After stopping at their favorite coffee shop for their daily afternoon caffeine blast, Freddie and Michael finished sipping their hot beverages while strolling the sidewalks. They must have taken a wrong turn, Freddie decided, because they came across a shop that he had never seen.
His boyfriend's expression showed delight as he read a sign outside the shop. The odd symbols on the sign made no sense to Freddie, but Michael read the occult glyphs with ease. "It's a magicks shop!" Michael exclaimed. "Let's go inside."
Michael's interest on the occult bordered on the obsessive. He studied Wiccan practices as well as the more elemental and dark sides of magic, but with a devoted enthusiast's approach to the subject, devouring PDFs online or crumbling tomes found in used book stores.
Freddie, for the most part, didn't have much use for what he loosely called "hocus-pocus" when he gently ribbed his boyfriend about his interests. His homework could wait, however, and he usually indulged Michael. "Sure," Freddie said. "It can't hurt to take a look, right?"
A bell chimed with a jangled tinkling as they opened the door and crossed the threshold into a rather poorly lit, musty shop.
Both Freddie and Michael are fairly average 17-year-old seniors in high school. Freddie runs some distance races for the track and field team at school, but otherwise they're not very interested in organized sports.
A wizened old man with a voice like dry wood welcomed them to the shop and offered to help them find what they need.
"We're just browsing," Freddie responded quickly.
"That's the beauty of this shop," the old man rasped in that strange voice. "The item being sought has its ways of making it into the hands of the right person."
"That's nice," Freddie said, wandering between two tall shelves of merchandise to bring an end to the conversation.
He finds himself looking into some crystal balls on a nearby shelf. His blue eyes stare deep into the nearest ball and he sees his warped reflection within the glassy depths. As he is looking, the image begins to distort. He is surprised as his face begins to stretch into a canine snout and his ears rise into furry points. He is mesmerized when Michael touches his shoulder.
"Find something interesting?" Michael asks.
"Maybe," Freddie said. "Look at..."
He stops. The exterior of the crystal ball is frosty glass again and simply shows his curved face on its surface. The strange image he thought he glimpsed has disappeared.
"I found something," Michael said, grabbing Freddie's hand and pulling him down another nearby aisle. He stops in front of a shelf.
"These are actual powerful magical artifacts from some of Europe's most famous families," he whispered in amazement.
Freddie looked down and saw a ring, a glimmering amulet, and an assemblage of crumbling pages bound into a small but thick book.
"What are they?" Freddie whispered.