Love Charms and Other Catastrophes (12 page)

Hijiri waited. She knew there had to be more.

“We're supposed to do everything together. We're
twins
. I'm scared we'll go our separate ways unless we pick the same specialty.”

They wouldn't be twins anymore. Out in the world, under different apprenticeships, Femke and Mirthe would be individuals. For the first time, it sounded like. Hijiri didn't have siblings, but she tried to show some sympathy. “Being alone isn't so bad,” she said.

Mirthe gasped. “That's a lie.”

“I'm happy.”

“You don't always
look
happy. Content, maybe. But there's a difference.”

Hijiri's heart rattled in its box. She mentally sat on the lid. “If it's that bad, you should learn to love clouds.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Then what?”

“I'm going to make her fall in love with another specialty.”

Hijiri balked. “I'm
not
making a love charm for this.”

Mirthe burst into laughter. “No way! Even if I was tempted, seeing what happened to Zita is enough of a warning. I'm glad that weather charms don't often infect a person's insides like love charms do.”

“So what's the plan, then?”

“I just have to show her how much fun other weather elements are. She'll see.”

Hijiri wasn't convinced. More than that, she was worried.
The twins probably do need a love charm for this
, she admitted to herself.
Not manipulation, but there must be some way to help them.
Another charm to make.

She needed to start crafting.

*   *   *

When Hijiri returned to her apartment, she dove into her love charm supplies. Her cramped bedroom was still a problem. She inched past the shoji screen to root through her open suitcase, tossing wrinkled clothes on the bed in her search for materials. “Candles, candles,” she muttered, finding a packet of dried hollyhock petals and a few loose red strings instead. Orange candles would be best for the charm she had in mind for Nico and Martin. Orange candles felt lively, like sunrise waking a sleepy couple with its bright rays, a comfortable touch that opened the lines of communication.

Balanced on her heels, she clung to the sides of the suitcase to keep herself steady. She thought she saw orange underneath her sweaters. When she reached for it, her foot slipped and she fell backward, knocking into the shoji screen.

The screen crashed into the table it hid. Everything else happened in slow motion.

With so many materials and experiments piled on her table, Hijiri had failed to notice the table's dying creaks and groans. The impact from the screen caused the table leg to break, sending glass bottles and open containers tumbling to the floor. Her heart jumped into her throat. She was scared to look behind her; her hand landed in rosewater from a spilt bottle.

A feeling worse than dread settled in her stomach. When she finally peeked over her shoulder, she couldn't breathe. Most, if not all, of the glass bottles had shattered on the wood floor. If she had left any dry materials open, they were now soaked and useless. Tears burned the back of Hijiri's eyes, but she forced herself to her feet and wiped her hand on her shirt.

The materials are replaceable
, she reminded herself.
Nothing was too expensive. It's okay.
Anything to take away the numbness spreading through her body.

Then she heard a knock on the door.

Hijiri rubbed her eyes and gingerly stepped around the broken glass.

She opened the door while Fallon was in the middle of talking to someone—Ken. “Ms. Ward still can't believe the school paid for new card catalogs,” she said, “and I can't either. The library's seen better days. If the carpets could be replaced too, I'd call that an improvement.”

Hijiri croaked out a hello.

Before Fallon could respond, Ken shoved himself through the doorway and cupped her face. “Your eyes are red,” he said, his brow furrowed. “What's wrong?”

His hands were warm on her face. She tried to smother her tears, to push them down with her other buried feelings, but the hurt was too real. Too soon. Tears ran down her cheeks and wet his fingers. “My charms,” she managed.

Ken dug a tissue out of his pocket and wiped away her tears.

Fallon sniffed the air. “Something smells … strange. Like candy and flowers mixed together.”

“I knocked them over,” Hijiri said.

“Oh no,” Fallon said.

They entered her apartment and headed straight for the chaos in her bedroom. Fallon gasped when she saw the shattered materials. “Can you find anything to salvage?” she asked.

Hijiri couldn't speak, but she nodded.

“There's too much broken glass. Just tell me what you want and I'll get it,” Ken said.

While Fallon ran back to her apartment to get a broom, pail, and cleaning supplies, Ken picked through the mess for Hijiri. She pointed to everything that could be wiped clean, that hadn't lost potency being mixed with the liquids. Ken handed her golden buttons, cinnamon sticks still sealed, rose quartz, and a few sentimental items that made her charms stronger when she held them while crafting.

“How do you use these?” Ken asked, tossing her a teddy bear missing an eye.

Hijiri wiped her nose with the tissue. “If I tell you, you'll steal my ideas.” She was only half-kidding.

“I don't know the first thing about crafting love charms,” he said.

“You're lying.”

“That's not something Love felt was necessary for me to know.”

“But you're—”

Ken turned his face away from her, intent on brushing more glass out of the way with a towel. “There are other subjects, other parts of life, that interest me.”

Hijiri sank down on her bed. Clearly, he hadn't forgotten their earlier conversation at the club meeting. Neither had she. Love made him for her, so logically he'd have to be a love charm-maker himself, or at least have the aptitude for it. What was the point in making him otherwise? She couldn't let it go. “What else could you possibly like?”

Ken balled up the towel. When he looked back at her, his eyes flashed with bitterness. “I am more than you think.”

 

Chapter 8

CHANGE OF PLANS

Hijiri stared at her feet. Another pain flared up, worse than seeing her supplies break. Maybe he wasn't real. His heart might be iron, his blood made of charms, but he obviously thought different of himself.

“Anything else?” Ken asked tightly.

“No.”

He stood up and inspected his wet knees from kneeling in the spilled liquids. He let out a ragged sigh and said, more softly, “It's okay to think of me as a person, you know.”

Hijiri's heart wiggled up her throat and stayed there. To think of him as human would mean she had given up on trying to solve him. She couldn't indulge in that kind of thinking, could she? “I'm not giving up,” she said.

“I know that,” Ken said. “You could pretend sometimes. See how it feels.”

Hijiri turned inward, mentally poking her heart for feedback. Maybe she could try. Charm or no charm, he was asking for respect, and she had to find a balance between that and her own desire to solve Love's riddle.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I'm sorry too,” he said. He plucked the tissue from her hand and gave her a new one.

“If you don't want to craft love charms,” she ventured, “what do you want to do?”

Ken was about to answer when Fallon came back.

Fallon held up her broom like a sword. “Leave the cleaning to me.”

Ken turned back to Fallon. “I think everything else here is beyond saving.”

“That's fine.” Fallon grinned. “After this, your room is going to be the cleanest it's ever been.”

Hijiri had no doubt of that.

Between the three of them, cleaning the bedroom took about an hour. Hijiri moved her suitcase out into the living room, along with the shoji screen, and Fallon generously dusted the inside of the closet when they were done.

“The leg snapped,” Ken said, inspecting the table. “Bad structure.”

“Someone had left the table out for recycling last year. Seemed like a waste to leave it when it worked,” Hijiri said.

“It lived a good life,” Ken said.

Hijiri let out a laugh. The tension between them had eased with Fallon's presence and a task to focus on.

“How are you going to craft your charms now?” Fallon asked. “Please don't move it into the kitchen. That's unsanitary.”

“I need a safer place to store my materials,” Hijiri said. Once she put them back in order, she would be able to start experimenting with her competition charm ideas.

Ken brightened. “Fallon, you were talking about the library before. What happened to the old card catalogs?”

“Ms. Ward said she couldn't bear to get rid of them. Too many memories.”

Ken clapped his hands. “Would she give one to Hijiri?”

Fallon matched his excitement. “I don't see why not. Hijiri, can I use your phone? I'll ask her right now.”

“That would be perfect,” Hijiri said quietly. All those deep compartments. Most of her materials were small. She could fit almost everything into the catalog drawers.

Fallon went to the phone and dialed Ms. Ward's new number. After the Spinster Villas were shut down, Grimbaud High's head librarian found an apartment close to the school. Fallon worked in the school library as part of the office-experience program; she and Ms. Ward had formed an alliance, then a friendship, all because they had shared love fortunes declaring them spinsters from Zita's shop.

“I didn't want to say anything before,” Ken said, “but you could use more furniture.”

Hijiri sighed. “It just never seemed important before.”

Decorating had been so far from her mind last year. She hadn't given up on the idea of transferring to a Lejeune high school back home after seeing how tight Zita's grip on Grimbaud had been. She was thankful now that she stuck it out in this town, but that meant she needed to treat her apartment as a home away from home. Add some of her personality and make it look like she was really living there. That also included fixing her love charm-making situation. She'd have to have all her materials safely stowed and at hand.

Fallon returned with good news: Ms. Ward would be happy to give one of the card catalogs to Hijiri. They could go see the catalog right away at Ms. Ward's apartment, just to make sure it would fit in Hijiri's place.

*   *   *

“I've never seen so many books,” Ken said as soon as he entered Ms. Ward's apartment.

Hijiri smiled at that. Of course he hadn't. Still, Ms. Ward
did
have an excessive collection of books. With so many books, mostly hardcovers, the librarian had to find inventive ways to make space for them. Books were stacked behind the front door, next to the shoe rack, and Ms. Ward had installed small shelves above the door to accommodate magazines. The living room had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Some books were shoved between couch cushions. Others were piled underneath the coffee table.

“How did you organize them this time?” Fallon asked.

“By height,” Ms. Ward said.

Hijiri looked at the shelves again. One side of the room had tiny books, gradually growing in size as she turned to look at them down the hallway.

Ms. Ward had soft features hidden by the cat-eye glasses that swallowed her face. In her twenties, she had been the youngest of the spinsters, and took to wearing skirts with cat prints, though she didn't have pets. “You couldn't have come at a better time,” she said, leading them through the kitchen. One cabinet was open, revealing numerous cookbooks crammed inside. “I have a few books still in storage, but with the catalogs, I have no room to bring them home.”

Ms. Ward had both card catalog cabinets in her bedroom; Hijiri could see that losing one of them would give her some breathing room—or more likely another bookshelf. The drawers were too small for her to fit books inside. The card catalog was made of oak, with brass handles and frames around the labels.

Imagining all her materials inside each little drawer was easy. Her heart thudded as she ran her fingers over the labels. “I'd love it.”

“Great.” Ms. Ward said they'd need to arrange movers since the catalog was heavy even when empty.

They sat down at the kitchen table, calling a few companies in Grimbaud's directory until they found one that offered a reasonable price and speedy service. Ms. Ward brewed some green tea and unearthed a half-eaten chocolate cake from the fridge to celebrate. Fallon wouldn't try the cake, but Hijiri didn't hesitate to take a slice. Neither did Ken. The frosting was fluffy and sweet, a perfect match with the dark chocolate inside.

Ms. Ward welcomed Ken as quickly as the others had, asking him a few questions, but nothing too invasive. She seemed preoccupied with another matter. “Fallon, we have to talk about throwing some events at the library this year. Something fun for students to do besides just using the space for studying.”

Fallon frowned. “About that … I've been meaning to tell you … everyone … that I secured an internship at the police department.”

Hijiri gasped. “Is this about Sanders?”

Fallon's jaw tightened. “Not exactly. After what happened with Zita, I wanted to see if I was interested in using my inspecting skills to catch other charm criminals. With a new detective at the helm in Grimbaud, I have hope that we'll see changes. I want to be there helping in any way I can.” She shrugged. “Of course, while I'm there, I'm going to make sure Sanders is not overlooked. That man needs to be stopped.”

Ms. Ward smiled fondly. “That means you're going to be busy.”

“After school, yes. I know you have big plans this year; I'm sorry I can't help.”