Page 6 of Everything She Does Is Magic (Fableview #1)

Darcy

“I like the gnome,” Anya says as she follows me into our shop.

The wall behind the register is covered in dozens of ceramics we’ve painted over the years.

There is a collection of fairies my mom’s been adding to since she was a teen.

There are plates my dad has done with different landscapes, because he’s really good at painting trees and he never misses an opportunity to show it off.

There are seasonal pieces from my grandmother that we put out every Halloween—ceramic pumpkins, ghosts, and cats that are older than I am.

All of it is better than the break time craft I did in thirty minutes during last spring’s Paintapalooza.

“I made that,” I tell her.

“I figured,” she says, in such a casual but knowing way that my mind continues racing, undoing ten months of English silence and French conjugations, searching for gaps when we’ve somehow communicated without words.

More than once tonight she’s mentioned things about me that I’d never have expected her to notice.

Taking in the wall of ceramics, I try to look past all the obviously better creations and find my gnome worth noting. I painted little hearts on his stocking cap. Did his sweater in a checkered pattern. He’s very sweet, but he’s nothing special. How could she possibly know he was mine?

There’s not a lot I understand about this moment, but there’s one thing I know for sure—Anya Doyle did not come here to learn the French homework. She didn’t come here to take my art class either. But she does provide the perfect distraction from what my parents have done.

“We have a late arrival,” I tell my parents. “My friend from school, Anya.”

“Friend?” Grace makes no effort to hide her skepticism.

“Yeah, you know Anya,” I say, giving Grace a little just go with it glare.

Grace plays along to the extent she can, which is to say the right things with the look of a startled deer watching headlights inch closer, incapable of moving out of the line of fire. “Hey, girl! Glad to have you.”

“Hi,” Anya says back flatly.

It’s not supposed to be funny, but it makes me laugh all the same. She’s just so herself, even when it makes other people uncomfortable. I can’t help but find it endearing.

“We don’t allow late arrivals,” my dad reminds me, once again using the same smile he tried to have me paint onto my own face earlier.

I place Anya in front of a blank canvas at the end of the middle row of painters. “Surely we can make an exception for the newest member of Fableview’s Fall Planning Committee. She came here tonight to tell me she wanted to join.”

My parents swap their skepticism for open enthusiasm.

“How fantastic!” Mom says. “We can always use extra helping hands around town! Welcome, Anya!”

“I’ll explain in a bit,” I whisper into Anya’s ear.

This close to her, I smell herbs I associate with Witches of Fableview, the metaphysical shop the Blake family owns down the street.

I don’t know the herbs’ names, but they are scents that make me think of magic.

If it were real, it would smell like this—an earthy, consuming potion of petals and oils.

Returning to my canvas, I slide back into the role of Darcy the art teacher, no comment made about my parents’ earlier announcement. There’s nothing more to say on the matter. At least, not now. I can’t involve the tourists in my personal drama. Not during peak season.

Anya catches up fast, painting her background and speckling it with stars.

When we move on to adding in the trees, she watches me with unwavering focus.

It’s…intense to be the subject of her attention.

She doesn’t make any faces to urge me forward.

No friendly smiles when I attempt my little jokes.

No thoughtful nods of appreciation when I demonstrate how to stipple the brush for greenery.

My toes grip my shoes, fighting to keep blood from rushing to my cheeks. This is just how she is. Even when Madame Poncik pairs us up to conjugate verbs together, she is like this. It’s not personal.

By the time we’re adding the actual witch to the painting, I’ve almost adjusted to the way it feels to have her watch me. I like the challenge of it, the way it makes me consider my every movement in a way I normally wouldn’t.

Grace has grabbed my arm no less than four times— a reminder that we will be having a conversation about this as soon as we’re done with our shift. At present, all is calm.

Until Anya raises her hand.

“What about the dog?” she asks.

The painters crane their necks, peering at her in the back.

I think of the time Madame Poncik forced her to stand up and read Le Petit Prince out loud.

Her shoulders had rounded forward as her eyes burned holes into the pages, yet she’d read with flawless accented French, not only technically correct but filled with emotion too.

She does not like this kind of attention. Yet she’s offered herself up.

For me.

“The basset hound,” she adds, like maybe I haven’t understood her.

“I just, I notice that you’re dressed exactly like the witch in the painting.

” Everyone has stilled their paintbrushes.

Even the tourists seem to sense how rare this moment is.

“So are we going to add the dog that looks like her?” She points to Grace, who does a bashful who me?

bat of her hand, embracing the attention.

“That’s not part of the paint—” my mom starts.

“We can,” I interrupt. If someone as normally reserved as Anya Doyle can take a leap of faith, I can take one right back. “Grace, will you grab the basset hound version from the back?”

Grace—torn between disobeying my parents and getting to share the basset hound story she created—takes a step forward, then immediately steps back.

“Never mind,” I say. My mom exhales an audible sigh of relief. “I’ll get it.” I head for our supply closet, and my mom and dad follow, the three of us closing ourselves inside without more than a foot to spare.

“You can’t teach that,” my mom whispers, putting her hand in front of the rack of witch paintings, blocking me from reaching for it.

“The artists have already put in a background and scenery,” my dad adds, like that’s the real reason.

“Anya asked for it,” I say.

“She seems lovely, but we’re not bringing out a brand-new painting for someone who couldn’t even get the start time right.”

“Please,” I beg.

“No,” Dad says firmly.

For some reason, tears threaten to surface.

It’s not about this painting, I know. But also, it kind of is.

They’re making such a big deal about this very small thing when surely it’s a bigger deal to tell me that I’m going to run this whole art shop next year .

If they can’t handle this change to the painting, they’ll never accept the news that I want to go to college out of state.

It bothers me that they’ve never once asked me if I want something different. They just assume I’ll stay here after high school, because it’s what they did when they were my age, and they expect me to be their spitting image in every way.

The shop has always been called Pam’s Paints.

My grandma named it for my mom when she opened it, thrusting this legacy upon my mom as a baby.

Grandma and Grandpa used up almost all the money they had to make this dream of having an art shop happen.

They had to move into the condo above this building because it was all they could afford at the time, and it made it easy to spend every waking minute here, thinking up ways to keep not just the shop but our entire town afloat.

They’re the ones who started the Fableview Fall Planning Committee.

Within a few years, they’d turned our once floundering town into a genuine Halloween empire.

My dad grew up here too, taking art classes from my grandma and, eventually, from my mom. That’s how they fell in love. Right here in this shop.

Neither of them knows a world outside of Fableview—outside of Pam’s Paints, even. And they don’t want to. Which is why they can’t imagine one for me either.

I am their precious baby girl. Their greatest hope. The child they waited so long to have, and the only person they’ll ever trust with our family’s work.

This is who I was born to be.

“Okay,” I say to them, forcing myself to smile.

They give me a joint hug. “We love you,” they say in unison.

“I know,” I tell them. “I love you too.”

I return to my spot in front of the painters. With my biggest, brightest smile, I apologize for the misunderstanding about the dog, and I continue teaching the class as planned.

Eventually, my parents retreat upstairs.

When we finish the painting, I hope Anya will just leave. Everything I said to her outside seems mortifying now. Why did I ramble about not wanting to own the art shop next year?

She doesn’t leave. In fact, she waits out every single enthusiastic tourist, even the ones who stick around to take pictures with me beside their paintings. She stays in her seat, staring at her completed canvas until it’s only me, her, and Grace left in the shop.

Grace is, of course, allergic to normalizing this.

With every paintbrush she rinses off, she makes a show of smacking it as loud as she can against the edge of the sink.

If we were in a restaurant, Grace would be turning over every chair around Anya to make a point.

She’d be mopping the floor and asking Anya to pick up her feet so she could get under them.

“Is everything okay?” I finally ask Anya, unable to withstand another moment of this silent showdown.

Her natural expression is already downturned, but she’s frowning even harder than usual, her face a perfect portrait of disappointment. How could she possibly care enough to think I’ve let her down by not painting the basset hound?

And why do I care?

“The planning committee,” she says.

Embarrassment steals all my cool. I projected an entire tortured inner monologue onto her reason for hanging around when really she’s just waiting for me to explain myself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. Heat burns my face. “My parents hate late arrivals, but they love getting new committee members. It was the only way they’d let you join the class.”

“I see.” She stands up, her posture so rigid, she could balance a stack of books on her head.

“But if you want to join, we’d really appreciate it,” I add before she can flee. “We have weekly meetings at city hall. The next one is tomorrow after school. There’s no pressure to come. But it’s at five, if you can make it.”

Anya says nothing. She doesn’t even turn around to acknowledge my words.

“What the hell was that?” Grace asks the second the bell above the door is done chiming.

“I wish I knew,” I tell her, watching Anya stalk down Fableview Boulevard and following her movements until she’s no longer visible.