Bubbling Cauldrons and Persuasive Conversations

Elijah’s unwillingness to do what she asked was written all over his face. Quite honestly, he looked bored with the entire situation. If he were a bit older or at least a bit more independently wealthy, Remy could make him a willing participant in anything she wanted, and it would have little to nothing to do with her words. But if she wanted to keep things cordial with Elijah – as opposed to sexual, as they would surely become if she ventured down the previously aforementioned road – she needed to grit her teeth and continue to play nice. At least to a point.

“Physical work builds character,” Remy retorted matter-of-factly to Elijah’s question, easily avoiding her unwillingness to use magic. Attempting to lift these boxes via magic would be a dismal failure for Remy – she could barely levitate a paper clip, much less heavy boxes of supplies – and she wasn’t about to show Elijah her secret. She had survived this long without anyone becoming wise to her inadequacies when it came to wizardry. Menial chores were nowhere near a good enough reason to let something of that importance out into the open.

In spite of his protestations – Remy knew better than to believe it to be a result of her comeback – Elijah did as she asked and picked up the crates. It was about time, too, because the edges were beginning to really cut into Remy’s forearms and she would be glad to put the crates down soon. With the crates in his arms, Elijah proved himself to be courteous – as opposed to cocky, as he usually was – and took her place at the door, allowing her to go ahead before him.

“I’m glad to see a gentleman has somehow managed to inhabit your body,” Remy teased lightly, heaving herself away from the door and walking back into the main shop. Noah seemed to have lost the interest of the shop’s only customer, which was unsurprising because he was rather uninteresting in and of himself. Remy hadn’t been working with him long, but she had an intuition for these types of things. People generally fell into two categories for Remy: worth her time or worthless. Up until now, she had found nothing about Noah that kept him out of the latter subheading.

Upon reaching the stock room, Remy lifted the boxes to the height of the table and slid them onto it. The marks on her arms were visible from where the crates had rested, but she pulled her sleeves down over them and went to unstuck the crates. She was careful to leave room for Elijah’s stack on the table beside her and then turned to look for the inventory checklist in the piles of paperwork behind her. Remy was not a particularly neat bookkeeper, as evidenced by the disarray that she had to try to sift through now.

“Now where did I put that inventory list…” Remy muttered to herself aloud as she moved the papers back and forth, not bothering to place things in any particular order as they hadn’t really been sorted to begin with.

Noah had lost the customer, but she hadn't seemed very into what they were selling anyway. Noah shrugged. Why had she been here? To check up on things? On him? Or someone else in the Apothecary? Noah frowned. No, it had to be him. He knew for a fact Elijah was no Death Eater, and the thought of Remy as an iron clad servant of the Dark Lord nearly sent him into hysterics.

But Noah shrugged it off. It probably didn't matter. Maybe she had gotten distracted. Noah heard Remy mumbling herself about the inventory list and called out: "3rd drawer to the bottom, left side." He went back to doodling, glancing out the window every so often.

Remy was still shifting through papers, cursing her disorganized nature while knowing it wouldn’t change. It was probably a good thing that Slug and Jiggers rarely stopped by to check in on things; it was a definite possibility at their age that they might have a heart attack and fall over dead at the sight of the disarray.

Not a bad plan… Remy thought to herself while pulling open drawers haphazardly, Just have to find a way to get close to the old blokes to make sure I see some of that fortune before they keel over.

Remy was rifling through the most recent drawer she had yanked open when she heard Noah’s voice coming from the main section of the apothecary, easily carrying into the back room. Because he was the one who usually put up with her disorganized chaos, Remy took his advice and heaved open the third drawer down on the left hand side and, lo and behold, underneath a pile of receipts lay the inventory checklist.

“Thank you,” Remy called in response, raising her voice to allow it to reach Noah in the foyer of the store. Taking the clipboard and attached sheets from the drawer, Remy grabbed a quill and vial of ink from the top of the desk, somehow visible among all the rubbish, and moved to the table on which she had Elijah had set their crates, beginning to pull things out of her own boxes and check them off on the list.

“Call things out as you find them,” Remy instructed Elijah, not bothering with formalities. Technically, he worked for her, and from what she had seen he wasn’t all that receptive to her particular brand of seduction. Remy knew when to play her cards and when to hold them, and until she gained a better grasp on Elijah, she wasn’t about to show what she held in her hand. She knew that Elijah would be useful, what with his famous family and ties to the upper crust of society, but she wouldn’t spoil potential down the road by ostracizing him now.

“I think the liverwort is in one of your boxes, because it isn’t here,” Remy commented as she reached the bottom of her first crate, lifting it off the other and placing it on the floor, “Either that or they forgot it again.”