My eyebrows rose, and I went hot. “Excuse me?”
“What the hell?” Jenks whispered.
The young woman, eighteen at the most, fumbled for the phone, holding it like a threat. “I’m asking you to leave,” she said, voice firm. “I’m calling the I.S. if you don’t.”
Sparkles dripping, Jenks got between us. “What for? We didn’t do nothing!”
“Look,” I said, not wanting an incident, “can we pay for this first?” I nudged the basket, and she took it. My blood pressure eased. It lasted all of three seconds-until she set the basket out of my reach, behind her.
“I’m not selling you anything,” she said, eyes darting to tell me she was uncomfortable. “I have the right to refuse anyone service, and you need to leave.”
I stared at her, not understanding. Jenks was at a loss. But then my eyes fell on the newspaper with yesterday’s story of the riot at the mall. There was a new headline. BLACK MAGIC AT CIRCLE MALL-THREE IN HOSPITAL. And suddenly I got it.
I reeled, putting a hand to the counter for balance. The university returning my check. The hospital refusing to treat me on the witch floor. Cormel telling me he had to speak on my behalf. Tom saying he’d be around if I wanted to talk. They were blaming me for the riot. They were publicly blaming me, and calling it black magic!
“You’re shunning me?” I exclaimed, and the woman went red. My eyes flicked to the paper, then back to her. “Who? Why?” But the why was kind of obvious.
Her chin lifted, the embarrassment gone now that I’d figured it out. “Everyone.”
“Everyone?” I yelped.
“Everyone,” she echoed. “You can’t buy anything here. You might as well leave.”
I retreated from the counter, my arms slack at my side. I’ve been shunned? Someone must have seen me with Al in the garden, seen him abduct Pierce. Had it been Tom? The freaking bastard! Had he gotten me shunned so he’d have a better shot at Mia?
“Rache,” Jenks said, close to my ear but sounding faraway and distant. “What does she mean? Leave? Why do we have to leave?”
Shocked, I licked my lips and tried to figure it out. “I’ve been shunned,” I said, then looked at the tansy. It might as well have been on the moon. I wasn’t going to get it, or anything else in the store. Or the next. Or the next. I felt sick.
I shook my head in disbelief. “This isn’t right,” I said to the clerk. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve only helped people. The only one who gets hurt is me.” Oh my God, what am I going to tell Marshal? If he talks to me again, he might be shunned, too. Lose his job.
My demon mark seemed heavy on my foot and wrist, and I tugged my sleeves down. Red-faced, the clerk dropped the tansy in the trash because I’d touched it. “Get out,” she said.
I couldn’t seem to find enough air. Jenks wasn’t much better, but he at least found his voice. “Look, you lunker,” he said, pointing at her and dripping red sparkles that puddled on the counter. “Rachel isn’t a black witch. The paper is printing trash. It was the banshee that started the riot, and Rachel needs this stuff to help the FIB catch her!”
The woman said nothing. I put a hand to my stomach. Oh God. I didn’t want to spew in here. I’d been shunned. It wasn’t a death sentence, like it had been two hundred years ago, but it was a statement that what I was doing was not approved of. That no one would help me if I needed it. That I was a bad person.
Numb, my grip tightened on the counter. “Let’s go,” I whispered, turning to the door.
Jenks’s wings were a harsh clatter. “You need this stuff, Rache!”
I shook my head. “She won’t let us buy it.” I swallowed. “No one will.”
“What about Matalina?” he said, panic icing his voice.
My air slipped from me, and I turned back to the counter. “Please,” I said, Jenks’s wings making my hair tickle my neck. “His wife is ill. The tansy will help. Just let us buy this one thing, and I’ll never come back. It’s not for me.”
Her head shook no. All her fear was gone, washed away by the confidence she found when she realized I wasn’t going to give her trouble. “There are places for witches like you,” she said tartly. “I suggest you find them.”
She meant the black market. It wasn’t to be trusted, and I wouldn’t seek it out. Damn it, I had been shunned! No witch would sell to me. No witch would trade with me. I was alone. Absolutely alone. Shunning was a tradition that stretched back before the days of the pilgrims, and it was 100 percent effective; one witch couldn’t grow, find, or make everything. And once shunned, it was seldom revoked.
Her chin lifted. “Get out or I’ll call the I.S., for harassment.”
I stared at her, believing she’d do it. Denon would love that. Slowly I pulled my hand off the counter.
“Come on, Rachel,” Jenks said. “I probably have some tansy under the snow somewhere. If you don’t mind getting it for me.”
“It’s wet,” I said, bewildered. “It might be moldy.”
“It will be better than the crap they sell here,” he shot back, flipping the woman off as he flew backward to the door.
Feeling unreal, I followed him. I wouldn’t be able to check anything out of the library either. This was so not fair!
I didn’t feel Jenks snuggle in between my scarf and my neck. I didn’t remember opening the door or the cheerful tingling of the bells. I didn’t remember walking to my car. I didn’t remember waiting for traffic before I edged into the street. Suddenly, though, I was standing at the door to my car with my keys in my hand, the bright sun gleaming on the red paint, making me squint.
I blinked, going still. My motions slow and deliberate, I stuck the key in the lock and opened it. I stood there a moment with my arm on the fabric roof, trying to figure it out. The sun was just as bright, the wind just as crisp, but everything was different. Inside, something was broken. Trust in my fellow witches, maybe? The belief that I was a good person, even if there was black on my soul?
I had an appointment in twenty minutes, but I had to sit for a while, and I didn’t know if the coffee shop on the tower’s first floor would serve me. Word of a shunning traveled fast. Slowly I got in and shut the door. Outside, a truck rumbled past where I’d been moments before.
I was shunned. I wasn’t a black witch, but I might as well have been.
Twenty
It was with a new feeling of vulnerability that I stood before the double glass doors of the Carew Tower and adjusted my hat in the murky reflection, and I jumped when the doorman leaned forward and opened it for me. A warm gust of air blew my hair back, and he smiled, tipping his hat in salute when I came in with small steps and whispered, “Thank you.”
He answered me cheerfully, and I forced myself to straighten up. So I had been shunned. Edden wouldn’t know. Neither would Ms. Walker unless I told her. If I walked up there looking like prey, she would chew me up and spit me out.
My jaw clenched. “Stupid department of moral and ethical standards has their head up their ass,” I muttered, determined to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court-but the reality was, no one would care.
The restaurant at the top of the tower had its own dedicated elevator, and I could feel the doorman’s eyes on me as I clicked and clacked my way to it, forcing myself to find a confident posture. The elevator, too, had a doorman of sorts, and I told him who I was and gave Edden’s name as he checked his computer for reservations.
I hiked my bag up higher on my shoulder and read the restaurant’s events sign as I waited. Apparently someone had reserved the entire restaurant for a party tomorrow.
My flagging confidence took another hit as I remembered Pierce. I was shunned, my ex-boyfriend’s killer was roaming free, I was doubting my ability to stir something as complex as a locator amulet, Al was abusing our relationship…I had to start fixing things.
Jenks moved, startling me as he wiggled out and sat on my shoulder. “Your pulse just dropped,” he said warily.
