Essex [the bad familiar]

2: Smudge

The shopkeeper's bell chimed three minutes before close.

Sandelene lifted her face from her forearm, pulled off a bit of magazine that'd stuck to her chin from the drool of deep sleep, and sniffed. The quiet scent of burned sage was lost to the stink of alcohol and strong floral deodorant.

A group of teenage girls huddled around the store entrance, dressed in short skirts and cropped tops with styled hair the humid June air hadn't yet frizzed. White eyeliner made their eyes seem comically wide as they stared at the neatly stacked copper ritual bowls and incense sticks featured in the shop's main display. 

"Um," began one girl at the back, pulling a driver's license from her clutch. "Ribbet, ribbet, croak?"

"Ribbet, ribbet, croak," chorused the rest. There was a quiet unzipping of clutches and nervous brandishing of fake IDs.

Sandelene slipped her magazine below the counter, brushed dark bangs from her face and brusquely declared what they were beginning to suspect, "Not the Groggy Frog."

Immediately the shortest among them, a pretty girl in a bouncy peach skirt, hit one of her peers on the arm. "Told you 'Smudge' was wrong!" she hissed. 

The second girl rubbed her arm. She gestured at the windows. "But it's all blacked out! And look-" She waved wildly at a distant display. "Frogs! We're in the right place. You probably got the password wrong. Text Dave and ask him what tonight's is."

"You text Dave. I don't want to owe him one."

"Neither do I!"

"Have Maribel do it. It's her brother."

The conversation devolved into a high-pitched spat.

Sandelene massaged her temple.

Maybe she should have taken her inheritance and opened a secret speakeasy instead. Would've been more profitable. When she'd chosen the metaphysical supply store's name and designed the sign out front, she'd thought that 'Smudge' was a sleek, modern title that would help attract good business. Instead of her desired clientele, however, she'd attracted teenagers in spades, lured in by the dark windows, the slick, inky name; and rumors of a super secret speakeasy in the basement of a building around these parts.

"Dave's a liar, girls. You're looking for Barghest, not the Groggy Frog," Sandelene offered when the girls didn't see themselves out. "Unless you're looking to share a plate of wings with off duty cops."

"We're twenty-one," a girl asserted, but she leaned over and whispered at another to google it.

"B-a-r-g-h-e-s-t," Sandelene snapped, glancing at her wrist. The watch ticked past seven pm. Supper time. It was too late and she was too hungry to argue nonsense with a group of thrill-seeking teenagers. "Two blocks down. Red dog painted on a brick. Knock above it. Will be a ghost town until nine, though."

She fished her keys from her pocket and slipped around the counter. It was actually five blocks, and you had to whisper a password through a tiny little slot of faux brick— 'Throstlenest,' according to this week's email —but poor research wasn't her problem.

The second girl, somewhat braver than her watchful counterparts, gave Sandelene a leery once-over. "Are you a witch?" she asked, her fingertips following a pentagram stamped onto a glossy crimson ritual bowl.

Sandelene, a woman who preferred leggings and long sweatshirts to Gothic, romantic dresses and smoky eye shadow, a woman who, at current, wore an old blue tee and a pair of navy yoga pants, folded her arms across her chest and stared down the pimply little thing before her. "Yes."