“Who’s your other suspect?”
“This one’s a stretch, but there’s a hippie chick who runs the card and gift part of the store. She’s someone I could totally see trying to explore magic. I could certainly imagine her wearing robes and dancing around the courthouse square. I’m just not sure I can imagine her doing anything mean or greedy. Though I guess she might have been collecting the money for charity. How does this work, anyway? Can you tell someone’s magical just from talking to them?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple unless I’ve been around them actively using magic. Right now, I’m getting a sense for things. Then I might know how to go about testing.”
I directed him to park on the square, and then we walked over to the pharmacy. A blast of incense hit us as we entered, and not far behind it was Rainbow, which I was pretty sure was not her real name.
“Greetings and blessings!” she trilled. “Is there anything I can help you find? I got a new shipment of healing aromatherapy candles that you might enjoy. There are some that balance your energy into harmony, and others that encourage the full bloom of love.”
Owen turned bright red again, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of the suggestion of encouraging the full bloom of love or because he was coughing and gasping for breath from the heavy, scented smoke in the air.
“No, thanks,” I said. “We just dropped in to get him some allergy medicine.” Then I dragged a still-coughing Owen back to the more sterile-smelling pharmacy part of the store.
Lester was around the pharmacy counter before we reached the first set of shelves, not so much because he wanted to offer great customer service, but because he was afraid we might be shoplifters.
Never mind that he’d known me almost since birth—the word “trust” wasn’t in Lester’s vocabulary.
“What do you need?” he demanded. If one of the chains moved to town or if someone else decided to open a pharmacy, as long as they had the basic customer-service skills of the Soup Nazi, Lester would be in huge trouble.
I grabbed a box of Benadryl off a nearby shelf. “Just getting some antihistamines for him. It’s his first time in Texas.” Owen coughed obligingly, and Lester glared at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.