that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

his smile

c h a p t e r | 11
❝What we had only comes once.❞

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"How much is this?" A woman in a giant straw hat picked up one of Candy's best-selling suncatchers, a delicate wire-wrought snowflake tipped with pieces of blue and white sea glass.

Nine, I mouthed, smiling.

Katie was cutting back on her library hours to fill in at Amatheia Tears, but this morning she'd been called back to the stacks over a Harry Potter emergency, by which I assume she meant there was dark magic at work, and Candy was on a rare-book hunt in England, a mission also dark and magical.

So I found myself on newly familiar ground, miming my way through customer interactions at the shop, wishing someone would bring me a scone and a latte from the Black Pearl.

"Nineteen dollars?" The woman held the ornament to the light. "Is this even real sea glass?"

Yes, I mouthed. I'd harvested it myself. And it's nine.

The tide was rolling in outside, waves shifting from a distant hiss to a closer hush. The air felt heavy, damper than it had last night. Storm warning. 

The woman seemed immobilized with indecision. "Sorry." She squinted at my lips. "I can't seem to...What?"

I grabbed my Sharpie and the crab sticky-note pad.

$9 or IX or NINE. + tax.

She probably thought I was crazy. I dropped the Sharpie, reapplied my neutral, non-threatening smile.

"Okay. I'll take it," the woman said.

I wrapped it in tissue, bagged it. She set a twenty on the counter and took off without collecting her change. I stuffed it into the jar I'd started on my first day behind the counter, when I realized just how many people would rather leave without their due than try to make conversation with a mute.

I slipped out from behind the register to straighten the shelves. I'd just finished rearranging everything the woman had unsettled when the bells over the door chimed, followed by a cold blast.

Mayor Stoll took up all the space in the doorway. "Waves are really whipping up out there."

I was pretty certain he wasn't here for the suncatchers. I ducked behind the counter, hoping he'd state his business quickly and be gone.

His presence put me on edge.

"Good afternoon, Miss Chase," he said, finally acknowledging my name. A step up from the Solstice-party caterer, at least. "Don't suppose your aunt is around?"

When I shook my head, he approached the counter, leaned in close. I could smell the cheap gel in his slicked-back hair, like Windex and rubbing alcohol.

"That's all right," he said. "This concerns you, actually. Got a minute?"

I looked around. There were no other customers on the premises. No one watching but the mermaid dash ornaments, a shelf of fishtailed girls in seashell-and-coconut bras who tittered with every footstep.

Minutes, unfortunately, I had.

"Travis tells me you've volunteered as first mate in the regatta with Peter," he said.

Percy, I mouthed.

"Sorry, didn't catch that." He lowered his eyes to my lips.

I waved him off. He wouldn't listen, anyway.