Explorers of the Unspeakable: A Thea Walker Novel

Chapter Two: Ryan

Ryan had just gotten into a groove in moving newly created or shipped items from boxes to shelves when he heard the door jingle out front. Dammit! Jennifer was back. He had told her that he wanted to be alone, but she never listened! "Jennifer!" He stomped his way out of the storeroom to head out into the main store. "I thought I told you..." He trailed off.

It wasn't Jennifer.

Standing in his store was a tall, slender woman, her dirty blonde hair falling in haphazard waves around her shoulders. It was her eyes though that stood out--they were a brilliant blue that matched the blue in her shirt. Where had he seen those eyes before? "Sorry," he told her, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I thought you were my sister coming back to bug me because we are closed."

"No, I'm the one that's sorry." The woman's gaze darted back towards the door for an instant before she turned to focus on Ryan again. "The door was open, and there wasn't a sign..."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." Ryan followed her gaze as she looked over her shoulder again. "Are you all right?"

She turned back toward him. "I'm fine."

Ryan shook his head. "You're about as good of a liar as I am."

"Excuse me?"

Ryan sighed. "My twin died, but my family wants me to be okay, so I tell them I'm fine all the time, even though I'm not. You said you're fine, but you're clearly not either." He blinked. "I'm sorry. I don't usually talk about that--I don't know why I just said that to you. He didn't talk about Dylan, not even with his family or friends. It was like a knife to the chest to even say his name, so why had he just blurted it out to her?

"It's all right," she told him. "I get that a lot." She took a breath. "And, you're right. I'm not fine." She didn't elaborate, and Ryan didn't ask.

But, for some reason, he couldn't just dismiss her. "Look, I may be closed," he told her, "but you can come in if you like. I can...get you a cup of tea or something." Tea was supposed to be calming right?

The woman looked over her shoulder again, before turning back to Ryan and nodding. She took a few steps deeper into the shop. "All right. Thank you."

"I'm Ryan, by the way." Ryan retrieved a jug of water from the counter and poured its contents into a small black tea kettle before returning it to the small stove, turning on the gas to heat the water.

"Thea."

"Thea? I like that." He lit the fuse and turned to face her. "You're probably going to think this is really strange, but I swear that I've met you before." He reached into the cabinet for a box of tea bags and two black mugs one with blue on the inside, and the other with red. "How do you take your tea?" He added a tea bag to each mug.

"Plain is fine." Thea looked over her shoulder for a fourth time before focusing on him. "We went to S.F.S.M. together, so you probably know me from there. We just ran with different crowds." The San Francisco School of Magic was a well-known secret among the witches and wizards of San Francisco. While typical mortals had no idea that the school existed (technically, it existed on a parallel plane), most California witches and wizards had attended the school.

That would partly explain why she was familiar, but if she was who he thought she was, then it was more than that. "Do you want to talk about it?" Because there was clearly something on her mind that had her constantly looking over her shoulder.

The kettle began to whistle, and he turned off the stove. He poured the hot water into the two mugs and handed one of them to her. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to though. Everybody wants to talk when they think you're hurting, and sometimes you just need it to be okay to feel how you feel."