’d caught the customer in the act of pulling up his pants. Would it be weird if I flirted with a guy who was just naked a few minutes ago? I didn’t want to come off like I was desperate—I just wanted a bigger tip.

Needed a bigger tip, was more like it. Because thanks to that crappy Spellcraft at Bam Burger, no way was my hourly minimum gonna happen. Fine. I could flirt. I was perfectly capable of flirting. I’ve been told I have very nice eyelashes.

My app figured out what the customer was doing a split second before I did. I hadn’t yet figured out how to mute all the dumb sound effects that the user interface made—you’d swear they were thought up by a teenaged boy with a lowbrow sense of humor—and so it was with a tinny sad-trombone sound that my phone informed me my delivery was late.

Just as the wah-wah faded, the customer opened the door. Fully dressed. And smirking.

I said, “Did you just make me wait for two minutes so you could mark me as late?”

“Nothing personal.” He grabbed the Bam Burger bag from my unresisting hand. “When your food’s late, you get 15% off your next order.”

He shut the door. No tip. Not even a thank you. I stood there and stared at the closed door and wondered if it would’ve mattered if I’d managed to flirt.

Probably not.

I sighed and trudged down the stairs. Between the lack of a tip and the fact that he’d marked me late, all I’d earn was two dollars for the whole delivery, and I strongly suspected the Buick ate most of that in gas. And when I checked the WheelMeal app to see if there was another delivery I could grab to make the whole outing worth my while, there was nothing.

Unfortunately, the app prioritized drivers who were on time.

Nothing personal.

I slipped behind the wheel of the Buick, logged out of the app, and wondered how it was that my life had taken such a dismal turn. Scrivening runs in families. Both of my parents, my cousin and Uncle Fonzo all had the gift. Three of my four grandparents had it (God rest their souls). And the fourth, Papa Tobar, made such exquisite apple turnovers, no one held his lack of talent against him.

All the odds were in my favor. It was presumed I’d join the family business just as soon as I earned my quill. We were all so sure of my talent, I’d even taken some gap years after college, bummed around Europe with a knapsack over my shoulder, seen the inside of many a youth hostel, and cried over the blue-eyed French boy who proclaimed his undying love but ditched me at the bus station with a stubborn case of mono. Only when my tame bout of wanderlust was exhausted did I come back home….

And discover I was no Scrivener after all.

The smell of the Bam Burger lingered in my car—and something else, too. I retrieved it from the floor. Just a menu that had fallen from the bag, with that terrible Spellcraft slogan front and center: Come for the Food, Stay for the Atmosphere! It wouldn’t influence reality as digital typography on a printed menu, of course. It was just an attempt at pretending the thing hanging in the dining room was a slogan, not sorcery.

I turned it over in my hands despondently, then realized something else was stapled to the bag: a receipt. And while the WheelMeal app prides itself in customer and driver anonymity, the Bam Burger ordering system did not. There was the order: Bam Burger Supreme, no onion, extra mayo, with a side of fries and a diet cola. And there below it?

The customer’s name.

Brad.

Did Mr. Cheater look like a Brad? Yes. I could see it.

And I could see myself lettering that name in my best Scrivener-trained calligraphy.

The thing about Brad, when he acts like a cad, it comes back to burn him…but twice as bad.

Spellcraft doesn’t have to rhyme—but when it does, it’s epic.

It wasn’t the rhyme that was unusual about that particular Scrivening, though, but the inclusion of a proper name. Uncle Fonzo always told me, “If you pen someone’s name in a spell, it’s got just as much chance of working as any other Spellcraft. But actually doing it? Felony. Even if it’s only designed to clear up someone’s pimples. People say it’s a matter of public safety, a precaution against a badly-worded spell misfiring.” He gave me that knowing look of his. “But you and me…we know different.”

“The Handless are scared of anything they can’t control,” I said. So cocky. So oblivious.

“Especially Spellcraft, kiddo. Especially Spellcraft.”

I had no idea what it would be like for my Spellcraft misfire. And I never would. How…fortunate for me.

I tucked away my brief daydream about getting even with Brad where I kept all the rest of my unfulfilled fantasies. There were so many, you’d think I’d have nowhere left to store them anymore. I guess they don’t take up much space. Either that, or I had a vast capacity for disappointment.

I tossed the paperwork onto the passenger seat and figured I might as well head home. Sabina’s remark about writing something important still stung, but we Penns are a tight-knit clan. Hearing about how Brad bilked me out of my ten bucks would be a bonding moment that would leave the two of us united against a common foe. Doubly so considering he hadn’t even tipped.

But as I started up the Buick and peered out at traffic, debating the wisdom of saving a few minutes by pulling a U-turn, the menu beside me settled with a quiet rustle of paper, snagging my attention.

I glanced down and saw it had fallen on its side, with the receipt flipped over to reveal the printing on the back. More ads. A dollar off a car wash. Pedicures, buy one, get one half price.

And a certain greeting card contest with a thousand-dollar prize…with a deadline, I now realized, of midnight.

2

Over the course of a normal day, most people will find themselves needing to write something at least once, even if it’s as dull as a shopping list. But while the majority of adults know how to write, it’s another thing entirely to have a talent for writing.

And that’s aside from being able to Spellcraft.

My family’s shop, the Practical Penn, sat in a strip mall between a dollar store and a carryout place that sold take-and-bake pizzas. Pro tip: you can’t cook those pizzas in a microwave unless you want to give your jaw a really solid workout. Practical Penn’s business hours varied, depending on my mother’s mysterious circadian rhythms—on a bad day, she’s awake several hours before dawn—but it was a safe bet that no one would be there at this time of night.

During my sporadic pitstops home throughout my gap years, I spent my time learning the business end of the shop, since everyone expected that someday it would be mine. It wasn’t a gender thing. Sabina had made it clear since she was in zit-cream and braces that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with spreadsheets and marketing. I might have been full of myself back then, but I’d been more amenable to doing all the boring jobs that came with owning a business…until it became clear that I could never aspire to anything more.

I still had a key. And I still had an office. But in the pit of my gut, I knew that someday my parents would retire, Sabina would need to hire more Scriveners, and I would eventually discover some stranger had taken up residence behind my desk.

For the time being, though, the desk was mine. And I would use it to win that thousand dollars if it was the last thing I did.

Getting into the right frame of mind was a challenge. Every time I thought I found the right words, they slipped away to the sound of a sad trombone. I was overtired and desperate, and I found it challenging to reach for a valentine sentiment that wasn’t trite, forlorn, or downright cynical.

It took every last second I had, but eventually I came up with a phrase that didn’t feel entirely contrived.

Love lets the heart soar free.

I was so wrapped around my own axle I couldn’t tell whether it was optimistic or just plain weird, but time was running out. Ever since I could hold a crayon, it was presumed I’d do everything longhand, so I’m a terrible typist. In fact, I still had the Penn family callus—right hand, middle finger, first knuckle—that resulted from thousands of hours of perfecting my letterforms. I barely had time to call up the Precious Greetings website, peck out the words, and launch the entry before the clock struck twelve.

Okay, nothing actually struck. But the digital clock in the upper corner of the screen went from 11:59 to 12:00 right after I hit send.

Afterward, it seemed like there should have been some sort of fanfare…but there wasn’t. Just me, sitting there alone in the dark, in the office I no longer wanted, yet desperately missed.

If I were a drinking man, it would’ve been the perfect setting for me to break out a bottle of booze, just me listening to the HVAC system wheeze by the dim glow of the emergency exits at midnight. I even knew where my father kept a little something, though I strongly suspected it was peppermint schnapps…and it would take a lot more than a customer failing to tip for me to get drunk on syrupy, boozy mouthwash.

I was so convinced I was completely and utterly alone, though, that when a new email chimed, I jumped so hard I nearly tumbled out of my chair. Rattled, I looked at my inbox and saw the sender was Precious Greetings, and immediately chided myself for being ridiculous. Obviously, no one was sitting there going through the contest entries at midnight. It must be an autoresponder telling me they’d received my entry. Nothing more.

Dear Mr. Penn,

Thank you for your entry to the Greet the Day Valentine contest. We were very impressed with your entry—

Was it just wishful thinking? The more closely I read the message, the less automated it sounded.

—and note that you have a local residential address. Our staff would be interested in meeting you in person.

Tomorrow morning, in fact (or today, technically, since it was now 12:03.) Bright and early. Nine o’clock.

If this was an autoresponder, it was doing a pretty darn good job of looking like an actual email from a real person. And then I saw it was signed by the founder of Precious Greetings himself—Emery Flint.

Very impressed. That’s what the email had said. They were very impressed with my entry. He was very impressed with my entry. I couldn’t recall the last time anyone had been very impressed with me, let alone the CEO of biggest greeting card company in the state, but it was definitely sometime before my Quilling Ceremony failed.

The next morning, Sabina had left for work by the time I squeezed out from between the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that divided my “bedroom” from the rest of the attic. I was glad. I know that deep down inside, she wanted what was best for me. And in her fantasy world, that meant me somehow finding a way to take the test again. I’d pen a pithy bit of Scrivening—Second time’s the charm!—and take my rightful place at Practical Penn.

Thing was, I’d never known anyone to fail the Quilling Ceremony, but I’d never even heard of anyone trying a do-over. Failing the first time around was devastating enough, not to mention the fact that I’d ruined the other half of the spell—the precious, magical half.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was dressing for that morning, but I figured it was hard to go wrong with a bow tie. I come from a long line of snappy dressers, after all. With my shoes shined, my tie tied and my dark hair artfully tousled, I headed off to Precious Greetings with butterflies in my stomach and a spring in my step. And I kept my fingers crossed that I wasn’t reading too much into a cleverly worded autoresponder after all.

3

The Precious Greetings Card Company was everything I hoped it would be…and more. It was a lot like a Spellcraft shop, actually, but without the anxiety that the slip of a pen could result in a bunch of customers refusing to leave your restaurant until you chased them out with a fire extinguisher.

No, at Precious Greetings, all they endeavored to create was something to bring a smile to the recipient’s face. Well, the security guard at the gate probably didn’t—but he did check me off a list of preapproved visitors and let me in.

At the building’s grand entrance, the ubiquitous Precious Greetings-sponsored mascot, the Pinyin Bay Perch, greeted the visitors. The 6-1/2 foot tall plushy fish was a staple at all of the city’s sporting events, tourism commercials and mall openings. It never occurred to me the Perch hung out anywhere between appearances. He (or she) waved at me listlessly. I waved back—though I wasn’t sure the person inside the costume could actually see me—and stepped inside.

An imposing front desk barred my way, with an equally imposing receptionist who gave me a “look” when I said I had an appointment. Stern, middle-aged…in fact, she would’ve made a pretty convincing dominatrix. She subjected me to a long, cool scrutiny that had me fidgeting in place, but she did pick up her phone and let someone know I was there. Once she announced my name and said Mr. Flint would see me, I treated her to my most winning smile.

She didn’t smile back. Oh well.

The reception area led to a broad workroom that contained desk after desk of artists and writers painting and penning the next big greeting card hit. I paused for just a moment to soak up the atmosphere. The air smelled of cellulose and India ink, and dust motes floated in the thin rays of sunlight eking through the smudgy skylights overhead. Conversation was muted, and the overall mood was serious, even intense. To the uninitiated, greeting cards might seem like so much fluff—but I could totally tell, these folks meant business.

I must have expected Emery Flint to be larger than life, too, because I was surprised when he came out to greet me and he was the same unremarkable height as me.

But what he lacked in tallness, he made up for in extremely strange hair. Close cut, old-fashioned, and slicked back severely from his brow. A wig? That was my first thought, though if it was indeed a wig, the hairline was really well made.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Penn. I’m sure you’re very excited to get a firsthand look at the top greeting card company in the country.” Actually, I was pretty sure Hallmark held that slot, but I wasn’t about to contradict him. “As you can see, Precious Greetings employs the top echelon of artists and writers. People come from far and wide to ply their trade at my not-so-humble shop.”

Our footfalls rang alarmingly in the cavernous room. In the far corner, a quiet cough escaped one of the employees. A fountain pen scratched on a sheet of paper. In fact, it was so uncannily quiet, the father in I got, the more I worried I might be breathing too loudly.

Mr. Flint led me to an office graced by floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the bullpen, his greeting card domain. The room was somehow gray and somber at the same time as being brightly lit—so much so that my eyes watered a little. But he could see every last corner of the room beyond, while the employees, should they look up, would mostly be looking at their own reflections.

Beyond the glass door, though, the office was anything but quiet. I’ve never heard—or seen—so much noise condensed into such a small space. Noise…and movement. Because there were more tanks and cages in that room than there were in the reptile room of the Pinyin Bay Zoo. I’d always been soothed by the sound of crickets chirping. But when I realized they were only there to be food for lizards and toads, I found their song less than encouraging.

Interspersed with all the cages, in a mish-mashed jumble, dozens upon dozens of greeting card characters leered out from the cacophony. Easter Bunny. Santa Claus. And, of course, the ubiquitous Cupid.

“Have a seat.” Mr. Flint indicated a very stiff looking chair, then glanced behind me and added, “And don’t mind Yuri.”

I presumed he was talking about the massive white cockatoo grooming itself on a perch beside his desk…until a huge man peeled out from behind a coat rack. Well over six feet tall, shaved head, bulging with muscle and covered in tattoos. The type of guy you’d cross the street to avoid late at night…. Unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case, he had really striking hazel eyes. He wore an off-the-rack suit that could barely contain him. Its fabric stretched precariously across his biceps and chest, and when he folded his arms in front of him, I was worried he’d split a shoulder seam.

“Yuri is head of security here at Precious Greetings,” Mr. Flint proclaimed. “It’s a sorry state of affairs when a greeting card company needs hired muscle. But the theft of intellectual property is always a concern—and Precious Greetings really is that popular.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly, recalling the height of the chain link fence.

Mr. Flint settled behind his desk and steepled his fingers. “Now, just to be clear, you are a member of the Penn family that owns Practical Penn Spellcraft?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t actually work there.”

“No matter, I won’t hold it against you. And Fonzo Penn—you’re related?”

“He’s my uncle.”

“Ah! How’s old Fonzo doing these days?”

“Well, he’s been traveling.” Nice euphemism. “So, I don’t really get to, uh…anyway….”

“Now, this entry you created, it has the mark of some very promising writing.”

I stared hard at his hairline. I didn’t think it was a wig.

“Love lets the heart soar free. The wording is very concise. Does what it says on the tin. Specific enough to evoke the holiday, general enough to appeal to a broad audience. Plus, it’s something I haven’t seen before, and it would pair well with a few different styles of artwork. These are the types of things we look for at Precious Greetings.”

But no one’s hair really was that particular brown, the color of the second darkest crayon in the box. And real hair didn’t have that strange luster.

“Of course, when you have as much experience as I do, you can always tell amateur writing from professional. Please don’t take that as an insult. In the greeting card business, you need to develop a thick skin.”

Or maybe it was just that his eyebrows didn’t really match his hair. They were half a shade lighter and had an almost greenish undertone.

“At any rate, why don’t we move on to the written portion of the test?”

“Test? What test? I thought this was a contest for a greeting card slogan.”

“Oh. Yes. Indeed, it is. But if you don’t take the grand prize, there may be something we can offer you as a runner-up. For entrants with potential, there may be future opportunities, but we need to vet those entries thoroughly. Make sure they haven’t been plagiarized from somewhere on the web. Nasty business, plagiarism.”

“Oh, right. I see.” I shifted in the seat that really was as uncomfortable as it looked. “But I would never….”

“The only way to be entirely sure this greeting was created by you, and you alone, is to administer an in-person test. Surely, you understand.”

Well, I guess with a thousand dollars on the line, I couldn’t afford to say no. “Okay.”

Mr. Flint gestured to Yuri. “An image to inspire another verse from Mr. Penn?”

Wordlessly, the outrageously muscled, tattooed man turned to a folder, drew out a single sheet of heavy paper, and set it in front of me on Mr. Flint’s desk. It wasn’t just any old image. The paper was fine watercolor stock, and the image was an intriguing, gestural piece of work. If I weren’t so baffled by the fact that I was supposed to come up with a greeting card sentiment on the spot, I might’ve had a flashback to my Quilling Ceremony. “Are you sure you want me to mark up this beautiful artwork?”

“It’s just a copy,” Mr. Flint said.

I held up the paper to the light. The texture was definitely that of a richly colored gouache on cold-pressed block. “This is an original,” I said. “I’m sure.”

“It’s a proprietary inkjet technology,” Mr. Flint reassured me. “Entirely new. People are into handcraft these days. You can charge more for a greeting card that appears to be hand-painted.”

Wow, I could swear I was holding an original watercolor.

“Were we to hire you at Precious Greetings, give you a chance on the writing staff, you’d need to follow orders explicitly and learn from constructive criticism. This is my company, after all, and it’s my job to carry the vision. It’s all part of the job.”

And, in fact, one of his eyebrows was slightly higher than—wait, what was that about putting me on the staff? I did my best to block out his weird hair, and leaned forward in my seat. “I’m totally open to criticism,” I said. “Not a confident bone in my body.”

Mr. Flint smiled. One of his eyebrows quirked strangely. “Good, that’s good. I look for employees who are willing to set aside their egos and learn.”

Nope. No ego whatsoever.

If a thousand dollars would be a huge blessing, imagine the impact a permanent, full-time job would have! I was brimming with so many questions I could barely contain myself. But Mr. Flint was unwilling to share any more details until I’d passed this test of his.

He slid a fountain pen across the table, and I turned it around in my hands. Thanks to their potential to leak and blot and otherwise create very inky messes, fountain pens aren’t too common anymore. But I’d used many a fountain pen, since Spellcraft families have a tendency toward exotic writing instruments. Apparently not as exotic as this one, though. Instead of the normal bronze writing nib, this one had a hollow tip that looked an awful lot like a hand-cut quill from a feather. “How unusual,” I murmured. “I’ve never seen a—”

“This will be a timed trial,” Mr. Flint said abruptly, and glanced at his watch. “When you’re ready….”

“But what’s the greeting?” I asked. Mr. Flint seemed puzzled, or at least I think he was. Hard to tell with the way his eyebrows were canted. “Get well soon?” I suggested. “Mother’s Day? Another Valentine?”

The cockatoo gave an edgy chuckle that sounded eerily like a human laugh, though it cut off just as abruptly as it started.

Ignoring the bird, Mr. Flint nodded gravely. “Ah—you’ve passed the first portion of the test. Obviously, you can’t write a sentiment without knowing which occasion it’s meant for!” He laughed a bit too loud, and I forced myself to join in, though mostly I just felt nervous. “Tell me, what does it look like to you?”

I swallowed hard and wondered if this was part of the test as well. I looked down at the painting—and hard to say exactly what it might be, but it was difficult to pull my eyes away. The colors were rich and lush, yet tasteful and subtle. Wet-on-wet technique yielded gorgeous gradations of color, purple to red to orange—while other strokes were hard-edged and defined. I turned it around, unsure which was way was up, but as I considered the beautiful image in its various orientations, eventually I saw, within the deft, colored strokes, a road. “A congratulations card? The type of thing you would send someone when they get a new job?”

Mr. Flint drummed his steepled fingers together, one pair at a time. “That sounds absolutely perfect. Begin.”

Well, okay… What do you say to somebody who gets a new job? Good for you. Now you don’t have to deal with jerks who claim you’re late when you’re clearly on time. Okay, no. That was way too personal.

Or was it?

All the best! Maybe someday you can move out of your uncle’s attic.

No, not that.

Here’s to no longer having to wear a lime green visor.

That one might work if I changed the visor to a name tag, but the tone was all wrong for such a serious painting. Creating greeting cards might not be exactly the same as Spellcraft, but despite the fact that I wasn’t Crafting, I couldn’t shed my inherent respect for a beautiful piece of art. I ran my fingertips over the nubby texture of the paper—just enough tooth to capture the paint vividly—and softened my inner focus. Aside from the obvious hallmarks of success that would mean something to me—living in a real house again; having respect from my customers; waking up to face the day without an impending sense of dread—I let the concept broaden. It had been an awfully long time since I felt successful, but I gave it my best shot.

When I opened my eyes, the painting filled my field of vision, once I let the cluttered office recede into the background, at least. The road could be leaning toward a sunset, retirement, the end of a fruitful career… But I didn’t think so. Something in the way the purple bled into the subtle rosiness of the reds told me this was a sunrise. A beginning. A fresh start. I felt that old familiar tingle in my arm, the one I used to think meant I was Spellcrafting, and I allowed the words to flow.

May your feet set you on the path to success.

I almost second-guessed myself, thinking it might be too preachy, or perhaps too vague. But I’d already penned the words. And so, I simply sat down the scratchy fountain pen and hoped it was enough.

“All done,” I said.

The cockatoo chuckled, then fell silent.

Mr. Flint had been watching me eagerly. He picked up the sentiment, then turned it this way and that. His eyebrows screwed up. Maybe. And then he stood abruptly. “Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Penn.”

“Is that it? When do I know—?”

“We’ll be in touch.”

“If you have any feedback about how I could improve—”

“Yuri will see you out.”

And with that, I suppose I was dismissed. The massive, silent, tattooed man detached from the wall, inserting himself between Mr. Flint and me, and with only his strikingly hazel eyes, gestured toward the door.

Guess it was time to go.

For such a huge man, Yuri walked silently. Maybe he’d had a lot of practice navigating such a stunningly quiet workplace. I’m not sure if it was eagerness I was feeling or anxiety over the prospect of winning the thousand dollars—either that, or one of the available staff positions, and so my whispered words just tumbled out into the stifling silence. “Have there been many other contestants?” I asked Yuri. “Do you think I have a chance? Because greeting cards seem like simple things, but they’re actually pretty difficult to do just right. And if I have competition, I guess it’s best for me not to get my hopes up. And not to toot my own horn, but I think I did pretty well. If that painting was supposed to be a road. Do you think it was a road?”

My babbling had carried us all the way past the receptionist to the front door. Yuri crossed his arms, and beneath his ill-fitting sport coat, muscles bulged hard enough to strain the polyester blend while tattoos peeked out at the collar and cuffs.

“Forget about the job.” Oh…he had an accent. A lyrical Russian accent. “Precious Greetings is not the place for a nice boy like you.” He stepped forward, into my space, and I realized he was wearing cologne. Not a lot of men can carry off a fragrance, but the resinous hint of cedar emanated from him in a deliciously tantalizing whiff, briefly there, then gone. And before I could close the space between us to try and identify the notes of the cologne, he poked me in the chest, sending me staggering back a couple of steps, then pulled the front door of Precious Greetings shut.

The electronic lock gave a loud click.

I stood there, peering through the locked door, searching for his eyes. I thought I caught a glimpse of him looking at me with a cryptic expression on his face that was oddly tender. But then the clouds overhead shifted, and all I could see was my own reflection in the glass. I looked to the Pinyin Bay Perch for guidance, but all he did was shrug.

I thought the interview had been going well, at least until I was done writing the sentiment. And then it seemed like something had shifted. Hopefully Mr. Flint hadn’t thought I’d been cheating last night. What I wrote today seemed pretty promising to me—but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d been guilty of hubris.

Like when I decided to take the Balthazar Expressway to deliver an order of hot wings to the south side. What was I thinking? If that customer marked me late, it wouldn’t be for a coupon—it would be because I deserved it. I finished that thankless delivery, then accepted another. It was either ferry meals all over the city, or face another long day pounding the pavement. And by pounding the pavement, I mean trying to find something on Craigslist that was anything more than a weird pyramid scheme. Eventually, I did manage to deliver a few orders on time, but no matter how eager, friendly, and charming I attempted to be, I didn’t receive more than a three-dollar tip.

Did they not see I was wearing a bow tie?

By the end of a lackluster lunch and a dispiriting dinner, I pulled up to my uncle Fonzo’s house well after dark, barely fitting behind our tenant’s car, which was taking up two spaces, and thought back to the remark Yuri had made—such an odd thing to say—that Precious Greetings was not the right place for a “nice boy” like me.

If not, then where did I fit in?

4

I’m sure anyone born into a family business is expected to take up the reins once they’re old enough to settle down. The Penn family certainly presumed Practical Penn would eventually fall to me. My family is a pretty easygoing bunch. My folks had been not simply tolerant, but downright indulgent about me “finding myself.” I’d put off my Quilling Ceremony until I was nearly twenty-six years old—because maybe what I really wanted to do was design men’s outerwear or curate a wine subscription or study contemporary European pottery.

One day out of the blue, though, Uncle Fonzo sat me down and told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to quit screwing around. Life was short. And while Scrivening might not be seen as a particularly cool endeavor, nothing compared to the feel of the Spellcraft tingling down your arm.

Uncle Fonzo was my sponsor—not only was he the patriarchal Hand of the family, but he was like a second father. He was the one who’d rented out the gazebo at Parliament Park. He was the one who’d arranged for the most important local Spellcrafters to be there. And he was the one whose Spellcrafting quill would allow the Quilling Ceremony to bring me one of my own.

There was no room for improvisation in the traditional Quilling Ceremony. The words are always the same. Given that I didn’t have to come up with a pithy saying on the spot—and that I’d always presumed I’d be a Scrivener—I wasn’t particularly anxious. A little nervous that my first official Spellcraft would look pretty, maybe. But I’d practiced the letterforms in pencil enough times to ink them in my sleep.

Axioms are axioms for reasons. Pride goeth before a fall.

I accepted my uncle’s quill from the oldest practicing Scrivener in our circuit, Morticia Shirque, and heard the traditional phrase in her gravelly old-lady voice. “Dixon Penn, do you promise to keep the Spellcraft within your own family, to abstain from sharing our secrets with the Handless?”

“I do.”

“Do you acknowledge that words have power?”

“I do.”

“And are you ready to let Spellcraft flow through you?”

“I am.”

She placed the first element of the Spellcraft, the Seen, in front of me. “Then take up the quill of your family’s Hand and Scribe your first Crafting.”

I looked down at the small watercolor—a squiggle, which was probably supposed to be a feather. Practical Penn Seens are notoriously abstract, even to the point of being ugly, but that was a minor aesthetic consideration. What mattered was that they always worked. With the sort of gravity you’d expect for the occasion—but no lack of overconfidence—I penned the traditional phrase, I choose the quill and the quill chooses me.

While eagles were occasionally spotted around Pinyin Bay, they don’t seem inclined to participate in Quilling Ceremonies. No, I’d be more likely to have a hawk or a Canadian goose drop a feather on me. I’ll admit, I was hoping for a swan—despite the fact that I’d never spotted one in the wild—but the quill truly does choose the Spellcrafter. Case in point: despite the fact that they can’t fly, some poor turkey lost a tail feather to an errant breeze during my father’s ceremony and it practically flew up his nose. If you’ve ever heard one of his dad-jokes, you’d definitely agree he couldn’t have found a better match.

I finished the final stroke and set down my uncle’s quill. And with that, all the Scriveners there, plus all their extended families, looked up into the sky expectantly. And looked. And looked.

…and looked.

Sabina was the first one to realize the Quelling Ceremony had failed. She makes this funny strangled sound when she cries. Disbelief rocked Uncle Fonzo—I couldn’t count the number of times he demanded, “What do you think happened?” And as for me, given the fact that I’d spent my whole life worrying that being a Scrivener would prevent me from pursuing other lines of interest, once I realized there was no quill for me, I found myself feeling unexpectedly bereft.

After the debacle, my parents insisted they loved me just as much—but it was clear the Penn family simply wasn’t the same. Uncle Fonzo left on a spur-of-the-moment trip the very next day…and never came back. Every now and then, Sabina gets a postcard from some tacky, oversized roadside attraction—from a giant smiling peanut in Georgia to an oversized moose in Canada. But there was no way to write back and tell him that we missed him. Or that his house was on the verge of foreclosure. Or that every time I picked up a writing implement, I was ashamed I’d let him down.

My disappointment was no longer fresh. But on nights like this, it was definitely persistent.

When I finally got home that night, I trod carefully on the stairs so as not to wake Mr. Greaves, and was surprised to find my cousin sitting up at the kitchenish card table waiting for me. “Where was your last delivery?” she asked with forced lightness. “New Jersey?”

“I doubt the Buick could make it that far.”

Sabina might have pooh-poohed my attempt to win that contest, but it was impossible to stay mad at her. I pulled out a chair, and we both winced as it squalled against the floorboards. We braced ourselves, but there was no ceiling pounding. This time, anyhow.

“Look,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be such a downer before. You’d be great at writing greeting cards—in fact, I bet you’d be the best writer they’ve ever had. You’ve always been good at anything you set your mind to.”

Well, I had been. Once.

“Y’know, Dixon, maybe there’s a reason your Quilling Ceremony didn’t pan out.”

“Right. Because I didn’t inherit the talent.”

“No….” Sabina waggled her finger at me. “Because the Scrivening and the Sight can’t coexist in the same human consciousness.”

Otherwise, I’d be a god…and then I’d really make that guy Brad sorry for marking me late. I sighed. Scriveners were uncommon, but Seers were downright rare. “I think we would’ve noticed by now if I had the Sight. For one, I’m right-handed.”

“Are you? Or did the family just train you to use your right hand because they presumed you’d be a Scrivener like the rest of us?”

“Listen,” I said, “it’s late….”

Sabina ignored my attempt to fend off the conversation. She’d been waiting all night to talk, and she wasn’t going to let me rest until she said what she had to say. “I remember when you came out—it was Sunday dinner and the whole gang was there. I was just fourteen, but I’d always suspected you were gay. You were just too damn nice to be a straight guy.”

“Um…thanks?”

“You hear about families losing it when their kids come out to them, but I’ll never forget what your mom said.”

Actually, neither would I. What a relief. Now you can find yourself a handsome Seer and settle down, so I won’t have to worry about you when I’m dead and gone.

I’m told that Handless families usually want sons, someone to carry on their family name. Not Scriveners—when they have kids, they hope for daughters. The best a male Scrivener could hope for was to pass on his talent. But any offspring who managed to loop a Seer into the family would secure the future of the entire clan.

Neither science nor medicine had ever quite figured out what made Spellcrafters tick, but the working theory was that Scriveners—male or female, always right-handed—carried a recessive gene on the X chromosome, which made the Scrivening run in families. Seers—left-handed and always male—cropped up with no apparent rhyme or reason. It was thought the trait must be a mutation of a Y chromosome, though the specific gene involved was yet to be pinned down. And just like it took two hands to tie a shoelace, it took a Scrivener and a Seer working together to Craft a spell.

Sabina cleared the remains of her cold take-and-bake pizza from the card table and set a blank piece of paper in front of me. “The family never made any assumptions about your sexuality. But Scrivening? They figured it was a given.”

She pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, but the thing inside was no sandwich. It was a piece of foil with a few smears of color on it. “Oh no.” I swallowed hard. “You didn’t.”

“I only took a few dabs.”

“Oh my God.”

“Calm down. No one will even notice it’s gone.”

Hopefully not. Rufus Clahd, the Seer at Practical Penn, was beyond particular. He was around my parents’ age, but somehow his sense of fashion never evolved beyond the eighties—and though his mustache and aviator glasses had come back in fashion, no one would ever mistake him for a hipster. He’d go for days on end without speaking to anyone, then suddenly blurt out the accusation that everyone was ignoring him. If he knew Sabina was not only pawing through his paints, but stealing from him? He could easily pack up his stuff and leave. Seers were rare, and he could find a new job before the day was out. And it might take months for our family to find a new Seer—if we were lucky enough to replace him at all.

My failure to earn my quill was a disappointment, sure, but the family business chugged along without me. If we lost our Seer, though….

“What’s done is done,” Sabina said decisively. “I can’t put the paint back in the tube. So, make it worth my while, Cuz.” She slid a coffee mug full of water toward me and dropped a paintbrush in. “I believe in you. Just try.”

True enough, if Rufus knew his paint had been tampered with, it wouldn’t matter whether or not I dabbled with them now. And while there was no chance whatsoever I’d paint a Seen (since I was most definitely not a Seer), if Sabina saw me try and fail, hopefully I’d never have to hear about it again.

The Sight is mysterious, but it’s hardly complicated. The Seer would dab his brush in paint, clear his mind of all thoughts, and let the magic come to him. I’m sure anyone is capable of making marks and squiggles on a page—that was all Rufus Clahd’s ugly doodles looked like. But only a Seer could capture the elusive gesture it takes to fashion Spellcraft.

I wet the paintbrush, then looked across the card table at my cousin. She’d washed out her fauxhawk, and her peroxide blonde hair hung, straight and fine, in her eyes. She was almost twenty-four, but she looked like a teenager tonight. Vulnerable and young. “What do you want to Craft?” I asked her. “You’re the Scrivener.”

She laughed nervously, as if she could make a joke out of it, but the Crafting she came up with was dead serious. “I want our house back.”

I glanced at the floorboards as if I could see crabby Mr. Greaves sprawled out in the master bedroom where Uncle Fonzo should have been snoring away. It was definitely no joke. Sabina and I both wanted nothing more than to see that moving truck pull up and get the irritated canker downstairs out of our lives for good.

A more frivolous guy would dash off a quick gesture à la Rufus Clahd and be done with the whole thing. But even though I didn’t have the talent myself, I held a deep respect for Spellcraft. Sure, most people thought of the art in the same vein as Magic 8-Balls and Ouija boards, but I saw the Craft as my family’s legacy. And as crappy of an evening as I’d endured, as weary and broke and all-around disappointed as I felt, I couldn’t just phone it in.

I pictured our house as it used to be, with Uncle Fonzo here. Not a silent shell with the two of us gingerly skulking around in the attic, but a home. Full of music and family and the smell of my mom’s famous cheeseburger casserole. I held that feeling, and then I pictured it swelling, lighting my body up from the inside. Starting from my heart, then growing, spreading, until the energy of home reached my hand. I poised the brush above the paper, and Sabina whispered, “Left hand.”

Oh, right. I switched hands, called up my image of our house the way it used to be, then touched the brush to the paper.

Nothing.

Not that I’d expected anything…or, at least, I thought I hadn’t. But even in my failed Quilling Ceremony, I’d felt a little something. Maybe not the “tingle” Uncle Fonzo always talked about, but a spark of excitement when I touched my pen to the Seen. I’d felt it even when the words I’d written fell flat on the page. Even when my words just sat there like so much dead ink.

Now, in our makeshift apartment, I did my best to create a small painting. But I was no artist…especially left-handed. All my life, I’d been exposed to the types of paintings that would light up under a Scrivener’s touch. They weren’t necessarily works of art. But they contained a special “something.” Always. The lopsided house I was currently trying to paint was clearly no Seer’s work. But I dutifully tried, nonetheless. I added a reddish stroke for the chimney and a cheerful yellow rectangle for each window, doing my best to imagine the house as it used to be when Uncle Fonzo was still here, brimming with laughter and light. And I slid the drawing across to Sabina.

Sabina shook the painting dry, then took up her quill, a long raven pinfeather that came to her at the tender age of seventeen at the completion of her own successful Quilling ceremony. Frankly, I thought it bordered on heretical for Sabina to use her quill on my silly left-handed painting that was clearly not an actual Seen. But before I could voice my trepidation, Sabina was already inking her Scrivening.

There’s no place like home.

Phrases become cliches for a reason. Often, they make extremely effective Spellcraft. In this case, though? We were probably lucky that my stupid little painting was as magical as a gum wrapper. Because as Scrivenings went, the phrase was far too inexact to be effective. Not only were no two homes exactly alike to begin with, but there was certainly no place like the half-finished attic where we currently lived. A Scrivening like the one Sabina had just written could very well leave us squirreled away in the attic forever.

“Nice try,” I told her anyway. She didn’t need a lecture on Spellcraft from me.

Particularly since I had no quill of my own.

5

YURI

“How disappointing.” Flint glared at the tiny bit of Spellcraft. “I thought we’d finally found our new Scrivener.”

I shrugged—no answer was often the best answer, and it has never been safe for me to say what I really thought.

America was supposed to be different.

What a joke.

Flint never minded my silence. In fact, I think he preferred it. With no one to contradict him, he could pontificate for hours in his grandiose bubble of self-importance. Meanwhile, I stood by and fantasized about the satisfying crunch his nose would make when it connected with my fist.

Too bad the time for fighting my way out of the situation was long past.

And now I was stuck listening to this.

“Scriveners are a dime a dozen.” Flint waved his hand and the gecko in the tank beside his desk scampered behind its driftwood to hide. “It makes absolutely no sense. Unless the attraction Spell is tapped out.”

It wasn’t. I wanted to shrug—to let him think the Crafting was no good. But my muscles seized up, and the desire to speak burned in my belly. I might be able to hold out for a minute or two, but no longer. I’ve timed it. The quicker I answered, the more natural it would sound, and I was too proud to let him know how deeply I was under his control. Pride was a poor substitute for freedom, but it was all I had. “The Spell is fine.”

Flint tipped back in his chair, which gave off a metallic squeal. Meringue puffed up her yellow crest and imitated the sound. I handed her a peanut from my pocket to shut her up. Once she got going, she’d squeak and creak all afternoon until you provided her with a distraction. Plus, I got some satisfaction from seeing her fling bits of shell around her perch.

Flint ignored her, like he ignored all his acquisitions once the shine wore off. “The kid’s from the Penn family and everything. Their Scriveners run three generations deep. How is it even possible he can’t Scribe?”

My insides clenched as I thought of all the ways that question could have landed. “Genetics,” I said. It was fortunate Flint was so careless with his words—when Dixon Penn Scribed, his right hand sparkled like it was covered in glitter—but anything was possible.

“Just my luck. I somehow managed to pull in the one family member the talent skipped.”

Good thing he hadn’t phrased that statement as a question. The Crafting’s failure had absolutely nothing to do with luck. Once I got a look at Dixon—the way he sparkled with innocence and goodness—there was no way I’d let Flint sink his claws in.

Flint sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let Dolores go.”

I rolled my eyes. “Dolores was so old she could hardly hold a quill.”

“There’s always duct tape. D’you think she’d come back if I offered her a bonus?”

Once Dolores Tran found a loophole in her contract, she’d moved to Maple Heights and changed her phone number, so I highly doubted she was in any hurry to resume her relationship with Precious Greetings. But I couldn’t be absolutely sure.

I shrugged.

“Yuri, are you positive the Spellcraft is still working properly? Reaching halfway around the world for you had to use up a lot of power. Take a better look and make sure.”

I didn’t want to touch the nasty little thing, but I had no choice. Even as I considered shrugging and giving him another bland reassurance that the Crafting was fine, shooting pains sparked along the muscles in my back, and my arms began to cramp. I struggled to turn away, briefly, but it was no use. The only way I could move was toward the Spellcraft.

I pulled it from its place among all the clutter. For such a tiny slip of paper, it was very heavy on my soul. The square of cardstock was the size of a sticky note. The Seen painted on it was a lopsided red arch—a magnet, I supposed—and the Scrivening read: Magic Draws Magic. Dolores’s penmanship was shaky. Her fingers were all twisted with arthritis, but Spellcraft flowed through them just the same. I never learned who the Seer was, but it didn’t matter. Before Flint had Spellcraft in his arsenal, he used trickery and blackmail to get what he wanted. I knew plenty of men like him in Russia. If he needed a Seen, he’d find a way to get one. Just like he’d eventually find a way to replace Dolores.

I held the stiff square of paper to the light, sideways, so I saw it only in two dimensions. Like hot asphalt, the surface of the paper distorted the air above it. “Still good,” I said shortly.

“If you say so.” Flint gave a negligent toss of his hand. “Then put it back where it belongs and update the website with a Mother’s Day contest. There’s bound to be a real Scrivener out there dumb enough to take the bait.”

I tucked the tiny square back into the corner of a mirror frame. The reflection of my eyes in that mirror looked blank. A carefully cultivated neutrality. Bits of Spellcraft were hidden throughout the room, endowing Flint with everything from stamina, to luck, to the ability to stick to his Keto regimen. There was only one Crafting I cared about—the one that stole my will, that reduced me to nothing more than Emery Flint’s puppet. I knew it was there somewhere. But Flint had declared I wouldn’t be able to find it. And thanks to the power of the Casting—of my own damn painting—no matter how hard I looked, it was nowhere to be seen.

6

DIXON

Even though I’d been up early and run myself ragged making deliveries, when my head hit the pillow, I found myself staring sleeplessly at the ceiling slats, thinking about how I might have phrased that particular Scrivening. Home is Where the Heart Is might seem like a cute sentiment, but there’s too much potential for serial killer action. Bless this House was potentially harmless, though in the hands of a clumsy Scrivener, it might leave people sneezing. I could have written Love is the Heart of this Home. Though without Spellcrafting ability behind it, they’d be nothing more than pretty words.

It had been a while since I’d lain awake creating Spellcraft in my mind. I blamed the pop quiz at Precious Greetings for getting the wheels turning again—wheels I’d presumed were permanently stuck. By the third or fourth or twenty-fifth time I checked my email the next morning, I still hadn’t received any word from Precious Greetings. That didn’t stop me from suggesting some new phrasing for the painted road Mr. Flint had shown me in his office.

Enjoy your new journey.

Follow your own path.

Find delight wherever life takes you.

Just to name a few. Because who’s to say that persistence wasn’t another thing I was being tested on. Right?

I started off my day’s deliveries with a tandoori chicken from Curry Favor that left my car reeking of garam masala, but I hardly noticed the smell. My brain was still churning on potential greeting card verses. I checked my phone, and checked it again, but Mr. Flint still hadn’t returned even one of my emails. And then I started worrying that I was coming off a little too eager.

Especially with the one I’d sent in the middle of the night.

My own road, studded as it was with WheelMeal deliveries, was nowhere near as promising as the watercolor painting I couldn’t put out of my mind. I detoured from my latest route and pulled up alongside the Precious Greetings studio. It hulked beneath a lowering gray sky, industrial brick, the opposite of welcoming. But if I was simply persistent and polite, surely Mr. Flint would be willing to let me plead my case. My name was still on the good-list, but unfortunately, I couldn’t make it past the receptionist without a prior appointment.

If my time at WheelMeal had taught me anything, though, it was that there’s more than one way into a building.

I went around back, and sure enough, there was a weathered, sagging picnic table surrounded by cigarette butts. All I needed to do was act casual until someone came out for a smoke, and then come up with a clever excuse as to why I was lingering around outside. Luckily for me, no one has ever been intimidated by me, and so I parked myself at the picnic table, picked a splinter out of my slacks, and waited.

There must’ve simply been too many entries. With a thousand-dollar cash prize, of course there were. And Emery Flint would get back to me just as soon as he’d been through all of them and seen that mine was definitely the best. I checked my email—nothing new. Right. But surely he would get to it soon. And then….

The back door opened with an ominous creak, and I turned. Out trudged the Pinyin Bay Perch, in all its plush, mascot-like glory.

It proceeded to tear off its own head.

The man inside the striped brown and yellow costume was gray. Gray hair, gray stubble, even a somewhat gray pallor. He squinted up at the gray sky as if the dim, overcast light hurt his eyes. And then he shuffled over to the far end of the picnic table, pulled out a cigarette from somewhere on his costume, and lit up.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Dixon.”

The man in the headless Pinyin Bay Perch costume smoked listlessly. “TGIF.”

“Actually, it’s Thursday.”

He took a drag of his cigarette and gave a smoky sigh.

“So…you work at Precious Greetings. That must be exciting.”

The man sniffed a silent laugh. A stream of smoke curled from his nostrils.

“And you’re a professional mascot. That must be a fun job.”

The man said nothing, just shook his head vaguely. Well, I couldn’t really blame him. After all, who would really want to share the lowdown about working at Precious Greetings with a total stranger? This guy had no way of knowing that I was a team player. Supportive, enthusiastic…. Actually, that would make a really good email. I pulled out my phone to compose yet another message to Mr. Flint while the Pinyin Bay Perch stubbed out his smoke, stood up and headed back into the building. I was so involved in my email that I barely had time to register what was happening, but at the last second, I hopped up out of my seat, scrambled up behind the Perch, and managed to sneak my foot in the door just before it closed.

I caught the tail end of the gray man turning down the far end of the hall. He’d taken no more notice of me following him in than he had of me talking to him at the picnic table.

Guess he wasn’t a people person.

I got my bearings, figured out where Mr. Flint’s office was most likely to be in relation to where I was. If I could avoid the dominatrix receptionist, it would be smooth sailing. Casually, I strolled around the perimeter of the quiet workroom, keeping my eye on the reception desk all the while. I was nearly home free when I rounded a corner and found myself face to face with a tall, imposing, tattooed wall of muscle.

Yuri.

He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He wore black leather driving gloves and a tweed overcoat big enough to wrap around me twice, though he could barely button it across his broad chest. In each hand, he held a canvas bag of groceries, bulging with fruits and vegetables. Leafy celery greens, a big purple cabbage, a bundle of parsley, and even a whole pineapple.

“That’s some produce,” I said conversationally.

He rolled his eyes. “The boss is on a juicing kick. Don’t get me started.”

“Juicing. Right. That sounds very healthy. I love juice. Orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice….”

“Stop talking. Unless the next words out of your mouth are a very good explanation as to what you think you’re doing here.”

“I had an idea. Inspiration, really. I’d like another chance at that test. I think I could really nail it.”

“Trust me….” He backed me into the wall, chest to chest, with a bulging bag of veggies blocking my escape from either side and his spicy cedarwood fragrance welling up between us. “You don’t want to nail anything here.”

Oh, I wouldn’t say that.

His fathomless hazel eyes bored into mine, and my heartbeat did a little syncopated flip. I couldn’t tell if he was threatening me or flirting with me. But it must be wishful thinking—the flirting part. Right?

I swallowed nervously. “It’s just that I don’t think I showed myself in the best possible light yesterday.”

“You showed yourself, all right.” Yuri was less than a hand’s breadth away from me, and his closeness was making my knees go all to jelly. He shifted the heavy bags, so he was carrying both in his right hand. A grapefruit bounced out and rolled away in a bid for freedom. “And I’ll tell you now what I told you then. This is not the place for nice boys like you.”

“I’m hardly a boy—how old are you anyway? You can’t be more than a few years older than—hey, watch the sleeves. I had this jacket specially tailored.”

My snappy taste in clothing failed to impress him. Unceremoniously, he grabbed me by the arm, dragged me down the hall, past the formidable receptionist, and out the front door. He didn’t let go until I was at the foot of the imposing gray stairs. “I’m not telling you again,” he said. “Go away. And don’t come back.”

7

Throughout the day, I kept myself logged into my WheelMeal app and managed to do a handful of deliveries—some of them on time. But the whole encounter at Precious Greetings kept gnawing at me. My ideas were good. I knew they were. I was an enthusiastic go-getter. So, what was with the silent treatment?

When I got back home that evening, I stomped up the stairs so hard, Mr. Greaves punctuated each one of my steps with a pound of his own on the other side of the stairwell. But I didn’t have time to worry about him. I was too caught up in Precious Greetings.

I found Sabina surfing the web at the far end of Uncle Fonzo’s couch. It was a hideous plaid thing known as the “davenport,” older than the two of us put together, but impervious to random spills and strangely comfortable. “Something doesn’t add up,” I declared.

Sabina pulled out her earbuds. “Isn’t everything logged in that app? Times, GPS, everything?”

“Not WheelMeal—Precious Greetings.”

“Oh no. You didn’t enter that stupid contest, did you?”

I climbed over the end table and squeezed onto the davenport. Even though no one in our family has smoked since we kids were still in grade school, every now and then, a faint whiff of cigar surfaced. I found it comforting, as if my uncle was still puttering around the house with a stogie clamped between his teeth. “A handful of words, a thousand dollars. Of course I entered that contest. Not only that, but I went to Precious Greetings and met Emery Flint himself.

Sabina snapped the laptop shut and gave me a wide-eyed look. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“No offense, but you’ve always been a total dilettante. If you haven’t been distracted by some other shiny object yet, you must really want this.”

“I do—I can’t stop thinking about it. I even made it to the second round of the contest. But like I said, something just doesn’t add up. Everybody who works there is weirdly standoffish. And he has a security guard, a big Russian guy whose muscles have muscles.”

“Is he cute? Does he have an accent?”

“This isn’t funny, Sabina.”

“You’re such a sucker for accents.”

I ignored the remark. It might be true, but it wasn’t the point. “There’s too much security. Everything is locked up so tight, you’d swear they were printing money, not greeting cards.”

Sabina’s dark eyes flashed, and I knew I’d managed to reel her in. Then again, between the two of us, I’d always been the instigator. That time when she was eight and I was eleven, and the two of us got in trouble for selling fake Spellcraft charms at school? Yeah, that was me. Sabina just got caught up in all the excitement and didn’t stop to think about what would happen once the Spellcraft revealed itself to be a bunch of childish nonsense.

“I’m sure no one gets away with printing money these days,” Sabina said, “what with all the anti-counterfeit measures in place, but I’m sure there are plenty more scammy things you could print. Coupons maybe? Gift certificates?

I didn’t actually think counterfeit items were being printed… Although, given that special proprietary ink they had, maybe they really were doing something that wasn’t on the up-and-up. “Like you said before, more and more greeting card companies are going digital these days. Maybe they had to start doing something shady to make ends meet.”

Sabina nodded eagerly. “And maybe that contest you entered was all part of the scheme somehow. Maybe they were looking for people they could lure into their shady business, and they saw how squeaky clean you are….”

“Not that squeaky clean.” Spellcrafting families did have a reputation for a certain amount of hustle, after all.

“We need to take a look for ourselves,” Sabina decided. She stepped over a coffee table on its side and climbed around an exercise bike with half her laundry hanging off it. “Well, what are you waiting for? Don’t just sit there. Let’s go.”

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time—these things Sabina and I cooked up often do—until we got to Precious Greetings and found the massive chain-link fence surrounding the building closed and locked. We circled the perimeter and discovered a gap between two sections of fencing where the ground had settled. Sabina is a tiny slip of a thing, and she squeezed through the bars like a contortionist. I, however, was not so limber.

“There’s no barbed wire at the top,” she said helpfully. “And it’s not electrified. What are you waiting for? Climb.”

Although there was nobody there to see me but her—that was bad enough. I climbed that fence, albeit with the grace of a drunken three-legged sloth. Sabina had the grace not to laugh…too much.

I dropped the last few feet. My hands smelled like galvanized metal and I’d split the knee on my favorite skinny jeans, but my heart was pounding with more than just exertion. Precious Greetings lay ahead of us, dark and quiet, just waiting to give up its secrets. “The windows look awfully high. How are we going to see in?”

“Don’t worry, Cuz, I got this.” Sabina pulled out her wallet. Behind the various maxed out credit cards was a tiny slip of paper. Thick. Textured. With a watercolor rectangle…and some hand-drawn lettering.

“You carry a Scrivening with you?” I asked. “If you ever got arrested, the judge would have a field day with that.” Spellcraft might be technically legal. But law enforcement went hard on anyone who kept it on their person.

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s not like we’re going to get caught.”

I recognized Uncle Fonzo’s calligraphy immediately. It was big and bold, and he crossed his T’s with a certain flourish. It read: Persistence opens all doors. I supposed that rectangle could be seen as a door… Among other things. Definitely Rufus Clahd’s work. “When did your father give you that?”

“After the fourth or fifth time I lost my keys and woke him up after midnight. Pretty handy, huh?” She felt all around the doorjamb, whatever she could reach, and poked and prodded the bulletproof glass door panels.

“That might work with a flimsy home lock,” I said.

“A door is a door.”

“This was a bad idea.”

“Persistence,” she said. “It’s genius, when you think about it. Because otherwise, doors would just be flying open left and right as I walked by. But the way Dad Crafted this, I’ve got to do some fiddling first.” And fiddling she did. She rattled and shoved and jiggled, but while I was discouraged, Sabina simply kept trying. And just as I was tempted to call it a night and go back to the Buick, I heard a tiny, yet satisfying click.

“Ta-da!” she said happily.

“That thing really works?”

She grinned. “Like a charm.”

“Then how come you made me climb that stupid fence? Was it just to see me squirm?”

“No, silly. The fence is closed with a gate, not a door.”

Well, she had me there. Spellcraft could be really persnickety.

We crept past the reception desk, and I stole a look at the family photos tacked discreetly to the bottom of the stern receptionist’s computer. She was in a few of them, but only holding up big puffball of long-haired guinea pig for a selfie. Others were of the rodent, solo. In a tiny cowboy hat. Eating a stalk of celery. Lounging in the grass in a glamour shot pose.

Interesting. But it shed no light on Precious Greetings. “What is it we’re looking for, exactly?” I asked.

“It’s like porn, Dixon. We’ll know it when we see it.”

We crept into the workroom, row upon row of desks all silent beneath the yellow safety lights by the exits. Practical Penn had a similar silence late at night after my parents clocked out. And yet, there were subtle differences. Rufus Clahd’s desk was a riot of paint and color. Notebooks, pens, and other office supplies littered the various workstations. Half-done projects lay everywhere.

But not at Precious Greetings. Every desk was as clean as if it had just been hauled in from the showroom.

“Does anyone actually work here?” Sabina asked.

Hopefully so. Otherwise, I’d fallen victim to a frighteningly realistic hallucination. The two of us circled around one of the desks to get a better look at it. I captured a few eraser crumbs on my finger. “Look at this—someone’s been here.”

“Then they must lock up everything at the end of the day. Funny that they’re more careful with their greeting cards than we are with our Scrivenings.”

Half-done Spellcraft wouldn’t do anyone any good. Maybe there was more black market value to a partially done greeting card.

“Just keep looking,” Sabina said. “Anything might be important. Once we take a good look around, we just have to connect the dots.”

Funny how hard it is to locate a dot when you simply don’t see any. But while I couldn’t see much, I did hear something. The gentle scrape of shoe leather on floorboards.

I glanced up just in time to see a figure emerge from the hallway, safety light glinting off his oddly-quirked eyebrows.

I grabbed Sabina’s arm and yanked. She looked up, startled, and gave a tiny squeal. Then we both ran like all get-out.

The broad, empty desks formed a maze in the dim safety light, and we scampered through it like a couple of long-haired guinea pigs in cowboy hats. We spilled out the far end and sprinted toward the door. I heard the other knee of my jeans rip—at least they were even now. And, bonus! I could bend my knees a heck of a lot better. We outpaced Emery Flint easily, being both younger and fueled by terror—Sabina with a not-so-legal Spellcraft in her pocket, me mortified at the probability of him recognizing me. We were well ahead of him when we got to the fence and Sabina squeezed her way through. But as she did, I realized something. I would get over my mortification a lot more easily than she would do a jail sentence for the Scrivening that got us through the doors.

“Come on, Dixon,” she whispered breathlessly.

With a sad smile, I pulled the car keys out of my pocket and handed them through the chain-link.

“What is this?” she snapped. “Climb.”

I shook my head. “He’s right behind us. And there’s no sense in us both getting caught. Go.”

Sabina would’ve stayed—she’s loyal to a fault. But I clasped her fingers through the chain-link and said, “Please? For me? Go.”

“Jerk,” she muttered. But by the time Emery Flint caught up with me, the Buick’s tail lights were receding through the trees.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Mr. Flint said, “and no one needs to get hurt.”

Dutifully, I surrendered, and a flashlight beam played over my face. “Wait a minute. Dixon Penn—is that you?”

I’m sure the wince I gave him in return was very becoming. “Just following up…did you get my email?”

Mr. Flint dropped the flashlight beam so it was no longer shining directly in my face. I tried to back up. The chain link fence behind me bowed a little, but held firm. “I could call the cops and have you prosecuted for trespassing.”

“I’m sure the cops don’t want to be bothered over a simple misunderstanding. Honestly…I was just really pumped up about that contest.”

“You don’t seem to be able to take no for an answer—so let’s settle this once and for all. One more test. And if I’m not blown away, then you stop pestering me for good. Deal?”

I was getting another chance at the thousand bucks? I could barely contain myself. “Deal!”

He pulled out his phone and made a quick call—I need you at the office. Yes, now—and then walked me back to the workshop with a firm hand on my elbow. Inside the menagerie, the animals I’d seen before were asleep, while some new creatures had come out of their plastic foliage—a huge moth fluttering against the side of its tank; a hedgehog rummaging through his wood chips; a troupe of tiny frogs the size of my thumbnail that filled the office with a midnight chorus. I attempted to charm Mr. Flint by asking questions about his exotic pets, but he had one word for me, and one word only. “Sit.”

I sat.

Behind me, bird toenails clacked. The massive cockatoo pulled its head out from under its wing in annoyance, frilled its yellow crest, and began gurgling like a backed up water fountain. It was a disconcerting sound, but it filled the awkward silence until the door opened, and Yuri stepped in.

He was dressed in another suit that strained across his broad shoulders, this one tobacco brown, his ubiquitous leather gloves, and a slightly wrinkled dress shirt that couldn’t quite button around his thick, muscular neck. I knew just the place to find clothing in unusual sizes. But judging by the disgruntled look he aimed at me, I suspected he wasn’t interested in the name of my tailor.

“What is this?” he said…the accent was truly droolworthy.

“The Penn boy has convinced me to give him another chance at the exam.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Yuri said—to his boss, or to me? “You already saw he’s not…qualified.”

“And yet, he just can’t seem to stay away. That tells me he might have what it takes after all.” Mr. Flint swept a hand through his hair—if it was a piece, it was truly good...except the way the color didn’t quite match—and then flicked open a binder.

“Fine.” Yuri snapped. “I’ll go get him a picture.”

“I don’t think so.” Mr. Flint was taking some kind of tone, though I had no idea what it might mean. He pulled a square of watercolor block from the binder and slid it across the desk to Yuri. “I’d like something fresh. Here. And Now.”

Yuri was glaring so hard at his boss that when he reached into his pocket, I half-expected him to pull out a sockful of pennies and whap Mr. Flint upside the head. But what he came up with instead was a tiny metal box, scuffed and battered. A miniature paint set—one that had clearly seen plenty of wear and tear. The paints were mostly used up, some only thin slivers of pigment clinging to the edges of the pans, and the brush was smaller than his index finger.

Still glaring, Yuri took up the paintbrush in his gloved hand, grabbed the cockatoo’s water bowl and dipped the bristles. “What is the sentiment?”

Flint’s right eyebrow canted alarmingly. “How about a wedding? The type of card you’d give someone as they’re embarking on a fresh, new relationship…one that will last a lifetime.”

Yuri and swirled the tiny brush in a pan.

“Without the gloves,” Mr. Flint said.

Yuri glared even harder and removed his gloves. His hands and fingers were covered in tattoos. I tried to read the words inked across his fingers but gave up when I realized the letters were Cyrillic. But then I saw something much more personal and telling: the colorful stain of paint pigment around his nail beds.

“Left-handed,” Flint added.

Maybe Yuri’s just ambidextrous, I told myself. But the way my pulse was going haywire—the way the very air in the room seemed to crackle with anticipation—I could hardly deny what my heart already knew.

I was in the presence of a Seer.

8

Staring at Mr. Flint the whole while, Yuri swirled the brush in a pan of brown paint that was little more than a crust in the corners. He scowled so hard his thick eyebrows drew entirely together, and then he placed the brush on the paper—left handed—and swept it across in a graceful stroke

Mr. Flint planted his hands on his hips and looked down at the small painting eagerly. “A knot? How…romantic.”

“Maybe you would prefer a ball and chain.”

Flint chuckled stiffly. “Russian humor. Ha ha. No, I’m sure this will do quite nicely.” He pulled a heavy keyring out of his pocket and selected a tiny key. He opened his top drawer, pulled out a metal cashbox which he opened with another key. Inside that was a locked bankers bag—yet another key. And once that was unlocked and unzipped, he withdrew a silk-wrapped bundle which he conferred to reveal…a fountain pen.

The same pen I’d taken yesterday’s test with—the fountain pen with the nib that looked suspiciously like a feather quill. Obviously because it actually was a feather quill. A quill that had once belonged to a Spellcrafter.

It’s Spellcrafter tradition to bury the dead with their quills—at least that’s how my grandparents were sent off. But I suppose a desperate family could stand to make a few bucks by selling one. It didn’t seem like there’d be much of a market, though. Spellcraft was genetic, passed from parents to children. It’s not like you could just pick up a quill on eBay, watch a few YouTube videos, and get Crafting.

At least, I didn’t think so.

As soon as Mr. Flint unwrapped the fountain pen, Yuri snatched it away. There was a red dot of color on each of his cheeks, and his eyes roiled with fury. He was so angry he was shaking. And when he turned to hand the pen to me…he dropped it on the floor.

“Idiot,” Flint yelled.

Yuri bent to retrieve the pen, and snapped, “It’s fine.” And maybe it was. But while he was crouched over, out of Mr. Flint’s line of sight, he slipped another fountain pen from his sleeve and tucked away the one that had been kept under lock and key. With a look in his riveting hazel eyes I can only describe as pleading, he handed me the switcheroo and said, “Good luck.”

Obviously, he didn’t want me to Craft anything for Mr. Flint—and given how hinky the guy was acting, I could see why. But all the subterfuge was unnecessary, since I’d never Scribed a word in my life. At that point, all I wanted to do was jot down some kind of semi-coherent sentiment and get the heck out of there without anyone calling the cops.

Unless the thousand dollars was still on the table…. No, there was no thousand dollars. Was there? Probably not.

“Well?” Flint said. “It’s not getting any earlier.”

Right. I settled my butt cheeks in the seat, sat up straight, cupped my hand around the tip of the fountain pen to disguise the fact that it was not the modified nib, and penned the first phrase that popped into my head.

A Perfect Union.

As Scrivenings went, it wasn’t bad. No loopholes for things to go horribly wrong, like the Bam Burger spell that forced them to pry their customers off the tables with crowbars. Really, I would’ve made a pretty good Scrivener…if it weren’t for the fact that the elusive Spellcrafting “tingle” my uncle told me about was entirely absent.

Then again, what could I expect when I was writing with a mundane pen—which Yuri snatched away from me, and deftly palmed. I’m not sure which quill made it back into the locked bag in the locked box in the locked desk. All I knew was that all eyes were on the fake Scrivening…which Mr. Flint plucked off the desktop with gusto. He held it up triumphantly and asked me, “Who do you work for?”

“Um…WheelMeal?”

One of his eyebrows twitched. With pointed emphasis on a different word, he asked, “Who do you work for?”

I shook my head helplessly and repeated, “WheelMeal.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Look,” I spluttered. “I’m not proud of it, okay? But I’ve put in applications all over town and it was the only place I got past the first interview.”

Before Flint could ask the question any more weirdly, Yuri said, “I told you he was no Spellcrafter. If he carried the talent, do you think his family would have him delivering burritos?” He plucked the paper from his boss’ grasp and tossed it on the desk as if he was dealing a particularly odious hand of poker. “There’s no magic here. Satisfied?”

“If you know what’s good for you,” Mr. Flint said to me, “you’ll get out of here and never come back. No more phone calls. No more emails. I don’t want to see your pathetic, hopeful face here ever again. Got it?”

“So, what you’re saying is, I didn’t win the prize?”

Flint rubbed his face in his hands. When he looked up, one of his eyebrows was slightly lower than the other. He gestured to Yuri and said, “Toss this useless nitwit—get him out of my sight.”

Yuri hauled me up out of the seat by my armpit and wasted no time dragging me toward the door. My feet were hardly touching the ground, bicycling along without actually propelling me forward. But Yuri didn’t really need my help. For such a big guy, he moved really fast.

Before we crossed the threshold, though, Flint told me, “One peep about this to anyone, and you’ll regret it. Remember, we know where you live.” I wasn’t so sure I believed that…until he added, “You wrote it on the entry form. Oh, and Yuri—just in case the kid gets any funny ideas about talking, make sure you give him a good pounding.”

My armpit was really smarting by the time we got through the bullpen, but I was so terrified, I barely noticed. “That pen he had under lock and key—was that an actual Scrivener quill? It looked like a quill. Can I see it? Because I’ve never seen anyone modify—”

“Stop talking.”

“It’s almost like he thought I was a Scrivener, y’know? As if I’d be driving for WheelMeal if I could be Spellcrafting instead—”

“Stop. Talking.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just nervous—you can’t blame me for being nervous when you’re—”

Yuri spun me around and slammed my back into the wall beside the reception desk. The photos of the guinea pig trembled. He mashed his huge hand over my mouth—it smelled of leather. “Listen to me, Dixon, and listen good. We need to get out of here before he gives me any more orders. Get it?”

I nodded and said, “Got it.” The words were pretty muffled.

Yuri dragged me out the door and down the stairs, then shoved me into the passenger seat of a battered pickup truck. The gate was open. Gravel kicked up as he floored it and put as much distance as possible (as quickly as possible) between us and Precious Greetings. And while I had a million and one questions, by that point I was so baffled, I no longer knew what to say.

You know the type of person who talks just to fill the silence? That was definitely not Yuri. He gripped the wheel tightly in his tattooed hands, glaring hard at the road ahead of us. Seething, he stuck to the back streets, guided mostly by moonlight and instinct. Pinyin Bay is not a huge city, though the outskirts sprawl into patchy expanses of bluffs on one side and cornfields on the other three. Yuri drove toward the water. Over the summer, it would be bustling with tourists who were too frugal to make a trip to the ocean. But in February, the eponymous Pinyin Bay was entirely deserted.

Back at Precious Greetings, I thought Yuri had been helping me, at least that’s how I’d interpreted the look he gave me when he bent over and switched the pens. But now? Maybe I should’ve been less turned on and more freaked out. Why bring me to a deserted beach if not to fit me with a pair of concrete shoes? When he slammed the car into park and killed the engine, I said, “It’s a little chilly for a swim, so I’m just gonna—”

Yuri climbed out, stomped around to the passenger side and yanked open the door. “Get out of the truck. And don’t make this any harder than it already is. It will only be more difficult if you struggle.”

My life flashed before my eyes—mainly the part where I wasted so much time delivering food when I could’ve been doing pretty much anything else. What a disappointment. “Listen, you don’t have to do this.”

“Yes. I do.” He grabbed the entire back of my shirt in his meaty hand and hauled me up a walkway toward a tidy row of beach houses. They were tiny clapboard things, touristy vacation cabins with colorful gingerbread trim tacked around the windows and roofs, but shuttered with utilitarian plywood for the winter…all of them except one.

Yuri shoved open the door and dragged me in behind him. There was no wheelbarrow or sack of concrete—what a relief—but the interior was still nothing like I expected. Sure, it contained all the sorts of kitschy, beachy nick-knacks you’d expect to find in a tacky weekend getaway cabin. But they were all piled in the far corner in an unceremonious heap.

The rest of the dinky beach house was spartan. One room, none too large, served as living, eating and sleeping quarters, plus a bathroom off the side that was so narrow, Yuri must’ve had to back in and hope he didn’t need to turn around. The bed took up most of the floor space, made up tight with a woolen army surplus blanket and a single flat pillow. I got up-close and personal with the bed when Yuri pitched me across the room like a bag of trash aimed for the top of an overflowing dumpster. I bounced once, then settled, staring up at the cedar-paneled ceiling in a daze.

I have taken a punch exactly one time in my life. I was eight. And Melissa Dombrowski’s seven-year-old fist packed a huge wallop—though when little Sabina joined in the fray and threw dirt in her eyes, Melissa cried a lot harder than I did.

At any rate, I’m not sure if it was the flood of adrenaline that preceded my imminent thrashing that inspired a string of associations, or if bouncing off the mattress had managed to shake an idea loose.

Get him out of my sight…check.

Toss him…ditto.

And give him a good pounding.

I swallowed hard.

Yuri had removed his jacket, presumably to keep me from bleeding all over it, but if I was right about my suspicions, maybe the situation had another way out. “Say, Yuri.” I thought I sounded pretty calm for someone who’d very nearly mastered flight. “Do you want to do every last thing Mr. Flint tells you to…or do you have to?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he claimed. Not only was his delivery entirely unconvincing, but when I watched him really carefully, I could’ve sworn I saw the subtle glimmer of Spellcraft dancing along his lips.

Either that or he was wearing shimmery lip balm. But he really didn’t seem like the type.

I eased myself off the scratchy blanket and sauntered up to Yuri as my best charming self—not that being charming had gotten me very far lately, but there was no time to dwell on that. I looked up at him through my eyelashes in a way that was anything but demure, and said, “I’m on board with the pounding…so long as you still respect me in the morning.”

His hazel eyes went wide, and for just a second, I thought I might have entirely misread the way he’d been looking at me. But then his nostrils flared, and when he grabbed twin fistfuls of my shirt, it wasn’t to pitch me across the room this time, but to drag me into a deep, searing kiss.

Flirting has always been a little hit-or-miss for me, and that moment when I realize someone likes me back is always filled with a squirmy and precarious eagerness. There’s always the chance, however slim, that the body language, the banter, the pheromone cloud—or whatever subtle clue I think I’ve picked up on—was nothing more than my own wishful thinking. When Yuri kissed me, not only was I flooded with relief, but with yearning.

Sure, I’d manage the occasional hookup now and then. But I hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since undergrad, a relationship that fizzled when we tried to take it long-distance, though even now he’ll occasionally throw a “like” my way on Instagram. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with someone. Settling on my futon at night, staring up at the rafters and wondering how I’d ended up where I was? Beyond lonely. But how could anyone possibly take me seriously—a college-educated delivery boy who lived in an attic—until I turned my life around?

I might be trapped in a truly underwhelming circumstance, but Yuri was trapped in Spellcraft. Which made my own situation seem a heck of a lot more surmountable. Not only that—but it gave me the chance to play the hero for a change. Yuri searched for words, then sighed in frustration. Obviously, he couldn’t talk about it—but that was fine. I’ve been told I’m able to talk enough for everybody.

I drew him down to the edge of the mattress and knelt beside him, facing him with my whole body, and took him by the shoulders—wow, they were solid—then told him, “Listen, Spellcraft can be tricky, but it’s not set in stone. People need misfired Craftings untangled all the time.” Of all the Penns, Uncle Fonzo was actually the most adept at Recrafting a Spell, but even so… “I’ve got a family full of Scriveners who can turn this around.”

“Certain things are not so easy,” he said under his breath.

“Well, sure.” I traced the edge of his ear with my fingertip and he shivered. A black smudge of ink had leaked from the fountain pen and wicked into the callus on the knuckle of my second finger. You’d never know I hadn’t picked up a real pen in months. “Nothing worth doing ever is.”

I trailed my ink-stained fingers down his jaw and turned his face toward mine.

“Now, I know you can’t confirm or deny anything, but if you truly are compelled to follow Mr. Flint’s orders to a tee...you won’t be able to think straight until you serve up my pounding.”

“This is not a game,” he said raggedly. His pupils had dilated and his whole body was tense.

“You’re right.” I slid my hand down his broad chest and fit my mouth against his, speaking in a whisper against his lips. “It isn’t.”

9

As much as all the major elements of my life had conspired to leave me mired in discouragement, I’m really an optimist at heart. Case in point: Sabina teases me relentlessly for keeping an extra-large condom stashed in my jacket pocket.

But who’s laughing now?

Actually, not me. I was too busy having my back exfoliated on the world’s roughest blanket…and loving every deep, shuddering thrust. The tiny cabin was chilly, but Yuri radiated so much body heat it warmed up fast. And as we moved together with my legs clasped around his lower back and our bodies grinding together, we even managed to work up a sweat. I wished it could last forever—or at least all night—but I was so taken by the emotion in his eyes, I couldn’t help but be swept away in the heat of the moment. If I’d figured my lousy living situation took me off the market, Yuri must have despaired of ever enjoying another human touch. And yet, there we were. Moving together in that age-old rhythm, reaching not just for satisfaction…but connection.

I’d always thought there couldn’t be anything worse than failing a Quilling Ceremony. But being forced into a magically indentured servitude, Spellcrafting under duress? I’d rather deliver gyros for chump change.

I’m a sucker for big, brawny guys anyhow—but add that spark of intelligence, some roughness around the edges, and a hint of magic? Yowsa. Good thing I wasn’t on top—I would’ve finished before we even got started. And by the time Yuri dug his big hands into the rough blanket on either side of my head, balled it up in his massive fists while his whole body bucked into me and his breathing staggered, I was flying high enough to get off from nothing but the sweaty brush of our bellies.

Even though we were both wrung out and well satisfied, I felt a pang of loss when Yuri pulled out and rolled off me. That, and a momentary stab of alarm. While the two of us did the horizontal tango, he’d well and truly rocked my world—but what if he’d only been following a magical directive? If I’d taken an already bad situation and used it to my advantage, I’d never forgive myself.

Maybe I should’ve just let him beat me up.

Yuri glanced over at me. “What is this face?”

“Just…free-floating anxiety.”

He cupped my jaw, then ran his thumb along my lower lip…and I hoped my worries were for nothing. Because yes, he had to “pound” me. But nothing required him to touch me afterward.

“Dixon. I need you to write something. Will you do this for me?”

Writing? That would be no problem. It was obvious, though, that what he wanted was for me to Scribe. “I know you can’t say it, not in so many words. But what you’re asking me to do? I would if I could, but I simply haven’t got the gift. The talent runs in my family, but it managed to skip me. And that’s just the way it is.”

Trailing a caress across my chest that left me shivering in the cedar-scented dimness, Yuri salvaged his jacket from the floor, pulled out the modified fountain pen, and pressed it into my hand.

“Yuri….”

“Try,” he murmured. “For me.”

He poked through my pockets and came up with a stray receipt, then dug out his battered metal paintbox and slipped on a pair of glasses off the nightstand. (Glasses? As if he could possibly be any more adorable.) Perched naked on the edge of the mattress, hulking, tattooed and criss-crossed with old, faded scars, Yuri was the absolute picture of concentration. He smoothed the receipt over his knee, dampened the tip of the minuscule paintbrush on his tongue, and captured a trace of gouache.

On YouTube, I’ve watched Seers create miniature scenes so detailed it looked like you could step right inside and inhabit them. The recordings were time-lapsed, and spanned hours, even days. In person, I’d watched Rufus Clahd paint his misshapen, clunky strokes that somehow managed to capture enough magic to Craft with. But watching Yuri work was fascinating.

He peered at the slip of paper with a grim intensity, sifting through his internal landscape, filtering the image, perfecting it. And only when he fully grasped the essence of what he wished to convey did he touch brush to paper. As gestures went, it was bold. All-in. And at first I thought it might be nothing but a gray stroke on a white field.

But then I looked closer.

The stroke itself was too dry to be solid, and where the sable of the brush had split, gaps appeared in the paint. But Yuri had varied the pressure so those gaps opened and closed like tiny white islands in the stroke. In the center, he’d lifted off entirely, allowed the paint to spatter, then continued the stroke to the other side of the receipt. He handed it to me. I stared for a moment, and then what I was actually seeing clicked.

Not just an artfully-rendered chain—but a broken one.

As a rule, Seers call the shots. And if a client wants them to Craft something that rubs them wrong, all bets are off. How long had Yuri been bound to Flint, forced to See whatever Craftings were demanded of him? He couldn’t tell me, not in so many words. But in the simple gesture of that chain, I saw it must have been quite a while. “Even if I had the ability to Scribe, whatever it is that’s holding you back came first. In the hands of a good Scrivener, maybe it could be unmade. But I’ve never heard of one Crafting being negated by another.”

“I knew a man in the old country who could do it. The volshebstvo was strong in him.”

Yuri must’ve missed the part where I held no vols…omething at all.

Or maybe it just felt better to hope than to admit defeat. He took my hand in his and ghosted a fingertip across the first knuckle of my middle finger. His cuticles were stained with pigment, my callus with ink. It was the match my mother had dreamed about ever since I defied the dinner table to give me flak about my big announcement. A Seer and a Scrivener. But this Scrivener had no talent, and the Seer was magically bound to someone else.

Yuri took my hand in both of his as if it was something fragile and precious, and said, “Please. Try.”

I’m not religious. But it felt profane to take up the mangled remains of another Scrivener’s quill and pretend to Scribe onto an actual Seen. Even so, with Yuri watching me, brittle with hope, I felt I had to at least make the effort, even if it was only to show him that what he wanted simply wasn’t possible. We could bring the Seen to one of my family members who actually had it in them to Craft, but none of them had ever undone someone else’s Scrivening by Crafting something new. Not even Uncle Fonzo.

I pulled on my jeans and took the receipt over to the countertop of the tiny kitchenette. Once I brushed away a few crumbs, I smoothed the paper flat. It was tempting to simply tear off the bandaid—write the first thing that popped into my head and declare, “See? I told you it wouldn’t work.” But I’d have to look into Yuri’s earnest face as I said it. And so, I couldn’t just pretend to try.

I shook out my writing hand, took a steadying breath, and cleared my mind until all it held was the image of the breaking chain. So much easier than trying to make sense of one of Rufus Clahd’s distorted blots. I could practically see it coming to life, a painted chain pulling taut with a quiver—and snap! Both sides fall to the ground. It wasn’t just my overactive imagination—it was the power of Yuri’s painting.

What a shame to waste it on such a hopeless endeavor. But even as I despaired, words floated to the surface of my mind in that way they occasionally do, when I used to practice with the expectation I’d ace my Quilling Ceremony and take my place in the family business. I was so caught up in the fantasy that we’d actually create something that I felt the tingle in my writing hand—the one that meant nothing more than wishful thinking—as I penned the words: Free in Body, Mind and Spirit.

There were too many strikes against us. Even had I actually been a Scrivener, it was a long shot to hope any new Spellcraft could override what came before. I gave Yuri a sidelong glance just in case some miracle happened, and by the strength of his Seen alone, a few hopeful words could set him free. He picked up the receipt, stared at it—attempted to absorb it. “Nothing.”

My heart sank. I snatched the paper from him and balled it up, but he stopped me. “Just hold onto it.” He tucked the wad into my jeans—right into that tiny little pocket where nothing really fits. “A little something to remember me by.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I told him. “I’m going back to find the Crafting. The only way is to unmake it.”

“Don’t be stupid. Go back to your shop and forget about me.”

No. Despite the fact that I couldn’t help Yuri myself, I was determined to undo whatever malignant Spellcraft had been done. Moral, upright people tend to look askance at Spellcraft. Even when it’s done to the utmost ethical standards, people see it as cutting corners, like buying a cake at a grocery store and claiming it’s your grandma’s recipe.

Spellcraft might influence, but it should never command. No shop worth their salt would actually Craft something that impinged upon a specific person’s freedoms. So, if we could just get our hands on the Crafting, someone in my family would surely be willing to unravel the magic.

“Can you tell me what happened to the Scrivener who wrote the Spell that’s holding you?” I ventured.

Yuri’s jaw worked, but he didn’t answer.

“Okay, maybe not. But whatever the reason, if Flint is trawling for a Scrivener, it means someone else runs the risk of getting scooped up under false pretenses. Probably someone I know. I might not have inherited the gift—but I’m not Handless. Scriveners are still my people.”

“You are determined to go back to Precious Greetings.” It was more of a statement than a question. “No matter what.”

“I’m just not willing to walk away from this.” Not if it meant leaving Yuri behind.

“The next time Flint gives me an order, he will not be so sloppy about it.”

“Then we’d better make sure there is no next time.”

10

YURI

Back in Russia, where every gay person is a “pervert” who’s fallen victim to a pedophile’s propaganda, this was how I always imagined it would be once I got to America. A society swimming in gallons of soda and covered in big box stores? Sure. But somewhere I could be who I really was without fear of finding myself on the wrong end of some corrupt policeman’s nightstick.

Except I wasn’t really free. I’d just experienced a few moments of something that disguised itself as freedom. And all the while, I was only skirting the edges of Emery Flint’s commands.

Dixon was the first man I’d made love to on American soil—and if that was the only thing we shared, it would be plenty. But he was also the first man to put his lips to mine like his whole heart was behind the kiss. And the first one to break in pleasure at just the feel of me inside his body.

Maybe this was what it was like to grow up without stigma and shame.

Though when I looked at Dixon and saw the fierceness in his dark eyes, I knew it was more than just a different set of circumstances.

He was special.

Unfortunately, Emery Flint was also in a class of his own. I thought all Americans were gullible and soft—chum in the shark-infested waters of reality, bobbing in the waves, waiting to be gobbled up.

Again, I was wrong.

Every time I tried to tell Dixon he was in danger—to get as far away from Emery Flint as possible—my tongue froze, and the words died before I could speak them aloud.

As we approached the building, I tried to figure out some way to warn him without actually speaking the words. Euphemisms are powerful things. But even those locked me up tighter than a jar of paint with the lid crusted on. And all I could do was sit in my dread, and hope I could manage to distract Flint well enough for Dixon to get away.

“So, what’s the deal here?” Dixon asked.

Precious Greetings was nothing more than a front for Emery Flint to run illegal Spellcrafting. He lured in unsuspecting Scriveners and Seers, and exploited their talents for both his gain, and his sickening sense of shrewd entitlement. He forced us to Craft things that would land us in prison for sure—and while American minimum security incarceration was nowhere near as bad as a Russian penal colony, I for one did not want to end up behind bars. Or worse, deported. And now Flint’s Scrivener was gone, and he was desperate for another.

That’s what the deal was. I longed to tell Dixon. But all I could do was shrug.

Dixon batted his eyelashes and gave me a look that was part conspiratorial, part seductive, and tapped his earlobe. “You can whisper it to me if you want.”

Oh, I wanted to do many things. But Flint’s Crafting wouldn’t allow it.

“How about I try to guess—and if I just so happened to figure out what’s what, maybe you could remark on the weather. Let’s see…Mr. Flint is in witness protection. New name, new identity, new hair—that’s where the toupee comes in.”

Actually, the hair was real. I snorted.

“No? Maybe he’s got amnesia—and all the Spellcrafting is some way to try and regain his lost memories. Or else…ooh, wait, I know. Secret twin.”

“This is no laughing matter.” Vague enough to evade the bonds of Spellcraft locking me down? Apparently. But no less true.

Dixon took my hand in his and threaded our fingers together. It might seem like a small thing. But it was a small thing I never thought I’d experience. The men I knew in Russia might kneel down and unzip your fly—but they’d never hold your hand. It should have been a happy moment; instead, it was bittersweet.

I couldn’t let Flint sink his claws into this tenacious young man. I refused. Though when my body allowed me to let us into the darkened Precious Greetings studio to find the Spellcraft holding me captive, I had to wonder if maybe I was not actually rebelling, but playing right into my enemy’s hand.

11

DIXON

Breaking into Precious Greetings was a heck of a lot easier now, since Yuri had the keys. But he seemed pensive and discouraged, even though I was confident I could set things right. Maybe I couldn’t personally unmake the Spellcraft holding him hostage…but I could ask my parents to help. Running to Mom and Dad might not make me look particularly sexy…but if it could help Yuri, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

“Okay,” I said, “I know you can’t tell me anything, so I’m just gonna spitball out loud. Mr. Flint might be carrying around the Crafting itself, but I don’t think so. Because he’s tied to the spell, but he’s not actually the subject. And it’s not on you, either, because you’re a Seer, and if you had easy access to it, you might ‘accidentally’ use it for scratch paper in such a way that you negate the magic. So, the next logical place to look is his office.”

Yuri couldn’t answer. But I liked to think he looked pleased with my powers of deduction.

Even without Emery Flint inside, the office was active 24/7. It was just a few hours before dawn, but the nocturnal critters were still rustling around, while the diurnal ones were annoyed with our intrusion. “I don’t suppose you can throw me a hint,” I said with my most winning smile.

Yuri looked at me blandly.

“That’s fine. I love a good puzzle.” I started at Mr. Flint’s desk, but the drawers were locked, and Yuri’s keys didn’t fit. I pondered the lock, stumped, then realized a bit of reverse psychology might help me figure things out. “Say, Yuri, do you suppose you can pry this open?”

Yuri grabbed a letter opener off the desk—it looked like a miniature sword—and jammed it into the seal.

“Never mind,” I said. Because if he was able to try, then that wasn’t where the Crafting was hidden. I cast around, overwhelmed by the sheer busyness of the room, the terrariums and aquariums, the decorations and doodads. Every surface was covered in color and texture, and dozens upon dozens of words. Samplers and motivational posters warred with framed sentiments and calligraphy. So many trite, kitschy sayings, I might never spot an actual Spellcraft among them.

But maybe I could recognize Yuri’s painting.

From afar, many miniature scenes looked like they could’ve originated in that tiny, battered Russian paintbox. But up close, none of them held the confident elegance of Yuri’s hand. I scanned carefully, up, down and across, inching my way along the wall. Something chittered at me—oh God, Mr. Flint had an actual monkey in his office. And it really stunk. But I kept my eyes on the prize and continued searching for Yuri’s work.

“Can you tell me if I’m warmer? No? That’s okay—got to be here somewhere.” I picked my way through an ant farm, a case of taxidermy butterflies, and some truly sappy kitten paintings. I scoured that room from end to end and top to bottom. But when it was all said and done…nothing really spoke to me. “I don’t get it,” I finally admitted. Yuri stood with his back to the door and his massive arms crossed, but said nothing. “This is the logical place for him to keep it. Unless it’s just not scary…enough.”

As I finished the thought, my gaze fell on a terrarium. A small, plain thing—unassuming, really, compared to the other exotic habitats all butting up against one another. Just a glass cube with some dry moss, a hunk of driftwood and a shallow bowl of water.

And in the background, a small laminated card. I couldn’t tell what the painting was from where I stood. But even from across the room, I could see the painting was colorful and confident and gestural. My mouth went dry, and I swallowed against my sudden nervousness. Even before I saw it up close, I knew in my gut it had to be the thing I was looking for: Yuri’s Crafting.

Hopefully he hadn’t been instructed to dismantle anyone who happened upon it.

“Maybe you want to leave the office?” I was aiming for a playful tone, but mostly it came out strained.

“I believe in you, Dixon.”

I peered through the glass. The hermit crab, or whatever it was, had burrowed under the driftwood, leaving the Spellcraft in plain sight. I could see where it could easily be mistaken for a greeting card—that’s exactly what it looked like. A valentine. With a red heart that looked like it was soaring, and the simple words, “Be Mine.”

I might not be a Scrivener, but even I could see the tiny card was crackling with Spellcraft. “Okay, then. Here goes nothing.”

The terrarium was thick and sturdy, with a door in the lid for feeding and cleaning that was held shut with a simple latch. It wasn’t even locked.

Maybe that should’ve been my first indication that it wasn’t quite what it seemed. But I was so focused on retrieving that tiny magical valentine, I didn’t realize what was happening until an alarm blared, emergency lights flooded the dim room, and the top of the terrarium snapped shut, trapping my hand inside.

The alarm was loud—so loud I nearly wrenched my shoulder trying to cover my ears. At that point, I realized two things: one, apparently I’m very sensitive to loud noises. And two, the terrarium must’ve been bolted down, ’cause that thing didn’t even budge.

I wasn’t the only one none too keen on the bleating alarm. The stinky monkey started shrieking, baring its tiny yellow fangs in an unsettling grimace. The cockatoo stuck its crest straight up and began bobbing like a punk rocker in a mosh pit.

And the driftwood inside the terrarium trembled as the creature beneath it was roused.

Yuri was across the desk from me—no more than a couple of yards away—but all he could do was stand there stiffly as if even breathing was difficult for him. He squinched his eyes shut and shouted over the alarm, “I am not telling you this specifically, just making conversation—I happen to know a few things about tarantulas.”

Oh crap.

I watched in horror as, inches from my poor, exposed right hand, one fuzzy leg probed the gravel—then another, then another, as an impossibly big, hairy, spiderish body squeezed out from beneath the driftwood.

Yuri called out, “Tarantulas don’t attack unless they’re threatened.”

There were plenty of spiders in the attic. Sabina enlisted me to kill them on a weekly basis. I never thought I was scared of them…until now. Suddenly, every spider death in which I’d been a culprit was coming home to roost. I tugged hard on my arm, twisting and pulling, but my hand was well and truly trapped.

“If a hypothetical person wished to be ignored by a tarantula, they should stay as still as possible.”

I pulled harder, but it was no good. My hand was clamped just below the wrist bone, and unless I could dislocate my thumb, no amount of yanking would help me.

The tarantula, meanwhile, must have mistaken my hand for a pale, fleshy, five-legged playmate. It tiptoed over and began to circle beneath it while I splayed my fingers and did my best to keep them out of reach. I turned my head away, so I didn’t need to see the massive spider considering my hand.

“Tarantulas have poor vision,” Yuri announced, as if he was giving an eighth-grade science report, “but the hairs covering their bodies are very sensitive. They explore their world by the sense of touch.”

I told myself the shrilling alarm totally covered up the high-pitched whine that was suddenly escaping my throat.

“This hypothetical person I have never met who didn’t want to threaten a tarantula should stop moving their hand around,” Yuri said urgently.

“But…it’s…touching…meeeeee.”

It was just a poke of the foot—nothing worse than being prodded by a cotton swab. And yet, some primitive part of me was going into full-on OH GOD SPIDER meltdown mode. Luckily, the creature soon grew bored with poking at me, and paused to itch at its butt with one of its hind legs.

Yuri, however, looked distinctly unhappy about this.

“When certain species of tarantula feel threatened, they kick barbed hairs off their back to ward off the threat.”

My hand began to prickle. “Oh, come on.”

“Species which do this are not as venomous as others,” Yuri said helpfully.

“It’s venomous?” I shrieked, waaay louder than the alarm, and started hauling at my arm for all I was worth.

It was then that Emery Flint sauntered in, treating us to the world’s most patronizing slow-clap—one which hopefully wouldn’t provoke the threatened tarantula into an all-out venomous attack.

“And here we are again,” Mr. Flint crowed to Yuri. “You, me, and a decidedly unmolested Dixon Penn.”

“Oh, I molested him, all right,” Yuri said quickly, and then flushed redder than the scarlet gouache in his paintbox.

Mr. Flint’s whole face registered shock—all but his eyebrows, which merely went a little cockeyed. “Really? Well, I’ll be. No wonder you were so keen to take any work visa you could find.” He gave me the side-eye. “And no wonder this little weasel was able to turn you against me. Don’t worry, I forgive you—but I won’t make the mistake of abandoning you to his dubious charms again. Come on, Yuri, let’s shut off this alarm before my head splits open.”

Yuri glowered like he’d enjoy nothing more than watching that exact thing transpire, but when Mr. Flint turned to leave me there with my hand stuck in the tarantula trap, he followed without a backward glance.

“This is so not fair,” I told the gigantic, venomous, itchy-haired spider. “I don’t care if it was a twisted bit of Spellcraft that brought Yuri and me together. It doesn’t matter whether or not I can Scribe—I think we’d be good together anyhow. In fact, I know we would. But if Mr. Flint doesn’t have Yuri kill me outright, at the very least, he’ll make it so we never see each other again. And all I’ll have to remember this night by is….”

The lousy wad of failed Spellcraft in my pocket.

I dug it out—awkwardly, with my left hand straining to reach my right pocket—and eased open the crumpled ball of receipt paper with my thumb. Yuri’s painting was inspired, and my calligraphy wasn’t half bad. Free in Body, Mind and Spirit.

If only our attempt had worked. If only I’d inherited the Craft. If only I wasn’t stuck in this ridiculous….

My gaze fell on an electrical cord that connected the base of the terrarium to an outlet on the wall. I’d presumed it was for the heat lamp. But the sensor that clamped the jaws shut must’ve been powered by something too. It was a real stretch—I very nearly dislocated my shoulder reaching with my right foot for all I was worth—but on the third try, I snagged the cord and yanked it from the wall.

With the alarm still shrilling and every last animal in the menagerie either hiding or screeching, the tarantula tank went dark and the lock sprang open. But before I yanked my hand out of that den of itchiness for good, I made sure to snag the thing I’d been after in the first place: the tiny bit of magic—one simple image, two simple words—binding Yuri to do the bidding of Emery Flint.

Laymen think getting rid of Spellcraft is as easy as tearing up the Crafting. Not so. Uncle Fonzo once told me, “You think Spellcraft lives in pictures and words? That’s only part of it. The rest of the magic is in the skill of the Seer and the intent of the Scrivener. And those things don’t go away so easy.”

Destroy a Crafting, and you might release the magic. But there was also a chance of it sticking around permanently. The only sure way to dispose of Spellcraft for good was to Uncraft it first. In the case of a misfired Crafting like the one at Bam Burger—Come for the Food, Stay for the Atmosphere—I’d simply add the line, Leave with a Smile.

Since I wasn’t a Scrivener, though, my ideas didn’t matter.

In this case, my best bet was to replace the Crafting with a decoy and smuggle out the tiny card so someone competent could undo it. I sat down at Mr. Flint’s desk, grabbed one of his business cards from a bronze holder, flipped it over to the blank side, and jabbed my palm with the dull letter opener until I drew blood. With just a few smears, I approximated Yuri’s soaring heart painting. The color would be a lousy match as the blood dried and turned brown, but it didn’t need to fool Mr. Flint forever. Just long enough for me to smuggle the real Crafting out of there.

I flapped the card in the air, hoping for my blood to dry just enough for me to add the lettering, and cast around for a pen.

And found nothing.

I was seated at a desk. How could there not be a single pen in sight? Papers, sure. Plenty of papers. I scattered them all over searching for something to write with, but came up with nothing I could use while the alarm bell bleated. Rubber cement, sticky notes, an “insult of the day” calendar, a tiny pencil sharpener, even an inkwell. But no pen. Then I thought back to the modified quill Flint had produced from the locked pouch in the locked box in the locked drawer. Yuri still had the real quill—but he’d swapped another fountain pen in its place. If I could just get to that—

I was going at the locked drawer for all I was worth when a shadow loomed overhead. When I jerked back in surprise, something bounced off my head, then dropped to the desk in front of me.

A single white feather.

The cockatoo landed clumsily on the desk, crest high, bobbing up and down and whooping along with the alarm. It would be some sort of poetic justice—or maybe just irony—if I managed to slip this trap with an actual feather quill. But you can’t just pluck a feather from a bird and write with it. The tip has to be cut to hold the ink properly. I knew full well how to cut a nib. I’d practiced so many times I could do it in my sleep. But without a blade….

The cockatoo flapped its wings. Papers rustled, and the tiny pencil sharpener tumbled across the desk. The tiny plastic pencil sharpener with the even smaller metal blade inside.

That would do.

In mere moments, I’d crushed the pencil sharpener between my molars and freed the minuscule blade. It was so small I could barely hold it, but it was enough to take to a feather and create a pen.

I thanked my lucky stars for the inkwell. Even though the gouge on my palm had already clotted over, it really stung. Not to mention the itchy spider fur. Once I inked my quill and made a few preliminary test strokes, I studied the Crafting that bound Yuri to get a feel for the lettering. The penmanship was shaky and awkward, but I should be able to mimic it well enough to pass from across the room. With my plan in place, I set the tip to the fake Seen. But when my quill touched the cardstock, my hand erupted in tingles. At first, I took it for an allergic reaction—the onset of severe anaphylaxis—but when my throat didn’t close, I realized the tingling had nothing to do with the tarantula fuzz.

My feather might not have dropped from the sky at my Quilling Ceremony…but this was definitely no ordinary feather, and it fit in my hand as if I’d been born to hold it. I looked at the bird in wonder, hoping to share this joyful moment of revelation. It kept right on bobbing and weaving, dancing its loopy bird-dance and shrieking along with the alarm.

I couldn’t be entirely sure that I wasn’t just having a hallucinatory dream brought on by tarantula venom. But if I truly was the Scrivener now that I always thought I would be, I couldn’t Craft alone. The Spellcraft would be no good on my bloody heart. It would only work on a real Seen.

I spotted the receipt—Free in Body, Mind and Spirit—and briefly considered adding Yuri’s name. I discarded that idea just as fast. The way I’d Crafted the rest of the Scrivening, putting his name on it could very well kill him. No, if I wanted to free Yuri, the only way to do it was to unmake the Spellcraft that bound him to Emery Flint.

With trembling breath, I cleared my mind and studied the Spellcraft I’d liberated from the tarantula tank, much more carefully now than I had when I’d just been making a quick duplicate.

Be Mine.

The only word I could think of that started with mine was mineral. And while I didn’t think Spellcraft was powerful enough to turn Yuri into a pillar of salt, I couldn’t risk it. Okay, add something to the front instead. Maybe mine? No, too vague.

Never be vague in your Crafting, Uncle Fonzo used to say. The magic is wily—and vagaries are where the failure slips in.

Okay.

Breathe. Think.

Be Mine. Be Mine….

Be. Mine.

The alarm stopped, though the cockatoo kept right on bobbing and shrilling. He wasn’t nearly as loud, but it meant Mr. Flint had turned off the alarm and was now coming back toward me—unless I could stop them by thinking of a word other than mineral that made the Scrivening read something else. But try as I might, nothing made sense. I racked my brain until I saw two men emerge into the bullpen, heading right for Mr. Flint’s office—where surely he’d tell Yuri to wring my neck, and force him to carry that memory with him for the rest of his life.

I was just about to settle for Maybe Mine—though who knew what it might result in—when I realized the letters of the penmanship were far enough apart for me to sneak letters both in and around the words. Just as Mr. Flint crossed the bullpen, I dipped the fresh, white quill again, and with the Spellcraft raging through my veins, set pen to paper.

12

YURI

When Emery Flint shielded the alarm from me with one hand and keyed in his code with the other, I wanted nothing more than to grab that finger and snap it right off. But even though I was trembling with the urge to hurt him, all I could do was stand by and watch.

The noise died down, and Flint turned to me with a self-satisfied grin. “Never fear, Yuri—I won’t make you do away with your new playmate. Contrary to popular belief, he’s actually pretty valuable. Sometimes the road to success has a few pitstops along the way. It’s all about patience—being in it for the long game. Fonzo Penn should’ve been the answer to my prayers—the most slippery Scrivener Pinyin Bay has ever known. But he’d rather gnaw off his own quill then partner up with me? So be it.”

I’ve never met Fonzo, but I suspected I’d be able to relate to the man. However he fell in with Flint—if his best option now was to abandon both his family and his quill, his other choices couldn’t have been good.

Flint turned away and began striding across the bullpen. “I got his quill,” Flint went on, “I’ve got his nephew…and maybe the kid can’t Scribe himself, but we can use him to pull the daughter in.”

I hated Flint. I always had. But now the urge to rip him limb from limb was so strong it might very well kill me. Except….

When I closed the gap between us…when I flexed my fingers and anticipated how satisfying it would be to sink them into his arrogant throat…the painfully stiff pins-and-needles feeling I’d get when I so much as thought of going against him was entirely absent. Which could mean only one thing.

Dixon Penn had done it.

Somehow, I was free.

It seemed like there should have been some external cue—fireworks. Or at least a burst of light. But Flint just went on as if I was still frozen in his web of magical compulsion.

“That Dixon kid might not be the sharpest rock in the box…but I’m sure he’ll make excellent bait.”

I straightened my fingers experimentally. Clenched my fist. Then, as we approached the office, took a few long strides and overtook him.

It must have been the sound of my footsteps that alerted him something wasn’t quite right. When he spun around to face me, I pinned him to the floor-to-ceiling window with my arm across his throat. I pressed, hard, and imagined the feel of his windpipe collapsing like the core of a paper towel roll. He struggled and scratched, and his feet scrabbled against the linoleum. One of his ridiculous eyebrows dropped off and landed on my sleeve. But I held fast. I was so full of pent-up anger, it was as if I’d been storing it up all these many months, just waiting for somewhere to release my fury.

“Let…go…of…me….”

The words were a dry wheeze. And they held no power over me at all.

I thrust my face into his and said, “You are not now, nor will you ever be, a Spellcrafter. And if you ever try to control me again, I will show you exactly what it means to be Handless.”

13

DIXON

“So…” I murmured. “His eyebrows were fake.” Somehow, I’d totally missed that. Guess it’s not something you see every day. “And what about the first Seen I wrote on, the one that didn’t Craft—did you paint it right-handed?”

Yuri looked pretty pleased with himself. “I did. And I kept my gloves on, too.”

Mr. Flint’s office lit with the wan sunlight creeping over the horizon. The Pinyin Bay Perch costume was slumped in the corner, looking deflated, or possibly just hungover, without an actual person inside. While the animal menagerie squawked and screeched (or in the itchy tarantula’s case, hid in his gravel) Yuri and I stared out at the bullpen where Mr. Flint was trussed to one of the drafting tables like a sacrificial virgin. Yuri had been eager to exact a very personal revenge, but I’d managed to convince him it wasn’t worth the risk of him harming his hand.

Seers are so few and far between, after all.

Yuri stroked his chin-stubble and said, “Flint thought Spellcrafting was something he could learn, if only he found someone willing to teach him.”

“Good luck with that. Any oath-breaker who went around spewing secrets to the Handless would not only get themselves in trouble, but their whole family.”

Yuri shifted uneasily.

“And the eyebrows?” I prompted.

He made a vague gesture. “His lessons were less than successful.”

What I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall the day he blew off his own eyebrows for good. “So, when he figured out Spellcraft wasn’t learnable, he moved on to entrapping Crafters—and that’s how you ended up here?”

Yuri nodded sadly. “Just like you. Magic draws magic—once you were in the spell’s influence, you couldn’t stay away.”

Good thing. Who else would’ve had the inspiration to change Be Mine to Able and Determined? So much better than Be Mineral.

“Funny, how the Crafting knew I had the gift, but my Quilling Ceremony was a total flop. What are the chances?”

Yuri looked pointedly out the window, and I realized that for someone who’d just defeated his mortal enemy, he was acting awfully subdued.

“Yuri?”

He reached into his coat and drew out a fountain pen—the pen Flint had used to try to trick me into Scribing for him—and handed it to me. He said, “It’s impossible to Scribe without a quill.”

Obviously. That was Spellcraft 101. Yet I had the sense Yuri was trying to get me to infer something, but without actually coming right out and saying it. My Quilling Ceremony. The pen. The fact that he couldn’t bring himself to meet my eyes.

“You’re holding the oath-breaker’s quill,” he said softly.

I suppressed a shudder. “That’s awful. His poor family.”

“Dixon…” His hand fell to my knee, and it occurred to me that his voice was filled with a deep sorrow. And of all the clues, it was the sadness in his tone that caused all the pieces to fall into place.

I dropped the fountain pen as if it was venomous, this horrible mangled thing that had once carried my birthright.

My failed ceremony.

Uncle Fonzo’s relentlessly repeated question.

What do you think happened?

Well, now I knew, didn’t I? Scribing that traditional Quilling phrase had felt like writing the empty sentiment with the switcheroo pen. Just words—nothing more.

You’d think the most painful betrayal would come from a lover. But no, it was family.

“Don’t blame your uncle,” Yuri said. “You see how easy it was to fall into Flint’s trap.”

I swallowed hard. I’d been advocating to bring the authorities down on Emery Flint’s head. “But if we call in the police, then everyone will know. My family—” Cast out of the Spellcrafting community, just as surely as the tip of Fonzo’s quill had been castrated to make the freakish hybrid pen. “My parents will lose the business,” I whispered. “And all their friends. They’ll lose everything.”

Yuri gave my knee a squeeze, not so much in reassurance—actually, it kind of hurt—but to pull me out of the shock. “Only if word gets out.”

“But how could it possibly stay a secret? If we file a report of illegal Spellcrafting, everyone will know Uncle Fonzo leaked our secrets to a Handless.”

“In Russia, the police were all corrupt. I had no use for a bunch of bullies with their hands out for bribes.” He took my hand in his—my right hand, his left—and a tingle raced up my arm that had nothing to do with how sexy I found his tattooed fingers. “It’s better to handle this ourselves. No cops. Just you and me. Do you agree?”

“In theory, sure.”

“No theories.” He raised my hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across my knuckles. My whole body lit up. “Close your eyes, Scrivener, and think about what he’s done to you and yours. What words come to mind?”

Revenge would be an understandable motivation, but when I considered the word, it didn’t quite fit. I went through a few others, trying them on and shedding them just as quickly, like so many pairs of jeans in the world’s most esoteric fitting room. “I don’t want to get back at him,” I said finally. “I just want to make it right.”

Another tingle rippled down my arm, and Yuri shivered. “Then that is exactly what we will do.”

He let go of my hand and pulled out his tiny paintbox, borrowed a water dish from the tank of a sleeping tortoise, and set to work. Moments later, he slid a miniature painting over to me—a painting of a fish. I didn’t understand, not intellectually, anyhow. But my heart recognized its rightness.

The inkwell was nearly dry, but there was enough ink to pen a line or two. Good thing. Only weirdos make a habit of Scribing in blood. I thought through my letterforms and set the cockatoo quill to paper, and before I could second-guess myself, I Scribed the phrase Recompense and Justice. Our two original halves, image and word, Scrivening and Seen, became a single, focused Crafting—and only then did I recognize the tiny, gestural painting for what it was.

“Is that the Pinyin Bay Perch?”

Yuri smiled grimly. “As you say in English: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

When I squinted at the painting, I marveled at the resemblance he’d been able to capture in such a small image. The striped markings. The matted fuzz of the plush material. But the most impressive detail of all was the Perch’s expression. It was somewhere between confused and surprised—thanks to the addition of a cockeyed pair of greenish-brown eyebrows.

14

Because of our Scrivening, the wheels of justice turned with blinding speed. Bright and early the next morning, Bayside Savings and Loan came collecting on a late repayment, and by the end of the week, Precious Greetings was up for auction.

Yuri and I sat in the battered pickup truck and watched the Pinyin Bay Perch wandering back and forth on the side of the road, at the highway entrance ramp between the two busiest service stations on that side of town, holding a sign that read, Business Liquidation Sale - Everything Must Go. It was unseasonably warm for Valentine’s Day, and surely Emery Flint was sweltering inside.

Good.

Yuri brushed his pigment-stained fingertip over the inky callus on my knuckle. “Will you bid on the business? With everything he’s stolen from your family, you could have it for a song.”

“I thought about it long and hard.” I managed to keep from snerking over my choice of words, though I couldn’t quell the impulse to glance toward Yuri’s fly. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about lots of things. My family is beyond ecstatic. Not only that I’m a Scrivener myself, but that I’ve found a special someone.”

Yuri might look mean enough to send a tarantula packing, but at the mention of my family, he paled. “What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. Yet. But my mom can’t help but notice the fact that I’ve been smiling so much my face literally hurts.”

He let his breath out carefully. “It will take some time for me to get used to people of that generation accepting me…accepting us.”

“Accepting? They’re beside themselves with joy that I’ve snagged a boyfriend. Just wait till they find out you’re a Seer.” I gave a contented sigh. “I suspect I could very well end up the new owner of Precious Greetings if I chose that route. Or I could let my folks start grooming me to take over Practical Penn. Heck, maybe I could even merge them both. But if these last few days have taught me anything, it’s that there’s more to life than Crafting spells for money. I could make a real difference in the world, but not if I’m cooped up behind a desk.”

Yuri slid me a knowing look. “Or maybe you’d rather charge someone ten times as much as a freelancer to undo a bad Crafting.”

I gave him my best innocent smile. “But that’s half what you’d pay at one of the bigger shops.” Though all the Bam Burgers I cared to eat had also been a wonderful incentive.

Fine. Specializing in Uncrafting was pretty lucrative. And I definitely needed the cash if I ever hoped to get rid of our thumpy tenant. But that wasn’t my main motivation.

Spellcraft was volatile and unreliable—and the Handless only tolerated it with the same long-suffering distaste they usually reserved for ambulance-chasing lawyers—but it was my birthright. And, damn it, I was good at it. After everything I’d struggled through to finally claim my quill, though, I wanted to be more than just a Scribe for hire. Especially since my Craftings could have such profound effects elsewhere, righting the subtle wrongs of the world.

Was our first official Spellcrafting—Recompense and Justice—entirely legal? With the right lawyers and a sympathetic judge, we’d probably get away with a stern warning. I hadn’t specifically named Emery Flint, after all, and it could certainly be argued that sometimes, an eyebrow was just an eyebrow.

My second act as a bona fide Spellcrafter was to defuse the Crafting that was drawing unwary Scriveners and Seers to Precious Greetings. Magic Draws Magic. The malformed magnet behind the words could be none other than a pilfered Rufus Clahd painting—yet another way in which Uncle Fonzo had bent the rules. But how annoyed could I realistically be over his dubious choices when, ultimately, his involvement with Precious Greetings led me to Yuri? I changed the last word to “Magically”—making it a rather weird and obvious statement instead of a command—and gave it to Yuri for safekeeping. I suspect he might have eaten it to ensure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands again.

I looked at Yuri out of the corner of my eye as he watched Flint caper for the passing cars. Yuri simply sat—cool and collected, muscular and tattooed. And above it all, profoundly vigilant, taking everything in with his shrewd hazel eyes. There was zero doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t intervened, there’d be no more Emery Flint to drag through muck—just shreds of bone and gristle, and a stray prosthetic eyebrow.

I liked to think I was a good influence on Yuri. He wore his freedom well. As if he could sense my satisfaction washing over him, he turned to meet my gaze and gave my Scrivening hand a tingling squeeze.

One Scrivener, one Seer…and one heart.

Together, we were unstoppable.

Take a road trip to Minnesota with Dixon and Yuri in the second ABCs of Spellcraft book, Trouble in Taco Town.

And don’t miss the fateful dinner where Yuri meets Dixon’s parents in the bonus Spellcraft story, All That Glitters—a newsletter sign-up gift! Download at http://bit.ly/jcpallthat

1. Quill Me Now

1.5 All that Glitters

2. Trouble in Taco Town

3. Something Stinks at the Spa

4. Dead Man’s Quill (coming soon)

ABOUT THIS STORY

The ABCs of Spellcraft series began its life as a Valentine’s Day challenge between me and three friends: write a story stemming from the same first line, Nothing good ever came of a valentine.

All of us took the initial prompt somewhere very different. Jesi Lea Ryan’s valentine was floating in the air on a current of magic. Dev Bentham’s held a hastily scrawled note from someone’s flaky sister. And Clare London’s was an invite to a harrowing speed-dating event. But one thing they did have in common—they were all a lot of fun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Castillo Price thoroughly subscribes to the notion that words hold power. She has submitted verses to greeting card companies…and been rejected. Though invited to resubmit, she was not nearly as persistent as Dixon.

Jordan has never touched a tarantula, though she generally leaves the myriad spiders who share her house to go about their own business.

Connect with Jordan:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Jordan-Castillo-Price-257078438055

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Blog - http://jordancastilloprice.com

And explore her other stories at http://jcpbooks.com