By Priyasha Gupta
Disdain was the word of the day as her eyes cast on the lonely silhouette by the door. “This place is not for you,” Melona calls, something as sweet as tangerine lacing her voice.
The figure blanketed in shadows doesn’t move or speak. A few moments later, a woman in a taffeta shawl wrapped around her shoulders, bustles her way inside the antique store as bells jingle behind her. She doesn’t pay heed to the man who regards her quietly with narrowed eyes while clinging to the vestiges of dark corners. Chances are—she does not see him. Most mortals can’t.
Melona smiles at her warmly. She has known this woman her whole life. Auntie Iba with her eccentric sense of humour, a curious collection of stories and secretive glances that could pull stars from the sky and tether them to the bridge of lovers.
She was in her heart- the best matchmaker in the world.
“How can we assist you today, Auntie? Are you perhaps in need of ornate mirrors or candelabras? Good ole’ memoirs of Vlad The Impaler?” croons Melona as she strokes Loki, her Siamese cat who sits on his haunches watching their exchange unfurl.
A laugh bubbles out of Iba as her eyes gleam with mischief. “You’re too good to be true, Mel. Doesn’t help that you shrug off all the men I send your way.” From the corner of her eye Melona catches her nemesis looking away, toward a narrow beam of light as unease flickers over his starkly gorgeous face.
Blissfully unaware of his presence in the room, Iba continues “But yes, you are correct. I am in dire need assistance. I want you to guard a secret for me.”
This should not have come as a surprise. Apart from the antique store that Melona inherited from her father after his passing, she was also the Keeper of secrets, dealing with inklings of information that were just too precious to be revealed to anyone else.
“You know what you need to do,” Melona said, her smile intact. Auntie Iba didn’t require more encouragement as she leaned across the table and cupped her hand around Loki’s delicate ear and whispered. “My son doesn’t know I gamble. Let it be that he never finds out.”
The moment the words left her mouth Loki’s cornflower blue eyes glowed with an unnatural light, momentarily sweeping the walls of the store with a brush of incandescence.
Melona watched with rapt fascination, as her wrist emanated a flash of blue, coiling and curling around like a ribbon until it was a singular globe of pure, white light perched on her palm. She sighed in relief as Loki’s small furry head bumped into the side of her elbow, indicating that he wanted to be petted for a job done well. She chuckled as the feline got exactly what he intended and he purred loudly in adoration. This form of affiliation, the kind that the two possessed was rare. Loki was her animal familiar, the result of stitching a part of her soul into his being. Even their magic was interwoven—making one incomplete without the other.
With the orb still in her hand, Melona stood on the tips of her toes to reach for an empty canning jar in one of the cabinets behind her. Her fingers closed around one and she dropped the glimmering sphere inside and sealed it with a lid.
“There, all done,” she said, shaking the container and proudly showing it to her customer. “You may now rest easy, Auntie. Your truth is sealed and so are your lips. It would take a colossal amount of effort for anyone to try and steal it from me.”
Determination was strewn on her features as caution got thrown to the wind, her eyes snagging to the man in the corner, a vein of defiance flaring in her chest. As if on cue, his eyes locked onto hers with a vice- like resolve—the message in them as pellucid as a streak of lightning —We shall see about that.
Melona bit on her bottom lip, barely reacting as Auntie Iba leaves on her merry way—tossing a golden drachma over her shoulder—the burnished coin rolling on the table before finally landing with a thud.
“Your clandestine ministrations never cease to amuse me.” It was the Spiller. Of course, it was. For that was his name, the only one he ever let on. His alluring dark voice carried over to her with a promise of all things forbidden. Melona sometimes wondered what it could’ve been if they weren’t stuck being eternal adversaries. This frenetic pulse that seemed to stretch between them, could it have blossomed into something more? Something with lesser thorns and more sweet-smelling bliss?
“I don’t recall ever saying your opinions matter around here,” she said, rolling her eyes at him.
He approached, slowly, until his statuesque form towered in front of her, and from where he stood, his scent reminded her of deep, enchanted woods, the kind that tempts you with dark, beautiful things, but eventually leaves you completely and utterly alone.
Spiller leisurely raised a brow. “Is that how it is, Keeper? But we both know you’re wrong.”
Melona, brimming with impatience tapped her fingers away at the table, being very careful to keep her disposition guarded yet seem casual. She could not let him know just how much he riled her up.
“Say what you will. But victory isn’t yours today.” As soon as the words left her lips, she turned away from him, unwilling to let this conversation go any further. In an instant, his hand comes to rest over her wrist as his sharp gaze tunnels to the jar in her grasp.
“Not all secrets are righteous, sweetheart. That human bonbon’s family deserves to know where their money is going adrift.”
Her lashes flutter and her breath hitches. “Yes, but I’m not here to judge my clients, am I?”
“And I am here for exactly that purpose.”
What feels like a millennium passes between the two until Melona relents. She isn’t sure why.
“Why not take all that which I guard, then?” she whispers.
He smirks, holding the jar in his hands as he backs away from her. “One at a time, Keeper. One at a time.”
By Priyasha Gupta
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