✨CHAPTER 1
Malcolm Witchell was Reg’s first appointment of the evening. She had not met with him before, so she wasn’t sure what to expect.

He was an older man with a round, stout figure and gray hair. He seemed pleasant enough when she met him at the door, but she could see a dark aura around him when she had him sit down on the wicker couch in the living room. The smiles and friendly manner hid what he was really feeling. Of course, that was not unusual. Society demanded that people hide their negative feelings and put on a show for the outside world. That was true even in Black Sands, where there was such a high population of psychics and other magical practitioners that a person couldn’t hide his true feelings for long unless he were skilled at blocking such intrusions.

“So, what can I do for you today, Mr. Witchell? Was there a particular type of reading you were hoping to have? A decision you’re trying to make or something you’re trying to reconcile from the past?”

“I was told you’re very good with the crystal ball.”

Reg nodded. “Sure. No problem.” She retrieved her crystal from its place on the shelf and put it on the coffee table in front of the wicker couch. She sat down next to him. Close enough to feel the cold, anxious cloud that enveloped him. He was troubled about something. But that didn’t come as a surprise. Many of her clients were going through a difficult time and needed someone to help them through it.

Reg gathered her thin red box braids together in both hands and pushed them back behind her shoulders. She adjusted the scarf around her head and closed her eyes. She just sat there quietly for a moment. Witchell shifted beside her, unable to stay still. He was uncomfortable in his own skin. Maybe second-guessing his decision to come to her. Too many negative emotions might block her from being able to do a successful reading.

“Can I get you a cup of tea, Mr. Witchell? Something to help you to relax?”

“I wouldn’t turn down a glass of Scotch.”

Reg smiled. “I can give you one… but alcohol can mess up a reading. It’s not the best idea. If tea would do…”

He cleared his throat and shrugged. “I suppose. Can’t hurt anything, can it?”

Reg stood back up to make the tea. While she was in the kitchen area of the front room, Starlight jumped down from the windowsill in the bedroom and came out to see who was there with Reg. She bent down to scratch the black and white tuxedo cat’s ears.

“Do you want to help me with the reading today?”

He purred and nuzzled her and wound around her legs.

“Do you mind cats, Mr. Witchell? Starlight is quite a powerful psychic himself and helps to magnify my gifts. If you don’t mind him taking part in the reading…”

“I like cats just fine.” Witchell patted his ample lap. “Come here, kitty.”

Starlight put back his ears and looked at Reg in alarm. She sent him reassuring vibes. “He’ll probably sit with me for it. If he wants to participate.”

Witchell grunted. He watched Reg get the tea ready. In a few minutes, Reg sat back down with him, a cup of tea for each of them on the tray she set on the coffee table.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re hoping to get from today’s reading,” she suggested. “Is there a particular question that you have in mind? Something that is troubling you?”

He looked her over, eyes bright and piercing. “I have certain concerns,” he said slowly. “But if I tell them to you ahead of time…”

“Then you can’t be sure whether I’m really exercising psychic powers or just telling you what you want to hear?”

He looked a little relieved at her suggestion, smiling tentatively. “Yes. I suppose that’s insulting, but…”

Reg sipped her tea. “Not at all. When people come for a reading, they are usually looking for evidence that I really am psychic and not just putting on a show. They want to believe, and they need help, but if they just want friendly advice, they could go to a friend. Or a bartender or therapist.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Reg didn’t tell him she’d been a pretty convincing psychic even before discovering that she had actual psychic powers. People who wanted desperately to believe were easy to con.

“That’s just fine.” Reg nodded. “You don’t need to tell me anything about what you hope to hear tonight. Though if I don’t have specific directions as to what you are looking for, the results might be unexpected. You may get advice on matters other than what you came for today. The fates aren’t always cooperative.”

He shrugged, but his hooded eyes told her he took her caution as a sign that she wasn’t really psychic and he might not get what he had come for.

She put her teacup down and turned her attention to the crystal ball. Starlight approached and jumped up on the couch. He squeezed himself against Reg’s leg, keeping her between him and the client. Why didn’t cats ever want attention from the people most willing to give it to them?

Reg rested her fingertips on the crystal and looked past the shiny surface reflections, focusing on the inner depths. She thought about the man sitting next to her, reaching out all her senses to gather what she could about him. His emotions, his discomfort with being there, his anxiety… over seeing her? Over something else that was going on in his life?

Starlight added his strength to Reg’s, helping to sharpen and clarify the feelings.

Yes, he was anxious and uncomfortable. Something to do with his personal life? His business? Family?

She could see shapes within the crystal, but they were still unclear.

“You are very anxious about the future,” Reg said slowly. “You are seeking direction, unsure of your choices…”

He tensed slightly. Wrong step. Reg backtracked.

“You have made a decision already. But you’re not sure.”

That felt more correct. Reg explored this, trying to put herself into his mind, to see him in the crystal ball and discover what choice he had made and why he was so concerned about it.

She saw him moving among shelves, the images very dark and fuzzy still. Shelves of what? Shelves in a storage room? Had he put something away and then forgotten where he had left it? People often came to her to look for lost objects.

But that wasn’t it. He had come to her about a decision, and if it were something to do with the shelves, it wasn’t hide and seek. She looked at the world from his perspective within the crystal, standing in the middle and turning to look all around him, three hundred and sixty degrees.

It was not a basement storage room; it was a store. A small store with dim light coming in through the front windows. Before opening or after closing, no one else in the store, and the main lights not turned on.

Reg studied the shelves, frowning. A toy store?

The products on the shelves were old. Or old-fashioned, anyway. Carved wooden cars and trucks. Sets of small animals. A blocky toddler puzzle. A turtle with wheels that looked like its flippers moved when it was pulled by a string.

“Is it about the toy store?” Reg asked.

Witchell took in a sharp breath. She didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the image within the crystal.

He still wasn’t sure whether he should tell her anything about the questions he had come to her with. Reg didn’t press him, but continued to observe the images within the crystal.

“It’s very nice. I’ll bet grandparents especially like to buy the kinds of toys for their grandkids that they played with themselves.”

Witchell grunted. “Yes.”

But he wasn’t happy about that. Why not? It must be fulfilling to craft the little toys, to make something with his hands that was so beautiful and practical and would be enjoyed for many years and passed down from one child to the next generation.

But he wasn’t the one making the toys, or didn’t enjoy it. He was dissatisfied, looking for something else to do. Maybe the business was not doing well. Maybe people didn’t buy many wooden toys anymore and his business was foundering. Looking for a new direction.

“Yes,” Reg murmured, as much to herself and Starlight as to Witchell. “It isn’t working anymore. The old ways aren’t always the best. People aren’t buying quality wooden toys anymore. Not many of them, anyway.”

“It’s a dying market,” Witchell confirmed, the words popping out of him like a released cork. Something that he hadn’t intended to tell her, but her words had freed him to talk about it. “If we don’t adapt, we will have to close the business.”

“You and your partner,” Reg said, seeing another man in the picture, smiling and talking to a customer about the process of lovingly crafting each piece. How each was unique and made individually, not mass-produced. There were no robots, no assembly line, just careful, loving hands. “Your brother?”

“My uncle,” Witchell corrected. “But… we grew up together. We are like brothers.”

In the crystal ball, the customer smiled and left the store without putting in an order or purchasing one of the completed toys off the shelf. The uncle’s face fell, and he shook his head. He’d thought that the woman would buy a toy. Maybe several. She’d seemed like a promising prospect. But she had left without buying a thing.

“Are the two of you trying to figure out what to do with the business?” Reg asked. “How to keep your customers or get more?”

“I know what we need to do,” Witchell said. His aura grew darker. “We have to change with the times. No one wants to buy that kind of thing anymore. Maybe we could still keep a few, a shelf in the back of the store where we sell old-fashioned toys to the oldsters. Sentimental fools who remember what it was like to play with them and want to relive their own childhoods. Because kids don’t want that anymore. They don’t want old-fashioned wooden toys.”

The world was now full of lights and sirens, screens that could play dozens of games and keep children occupied all day. Toys that talked and beeped and moved, that came with apps and movies and were backed by huge advertising dollars.

“What does your uncle think of that?”

“Arch is too old-fashioned. He just doesn’t see it. He thinks it is just a temporary lull. That the pendulum is bound to swing the other way and people will come back to the old toys. It isn’t a pendulum. That stuff is in the past. No one is going back there. The world is moving forward.”

Reg nodded. In the crystal, she saw Arch’s face, wistful and a little hurt. Witchell didn’t want to see him sad. But he couldn’t hold out and not do anything to change their business model, either. Ignoring the problem wouldn’t make it go away.

Reg was mindful of Witchell’s dark aura. He’d already made a decision, and he hated it. He felt like there wasn’t any other option.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m sending him on vacation. A well-deserved break, so that when he comes back, he will be rested and rejuvenated.”

But that wasn’t the whole story. That was just what he was telling Arch.

“And while he’s gone… I’m going to make some changes.”

✨CHAPTER 2
Reg was still looking into the crystal ball. She saw nothing but swirling darkness for a moment, and then… destruction. The toy store was gutted, everything removed from the shelves and all the shelving units and furniture torn out. Soft lighting replaced by bright fluorescent lights. A long, brushed steel counter and fresh new shelving and display units. Filled with brain candy. Electronic devices of all sorts, big brand toys, all of the popular stuff. Spick-and-span and shiny new.

Was that really what Witchell wanted? The wholesale destruction of what his family had built together? He said they would still sell the old toys at the back of the store, but Reg didn’t see any place left for them. Trash bags of handmade toys were disposed of in big garbage bins. Nothing was left of Uncle Arch or what he had built.

And that was what Witchell wanted him to come home to?

The man would die. With his life’s work destroyed and trashed, what reason was there for him to go on? Malcolm Witchell would be sad, but it would free him to run the toy store however he pleased, without anyone else telling him what he had to do or not do.

And then what? The renovation of the toy store would cost money. Would he be able to recoup that? Would he be able to turn a profit? Or would the change mean the end of the store?

“You would… do all of this while he was gone?” she asked Witchell.

“It needs to be done. It’s the only way we will be able to recover and run the store profitably. I know that Arch won’t like it; that’s why I’m going to do it while he is gone. Then there isn’t a fight over it. It’s just done.”

“You don’t think he’ll be upset when he sees it?”

“Well, of course he’ll be upset. For a little while. And then he’ll see that it’s turning a profit and that it means we can keep the store, when we wouldn’t be able to if we just kept doing what we’ve been doing.”

“And you’re sure that a store like this—” Reg realized that he couldn’t see what she had seen in the crystal, “—a modern store with all of the popular toy brands—will be able to turn a profit?”

“Well, they do, don’t they?” He shook his head as if Reg were being stupid. “These are the things that the kids want. They go into the city to buy them. They’d rather buy them here than go all that way.”

“I don’t think…” Reg worded her statement carefully, “that lying to your business partner and making changes behind his back is going to work out the way you think it will. If you want to make changes, you need to talk to him.”

“He just won’t do it,” Witchell insisted. “He won’t want to make any changes. I already know that.”

“This will not go well.” Reg looked away from the crystal and leaned back. She looked him in the eye. “If you do this… it will destroy your relationship with your uncle.”

“But without these changes, we won’t have anything to live on. Things are already tight, too tight. We’re putting money into the business instead of making it.”

“If you replace all the wooden toys with popular modern stuff, won’t you lose your current customers?”

He scowled at her. “They’ll buy the new stuff.”

“Will they?”

“If they don’t, then new people will come. That’s why we’re getting the new stock.”

Reg petted Starlight and scratched his ears. “I’m not sure what you wanted to ask me or what you were hoping to hear in this reading, but… if you want to know whether this is the right thing to do or not… I don’t think it is. You need to be honest and transparent with your uncle. Tell him what the problems are and what you want to do. Because if you do this… send him away, and throw out all of the wooden toys, and make over the whole business… you’ll lose him, and maybe the toy store too.”

“That’s not what I came to hear.”

“No.” Reg studied him. “But I think maybe you already knew. I think that’s why you’re feeling so… dark right now. You knew it was the wrong choice, but you were hoping I’d tell you to go ahead, that it was the only thing to do.”

“I’ve already ordered supplies and started setting up contractors to do the work.”

“Then you’d better stop them before they get too far. Tell them your financing didn’t go through.”

His expression was grim. “There is no financing. If this doesn’t work, we’re done.”

“Talk to Arch. Otherwise… you’re doomed to fail.”