Chapter 2 A Very Rude Customer

Hazel's POV

The shape in the doorway ducked its head to get through, which told me two things right away. One, it was even taller than the doorway made it look. Two, it had done that before, like the shop and its low frame were an old joke between them.

When it straightened up inside, it wasn't a shape anymore. It was a man , or something built to look like one. Broad through the shoulders in a way that made the counter between us feel like a toy fence. Dark hair, a plain gray coat, nothing about his clothes that should have scared me at all.

It was his eyes that did it. They caught the lamp light wrong, flashing gold for half a second before settling back to ordinary brown, like something underneath had blinked instead of him.

I gripped the candlestick tighter. "We're closed."

"You're not." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to , it filled the room anyway, low and even, like he was used to people listening the first time. "I can see the lights on. I can see you standing there with a candlestick like it's going to do anything useful."

Heat crawled up my neck. I set it down on the counter, slow, like that made the last ten seconds not happen. "My aunt's in the back," I said. "She's , busy. You should come back tomorrow."

"Beatrix doesn't have a back room." He glanced past me at the wall of glowing jars, the black cauldron, the table that hadn't existed an hour ago, like he'd walked this floor a hundred times and knew exactly where everything belonged. "She has this."

My stomach dropped somewhere around my shoes. He said her name like he owned it a little. Like they weren't strangers.

"Okay," I said, buying time I didn't have a plan for. "Fine. She's not in the back. She's out. She'll be back soon."

"How soon?"

I didn't answer right away. I didn't have an answer , Beatrix had been gone almost two hours now, way past the "ten o'clock, lock up if I'm late" she'd promised , and every second I spent not answering was a second longer than it should have taken to just say soon.

His eyes narrowed slightly, like he'd heard the gap and filed it away.

"My name's Osric," he said, when I still hadn't managed a real sentence. "Beatrix owes me something. I paid for it three weeks ago. Tonight's the night I collect."

"Collect what?"

"A Happiness Draught." He said it flat, like ordering coffee, no shame in it at all. "Full batch. Should've been sitting bottled and ready for me an hour ago."

I looked at the empty table, the shelves of ingredients I couldn't name half of, the cauldron that had risen out of the floor like it grew there. There was no potion. There was no bottle. There wasn't even a recipe that I could see, and I had exactly zero idea how to brew anything stronger than tea.

"It's..." My mouth was dry. "It's not ready yet."

"Then get it ready."

"I can't just ," I stopped myself before I don't know how came out, because saying that out loud to a stranger with gold-flashing eyes felt like handing him a knife. My whole life, people had been waiting for proof that I couldn't do magic right. I wasn't about to hand a stranger that proof for free. "It takes time. You'll have to wait."

Something in his face didn't change, exactly, but it settled, like he'd decided something about me and filed it next to my name. He pulled out the chair across the black table , my chair, I realized, the one Beatrix must have meant for whoever sat down to brew , and lowered himself into it like he had all night and no interest in spending it kindly.

"Then I'll wait," he said.

"You can't just sit there."

"Watch me."

I opened my mouth to argue and found I had nothing. He was already settled, elbows on the table, watching me with an attention that made my skin feel too small, like every mistake I was about to make was already being counted before I made it.

"Look," I said, trying for the voice Mom used when she wanted something done without asking twice, "you don't understand. I don't know how any of this works. My aunt does the potions. I do the register. If you want your , your Happiness thing , you need to talk to her, not me."

"She's not here."

"I know that."

"Then who does that leave?"

The question sat there between us, simple and terrible. I thought about Jasper, three towns over, who wouldn't pick up his phone this late. I thought about Mom, two hours away, who would absolutely come get me and would never, ever let me forget it. I thought about calling anyone at all and admitting I was standing in a shop that had turned into something out of a nightmare, with a man who wasn't a man asking me to fix a problem I didn't understand.

I thought about how the exam proctor had looked at me. Careful. Worried. Like something in me was already broken and he was just confirming it.

I wasn't going to give this stranger the same look on his face.

"Fine," I said, before I could talk myself out of it. "I'll figure it out."

Something flickered behind his eyes , not quite surprise, more like he hadn't expected that particular kind of stubborn. He leaned back in the chair, arms crossed, watching me the way you'd watch a pot you didn't trust not to boil over.

"You should know," he said, "the shop only runs one way. Whatever you start tonight has to finish before the sun's up, or it curdles. Turns to poison instead of medicine. That's not a rule I made. That's just how it works here."

"How do you know how this shop works better than I do?"

He didn't answer that. The silence stretched a beat too long, long enough that I noticed it, filed it away the same way he'd filed away my hesitation a minute ago. Two people, both noticing what the other wasn't saying.

"Sunrise," he said instead, tapping one finger once against the table like he was marking time itself. "That's the deadline. Not mine. The shop's."

I glanced at the window. Still black outside, no gray creeping in yet, but the number of hours I had left suddenly felt very small and very real.

"Fine," I said again, quieter this time. "I'll have it ready."

He studied me a second longer, like he was deciding whether to believe that, then settled deeper into the chair like a man planning to stay exactly where he was until proven wrong.

"Good," he said. "Because I'll tell you the same thing I'd tell Beatrix if she were standing there instead of you."

He didn't blink. Neither, somehow, did I.

"Tell your aunt," he said, "I don't leave empty-handed twice."