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the morning, a witch that risked it all on a forbidden love spell in the afternoon, and of course... the strange, delightfully irritating, Detective Nathan Wall.
    Despite being a consultant witch for the police force, and owning a magical second-hand bookstore, Ebony's life was usually fairly boring. She'd pack books on shelves, occasionally deal with customers, and trot down to the police station to remove a curse from a ring.
    Normal stuff, boring stuff. But now the winds of change were blowing, and Ebony could feel them playing against her hair.
    Now the only question was, just what would happen next?

Chapter Three
    E bony shifted her body from side to side, head weaving to and fro as the music pumped through her store. Her hair flicked around her like a skirt flaring in mid twirl. She clicked her fingers in time with the beat, and shook her wrists up and down till her copious golden bangles tinkled like little triangles.
    Ebony didn't believe in working without music. Working without music was like working without food: unsustainable, boring, and dull. So whenever she worked, she always made sure she had two things with her: blaring music and a bag full of lollies sprawled across the counter.
    Cleaning up the store had been quite a task. Harry really had put on a show the other day when he'd tried to teach that new detective a lesson. Really, Ebony sighed, though it had been amusing when it had happened, she was now thoroughly sick of picking up books and stuffing them into shelves.
    Time for a lolly then. Ebony just dumped the three or so books she had in her arms down on the ground, little dust clouds eddying up off the floor as they struck. Sweeping the floor was a task she had simply never gotten around to doing. It was because of brooms, she'd convinced herself, she just hated brooms. Human fiction had gotten that part dead wrong over the years. Witches didn't fly around on broomsticks all the time, black cloaks billowing in the wind, wands at the ready. Why? Because witches hated house work, the color black was boring, and wands were for magicians.
    Plus, Ebony reasoned as she flung herself down the old metal spiral-staircase that separated the first-floor from the second, people expected dust when they came into a used bookstore. If the books they were looking for weren't absolutely caked in the stuff, how would they know they are old and used?
    The stairs clunked with rusty creaks as Ebony's red, bedazzled high-heels pounded them. This bookstore really was old. It was a large open-plan building, with a high ceiling, and was just stuffed to the brim with books and dilapidated magazines not a soul had ever likely read. The counter was off to one side, right at the front of the store, near the fire-truck red door. There was an old cash register sitting on top of it, and a glass bowl full of candy and ludicrously colored lollipops. She always offered one to customers after they'd actually bought something, just to sweeten the deal.
    The rest of the first floor was sliced off erratically with giant, dark, stained, wooden bookshelves. Rather than having them neatly arranged in rows, with labels and some kind of order, Ebony preferred the hodgepodge method of library cataloging. There were old, red, velvet banana-lounges dotted around the place, their fabric torn and worn with age. And behind the lounges, or to the side, or in front of windows, or wherever she damn pleased – were the large bookcases, their shelves simply overflowing with books of all sizes, colors, and content.
    It was a rabbit warren, as her father described it, a crazy rabbit warren dug out by rabbits on barely legal drugs. Ebony had always giggled at that description. Her mother seemed to have a different opinion though. A messy mind, Avery Bell had always warned, summoned a messy life.
    But Ebony loved the place, she'd finally convinced herself. Sure, having no actual order meant that most people became too frustrated in their search to actually