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“There!” she said, dumping the armload of miscellanea onto the closest armchair. “I think I know which book I need, but I thought it would be best to just grab everything even slightly related to ghosts, just to make sure.”

She picked up one of the books and started flicking through it, muttering mysteriously to herself as she went, and certainly doing nothing to dispel the witchy vibes she’d been giving off.

“A-ha!” she said triumphantly. “Here it is.”

Ethan breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. If Margot could indeed make Curtis visible to Chloe, then hopefully she’d start to believe that he really was telling the truth.

“Luckily it looks like it’s actually not too difficult a spell to perform, which is good,” Margot went on breezily. “I was worried that it would be a complex spell and I’d accidentally turn Curtis into a turnip or something along those lines, but it should all be fine.”

That was… less reassuring. Suddenly, Ethan wasn’t really quite sure how he felt about this after all. Chloe’s eyebrows were also shooting up her forehead.

He turned to Curtis. “Curtis, are you sure you’re okay with this?”

While Curtis also looked somewhat perturbed at the idea of potentially being turned into a turnip, he was holding himself with an air of resolve.

~I am happy to do this. It would be nice to meet Miss Chloe properly.~ He smiled. ~In any case, I am already dead. What further harm could result?~

Plenty, Ethan wanted to say, but he refrained. If Curtis had made his choice, then Ethan didn’t want to sow any seeds of doubt in his mind.

“Okay, all ready to go!” Margot said, arranging some herbs in the top of a small, strange-looking multi-tiered dish, before lighting a match underneath. A searingly bright white flame sprang into being, and the herbs began to smolder.

At the same time, the lights in the room seemed to dim further, the shadows in the corners growing deeper, and Ethan suppressed a shiver.

He wasn’t scared of magic per se, but he wasn’t exactly a huge fan of it, either – corporate law and the occult were not really two areas that tended to converge all that often, at least within his circles.

His pegasus also wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, given that it apparently considered magic to be adjacent enough to ghosts to set off some of the same anxieties, but at least it wasn’t yelping and trying to bolt for the door.

Curtis was staring at the flame, entranced, seemingly unconcerned. Apparently his I’m already dead mindset was serving him well in this instance.

Chloe, though…

She was putting up a brave face, the burning white flame’s reflections flickering in her eyes as she stared, but she was also slowly, almost imperceptibly, moving in closer against Ethan’s side, as if seeking his protection.

He froze, wanting nothing more than to put his arm around her and make her feel entirely safe, but he also didn’t want to take advantage.

In the end, he settled for changing the angle of his body slightly so that she could lean in closer if she wanted – which she did, settling against his side, her warmth radiating through him with a wave of pure contentment.

He had never really understood it when other shifters had talked about how amazing it was to find your mate. Perfectly sensible, level-headed people he’d known for years suddenly became enamored of someone they’d just met, their priorities changing overnight.

He had thought at the time that he’d understood the general concept behind mates, and that it was something he wanted nothing to do with, but he hadn’t understood at all.

Now that he was experiencing it for himself, he thought that he finally understood what those other shifters had been talking about.

Standing there with Chloe by his side, he felt like he could face anything.

Suddenly, Margot’s eyes blazed with that same white fire, and he was very quickly snapped back into the present.

She chanted some words that he couldn’t understand, low and hypnotic, and Chloe shivered.

It was pretty unnerving, even for him – he could definitely see how it would be frightening for her.

Abruptly the flame went out, the shadows receded, and the lamps brightened. Everything was normal again, and it would’ve been impossible to tell that anything had even happened, if not for the curlicue of smoke that continued to rise from the charred remains of the herbs.

“Whew!” said Margot. “That went better than expected.”

Before Ethan could work out the most polite way to respond to that , Curtis doffed his hat and bowed his head a little.

~Pleased to meet you, Miss Chloe,~ he said bashfully, and Chloe almost jumped out of her skin as she turned to face him.

“You… you’re…” she stammered, her face as pale as… well, Curtis’s.

~A ghost, yes,~ he said. ~It takes some getting used to, I know. It took me a while myself.~

“A ghost… okay, you’re really a ghost,” she murmured, blinking rapidly as she stared at the apparition now suddenly standing in front of her, before shaking her head and assuming a more determined look.

“Nice to meet you too, Curtis,” she said, raising her hand again in an awkward wave, and smiled a little as Curtis waved back.

She turned to Ethan, looking up into his eyes. “I’m, uh, sorry I didn’t believe you,” she said. “Though, to be fair, I hope you can understand why I was a bit skeptical?”

“Absolutely,” he said – and it was the truth.

She could have stolen his car and left it in a ditch somewhere, and he would have forgiven her instantly.

Not automatically believing a near-stranger who said that ghosts were real and that one was, in fact, hanging out with them right at that second was not a particularly dire offense, in his book. “No need to apologize.”

“Thank you,” she said, and it was several long moments before Ethan was able to tear his eyes away from where they were locked with hers.

“I’m afraid that I can’t perform any stronger magic, such as divining your reason for returning to this plane,” Margot said apologetically. “I fear that the spell of revelation is as far as my limited powers extend under these circumstances.”

“No, uh, don’t apologize – you’ve been a big help,” Chloe said, dragging her gaze back toward Margot, much to Ethan’s annoyance. “So many things about today make a lot more sense now. Although…”

Her face twitched a little, and Ethan could tell that he wasn’t out of danger just yet.

“You said… magic ,” Chloe continued, seemingly picking her words carefully. “Were you being literal, or metaphorical?”

“Oh, I was being literal,” Margot said cheerfully. “I’m a witch.”

“I see,” said Chloe levelly.

“Not a particularly good one,” Margot went on, apparently unfazed by making such an unflattering admission. “Which is why I decided to ‘pivot’ to selling books! It’s much more fun.”

The word ‘pivot’ came out awkwardly – she made the air quotation marks around it and everything. If Ethan had had any doubts about Margot having spent most of her life sequestered away from regular human society, they were now well and truly dashed.

While some witches and wizards were more mainstream, most of them spent most of their time in their little magical enclaves, tucked away from the outside world, living according to their own laws and culture. It meant that they could be a little… odd by human and shifter standards.

Ethan couldn’t say that he was a huge fan of the few witches and wizards he’d encountered throughout his life – or in magic in general, for that matter – but at least Margot seemed friendly and harmless.

Well, mostly harmless, anyway. Her cheerful indifference regarding her apparent inability to fully control her magic was enough to have both Ethan and his pegasus on alert for potential danger.

“Well, I’m glad that you found your true calling,” Chloe said, still sounding remarkably calm.

Her face, however, told a very different story – one that started with Once upon a time there was a lawyer , and ended with And then the lawyer told the heroine everything she wanted to know while she threatened him with a scalpel .

“We can talk about this later,” he muttered. She looked only slightly mollified, but nodded.

Curtis looked up from where he had apparently been involved in a staring contest with Monty.

~Not to distract from your conversation, but would I be able to talk with Miss Margot some more about the town’s history?

I feel that her insights would be most invaluable.

Everything has changed so much from the home I knew…

I admit, I want to know how things have come to be the way they are.

And I believe it would help me to understand why I have been brought here,~ Curtis said, his voice just a little forlorn.

“Of course,” Ethan said, feeling a bit guilty. He’d been so distracted by everything that he’d forgotten why they were even here in the first place.

Chloe nodded in agreement. “And if there’s anything I can do, please just let me know.

Not that I think I’d be of much use in this situation, being a vet who barely knows the town,” she added.

“But I’d really like to stick around and help out in any way I can – if that’s okay with you,” she added to Ethan.

Tell her that it would be our absolute pleasure! the pegasus bellowed in the least pleasurable voice imaginable. Tell her that we would love nothing more than for her to assist us to the very ends of the earth!

“Of course it would be okay,” he said smoothly. “As long as it’s not keeping you from getting your business set up?”

“Oh, most of that is just cosmetic,” she said with a wave of her hand.

“Working out some tweaks I’d like to make and checking everything is set up how I want it to be, that kind of thing.

I’ll need to go in for a few hours before we open on Monday to move some furniture and finalize a few things, but the clinic is basically ready to go. ”