Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 119158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Look, I wasn’t one of those guys who needed fifty products just to care for my skin, but I also was not one of those assholes who thinks those all-in-one bottles of cleaner is going to cover it. I enjoyed having soft, unblemished skin. I’d been lucky enough to be zapped into a body with great fucking hair, and I wanted to keep it that way. And yeah, maybe I didn’t want to spend my days smelling like a rotting carcass.
Unfortunately, it took almost an hour to escape that shop with my brand-new heavy bundle of products that I hoped would survive the trip into Ulmenor, because I’d dropped far more coins in that shop than I should have.
Yet again, I saw the shadowy blur as soon as I stepped out onto the street. This time I tried to follow it, but this person was too fast for me and I was unwilling to dart down the narrow, dark alley without someone to watch my back.
Telling myself that it was a pickpocket, I returned to my previous course and hit my last stop, The Celestial Spell.
No, I refused to stop in the wizard shop called Dispel and That Spell.
I entered the dimly lit building, and the thick scent of old incense assaulted my nose. A soft twinkling chime echoed through the room, winding between the tall, overflowing bookshelves and the various herbs hanging from the ceilings. There were all kinds of raw crystals and minerals on low tables, reflecting the dancing candlelight. In a lot of ways, the store reminded me of Mother Thistle’s rickety house in Misty Pass, with its general sense of chaos.
“Halloooo!” a man from the rear of the room called out. “Welcome to The Celestial Spell.”
Weaving between the tables and shelves, I followed the voice to a man in robes that reminded me of Jasper’s, except they were newer and covered in stars and crescent moons. He had the prerequisite long white beard, bushy eyebrows, and wrinkled face behind tiny wire-rimmed spectacles. He looked the part of a wizard.
The wizard put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes. “Let me see…you’re here for a love spell.”
“No, I—”
The man’s brow scrunched up farther and beads of sweat popped out to sparkle in the low light. “A curse. Someone in your family is trying to steal your inheritance, and you need a curse to stop them.”
“No. What I need—”
“You need me to gaze into your future, and tell you what dangers lie in your path.”
I sighed. “No.”
The man dropped his hand and huffed, glaring at me through his glasses. “Really, boy. I’m getting nothing from you. You’re going to need to help me out here.”
I placed all of my packages on the cluttered counter that separated us and dug into my coin pouch for the infamous coin. “This. I need you to look at this coin and tell me about it. I found it over a week ago, and…well…” I hesitated, the words dying on my tongue. Did I need to tell him I was from another world? “Can you just look at it?”
The coin resting in the center of my palm, I held it out to the man, the candlelight sliding over the shiny gold to illuminate the raven with its wings spread wide. It appeared exactly the same as the day I’d found it.
The wizard stared at it for a second and extended one hand to pick it up, but his withered fingers never even scraped the surface. He jerked his hand away on a noisy gasp and jumped from me. The man was practically climbing the giant shelf behind him to get away from me. Or rather, he was trying to escape the coin.
“Out! Out of here right now!” the wizard screeched, pointing a trembling finger at the door.
His terror ripped the air from my lungs. His already pale face had taken on a waxy texture and was now covered in sweat. I didn’t want to give the man a heart attack, but he knew something. “But do you know what this is? Where it came from?”
“No! And I don’t want to know! You-you-you get that thing out of here and never come back!”
“But—”
“It’s evil. It was made from evil. Get rid of it. But get out of here first!”
“This thing stole me from my home and brought me here. How do I get home?” I demanded, as I slipped the coin into my pouch.
Only when it was out of sight did the wizard move away from the shelves. He rushed to the counter and shoved all of my packages into my arms. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Never return here. You and that coin are bad luck.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him, but I didn’t get the chance. A large puff of bright-purple smoke covered him. As soon as the smoke cleared and I stopped choking, the wizard was gone.