The Magician's Mistake (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 1) by Katherine Sparrow

 
     
     
     
     
    1
    The Magician
    It was a rainy Monday morning when the magician card showed up. I pulled it from my ancient tarot deck, and he sat staring up at me with one raised hand, holding a spelled staff. An infinity sign hovered over his head. My first urge was to tear it up. My second? I looked around my shop, heart racing, almost expecting him to be there, though I had no idea who he might be. It was as if I expected there to be some companion. Such foolish thoughts. I was alone. Always alone. I sipped my coffee and stared at the magician card.
    The door clanged open. Lila, my assistant, ran into the store.
    “Sorry I’m late.” Her cheeks were flushed and her jet-black hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. “Traffic. And I was out late last night on a date with this guy who seemed nice online, but then in person all he could talk about was his dog, like he was in love with his schnauzer and hey, are you okay, Morgan?”
    I pulled my gaze away from the card. Every morning, I always drew a card from my deck. There were one hundred and sixty cards, and yet it had been … decades? Centuries, perhaps, since I’d last pulled the Magician. The last time I had was the last day I … .
    I blinked and shook my head. The more ancient I got, the more my memories grew tattered. Perhaps the human mind was not meant to hold the length of a life such as mine. Best not to dwell on it.
    “Woah, cool card,” Lila said, coming behind the display counter and leaning over the thick glass display case that held baskets of crystals and spelled herbs. She poured herself the last of my coffee and turned her kohl-outlined eyes to the card. Even with her striking Persian ancestry, Lila was much too adorable to pull off her goth-girl look, but she tried, anyway. “The Magician? Wow, check out those burning eyes. What’s it mean?”
    “Power. Transformation. Trouble,” I murmured.
    “Does it mean you? I mean, are you him? You are the best at magic, right?”
    I shook my head as I looked at the card. “I’m a witch. A magician is high-born: trained to serve courts and kings. At least in my day. Or these days he might be some man who imagines he has some huge destiny.”
    “Ugh. I’ve met the type. But are you sure it’s not you? You’re not just any witch. You’re Morgan le Fay, the Morgan le Fay, like, an immortal living in Seattle and running a witch shop. Taking under your wing the best and brightest young witch in the city to teach her the ways of—”
    “I’m pretty sure I hired you off a Craigslist ad to be my shop girl,” I said. Which wasn’t the whole truth.
    “Oh sure, that’s what you told me, that you needed help with Morgan’s Ephemera , but nobody buys that. The most powerful witch in the world doesn’t need to make money on a tiny store on the lower level of Pike’s Place.”
    I glared at her. I loved this shop, and the daily ritual of work, even if it bore no resemblance to the fiery life I had once lived.
    Lila talked on. “Come on, Morgan, we both know this place is a ruse to bring us together, because you see great potential in me and you plan to train me, teach me every magic secret you know, and—”
    I pointed to a bookcase on the back wall of the shop. “The Crowleys won’t dust themselves, fair acolyte of mine. And how’s your reading of the hermetics coming along, by the way?”
    “Ugh. I’m reading them because you told me to, but hello, they’re barely written in English.”
    “Your modern, American English,” I corrected her.
    “Yeah, right.”
    The door flew open, and two men stumbled in, kicking the door closed behind them.
    They dove behind the nearest row of traveler’s cloaks and thigh-high boots. One of them had shaggy, black hair and a musk coming off him that stank of werewolf. The other was my age, or at least the age I wore. Thirty, with dark hair and a mouth creased with smile lines. He looked around the room, and then stopped when his eyes locked onto mine.