Magicae Terra - Episode 1 - Part 6

Chapter Six

The store was complete chaos when I arrived. People were running around screaming, women were crying that their perfect day had been ruined, men were standing around looking helpless, and the man was being led into a back room by the store manager. I ran after them, though, honestly, what was I going to say? Hey, I know he had bags of the store’s jewelry, but he didn’t steal it, honest. Ghosts did. Yeah. Totally believable.

First, I had to make my way through the hordes of people. Seriously, where had they all come from? There were two brides in the center of the store, both wearing the biggest, puffiest white wedding dresses ever to make it out of the 80s, screaming at each other until one of them made a running leap and tackled the other. They were on the floor, rolling around, fake nails and hair extensions flying. The grooms were trying to separate them when one of them “accidently” groped the other’s bride and then they were at it, too.

The staff, who would normally keep this kind of thing from happening, had been giving their statements to the police and now turned to them to stop the two fights in progress. The two cops present were older, overweight men, and it was obvious stopping the fights was the last thing they planned on doing. I could just hear them telling each other that they were too old for this shit.

I had to walk around the outside of the room, weaving between the spectators, until I made it to the door that the man had been led through. When I opened it, there was a short hallway filled with filing cabinets and boxes and then a doorway into what must be the manager’s office. I snuck up to the door and peeked inside, waiting for the perfect moment to step in and save the day.

The man was standing in front of the store manager, yelling at him. I was momentarily distracted by a vein popping in his neck—why was this man selling jewelry? I shook myself out of my fantasies and focused on what they were saying. I needed to know when to jump in and rescue him, though I still hadn’t thought of a plausible excuse for why he would have the jewelry. I’d think of that when I had to.

“You are so full of it, Steve! You saw the same thing I did—someone had to go after them and get the jewelry back; you know who owns this place. Do you think he would have been happy to know we didn’t stop his store from being robbed?”

Steve was a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch; him I could see working at a half-wedding, half-jewelry store. His face was purple and there was sweat beading on his forehead when he yelled back, “I know exactly who owns this store—the same man who set the whole damn thing up. You’ve worked here long enough to notice nobody buys the jewelry here. We’re losing money hand over fist, so he set this up to try to recoup some of those losses.”

That effectively shut the man up; I couldn’t see his eyes from where I was crouching, but I imagined they were all flinty and hard as he figured out what Steve was saying. All I could see was his back and I’m guessing the lightbulb moment was when it went ramrod straight and he leaned forward and grabbed Steve by the front of his shirt.

“Why didn’t you tell me he set up an insurance scam? I was hired as security, to stop incidents like this from happening; if he was planning on setting it up himself I should have been informed. Do you know what this means? Do you have any idea how furious he’ll be with me? I’ll have to go underground to hide from him and the only place for me to escape is to go through the Barrier, and if I happen to survive that, it still might not be enough.”

Steve yanked himself out of the man’s grip and backed away from him, moving behind the beige metal desk that was in the center of the room. “I told you to stay in your section. I stressed it. I couldn’t very well tell you ‘If some constructs come in today and steal from us, don’t go after them.’ You screwed up; you’re the one that got in the middle of an insurance con that the evilest warlock on this side of the Barrier planned. Now you have to deal with it.”

This was originally published in the book Magicae Terra Episode One. The full story is currently available on Amazon.
The image was created using canva.com