Hey everyone! Welcome back and once again hope everyone had a happy and yummy Thanksgiving! I'm very happy to be updating on time this week with a very exciting episode, no spoilers but here's where the interesting stuff starts. 

Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me so far and for everyone who's starting finals season like me, hang in there and together we can all make it through this hell. 

As soon as the last end of class bell rang Nic rushed through the hallways and out the front doors to freedom. Well, relative freedom, she never really felt free in her hometown but the apartment and her part time job where about as close as it got. And besides, anything was better than school.

She wouldn’t really say that she loved her job, hardly anyone who works in customer service ever really does. She did, however, enjoy all of the time spent among old books, the interesting travelers she met, and her employers occasional motherly warmth.

She had some lunch money leftover so she used it to buy a small snack from a local vendor who made the best soft pretzels in town before making her way to ‘The Writers Block’.

The medium sized shop sat in the corner between two roads, snuggled between an art gallery and a music store. The apartment above the shop belonged to the shops owner, Mrs. Phebes,a lively older witch who would sometimes bake treats to be sold downstairs. There was a small sign over the door displaying the stores name written in black letters with a silver outline, and books displayed in the windowsills.

As she walked inside the bell above the door rang its familiar ting and the medium sized Mrs. Phebes emerged from the nearby bookshelves.

“Welcome to The Writers Block, how can I…” She trailed off when she realized that the person before her was her employee and not a paying customer before shuffling behind the register counter.

“Right on time, that’s good, I need you to go in the back and look through a new order of books we got today. I wanna make sure there’s no tears in the pages like last time, and when you’re done with that you can catalog and shelve them.”

“The new shipment’s here already?” Nic asked as she followed her boss over to the counter. “Is it the new book by Mulbrim, and the special edition of Azithogs Theories of Elementalism?”

Mrs. Phebes stifled a chuckle at the younger girls enthusiasm and simply replied, “You won’t know until you’ve opened it and cataloged them.”

Nic replied with a quick “Yes Mam” before hurrying to the back room to put down her bag and get started.

She loved the backroom, a cozy space with shelves of the rarest books, enchanted never ending cabinets for cataloging, and a small table and chairs off to the side. She would often spend as much of her breaks as she could just sitting at the small table and reading whatever book had caught her attention.

Some people found it strange that a girl without magic worked at what she believed to be the best magic bookstore in town, but she tried not to let it bother her. Sure the magic contained in the books and all of the spells where useless to her, but many of the books contained more than just spells.

They held the lives and stories of witches that had lived and died centuries ago, their tales of adventure and thoughts about their world. And besides, not all of the books where about magic, the majority of the population where humans so of course the store carried stories for them to read as well.

Some of those stories waited for her in the cardboard box currently taking up the majority of the back rooms table space. She opened the box, took a good look at the various smooth covers, and got to work, humming a small song that was stuck in her head as she examined and cataloged the books one at a time.

When she finally finished she placed the books back in the box and carried them into the front room to shelve them.

As she emerged from the back, the ting of the front bell rang through the store as a tired looking woman walked in with her young son.

The little boy couldn’t have been older than six or seven and the way he was looking at the rows upon rows of books on either side of the store showed that he’d never seen so many in one place before. His mother interrupted his wide eyed staring to sink to his eye level and place a hand on each of his shoulders, forcing him to face her.

“Easton? Honey I need you to pay attention for a second. Mommy has to go find some books for work ok? You can look around and see if you can find any books you like, and if you behave, I might buy you one or two, ok?” The little boy’s head nodded like a bobble head whose chin had just been flicked and for a moment Nic worried that if it moved any faster it would fly off his shoulders.

The mother stood up and walked over to the front counter as her son nearly ran to the nearest stack of books. He skimmed through the shelves, eyes roaming eagerly for something a bit more within his age range and smiled at Nic when he walked past her.

She smiled back and carefully balanced the box on her hip, freeing one hand to point in the direction of the beginner witch books. With a bounce and a thankful smile, the boy followed where she had pointed and began to hungrily browse the books at his eye level.

After sliding her hand back under the heavy box, Nic turned to continue her job of shelving when a cold hand seemed to wrap itself around her spine. Standing in front of her was the man from her nightmare, the one with the mismatched eyes. She dropped her box in surprise as he turned and seemed to look right through her before wondering if he could hear her heartbeat from where he was. Before she had a chance to find out, he vanished, without a sign that he had ever really been there in the first place.

She shook her head, telling herself that it had just been some crazy sleep deprived hallucination and tried to get her breathing back under control. She had just come back to reality enough to hear Mrs. Phebes tentatively calling her name from the front desk when the ground started to shake.

It started simple but soon grew to be much more violent as the windows shook and several books fell from the shelves. Nic dropped to the ground as Mrs. Phebes and the other woman cowered near the front counter. She could barely hear the woman shouting for her son over the loud rumbling, but a quick glance at the boy showed that he was to scared to move. He was bent over slightly with his hands covering his ears and his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to maintain his balance. Nic’s heart stopped when she saw the large bookcase behind him slowly start to tip forward.

She was too far away to reach him, but out of sheer desperation and instinct she flung her arm out, willing with all of her might that he would just MOVE. The warm feeling that quickly spread down her arm was a sharp contrast to the cold fear in her heart, and as if pulled by an invisible rope, the little boy slid across the room and into Nic’s arms.

There was no time to question what had just happened before she felt the bookcase next to her beginning to fall. She pulled the little boy onto the ground with her and quickly laid on top of him, shielding him from the falling debris.