Love Charms and Other Catastrophes Read online

  None at all.

  Hijiri had two problems already this school year: solving Ken and preparing for the impending love charm-making competition. Making a dent in one of them would turn her day around—and she was ready to set aside her thoughts of the charm-boy for a while.

  * * *

  “What do you think the love charm-makers are going to be like?” Fallon asked.

  Hijiri pursed her lips. From what she had seen back home in Lejeune, love charm-makers were an eccentric lot but usually warm and welcoming. It came with the territory. But what kind of love charm-makers were these people? Moving to Grimbaud so soon after Zita’s loss was a risk. Did they want to make this town a better place? Or, as the twins feared, were they here for more selfish reasons?

  She knew the twins could be overly dramatic; they liked getting a rise out of people. But if Love was concerned too … should she be?

  “Well, I’m familiar with the first shop we’re going to,” Hijiri said.

  “Really? Have you been to”—Fallon checked her directions—“Metamorphosis before?”

  “Absolutely not,” Hijiri said, frowning. “But there’s a branch in Lejeune.”

  As they approached Metamorphosis, Hijiri sensed the air thicken. Her eyes flicked to the shop’s name above the door, written in reflective cursive. Two round windows on either side of the entrance had been shaped like mirrors with little golden bulbs framing them, drawing townspeople to peek in the windows. The lights stung, too dramatically lit compared with the neighboring shops.

  “What are they selling?” Fallon asked, squinting. “We need a closer look.”

  “Exactly what they want,” Hijiri muttered. They came to see the shops though, so she put her misgivings aside and tried to tolerate it. Shading her eyes to block out the golden lights, she saw that the left window revealed a makeup station with a chair already occupied by an excited customer. A Metamorphosis employee fussed over the customer’s face, smoothing on blush and lip gloss that warmed up the skin.

  Hijiri sighed. “So Grimbaud really has one of these now.”

  “You’ve heard of us,” said a small, dark woman with a jagged pixie cut. It wasn’t a question. The woman’s eyelids were dusted shimmery bronze, the hollows of her cheeks defined with more metal-hued powder. Her black smock had crystal butterflies pinned below the straps. “Don’t be shy,” she said. “My name’s Clea Deyrem, co-owner of Metamorphosis. Mandy’s inside.”

  “You’re beautiful,” Fallon blurted at Clea.

  Hijiri pinched her arm.

  Fallon flinched and rubbed her arm. She thanked Hijiri under her breath.

  Clea modeled her face, letting the charmed makeup shimmer in the light and shadow. “Our newest color palette for the fall. You’re feeling its effects already. The eye shadow and bronzer are charmed to encourage compliments.”

  Compliments pulled like taffy from people’s mouths the moment they set eyes on her, Hijiri thought with a shiver. Clea was trying to make her customers infatuated with her. The warmth Hijiri started to feel went away when she tore her eyes away from Clea’s face. That kind of charm reminded her too much of how Zita’s assistant Camille had controlled Martin with her charmed perfume—and made her doubly repelled by Clea’s products.

  Fallon must have been thinking the same thing, because she narrowed her eyes and said, “I’d rather form my own opinion of you.”

  “That’s not the point,” Clea said dismissively. “We design our love charms to fit our motto: ‘If you love you, love will love you too.’”

  “So if I look beautiful on the outside, I’ll feel beautiful inside, and love will surely follow,” Hijiri said.

  Clea clapped her hands. “Exactly! It’s magnetism. Love is pulled toward positive feelings, don’t you think? That’s what we think.”

  Hijiri wasn’t sure if that was true, though it was a nice sentiment. The Love she knew appreciated mischief. After all, it was mischief in the form of a rebellion that allowed Love to take back Grimbaud from Zita’s clutches. Then there was the present Love had left her yesterday.

  “New customers are often overwhelmed by our love charms. Let’s take a look at you,” Clea said, unconcerned with the fact that they were still standing outside the shop. She leaned down to examine Hijiri’s face. “You’ve got such long hair. So well taken care of. Nothing to change there. Clear skin. Good. You need to take better care of your lips. We have a line of glosses that will plump them up and draw boys in like bees to honey.”

  Hijiri’s ears burned from blushing. “I—I don’t want that. No kissing.”

  “You say that now,” Clea said, laughing. “Well, what about your eyes, your cheeks? No makeup at all. That’s a shame. You could be attracting more attention if you paid more attention to yourself.”

  Hijiri broke into a sweat, her pulse pounding. She didn’t want any more attention, especially from boys. Clea’s remarks dredged up memories of last spring when she had tried to go on a few dates. After Hijiri had helped defeat Zita, a few of the braver boys had asked her out, and she had said yes out of curiosity and a sense that a love charm-maker should have experience in these matters. Yet she never made it past the first fifteen minutes. Instead of focusing on her dates, she would start itching to return to her charm-making. Must be my small heart, she had decided, the reason I can’t feel even a flutter of attraction. “I’ve heard enough. Thanks,” she snapped at Clea, grabbing Fallon’s hand and turning on her heel.

  Clea called after her, but Hijiri didn’t waver.

  “Do you think she treats all her customers like that?” Fallon asked. “So pushy.”

  Hijiri pressed her hand over her heart, willing it to slow down. She couldn’t believe how quickly and effortlessly Clea had dissected her. How did she know in one glance that I’ve failed at love? What can she do to me because of that knowledge?

  Fallon touched her elbow. “Maybe we should take a break.”

  “No,” Hijiri said, shaking her head. “We have two more shops. It can’t wait.…”

  “It can,” Fallon said firmly. “We both need lunch. I know of a place that makes omelets with organic ingredients. You’ll feel better with some nice, clean food in your stomach.”

  “Will that really make a difference?”

  “Fresh food, fresh mind,” Fallon said. “One of my parents’ mottos.”

  Hijiri cracked a smile.

  * * *

  No matter how high quality her omelet was, Hijiri’s stomach twisted into knots as they entered a rougher part of Grimbaud. “Rougher” wasn’t quite the right word, considering how the town was built, each brick carefully laid and cracked only with age, but some townspeople took better care of their homes and shops than others.

  Fallon reread her directions a few times, crinkling her nose. “Is there really a love charms shop here?”

  Hijiri looked around. Most of the shops catered to locals since tourists usually didn’t wander off the main streets. They passed a lawyer’s office and a gym. After counting the numbers on the sidewalks, they found the second shop. Maybe.

  Heartwrench was a dingy extension of the car repair shop next door, with oil stains on the pavement and a crumbling shingled roof. Blacked-out windows gave no hint of what was inside, except for the flickering neon-pink sign that read HEARTWRENCH, with a wrench for the T and a heart framing the shop’s name. Fallon avoided stepping on the oil stains. When Hijiri and Fallon stepped inside, a bell made of nuts and bolts clattered against the door.

  Despite having been open for months, the shelves were dusty and empty. Boxes still sealed with masking tape were piled by the cashier’s desk. The shop was dark except for the hanging lightbulbs overhead, spotlighting the display tables below.

  Fallon ran her finger over one of the display tables, making a trail in the dust. She crinkled her nose.

  If Hijiri hadn’t known that this was a love charm shop, she would have thought the items on display were junk parts. She studied a charm sitting on a table to her lef
t; the metal had been sculpted to look like an anatomically correct heart, and messy wiring tangled around it like bramble. When Hijiri poked the heart, the charm sprang to life, rattling on the table and shooting sparks.

  “It’s not done yet,” yelled a man in his late sixties, emerging from the back room. His blue overalls strained against his belly, and oil spotted the mauve button-down shirt underneath. The man’s jowls jiggled as he walked, his thinning hair buried underneath a baseball cap.

  Hijiri leapt away from the table when the heart started rolling. “What does it do?”

  The man ran over to the table and caught the heart before it fell. He struggled to turn it in his hands while it still rattled, but after pulling a red wire, it stopped moving. “It’s a breakable heart,” the man said. “If you’re afraid of a broken heart, just wear this one strapped to your chest instead. It absorbs all the feelings you get while dating someone and keeps it away from your real heart. So when the relationship ends…” The old man chuckled. “This heart breaks instead and your real one is safe.”

  “To date someone with no risk to yourself…” Hijiri felt sick. “That doesn’t seem fair. It’s like you’re telling people it’s okay to close themselves off from experiencing love fully.”

  “Only cowards would buy it,” Fallon said, glaring at the mechanical heart.

  The man’s smile dropped.

  “Uncle Gage, I need some help here,” said a college-aged boy, popping his head out from the back room.

  “We have customers, Ryker!” Gage said.

  Ryker sighed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He had a handsome face with dark blue eyes and a straight nose, his hair smoothed back against his head with gel. Like his uncle, he wore overalls and a button-down shirt. “What are they going to buy? You haven’t unpacked the boxes yet.”

  Gage grunted. “We’re ready enough. The sign’s lit up outside.”

  The emptiness of the shop made Hijiri uneasy, and the one charm they saw didn’t tell her much about her competition. “I was wondering what kind of charms you make,” she asked.

  Ryker’s gaze flickered from Hijiri to Fallon and back again. His blue eyes were magnified by his thick prescription glasses. “Uncle and I decided to go into the love charm business with one goal in mind: to make charms that whet the appetite of customers who prefer technology to the magic of charms.”

  “So you mask your charms in wires and gears,” Hijiri said. While Grimbaud had always been accepting of charms, other places were not. In Lejeune, charms were used frequently, but most people preferred using modern technology rather than charms to heat their homes or monitor their heart rates. Hijiri always saw it as a matter of practicality—but that was why love charms were so interesting. Love is magic, she thought, and nothing can change that. Technology is no equal to love.

  “We marry the two,” Ryker said before his uncle could speak. “Watching a charm interact with the metal body we’ve built it into is exhilarating.”

  Hijiri shivered. The wired, metal heart on the table still hadn’t moved since Gage turned it off, but she half-expected it to start rattling again. Unnerved, she said good-bye, thankful that Fallon took her cue to leave.

  “Tell your friends about us,” Gage called after them.

  We will, Hijiri thought with a grimace.

  Chapter 3

  SWEATER WEATHER

  Hijiri’s feet dragged. Her heart had gotten stuck underneath her shoe; she heard it squish, squish, squish in her head as they came close to the third and final love charms shop. After two rather disconcerting shops, she doubted the last one would restore her hope.

  “Love For All is just around the corner,” Fallon said, folding her directions to go back into her skirt pocket.

  Hijiri grabbed Fallon’s wrist. “Did you say Love For All?”

  “Yes, why?”

  Forget her hope. This one was going to be a disaster. “It’s a discount store.”

  As common as supermarkets and nail salons, Love For All sold discounted love charms. The charms were cheap because Love For All notoriously bought them from apprentices or hobbyists and sold the charms at a slightly higher price to unaware customers. The company stayed in business because people preferred buying more charms for less money.

  The love charms that came from that store were unreliable. Hijiri had heard numerous stories of those love charms fizzling out after the first use or not working the way they were advertised. Still, Love For All never gets in trouble. They hang disclaimers all over their stores to protect themselves, she thought with disgust. Why would Grimbaud have approved of Love For All opening here?

  “I thought this town had standards,” Hijiri whispered.

  “Now you sound like me,” Fallon said wryly.

  “You’re not going to like this shop either,” Hijiri warned her friend.

  “I haven’t liked any of them yet. Metamorphosis was pushy and manipulative. Heartwrench was … kind of strange. Creepy, even,” Fallon said, shrugging. “I can’t blame Love for being concerned.”

  Hijiri had to agree.

  Love For All had set up shop in a time-worn brick building. Stone cupids joyously danced on the ledges. Giant yellow posters advertising back-to-school deals disfigured the old building, but it drew in crowds of middle school and high school students with small allowances.

  Seeing the crowds of eager customers made her eyes misty. Grimbaudians wanted their love charms. They were moving on. There was something beautiful about that. After Zita’s defeat, Hijiri felt the town darken with loss. They hadn’t known how horrible and twisted Zita’s love fortunes had been. They had no idea.

  Most of the townspeople had considered Zita the heart of the town. Losing a heart completely … is a death. But the town’s living again, little by little, she thought, softening.

  But watching them dig through bargain bins of badly made love charms wasn’t okay either. Hijiri stood taller and lifted her chin. She felt more resolved than ever to win this competition.

  The generous floor space inside had aisles and more bins. Big signs hung over each section with labels like UNREQUITED LOVE, BREAKUPS, and REKINDLING OLD LOVE. Customers searched through racks for charmed clothing with various love-related properties. Even with the signs, the sections themselves offered the same plethora of love charms mixed together in boxes, bins, and drawers. Most of them didn’t have labels either; how could people tell just what some of these love charms did?

  Fallon kept her hands at her sides. “I don’t want to think of the material,” she said when she saw a woman carrying a pile of charmed shirts in her arms.

  “Ignore the clothes,” Hijiri said, tapping Fallon’s shoulder. “Look at the back corner. I wonder what’s there. That line’s so long.”

  The main attraction that had caused the line was a candy station. Flashing bulbs along the top of the station beckoned customers closer for a taste of the treats inside the dispensers. Children grabbed plastic bags and scoops that were tied to each dispenser. Hijiri watched with fascination as customers scooped gummy mice, blackberry chews, miniature sugar waffles, and unsurprisingly numerous chocolate and chocolate-flavored confections.

  Hijiri slowly nudged her way to the dispensers to see the sweets. She spotted what looked like chocolate-covered black licorice, each one in a tubelike shape. Bending down to read the description, she was startled to find it carried a love charm:

  Sweet on the outside, bitter on the inside.

  Feed this to your angry loved one and find out

  why he or she’s mad—helps resolve lover’s

  quarrels with honesty.

  Forced honesty, Hijiri thought, flinching slightly, but that was how most love charms worked. “I thought they were just candy,” she said, meeting Fallon’s eyes.

  Fallon threw her a panicked look and checked another one. The gummy mice. She read it once, then motioned for Hijiri to join her. It read:

  Temporary heightened sense of hearing

  w
hen eaten. Use your spy ears wisely.

  “For the stalker boyfriends and girlfriends in all of us,” Hijiri said dryly, her nose crinkling. “Why would people eat these? They’re sure to cause trouble.”

  “Why are kids eating them?” Fallon stressed. Her eyes flung daggers. “This is not okay, Hijiri. Worse than loose threads and dirty ice.”

  For once, her quality-obsessed friend wasn’t overreacting.

  Back in Lejeune, there was an age restriction on buying certain kinds of charms. For safety’s sake, love charms had been included on that list of monitored charms. While not intentionally harmful, love charms impacted a person’s emotions and thoughts. Manipulating the mind and heart too much had consequences. A few years back, a love charm-maker in Lejeune had been arrested for selling love potions that turned the drinkers into little more than slaves—never eating, sleeping, or having a thought stray from the person they had been forced to love. Worse than the perfume Camille crafted, those love potions had been irreversible.

  As far as she knew, those poor people were still suffering from the potions’ effects while the crooked love charm-maker rotted in jail.

  Recalling that story gave her the shivers. Hijiri knew there was a fine line between a good love charm and a bad one. That was why rules existed. Middle schoolers needed permission from their parents to buy love charms, but once reaching high school, they gained the freedom to buy and use them as they liked.

  Grimbaud had not needed such rules during Zita’s reign. She had closely monitored who had access to her charms. But now that the town was free, Grimbaud’s police force should have been catching up with the rest of the world.

  “Where’s the manager?” Fallon said, raising her voice. She stomped away from the line, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I need a manager right now.”

  A weedy man with a sour face approached. His blond hair was cut short, his forehead riddled with acne. “Sanders Lemmens,” he said, crossing his arms. “Not a manager. Owner.”