Page 10 of Everything She Does Is Magic (Fableview #1)

Darcy

“By the way, what’s happening with the shop?” Anya asks now that we’re far enough down the boulevard that Pam’s Paints is no longer in sight. “Did you make a decision about whether or not you’re going to take it over?”

Anya reads over the details, and a slow grin creeps across her face. Her smile is as secretive as the rest of her, not easily earned. It’s a little thrill to know I’ve caused it.

“This is great,” she says. “You’ll get people posting, and then they’ll buy something at your shop. It’s really well-considered. Do your parents know?”

“Of course they don’t know,” I tell her, trying for a breeziness that isn’t landing, still stuck on everything I revealed to her that first night she showed up at the shop.

It’s hard to explain that that was only a momentary weakness.

“By the time anyone completes this, I should be back at Pam’s, finishing up my shift.

My parents never check our receipts very closely, so they won’t know about the discount.

Hopefully, they’ll just see the uptick in business and be thrilled.

And maybe the other shops will see what we’ve done and want to offer their own discounts next year.

If I’m lucky, it will come up at next year’s planning meeting like it’s a tradition we’ve always honored that they just forgot about.

That’s one big perk of having older parents.

You can make them think they forgot something you never said in the first place. ”

Anya nods. “Risky. I like it. What happened with the dog painting thing, though? Were your parents mad at you?”

“My parents don’t really get mad at me,” I say. “They get disappointed . They gave me a long speech where they asked me not to betray them again.” I try to laugh, but the sound is too choked to seem real.

Anya looks at the card, reading through it again. “You really want to own Pam’s Paints next year?”

Being around her reminds me of a sleepless night, the kind when suddenly you can see ten years into your own past with clarity, running through every memory you’ve ever had, piecing your life together like a puzzle.

She makes me feel alert, aware of myself and my decisions in a way I never am around anyone else.

She doesn’t let me get away with my usual easy avoidances, and I don’t entirely know what to do with that.

It helps a bit that her aunt lurks behind us, watching our every movement.

It’s like an extra layer of protection, keeping me from needing to go to the depths that Anya seems to want to take me to.

Being around her, I want to say things like Actually, before I broke those ceramics, I wanted to leave.

No one knows that, not even Grace. I even applied to one college already, just as an experiment. Only to see if I could get in.

The very things I cannot be saying, not now, when my parents have publicly pledged the shop to me. Not when I’ve accepted without protest. Not when I know things will break without me, and no one else will know how to fix them.

“I do,” I tell her.

The lack of conviction in my voice is obvious to us both, and she lets out a small “Hmm” before dropping it altogether. She hands me back half the stack of cards, and we begin passing them out.

As we go down the boulevard, I help Anya identify the tourists, and we approach them with the cards.

Once you know what to look for, they’re pretty easy to spot.

They’re always just a little bit in the way, not thinking about the flow of Fableview in the way the locals do.

And they tend to take double the pictures of a normal person.

Young Fableview kids participate in the parade too, but it isn’t the same banner spectacle that it is for a tourist’s family.

When we spot a smiling couple waiting for their kid to pass—phones out to take multiple pictures of the tree nearest them—Anya and I exchange a glance, knowing this is our next target.

“Hello,” Anya says to them, surprising me by initiating the conversation before I can.

“Would you like to perform a scavenger hunt that results in a discount from a local business?” It’s her first time asking this instead of me, and the stiff formality in her tone almost makes me laugh.

But she’s trying, for me , and I would never dare mock her for that.

“That sounds fun,” the woman says warmly. “How lovely. Thank you!”

Anya nods. “Of course.” She walks off.

“That was perfect,” I tell her.

“It was a start.” She wipes away the hint of a smile that had crept into her expression.

“Don’t,” I say, almost reaching for her face.

“Don’t what?”

“I just…I like when you smile, is all,” I say.

After about an hour, I’m out of cards, and so is Anya. We’ve stopped to watch the parade. It’s an endless stream of young kids in costumes, smiling and waving and begging for candy.

Grace spots me.

“Hey, bitch,” she says, grinning. She has on a disco ball minidress, sparkling silver tights, and matching silver boots.

One of her tamer looks. It’s too early in October for her to bust out the more elaborate costumes in her collection.

She notices Anya and immediately straightens up.

“We use that term affectionately. It’s our love language.

It’s kind of like a subversion of sorts. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly,” Anya says, her stare unflinching.

Grace half laughs, giving me one quick, urgent glance.

“Anya’s been helping me pass out these scavenger hunt cards, since someone didn’t want to be involved,” I say. Grace literally screamed when I told her my plan, then started holding up the sign of the cross, telling me she’d rather swim in a pool of sharks than betray my parents with this scheme.

“Hmm,” she says now, tapping her chin. “That person sounds really gorgeous and smart. Probably the most interesting, intelligent person you know.”

“Probably,” I respond. “Where’s Maddie?” Maddie is Grace’s four-year-old sister. The youngest Manalo, and the only one in their family still participating in the Fableview parade.

“My mom just texted, saying Maddie should be coming around the corner soon. She’s dressed as a manananggal. My mom wouldn’t let her be too scary with it, though. She was afraid it would freak out the other little kids. So she just kind of looks like Dracula with wings.”

Grace’s whole family is Filipino, and I know from her that the manananggal is sort of the Filipino folklore equivalent to a vampire but much gorier.

A few months ago, Maddie snuck out of her room and watched a horror movie with Grace and their thirteen-year-old sister, Claire.

Ever since then, Maddie has become obsessed with scary stuff.

She was begging for something scary to sleep with at night, so her mom got her a teddy bear that had stitch marks across its eyes and mouth.

But even that wasn’t enough for Maddie. So Grace brought Maddie to the art shop.

Maddie and I picked out some paints and random scrap materials, and we covered her teddy in fake blood and sewed on oozing organs made of felt.

It was genuinely grotesque-looking. Grace says Maddie drags it everywhere in the house now, completely obsessed.

That’s the kind of thing I love most about working at the art shop—getting to help other people make their creative visions come to life.

Maddie appears, tiny and always a little disheveled, her long black hair in tangles I can see even from here. There’s blood spattered across her light brown skin, and huge plastic fangs poke out of her mouth, with large, bat-like wings perched on her small back.

She is sobbing.

When she sees Grace, she runs over to her. “Look!” She turns to the side, showing Grace where the fabric on her wings has ripped. “It got stuck on a tree!” Her crying turns into big, dramatic sobs again as Grace wraps her in a hug.

“Maddie, you look amazing,” I tell her. “I never would’ve noticed that.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she tells me, snot rockets falling onto Grace’s shoulders.

I am just saying it to make her feel better, so she’s got me there.

“Can I look at it?” Anya asks.

There’s something about Anya that makes Maddie stop crying almost instantly. Maybe it’s her stillness. She never makes you feel rushed, or even worried. Or it could be the warmth of her eyes. There’s an unmistakable, inviting gentleness there.

Maddie stares at Anya in the way only a four-year-old can, with unshielded curiosity, patiently making her own judgmentcall.

She releases her hold on Grace and walks up to Anya, deciding to trust her.

I want to ask Grace if she still thinks Anya is sinister, but this moment is too fragile for all that.

“I’m really good at fixing things,” Anya tells Maddie, holding the broken part of the wing in her hands. “I think I can put this back together.”

Still awestruck, Maddie takes the wings off her shoulders.

Anya turns her back to all of us, huddling in the corner. Less than thirty seconds later, she spins around again. And somehow, the wings are good as new. The fine, gauzelike fabric shows no trace of a rip. There isn’t even a seam.

“How did you do that?” I ask.

“What? That literally took you, like, twenty-three seconds,” Grace overlaps, her jaw hanging open.

“YouTube tutorials,” Anya deadpans. She squats down to help get the wing straps back around Maddie’s shoulders.

Maddie throws her arms around Anya for a big, fat, four-year-old hug.

Grace gives me another look, and I genuinely wish I’d asked about the sinister thing, because this isn’t sinister at all.

But it is something strange.

The kind of strange everyone talks about in Fableview. What others would say is almost…magical.

But I know there’s more to it. Anya Doyle has tricks up her sleeve, like the novelty coins I carry in the pocket of my witch costume.

Aunt Cal closes in on us. She says nothing, just steps closer and closer until she places a hand on Anya’s forearm and starts to tug.

“I have to go,” Anya tells me. “I’m really sorry. I’ll be at Monday’s planning meeting. I think? I hope.”

“It’s okay if you can’t make it!” I call out as Cal hustles Anya away from me. “But we’d love to have you at the pumpkin patch party on Wednesday!”

Maddie returns to the parade, and Grace and I find spots along the barrier to watch her continue marching on, happy as ever now, catching candy from spectators.

“That sort of seemed, like… magical ,” Grace whispers. It’s a genuine whisper too, which is how I know she’s serious. She doesn’t want to be overheard, so she speaks through gritted teeth.

“Obviously it wasn’t magical,” I respond with my normal voice.

There’s nothing to whisper about. “That night outside the shop, I told her how none of the so-called magic here is real. I joked that people learn tricks from YouTube tutorials. That’s why she said that.

And that’s probably where she learned how to do that too. ”

“Okay…But, like, the wings were in perfect condition,” Grace says. “I know you don’t believe the witches here are real—and that’s fine, I can’t prove it either—but that seemed kind of impossible to do without some sort of power.”

“Maybe she’s a speed seamstress,” I say.

“Is that a thing?”

“Probably. Everything’s a thing.”

“Okay, well then, I changed my mind. You have to figure out what is going on with her,” Grace tells me. “Because I’d bet my life that you’re becoming friends with a real-life witch.”

“I bet my life that I’m not,” I say, turning back to catch one last glimpse of Anya before she disappears into the crowd. “And I’ll find a way to prove it to you.”