Bang bang bang bang bang BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

The door of the small shop flew open, revealing a bleary eyed woman wearing a threadbare robe and an expression that threatened the physical safety of the knocker.

“Do you have any idea what time it is? What the hell do you want?” she snarled.

The girl on the stoop quailed slightly, but after a deep breath, forged ahead. “My name is Nikola Zamoyski and I want to become your apprentice,” she said in a rush.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“My name is Nikola Zamoyski, and I would like to train as your apprentice please. Ma’am,” the girl repeated, somewhat more politely.

The woman looked her up and down, and didn’t seem particularly impressed by what she saw.

“What are you, twelve?”

“Sixteen,” Nikola said defensively.

“Go home, kid. I’m sure you’ve got better stuff to do than waste my time.” The woman tried to shut the door, but Nikola stuck her foot between the door and the frame.

“My name is Nikola Zamoyski, and I want to become your apprentice!” she said again, her voice rising in pitch.

“I said go home. Your parents are probably worried sick about you. Or they would be if they were awake at this ungodly hour, which I am sure no one in their right minds are except for you and me. Either way, go home.”

“My name is Nikola Zamoyski, and I want to be your apprentice!”

“I don’t need an apprentice. I don’t want an apprentice. And I certainly don’t want some kid invading my space and distracting me from my work. Now get, before I call the police and they take you home.”

“My name is Nikola Zamoyski, and I want to become your apprentice!”

The woman stared at the girl for several long moments. Nikola had her head angled down so her dark hair partially covered her face, but the woman could see the tears the teenager was struggling to hide.

It was bitterly cold on the stoop.

The woman sighed. “Come in. But don’t get comfortable! You can come inside for a second to warm up, and then you’re leaving.” She opened the door fully, and Nikola slunk into the front room.

Dim lights illuminated strings of dried herbs hanging from the rafters; the shelves behind a high counter were lined with bottles of murky substances; there was even a preserved crocodile head grinning at her from a circular table, on which fat white candles had been allowed to melt down into waxy lumps. Nikola tried to look everywhere at once, taking in as much as she could.

The woman rolled her eyes, and went behind the counter where the potions were kept.

“What do you drink?” she asked. Nikola started and looked at the wall of strange bottles a little warily.

The woman had to refrain from rolling her eyes again. “Coffee? Tea? Milk?”

“Oh, um… coffee?”

The woman pulled out two stained mugs and an old electric coffee pot from underneath the counter and plugged it in. She filled the coffee pot with water and then conjured a tub of cheap instant coffee from somewhere, spooning some into each cup. With nothing to do now but wait for the water to boil, she came back around the bar and gestured for Nikola to take a seat at the round table.

Nikola fell into the chair closest to her, which happened to be directly in front of the crocodile’s snout. She had to make an effort not to look it right in the glassy eyes.

“I want a job, please!” Nikola pleaded again.

“You’ve made that clear already,” the woman replied sharply. “And I’ve already made it clear that I'm not interested. I don’t have the time to be following some inexperienced teenager around all day cleaning up after her mistakes. Got that?”

“I… I want to become a witch,” Nikola tried to explain, all of her grand and airtight arguments about why she would make a valuable apprentice disappearing in a puff of smoke under the witch’s caustic stare. “And I know that I could be really good at magic if someone just gave me the chance to learn, and I heard about this place from some of my friends who had bought spells here, and…”

“And what exactly did you think was going to happen? That I would just let some random girl in off the street and start teaching her all my magical secrets? What happens when your parents come looking for you, or more likely, when the police come looking for you? I don’t want to be playing babysitter until then.”

Nikola sunk lower in her seat, now practically nose to nose with the grinning crocodile. “No one is going to come looking for me,” she mumbled, barely audible even to the reptile.

“I don’t want to have to convince a bunch of cops that I didn’t kidnap some runaway teenager. I don’t need that kind of trouble in my life.”

“No one is looking for me. No one is ever going to look for me. I just want to learn how to become a witch. I want to be your apprentice.”

The woman looked hard at Nikola, who was hiding her face again behind a wall of dark hair. The girl was trembling.

“...You can stay for the day.”

Nikola’s head whipped up.

“Just today. Tomorrow, you’re going straight home, and that’s final. And you’re going to have to work while you’re here, I won’t have you just standing around getting in my way while I’m working. Don’t look that excited, you’re not going to be doing any magic. When I say ‘work’, I mean sweeping the floors and reorganizing my pantry, got that? I don’t even owe you that much, so if you don’t like it, you can clear off.”

“No, no, I’ll… I’ll help, I’ll do work. I’m a hard worker.”

The woman stood up. “All right then, if you think you’re so sure. The shop doesn’t open for a few more hours, but there’s still plenty to do. You can start by reorganizing the potion shelves. Everything is all mixed up and I can never find what I'm looking for when I need it. I like everything in alphabetical order.”

Nikola looked over her shoulder at the high shelves filled with hundreds of small glass bottles.

“All of it?” she asked.

“All of it,” confirmed the woman. “That should probably keep you busy for a few hours. I’m going upstairs to change, I'll be back down in fifteen or twenty minutes. Don't touch anything except for those potions, not so much as a single sage leaf. I'll know if you do.” She gave the girl one last blistering look, and headed towards the only other doorway in the room, covered by a heavy brocade curtain. She paused with the curtain drawn back, and looked over her shoulder at Nikola. “My name is Tessa, by the way,” she said.

                                                         *   *   *

Reorganizing the potions did take hours. Each jar and bottle was labeled, its contents written in cramped handwriting on peeling paper. Tessa made Nikola provide a writing sample and apparently approved enough that she gave Nikola an entire stack of fresh stick-on labels along with the instructions to relabel all the jars and bottles while she was at it.

“I can’t read my own handwriting half the time,” complained Tessa. “Do you know why my hair is this short? I accidentally caught it on fire once when I grabbed the wrong ingredients because I couldn’t read what I’d written. I’ve kept it short ever since.”

By the time the first customer came into the shop over an hour later, Nikola was sitting cross legged on the floor behind the counter, surrounded by dozens of bottles.

The bell above the front door tinkled, and a gust of cold air blew into the room.

“Erm, good morning,” came a woman’s timid voice.

Nikola couldn’t see the customer from where she sat, but she listened eagerly.

“What can I do for you?” Tessa asked, putting down the magazine she was idly flipping through.

“I need… um, that is…” the woman looked around the room nervously, biting her bottom lip and clutching her handbag tightly. “I don’t know, I’m just looking,” she finally stammered.

Tessa raised an eyebrow, but nodded politely. “Feel free to ask if you have any questions.” She picked up her magazine again--Witch’s Quarterly--but continued to watch the woman instead of finishing the quiz she had been in the middle of taking (Enchantress in the Streets, Sorceress in the Sheets: How Balanced are your Work Life and your Love Life?).

The woman wandered over to the bookshelves against the wall opposite the counter and picked up a how-to guide on divination. She flipped through it without really looking at it and set it back down. She inspected some ceremonial knives behind a glass case, glanced at the selection of pre-carved tallow candles. She lifted a ceramic bowl for burning herbs as if testing the weight, and then stopped to read the Witch-A-Day calendar that sat on the counter (November 18th, Baba Yaga). She had come full circle around the little shop, and pretended to be surprised by the fact that she was now standing in front of the counter, opposite Tessa, as if she had ended up there by complete accident.

“Anything strike your interest?” Tessa asked innocently.

“Oh, I don’t know…” the woman hemmed and hawed. Her eyes slid to the shelves behind Tessa, still half-filled with potion bottles. “Well, since I’m already here anyway, wouldn’t it be such a laugh if you had… um, if any of those potions were for…” she lowered her voice and the words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush, “alovespell.” She cleared her throat. “As a joke. For a friend. Not for me.”

“Well,” Tessa said slowly, “I do provide a selection of love charms, amulets, and potions. It really depends on what you’re looking for though. I’ve got a charm that can make a person more lucky in pursuits of love. And I’ve got a potion that increases your natural pheromones. To some people you’ll smell like a fresh chocolate chip cookie; but to other people, you might reek like sewage on a hot day. I’ve got an amulet that draw attention and one that puts out a sort of general romantic aura like an aphrodisiac cloud; but the former only makes someone more likely to take notice of you, and the latter only works well with people who already have a romantic interest in you. Magic can only take you so far.”

The woman looked disappointed. “Oh,” she said. “Well, I suppose then… I suppose I’ll take the good luck in love charm, and one of those amulets you mentioned.”

“Which one? The attention amulet, or the romantic aura?”

“Uh… both. Both, actually. And maybe some of the pheromone stuff too. Just a little. For my friend.”

“For your friend, of course.” Tessa turned away from the woman to search the shelves, running her finger along the labels until she found what she was looking for. “Alright, here is the pheromone potion. Avoid crowded places like elevators after taking it.”

Tessa pulled open one of the countless drawers that lined the back of the counter and began rifling through the assorted wooden charms and amulets that had been just tossed haphazardly in there. She pulled out two and laid them on the counter top beside the potion. “Attention amulet,” she said pointing to one of them, “and a romantic aura,” she pointed to the other. “Don’t wear them at the same time. You wouldn’t want to get too much attention, or you’ll end up feeling like you’re walking through a dog park with a salami in your pocket.”

Then Tessa spent another minute or two digging around in more drawers until she withdrew a small white candle carved with runes; a packet of dried herbs; and a piece of paper that had been folded and sealed with a blob of red wax.

“And your charm. The invocation for good luck in romantic pursuits is already written on this paper,” she said. “Light the candle, burn the paper. Drop it into a bowl, add the herbs from this pouch. And that’s all you need to do. I’ve already done all the magicky bits for you.”

“Thank you!” the woman half whispered.

Money changed hands, the items purchased were dropped into a discrete brown paper bag, and the woman hurried out the door, the little bell above the door tinkling again as she disappeared back out into the street.

Once she had gone, Nikola jumped to her feet and peered curiously at the door. “She really bought all that stuff?”

Tessa snorted. “That was a pretty typical customer experience here. I would say about half of my sales come from love spells. And they almost always pretend to browse first, too embarrassed to admit upfront what they’re really here for. I prefer to make potions from scratch when the customer orders it, but I can’t manage that with the love potions. It’s easier just to make them in bulk ahead of time. Now get back to organizing those bottles, it looks unprofessional having them scattered all over the floor like that.”

Nikola scuttled back behind the bar to continue her work, her hand already aching at the thought of the hundreds of bottles and jars that still needed relabeling.