After five minutes of vampiretherapy, Kirill was looking at JJ with big, teary eyes, exclaiming that he didn’t feel any desire to drink even a drop of alcohol now. That was another line to check from my list.

Technically, my shop was all set now, but with only two people to man the counter, that left someone working overtime to gather new merchandise or to cover for the one who would do it. I didn’t want to work overtime and wasn’t sure JJ would agree to that, either.

Hell, since he was working for free, he didn’t count as an employee, anyway.

With this in mind, I wrote to someone whom I knew would be interested in my offer. When I named my price, she only asked: “When I can start?”

I liked her. She was all business. Probably because she was too chronically tired to bother about pleasantries.

She agreed to be ready for work right next day. I didn’t need to check her for her skills, too—she worked in various retail places all three years I knew her, and knew her history as well as our college could teach it.

Next morning, for the first time in a month, I woke up early and took down the mourning drapes from the store’s windows. Today even the weather itself seemed to agree that it was the time to stop grieving. The sun was shining, instantly turning the weather from chilly spring into twenty-two degrees Celsius early summer.

The same sunlight made the insides of the store look like the store again. If before it was more of another dusty storeroom, now it looked the best it ever was—well, would look after a little cleaning. Sunlight that shone on the old wooden furniture, antique vases, paintings and locked cases with gleaming jewellery, making them look more alive at once. It was like an instant transmission into the past.

JJ eyed the bright lines of light on the floor with visible apprehension, and I bit the inner side of my cheek. “Would the weather be a problem? I guess I can come up with something… Some thinner drapes on windows? I think there were some lying in storage…”

He sauntered to a patch of light, and I watched him put a hand in it. Nothing happened at first. Then, to my astonishment, it began to redden before my eyes, like from an extreme sunburn.

JJ took his hand back, and there, out of the direct light, it paled back as quickly as it burned. He gave me a smile. “It seems like my light tolerance grew while I was… indisposed. I think I will manage, as long as I don’t stay near the windows for too long.”

I gave him a thumbs-up. “Great! Now, as it’s your first day, you will help me clean up until my other recruit arrives and I will explain you two the ropes.”

Thankfully, JJ knew how to do basic housework chores, even if the last time he did anything like that must’ve been before humanity came up with modern brooms. For the sake of keeping him away from windows, I put him to dusting the merchandise while I busied myself with floors.

By the time my latest recruit arrived, the storefront was sparkling clean again. I probably should’ve asked her to come early and help too, but then I decided I did a good deed. The poor girl looked like a panda with her black bags under her eyes, as it was. Which was where her nickname, Panda, came from.

She was dressed in casual jeans and blouse, her greyish-brown hair cropped into an uneven bob. There was not a hint of make-up on her, and besides for hiding her eye bags, she didn’t need it. Panda was tall and lean, maybe even too lean, but her skin was clear and her blue eyes were bright and shone with intelligence.

“Hey, Diana,” she greeted me with a half-hearted wave of a hand. “Reporting for duty.”

“Hey you too.” I gave a nod in response. “Panda, this is Jean-Jacques. JJ, this is Sveta. You two will be working at the counter.”

“Jean-Jacques?” Panda gave JJ, who was leaning on a counter, a wide-eyed look. “Are you French?”

To my surprise, even though I knew JJ wouldn’t have said he could work without causing mass panic, Panda didn’t look at all weirded out by JJ’s starved look, his slit pupils, or his paleness that was borderline paper-like. No, she was just surprised that he had a French name. I wondered if it was some magic, too.

“I’m not native to this country,” JJ explained with the same flirty smile he gave me earlier.

Somehow, I felt cheated by that gesture. I knew on a logical level that JJ probably gave these smiles to everyone, and I stayed away from him like Titanic should’ve stayed from the iceberg, but damn. Apparently, some part of me liked to imagine that I gathered attention from a beautiful and interesting man like him. Now this part just felt hurt.

On a good side, Panda didn’t show any intention to flirt with JJ back—she just nodded, accepting the information, and turned back to me. 

Ha, jokes on him! She was lesbian (another reason to pick her of all people)! And she probably had too little time to sleep to want to share it with someone else. All of that, along with the fact that she was in a need of a job that could work with her college, I knew because before I took an academic leave, the two of us studied at the same college class.

I shook my head, pushing relationship thoughts out of my mind. “Alright, you know each other. Besides you two, I hired an appraiser, but he will only come at evenings, so I will introduce you to him later. Now, let me show you how everything works. JJ, you watch especially carefully.”

Panda grasped the inner workings of the cashbox and my documentation in a moment, and JJ was close behind. After that I explained to them about the merchandise I was selling. Panda knew a lot about history, but it was all from textbooks. JJ, though, would sometimes mention things that clearly (for me) came from personal experience.

By the time I walked them around the stock, Kirill had come to the shop. He had little of work today, though I asked him to look at some things my dad didn’t leave much notes about. I introduced him and Panda, and with that…

My antiquities shop was ready for its first evening of work.