Page 20 of Twisted Fates
He pulled into traffic, and we stopped at a strange little shop I hadn’t been to before. He parked in front of the building, and when we got to the front, he said, “The day I met you, I came here by accident. I’d never been before. But it wasn’t a coffee shop. It was a different building, and it said Magic Shop on the front. That’s how all this started. Then, when I came back out, it had transformed into this.”
I looked at the facade and shrugged. “Not much to look at,” I said.
“True, but the coffee is so good. Come on. I’ll show you.”
We walked in, and I ordered my regular almond milk latte, and he ordered a cappuccino. The place wasn’t crowded like it should be at this time of day in winter. I grabbed a muffin to split with Damian, and when the coffee was done, we went to sit by the front window.
I halved the muffin and then took a drink. “Wow,” I said, my eyes growing wide. “This is like the best coffee in Seattle. Why isn’t this place packed?”
“I might be new to all this, but I’m going to guess this is how they want it.”
I looked over at the barista, a petite woman who appeared to be our age. She winked at me like she’d heard what Damian just said. It had to be magic if she did because we were on the other side of the room.
I made a mental note to keep my thoughts to myself in a world where people had superhero hearing.
“So, what did you want to show me?” I asked as Damian took a big bite of his share of the muffin.
When he swallowed, he sighed. “You really should see it to believe it, but I’ll tell you this much: last night, I slept in the attic, and this morning, when I woke up, the house had changed.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Like, how did it change?” I asked.
He tossed the rest of the muffin in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, forcing me to wrap my half of the muffin since I had yet to take a bite and grab my coffee to follow him out.
He told me he didn’t mind if I ate in the car, so I finished the muffin on the way to his house. The house looked exactly the same to me.
“What’s different?” I asked.
He just laughed. “Not on the outside. Come with me,” he said, leading the way up to the porch.
He didn’t use his key, but I heard the door unlatch when he turned the knob, clearly unlocking on its own. So bizarre.
When I walked in, I froze. The traditional layout was similar. The smaller rooms were still to the sides, with pocket doors leading to them, but where the dining room had been with walls separating the kitchen and butler’s pantry, it was now open to the entryway.
“H-how?” I asked.
“Magic,” Orville said as he drifted through the wall to our right.
“Magic? Can ghosts do magic?” I asked, and for the first time since I’d met him, Orville chuckled.
“That’s a no, but Mr. Richards certainly can. However, I don’t suspect this was done by you, sir,” he said, addressing Damian. “I’m guessing this was a spell cast by Mr. Ericson, your predecessor.”
“I dreamed it all,” Damian said. “All night, I dreamed and saw the changes in my mind, but I had no idea they were happening.”
“Well,” I said, walking toward the now open-concept kitchen and dining area. “I approve of your dream design. This is beautiful. Oh,” I said as I noticed the butler’s pantry shelving was still intact, although the walls around it weren’t. “You saved the old shelving.”
Damian nodded. “Yeah, I saw something like this on a TV renovation series and remembered how much I loved it. It must’ve registered in my dream because this is how it was left.”
I walked around the kitchen, admiring the intricacy. I had to imagine only a dream could come up with some of thewhimsical elements. You had to look close to see the legs of the island splayed out to show unicorns on the ends.
My spirits lifted with the sight of the unicorns, and I smiled, thinking how much I’d always loved them. My room back home had been filled to the ceiling with stuffed unicorns until I’d started dating the hateful Mr. Strange. “I love it,” I said, forcing the nasty thoughts of my ex out of my head. “Was the kitchen the only thing you did?”
“No, come into this room,” Damian said, leading us into the parlor, which was still separated from the dining room with the same door. The room was still traditional and a little formal, but the old furniture had been replaced with more comfortable and modern pieces. It still matched the home's style, although if I were designing it, I’d probably have stuck with the formal stuff and turned the other rooms into the informal ones.
We walked through each room, and it was easy to see which ones Damian didn’t care much about. The music room now had a fancy sound system and was super modern, which was sad. I didn’t like old homes that had lost their historical charm.
The library was the biggest transformation. The shelves still held all the books, but the natural wood had been painted. “Ugh,” I said before I realized I was saying that out loud.
“You don’t like it?” Damian asked.
