The Elf And Shoemaker Read online

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  THE ELF

  AND SHOEMAKER

  by

  M. L. RHODES

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  http://www.amberquill.com

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  The Elf And Shoemaker

  An Amber Quill Press Book

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  http://www.amberquill.com

  http://www.amberheat.com

  http://www.amber-allure.com

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  Copyright © 2009 by M. L. Rhodes

  ISBN 978-1-60272-457-0

  Cover Art © 2009 Trace Edward Zaber

  Layout and Formatting

  Provided by: Elemental Alchemy

  Published in the United States of America

  Also by M. L. Rhodes

  After Hours

  Always

  The Bodyguard

  The Bounty Hunter

  Couplings

  The Draegan Lords

  Falling

  Hearts & Bones

  Heat

  Lords Of Kellesborne

  Magic

  Masks

  Never Let Go

  Night Shadows

  Out Of My Mind

  The Professor's Secret Passion

  Shattered

  Souls Deep

  Take It On Faith

  True Of Heart

  Under My Skin

  Under My Skin II

  Vertigo

  Well Hung

  Chapter 1

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  On a cold, snowy Wednesday in January, a young shopkeeper by the name of Logan Shoemaker hit rock bottom.

  He wasn't sure at which point, exactly, it happened...but happen it did. It could have been when he went out to his ancient Ford pickup truck that morning to make a run to the post office, only to discover it had not just one but two flat tires. Or it might have been when he tried to pay for the repairs at Big John's Auto and his credit card was declined because he was over his limit. But probably the straw that finally broke him was when he returned to the small, one-hundred-thirty-year-old Victorian house that served as both his home and his place of business, to find the note on the door telling him that if he didn't pay the electric bill by seven days hence, they were cutting off his service.

  After finding the disconnect notice, Logan crumpled the yellow sheet of paper in a fist and stared up at the gold sign decorated with blue moons, purple stars, and the words "Shoemaker's Magick Shoppe" hanging above the door.

  "So where's the magick when I need it?" he murmured, feeling all the stress of the past few months pressing on him until he wanted to lie down, right here on the front porch, and cry like he had when he'd been a little boy.

  There hadn't been much magick in his life for quite a while now.

  He'd tried, really tried, to keep an upbeat attitude, telling himself the problems would pass, sales would pick up, all would be well, the sun would come out, and any number of other falsely cheerful platitudes. But every day it had gotten harder and harder to see the bright side.

  Things had been going downhill for months. On every front of his life. He couldn't remember when he'd last spent time with friends even. He'd expended so much energy on keeping the shop afloat or worrying about keeping the shop afloat that there hadn't been much left for anything else. Aside from customers, an occasional chat with his regular clerk at the post office, and the old neighbor lady who lived behind him that he helped out from time to time, he was pretty much on his own. It seemed like the worse business at the store grew, the more isolated Logan became.

  Not that his little store on the main street of the sleepy Rocky Mountain college town was ever going to make him rich during the best of times, but at least in the past he'd always been able to pay his bills, eat, and get out now and again. Up until the past year, it had been a comfortable living. Even the smallest of liberal college towns had a dearth of back to nature, conscious living, Pagan, metaphysical types who loved their herbs, oils and incense, dragons, elves, and fairies, pentacles, ankhs, Tarot and divination tools. But the sad state of the national economy had reared its ugly head even here, and recent sales had tapered off to almost nil. He'd tried lowering prices across the board, running deep discount sales, and had even pimped himself out at a local metaphysical fair doing card readings to make some extra money. In spite of everything, last month, December, had been his worst holiday season since he'd opened the shop.

  And, damn, he'd needed to have a good holiday season. If he couldn't even earn decent money in December when most people were willing to spend extra, how in the hell was he going to make up the difference now?

  The thought made him physically ill.

  "Hello, Logan."

  Taking a deep breath to fight back the enormous lump in his throat that threatened to choke him, Logan slowly turned toward the sidewalk. He discovered a tiny, old lady bundled up in a nubby woolen coat and garish pink scarf, navigating the snowy sidewalk with her cane in one hand and pulling a handheld shopping basket on wheels behind her.

  "Hi, Mrs. Khovansky." He shoved the disconnection notice in his jacket pocket and, though his feet felt like lead, jogged down the front steps. "Let me help you with your basket." The old lady lived in the house behind Logan's, off the alley that ran alongside the magick shop. He took the basket handle out of her gloved hand and walked with her. "What are you doing out this morning?" he asked her. "It's freezing, and the snow makes it slick for you to be walking."

  "Gah!" She waved a hand to dismiss his concern. "A little snow hurts no one. Breathing cold air is good for the lungs. My Ivan took his walk every day of the world, rain or shine, snow or sleet, and was healthy as a horse until the day he died at eighty-nine!"

  Logan wasn't sure how old Mrs. Khovansky was, but suspected she was at least eighty-nine herself. "Well, I still worry about you."

  They turned into the alley and walked in the tracks left by a vehicle that had been through earlier. The snow had tapered off, but the sky was dark and foreboding, promising the storm wasn't over yet.

  "You know Mr. Jeffries' tea shop at the end of the block has closed." Mrs. Khovansky tsked. "Too bad. He was in business here for forty years. We used to go there for his scones."

  "I saw his sign was down," Logan said, the weight on his shoulders becoming heavier still.

  He knew he wasn't alone in his business problems. It seemed every couple of weeks another store along Main Street closed its doors. But, damn it, he didn't want to be one of the casualties. He'd never expected or even wanted to get rich from his store...he ran it because he loved it. He loved being his own boss. Loved staying active and giving back to the metaphysical community in which he'd been raised. He loved the quirky customers, the way the bell over the door jingled when people entered or exited, and loved creating new blends of oils, which he bottled and sold. He loved the sweet, woodsy scent of the Nag Champa incense he burned in the store and the way it had permeated everything with a smell he would forever find comforting.

  He didn't want to lose any of that. It was more than just a way to make a living, it was his passion, his life. He wanted to be here, in business, forty years from now, doing what he loved best. Just like Mr. Jeffries had.

&nb
sp; Of course, in the end Mr. Jeffries had been forced to close his store. Still, he'd had a good long run before it had happened. Logan wanted a chance at that. But the way things were looking, he wasn't going to be in business forty days from now. If the electric company had their way, it might be a lot less than that.

  "Do you know what Mr. Jeffries is going to do now that he's closed?" he asked.

  "Moving to Florida. To be with his grandchildren."

  They climbed the concrete steps to Mrs. Khovansky's kitchen door off the alley, Logan carrying her shopping basket. They stood on the stoop while she pushed the key into the lock and turned it, then she tottered in through the door Logan held open for her and set her patent leather purse on the counter. He went in behind her and propped her shopping cart against the wall.

  Mrs. Khovansky's house always smelled of savory cooking, like thick beef stroganoffs and pirozhki. In spite of her tiny size, he suspected that she continued to cook traditional meals for herself even though her husband had been dead for years.

  "It's just as well, about Mr. Jeffries going to be with his family," she said, picking up the conversation as if there hadn't been a lull. "It's not so good to be alone. It's the voices..."

  That caught Logan off guard. "The voices?"

  She looked up at him through wide owl eyes as she unwrapped the pink scarf from around her head. "Oh yes. Don't you hear them, dear? The voices in the night in the otherwise quiet house?"

  "Um..." Logan stared at her, not sure what to say. The little old lady had always been plucky and eccentric, but he'd never heard her talk nonsense before. Was senility finally catching up to her? "I...I'm not sure I've heard any voices at night. Has someone tried to break into your house, Mrs. Khovansky?"

  "Break in? Like burglars? No, no!" She pulled off her coat and hung it on the hook near the door, then leaned in close to him, almost conspiratorially, smelling strongly of rosewater and cabbage. "The other voices," she whispered.

  "The others?"

  "The ones that whisper in the dark. They'll tell you things."

  "What things?"

  "Well, that depends on the person, doesn't it?" she said matter-of-factly, as if he should have already known as much. "But if you don't live alone, you have no problems." She reached up and pinched his cheek as if he were five. "You're a good boy, Logan. You shouldn't be so alone. Find a nice girl. Get married. Have babies. Then you don't have to worry about it."

  It wasn't the first time she'd made the suggestion, and as he always had in the past, Logan kept his silence and merely smiled at her. Now was not the time in Mrs. Khovansky's life to enlighten her to the fact that a nice "girl" wasn't in his future because he happened to like boys.

  Not that he'd had many of them around lately either. His love life had been pretty sad. Kinda like everything else.

  He checked his watch. Five to ten. He really needed to get his store open. "Can I help you with anything else, Mrs. Khovansky?"

  "No, no! You go. You've done enough. You're a dear to walk me home."

  "Okay. But if it snows again tonight, I'll shovel your stoop for you in the morning. Don't try to get out if it's icy."

  He suffered through another cheek pinch. "Such a good boy. You go now." She opened the kitchen door and ushered him out. "I'll tell Ivan and the others you've been a big help."

  Before Logan could frown and question her, she'd already closed the door to keep out the cold, leaving him alone on the steps.

  Ivan and the others?

  Conversations with her dead husband. Voices in the dark... None of that sounded good. Trudging back to his house, his booted feet crunching on the snow, Logan decided he was going to have to make a point to check in on the old lady more often.

  But as he climbed the steps to his own covered front porch, it suddenly hit him with horrific finality that if he didn't come up with a solution for his business problems soon, he might have all the time in the world to look out for his neighbor. Because his store would be gone.

  * * * *

  Hours later, when he locked the door at the end of another painfully slow sales day, the knot in Logan's stomach that had been with him for weeks gave a painful twist.

  He'd had exactly two customers make purchases all day, and both sales had been for trivial, low-priced items. The unexpected cost of the tire repairs this morning that he'd ended up having to pay cash for had completely wiped out the funds he'd been saving for utilities. So, starting from scratch with the miniscule amount of money he'd made today, he could pay exactly--he did the math his head--five percent of the electric bill. And that was not buying any groceries, gas, or other necessities.

  "How am I going to get out of this mess?" he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the cool wood of the front door after it was locked. He drew in several slow, deep breaths, trying to clear his mind and tap into the well of inner peace that should have been somewhere inside him. It seemed, however, the well had dried up as effectively as the store's coffers. All he found for his trouble was an even more vicious twisting in his stomach and way too much noise in his head.

  With a sigh, Logan switched off the store lights and made his way around a skimpy display of New Age calendars and Celtic deity statuary--skimpy because he hadn't been able to afford to order anything new in several months--on his way to his private inner sanctum of the old house. His combination workroom and kitchen lay beyond the public area of the store, and a set of creaking wooden stairs led to his bedroom, a spare room, and private bathroom on the second floor. It wasn't much in the way of space, and the whole place really needed some renovation. The wood floors were scratched and scuffed. The peeling, rose-strewn wallpaper in the kitchen wasn't original from when the house was built, but it had certainly been there for the better part of the last fifty years. The appliances had been updated at some point, but had seen their heyday a few decades ago.

  Still, the place was all his. Even if he had to close the store, at least he wouldn't be kicked out of his home. Aside from yearly property taxes, which he'd just paid a couple of months ago, thank God, he didn't owe a penny on the old house. He'd paid for it in full five years ago when he'd bought it...a legacy from his elderly aunt who'd raised him. He'd been her sole heir, and had used the money from her estate to buy the house and set up his initial inventory.

  In the kitchen, he cranked the thermostat down ten degrees from where he kept it set during the day for his customers' comfort, then lit several candles in lieu of using the overhead lights. With money as tight as it had been, he'd been trying to keep his electric bill as low as possible. If that meant wearing more clothes to stay warm, and eating by candlelight at night, so be it. A fire in the fireplace here in the kitchen or in the one upstairs in his bedroom would be nice, but wood cost money. The few logs and kindling he had left in the stack outside the backdoor were for a true emergency, like when the power went out for days during one of the spring blizzards that swirled over the plains and against the mountains.

  Standing at the open pantry, he debated between a package of ramen noodles or...ramen noodles. His sensory recall, however, was remembering in vivid detail the scent of Mrs. Khovansky's beef stroganoff. He tried to ignore the way the thought made his mouth water.

  While his noodles nuked--How much electricity did a microwave use when it ran for five minutes, he wondered. Should he give that up, too?--he opened a bottle of wine from the rack on the counter. The red Burgundy had been a gift from someone during the holidays year before last. Logan wasn't much of a drinker, but after such a lousy day, he was hoping, at best, for a big dose of forgetting and a dead-to-the-world night's sleep. And, at worst, maybe he'd at least while away the next couple of hours before bed with a pleasant buzz.

  He ate his dinner, such as it was, perched on a stool at the raised, elongated butcher block that doubled as dining table and work table. When he'd finished and had rinsed the bowl and spoon, he cut up a withered apple and dropped a few small pieces into Zeus cage, which sa
t at the end of the table.

  The hamster's pink, twitching nose appeared from out of his most recent burrow, testing the air. Then he scampered out into sight, climbed into his bowl of seeds, and promptly began shoving apple bits into the pouches of his cheeks. After a moment he paused and nibbled furiously at the piece he still held between his paws and stared at Logan with dark, beady eyes that seemed to pierce right through Logan's soul.

  "Enjoy it, little man. It may be the last fruit for a while."

  Logan had grown surprisingly fond of the rodent. He'd agreed to hamster-sit over spring break last year for one of his sometimes customers who was a student at the college. But when the end of spring break rolled around, no student had returned to picked up the hamster. After trying for a couple of weeks to locate the young man, Logan had finally given up and officially adopted Zeus.

  "You know, that sure is a big, important name for such a small, unassuming fuzzball," he told the hamster. "The all-powerful Zeus."

  Zeus looked at him as if to say, "Yeah, and what kind of a name is Shoemaker anyway?"

  "Well, I suppose you have a point there," Logan told him. And then he gave a half-chuckle and rolled his eyes. He hoped it was the wine that was making him so chatty with the hamster and not because the stress and loneliness had finally driven him stark raving bonkers. Probably the wine. He poured himself another glass and took a sizeable swallow. Anyway, it was better to talk to a hamster than hear voices like Mrs. Khovansky. At least he hoped so.

  "One of my ancestors really was a shoemaker, Zeus, so there's no need to get snippy."

  Zeus chewed and chewed and stared hard at Logan as if measuring his sincerity.

  "It's the truth. Aunt Lillian traced the Shoemaker genealogy back to my great-great-several-greats grandfather, who was an actual shoemaker."