The incense left to burn on the windowsill was Sam’s idea. The old man thought that customers were more comfortable walking into an occult shop that smelled like frankincense or ginger than the authentic alternative: smoke, bins of dried herbs, musty books, jars of insects and dismembered animal parts. The incense didn’t neutralize the scents, but it gave it an air of respectability.
James looked up. He watched the woman enter the shop from a perch at the end of a long counter. Before him, a worn book was open to a diagram. The spellcaster had wrapped his hand in a leather cord, winding and doubling back between his fingers so that the cord traversed his palm in an elaborate pattern. He straightened to watch her. He could usually tell whether a customer had been in the shop previously; they made a beeline for a certain item, or searched the room for its amiable proprietor. She didn’t do either.
“Hey.” He plucked an earbud out and tossed it among his things. It settled in the spine of the book.