The Shop
Portia entered the small shop via a stairway that lead below the level of the sidewalk. There were three stores in the alcove but you could only find the one with the red door if you knew what to look for. The store on either side of it sold various used media of some kind. Probably LP’s or something, no doubt Conrad stopped in every time he came this way. Conrad had told her how to find it; he seemed surprised she didn’t already know the way. He told her to look for a music shop, the name escaped her now, something like “Used Children”, then focus on the image of a solid red door with a gold handle, with the image in her mind she could walk down the stairs and find the red door. If you did not know what you were looking for you would just find the other two shops. Once she hit High Street she began to picture the door and her footsteps had brought her directly here.
There were shelves upon shelves of knick-knacks, jewelry, and little boxes. A veritable treasure trove of small pretty things lined the walls, some hung from the ceiling, some pinned to scarves. Shelves that wound around the entire room were lined with jars that held a variety of what looked like dried herbs or animal parts. In the air lingered the scent of jasmine, and just faint enough that you almost didn’t notice, the smell of decay. This place made her distinctly uncomfortable. There were two other patrons, they were talking towards the back. “The problem with Halloween is, you don’t know whether to stay in and do rituals or go out and have a good time!” The boys laughed and continued looking at some dried insect husk the size of a bowling ball. Portia moved over to what appeared to be the counter and looked into the glass case. There were several knives on display, some brass knuckles, and even a couple straight razors. Her eyes were drawn right to the center of the top shelf. It was beautiful, exactly as she had pictured it. It looked delicate and deadly at the same time. It was black with a silver dragon coiling around the handle, its mouth was where the blade snapped out when you pressed on the ruby clutched in its claws. She looked up from the case to look for the owner and found herself staring into a hideous face, wrinkled with brown liver spotted skin, wispy yellow hair the color of pus clinging to a mostly bald head, and two bulging eyes, one brown and one blue. The blue eye starred directly through her and the brown one drifted aimlessly to the right.
“Would you like to hold it?” the voice was like the sound of sound of grinding stones under water.
“Yes please” She let him set it on the glass top so that she would not chance accidentally touching him. She turned it over in her hands and marveled at how perfect it was. The blade snapped into place silently when she applied just a touch of pressure to the ruby. “Do you have one with a diamond in it?” She could barely afford this one and wasn’t sure why she asked, but she had wanted to fill the dead silence between them.
The little man scowled at her and said “Five Hundred dollars and a lock of hair from a virgins head” She realized that his Brown eye had been watching the other patrons and that the statement was directed behind her. She suppressed a shudder. “NO” he replied to her.
“I’ll take it” She placed a Crown Royale bag on the table. The contents had taken her nearly a month to collect. He dumped it out on the counter and viewed the assorted items within. A marble sized sapphire, a piece of driftwood, a dried salmon, a money clip containing $2,000, a tuft of dark brown fur, and one fang. The fang was hers, but he didn’t need to know that. He put it all back in the bag and nodded. She put the knife in her pocket and headed towards the door.
As she passed the other patrons she caught one of them checking her out, she turned her head and caught his eye. She smiled a slow smile carefully parting her lips just enough to show one fang. He paled and quickly went back to examining some piece of nose jewelry. As she left she fingered the blade in her pocket.
Azmadaelous walked back into the storage room and opened a crate, he opened a small box and picked up the dragon-adorned switchblade inside, this one with a diamond in it. “Diamond indeed, as if she is going to use it on anything that doesn’t bleed.” He walked over to a shelf lined with glass vials with varying levels of blood in them and placed the fang she had given him in an empty one, it would fill as she used the blade. They always used their own fangs, as if he wouldn’t know. He grinned to himself and headed back to the counter, the boys should have had enough time to cut some of their hair by now.