Hello Again
Usually, Erica wouldn't be caught dead listening to 93.9. Usually. Lately, though, she was on an 80's ballad kick, so The Lite was right up her alley - for the time being. Sitting on a battered lemon yellow upholstered computer chair, the rusted old casters groaned as she wiggled her rear end and kicked her legs in time with the old Spandau Ballet song playing on the radio. A bright pink laptop and a tin cashbox, perched on the cluttered counter, were serving as a makeshift cash register for the time being.

Noontime had come and gone, the sun arching a little further westward as it made its way towards the California coastline, undoubtedly to sink gracefully beyond the warm waves of the Pacific ocean. That was something Erica would kill to see - a California sunset on the beach. Just her luck to be relegated to another chilly late afternoon in Chicago, where the only hope of sunshine would mean an evening of ankle-high slush to wade through. Joy.

Business was going... well. Sort of. Erica was unsure if she was making a profit yet - she hadn't quite got the whole Quickbooks thing down just yet - but customers were plentiful, as were people looking to hawk their shit. Erica had to explain to more than one person that she wasn't a damn pawn shop; estate sales and flea markets, those were more her style. Still, it was proving to be fun. One day, she might actually hire someone.

Francess liked second-hand stores. Though she didn't know their histories, she liked to select and buy objects that had them, and make up stories about where they'd been before. It was like they had former lives, in a way. Old things did seem to have a karmic weight, more so than brand new items plucked off store shelves, which all seemed plastic, cheaply made, and terribly disposable. Whenever she did a good spring cleaning and donated belongings to charity, she counteracted her sadness over getting rid of them by convincing herself they were simply... progressing farther along a path of reincarnation. Being plucked up by a stranger and having a new purpose was a darn sight better than languishing in an stuffy attic.

The lanky brunette studied the yellow smiley face painted on the glass storefront. Then, putting hand to forehead, she peered past her reflection at the interior. Francess didn't count on zoning right in on the clerk, but found herself doing so. "Oh--!" Jerking back awkwardly, she shook her head and patted the air, coaxing herself to chill out and not be such a spaz. She turned the knob and went inside, where it even smelled old. She waggled her fingers, which were sheathed in pea-green gloves to ward off freezing temperatures. "Hey," she said, noting with some trepidation that she was the only customer. "I'm just gonna..." She pointed at the merchandise.

The sweater Erica had plucked from a recent score of vintage chic finery should probably have been washed before she chose to wear it, but it had been chilly in the store that morning and she'd already had one lecture about not properly managing her utilities from the old man and didn't need another. So the thermostat stayed low and extra padding was plucked from the piles of pre-owned attire. The sweater had caught her eye immediately - bright blue and speckled with pink stars. It was cute; she had an idea for turning it into a very snazzy little purse.

Pity the damn thing itched so much. Having no other recourse, Erica fiddled in the drawer behind the counter til she pulled out a wooden ruler stamped with the name of a long forgotten parochial school, and slipped it down the back collar of the sweater, in search of the maddening itch. When the brunette with the killer gloves - green was Erica's favorite color... of the moment - came in, she shrugged in reply, doing on odd little jig on her chair as she tried to sooth the savage tickle betwixt her shoulders.

"Knock yourself out," she called cheerfully.

"Don't say that," Francess replied, "I could probably do it on accident." Though an unusual sort of girl, she wasn't shy, which added to her social oddity, in that she said whatever came to mind. For the moment, she bypassed the clothes, even though thrift store clothes from the 60s, 70s, and 80s were a passion of hers. Once, Francess had gone through a shameless butterfly collar phase. Another time, it had been tight-rolled jeans. Instead, she went to look at the books. She had a mind to expand her collection, especially of Arthur C. Clarke and Phillip K. Dick. If she decided someday to be an author, she would go by Francess M. Penn, because an initial really gave a name a certain 'something'. At the end of the acting class she was taking, there would be a public performance; she planned to be credited that way.

"How much are your paperbacks?" she asked, thumbing past the title and dedication pages in a novel and reading the first few paragraphs. If the narrative style didn't hook her from page one, Francess probably wouldn't buy it. After all, any author that didn't put stock in the first impressions of a reader was crazy, if you asked her.

"Uh... shit. Quarter?" Erica suggested.

When the idea for the store had popped into her mind, she had been focused on the goods she was most inclined to use herself: clothes, shoes, jewelry, belts, purses. Things she could manipulate, tear apart and sew back together into new forms and new shapes, make them her own. The rest of it came as a package deal: the furniture, paintings, lamps, knickknacks, old appliances and, of course, the books. While her craftiness might extend to interesting projects involving some of those items - she'd been pondering the idea of decorating a wrought iron garden school with shards of dishes she had bought with intent to sell but had smashed to bits in transport - her main interests lay in the clothes.

She was even considering making her own labels and trying to sell some of her creations.

"Uh... fifty cents for hardbacks," she added. That sounded fair.

"Neat, that's a good price," Francess said. She scooped up three books and browsed further through the store, fidgeting with the end of her plaited hair. Knickknacks should be skipped because they became objects to dust or prevent Ivan the Cat from breaking, but she picked up a porcelain owl. Upon flipping it upside down, she recognized it as a salt shaker. "Oh, cool!" she breathed. More enthusiastically, she searched for its match and found it beside a psychedelic ashtray. What owls had to do with cooking, Francess wasn't sure, but that made it kind-of kitsch.

She clasped the treasures in her fuzzy glove and wandered to a clothing rack closer to the register. The fashions on it seemed outlandish, and a brightly patterned blouse of blues and greens caught Fran's eye. The metallic scrape of a hanger against the rack was painful on the ears. She extracted the shirt from the collection and held it in front of her torso. Curious about the washing instructions, she looked for a manufacturer's label, but there was none. Francess carried it towards the other woman and held it up. "What size does this look like to you?" she asked, studying the lay of the fabric against her, then looking to Erica for clarification.

Erica glanced up from the computer and eyed the blouse in relation to the slim figure that held it up. That was a definite problem with the used-clothing trade: too many people, for one reason or another - though Erica did expect it was mostly based in personal vanity - tended to snip the tags from the inside collars of their tops and the flies of their jeans, as though removing the tag itself somehow negated the actual size.

Frowning, she cocked her head to the side. "I'd guess... medium? Little hard to tell on you, doll, you're kind of a stick."

"I know," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Mainly it's my arms that are a problem. I'm a medium torso with long arms. When I put shirts in the dryer, I end up with three-quarter-length sleeves." Francess looked dejected. "Do you know how weird a turtleneck looks with three-quarter sleeves? Like, you know, there was a sudden heat wave that only struck your wrists." Chewing the bottom corner of her lip, she replaced the blouse on the rack and continued to shop. It was her tendency to skip over pastels and go for primary colors and earth tones. She paused on a stretchy sweater. It had horizontal stripes, maroon and dark blue. Not green, like in Nightmare on Elm Street, but the similarity was enough to make her shudder and skip it.

Though in terms of fashion sense, Fran did think Freddy had nice taste in hats. "I wish fashion hats would come back," she said, out of the blue.

Erica pondered that particular conundrum for a moment. She'd shrunk her fair share of clothing in the dryer - though, usually, they came out too short more than anything, fun vintage tees shrunken into belly-exposing tops. If only the dryer would shrink things more uniformly; that way, Erica reasoned, people who lost weight would never need to buy new clothes. Just pop them in the dryer on high and voilà, a completely downsized wardrobe.

"You could always cut the arms off," Erica suggested. "Fold the part you cut under and put in a quick stitch so it'll look like it was made that way and wear it under a sweater or something. Cos hell, no one wears turtlenecks without a sweater or vest or something. And then you could use the arms to wrap a headband or make a belt or something."

Cutting and re-piecing clothing was more than a hobby for Erica; the sewing machine on a small table behind her counter sat waiting for its next use, and Erica was thinking of turning a faded pair of embroidered jeans into a patchwork jacket for the spring. It was a new kind of recycling, she reasoned.

Noting the girl's comment, Erica frowned. "My face is too fat for hats," she said; she couldn't even pull off a baseball cap without looking like a beachball under a beanie. "Maybe some of those whacked out ones from the day, with all the feathers and veils and shit. That'd be cool."

Francess pondered it. "I don't normally worry about trends," she said seriously, cocking head to one side. "But with hats, it's tricky, unless you're at the Kentucky Derby. You could probably wear a toilet tank on your head there, and be commended for innovation." She shifted what she held, the knickknacks clacking together softly. "You know a lot about sewing. I made a pillow once in home economics, but I didn't get the stuffing right, and it looked like it was full of tumors."

Lifting shoulders as if to say, 'oh well', she progressed around the rack of eclectic garments. On the back side, she came across a treasure. It was a Nehru tweed jacket with a mandarin collar, green colored with subtle gold stitching, and very reminiscent of the tailored coats of the 1960s. Large, slightly tarnished buttons ran in a line down the front. "Oh my gosh, I have to buy this!" she gushed, taking it off the rack. Francess liked it so much, she didn't even care if the sizing was off, but its 'large' marking meant it might accommodate her arms.

Going straightaway to the counter, she laid the coat flat before the shopkeeper, piling her books and owl figurines on top.

Pricing was something of a touch-and-go concept at Hello Again. Erica had spent so much time procuring lots of clothing and other saleable junk that she'd never taken a moment to really sort through everything and mark down appropriate pricing. When the slim brunette brought her treasure trove to the counter, Erica took a precursory glance and then turned to her laptop for support and guidance.

A quick few Googles and a scan of eBay, coupled with a moment of frowning contemplation, and she pronounced her prices. "Twenty bucks for the coat, five total for the rest, that cool?" she said. Truth was, she might've been a little less than kind, had she half a mind to do it; the girl's proclamation that she had to have the coat might have led her to jack up the price on an off day. But the weather wasn't too bad and she'd been making money, so Erica was in a fine mood and feeling good enough not to try and take advantage.

After all, anyone with such a keen eye for vintage fashion deserved a deal now and again.

"I didn't even notice those little owls. Cute," she commented mildly, pointing at the figurines with one hand. Without meaning to do it, Erica set for a small wave of motion that lifted the nearest figurine a few inches in the air and then down again, as though it was taking a small hop forward.

"Oops."

Fran's eyes bulged. The brunette's fingers paused in removing cash from her velcro wallet. "Hey... Is it me, or is my salt shaker possessed?" Weirder things had happened in recent memory, so she didn't think an enchanted owl figurine was beyond the realm. It looked as if pointing at him triggered it so, a little hesitantly, Francess extended her index finger and jabbed at the air between the owl and herself. A quick dart and retreat, as if fencing.

Nothing happened.

Fran's teeth worried her bottom lip. "Either he's playing possum, or... you did it." Blinking up at the shopkeeper, she waited to see if an explanation would come. Possibilities tumbled in her mind. Witch? Telekinesis, like that girl in Stephen King's Carrie?

"Sorry," Erica replied with a sheepish shrug. "I didn't mean to. I just forget sometimes. Here, let me fix."

She made a quick gesture with the same hand that had absently pushed the little owl away and instead righted it, lifting it gently and placing it back where it had been to begin with. That was the problem with her gift; with the telekinesis concentrated in her hands, any small gesture could become an accidental betrayal of her power.

Francess looked on with a mixture of awe and confusion. "I used to like science a lot," she said, coaxing a piece of hair behind her earlobe. It was too short to stay braided. "When I was in school. I thought Physics was pretty interesting, but they don't have answers for this stuff yet, and if you start thinking about it, it hurts your head." When they accidentally switched bodies, Melinda warned Francess about having telekinesis, but it never reared its ugly head. Now, upon seeing it, she found herself a teeny-tiny bit jealous over the capability. What had astral projection ever gotten her, except panic and an eyeful of neighborly behavior she didn't want to see? She was much too cautious to attempt to control it on her own; Mostly, she just wanted to get back in her body, where she belonged.

Remembering the open wallet, she placed thirty dollars worth of cash on the counter. Fran scratched her left ankle with the other shoe. "Could you always control it?"

"Not always," Erica replied slowly. It wasn't something she really talked about. Her parents liked to pretend it didn't exist, or, when they deigned to acknowledge it, that it was some kind of illness or disease that had a cause and a cure. They had tapered off addressing it altogether, though, in the years since she had lost her only real link to the supernatural world; even though vampires made newspaper headlines and magick was alive and real in the world, her family liked to keep their heads firmly lodged in the sand.

Or up their asses, as Erica was more inclined to think.

"Most of the time I can," she went on. "It's like... like a party trick, or something. And if I try to move something real big, it makes me real tired. But I'm working at it, you know. Tryin' to get better and shit. Plus, there's lots of other stuff I want to learn to do too." She paused, then regarded the girl curiously. "You're being pretty cool about this, though. Little old biddy in here to buy a lamp, I accidentally move the damn thing and she starts screaming and backing out the door with her fingers in a cross."

Fran wasn't sure what came over her when she blurted out, "My frequent-date-partner's a demon." But it did go far towards explaining her comfort with the subject matter. She picked up the owl and held it in her palm, expecting it to feel different now... be warmer or something. It wasn't. "I can do something kinda cool," she hedged, chewing her lip and chancing a look at the shopkeeper. "When I sleep, I leave my body sometimes. It's not on purpose, it just happens. Truthfully, when I found out demons and all were real, I was relieved. I wasn't a complete freak. Or if I was, I was in good company."

The tall brunette stood awkwardly, one shoulder dropping lower than the other. "I can't believe she used the sign of the cross," she said in sympathy. "I get worried sometimes. Like... sooner or later, when people stop being shocked and afraid of demons and special abilities, they'll just... I dunno."

"Oh! Demons! I know a demon!" Erica responded; it was the first time in a long time that such a word could pass her lips without earning a strange glance or a glare. Demons were real; the world knew it now. And yet they still acted sometimes as though the word itself was distasteful, some dirty little secret that they didn't want to talk about. Even Cathy tended to wig out a little when Erica went off on a riff about the weird and wacky in the world.

"He's kinda little and kinda cranky, but he's got this cute little dog and he's real nice when you get to know him," she prattled on, then stopped herself with a frown. "But we're not dating or anything," she added, arching an eyebrow at the other girl. She hoped her demon-friend was at least cute, if she was taking him out on the town.

Listening to the other's admittance of her own strange ability was... a relief. And a curiosity. "Out of your body?" she questioned. "But where do you go? Like... like is it some other world or something, or are you just floating around or...? Hey, what happens if you don't go back?"

Realizing she was prying, Erica gave a short, snorting laugh. "Sorry. I'm Erica, anyway. This is my store."

"Fran," she supplied in turn. "Um... it's this world. I float around, sometimes about tree level and other times lower. I guess it's like being a ghost. There's a thing called a silver cord that keeps me connected to my body." After looking at the window, as if passers-by could eavesdrop through plate glass, she went on, "I'm not very good at it. Supposedly the traveler can control it, but it hasn't happened since I found that out, and I'm too chicken to meditate and... what's the word, like when they make a woman go into labor?" She faltered and then snapped her fingers. "Induce! I'm too scared to 'induce the dream state'. Always when I did it on accident, I ended up safe and sound in my body. I'm afraid if I try it on purpose, I might mess up."

"That's really cool though!" Erica replied. The idea was delicious; being able to float around like a ghost, hear things not meant to be heard, see things not meant to be seen... maybe on an off day, slip into the locker room at Wrigley. The freedom of it was astounding. "So much cooler than being able to whack things around, you know?" She made a nonchalant gesture with her hand and the blinds behind her swung open.

"I bet you could learn though," she proposed. "Like, to control it in stuff, or move around further or something. There's gotta be books on it, right? There's books on everything now. I saw an article in the Times a while back about some store that opened that sells stuff like that, I've been meaning to track it down."

On the topic of books, Fran lost her hesitance. "Oh! Barnes and Noble!" she blurted. "They have a section on the paranormal now. Non-fiction. I picked up a few." It was a small victory, really, discovering that those books were no longer in the special interest/new age section, where fruit cakes shopped... People who smelled like patchouli and owned crystal balls Made in Taiwan. "But I think I know about the shop you mean. Is it called Thoth's Library?"

"Yeah the Borders over by the HIP has loads of shit but it's all, you know... well, bullshit. I know that there are these really kickass books out there. Like, true stuff. About vampires and Slayers and demons and magick and shit. I mean, I have a couple," Erica went on, more than willing to expound on the vaguest of knowledge she had on the subject. After all, it was nice to run into someone who might actually listen, for a change. "But not the best sources. I'd love to get my hands on some of the real stuff."

She reached underneath the counter, procuring a pink gel pen and a small stack of yellow Post-It notes. "Thoth's Library..." she muttered, moving to scribble it down. She paused, tip of the pen mere centimeters from the paper, and frowned. "How the hell do you spell Thoth, anyway?"

"Um, it's T-H-O-T-H," said Francess, looking to the ceiling for guidance. "I don't know who that is, though." The confession was made weakly with shrugging shoulders. Probably she should've asked Avery. "I never went in, but I know a person who works there, so." The realization that perhaps the books she picked up at Barnes and Noble weren't 'the real deal' startled her, mainly because Fran felt she should've known better. Furthermore, she had access to a person who worked near 'the real deal' and had never asked Avery to look a thing up!

On the surface, it made her think she was airheaded. Deeper down, Fran thought maybe she had been scared of 'the real deal'.

"You're right," she said, giving Erica a stiff nod. "I could probably learn, if I tried harder." Or at all. "I'm gonna do it." The practical purpose was lost on her; sure, it'd be great for sneaking around and spying on people, but there wasn't anyone Fran wanted to pull a Peeping Tom on, and besides, that was creepy. She zoned out and stretched her imagination for a moment, imagining herself spying on crimes and giving anonymous tips to the police. Crying people would get their stolen bicycles or cars or babies back, be overcome with relief, and say things like, 'Oh, if only we knew what kind soul returned it us, without request for an award. What a Samaritan!'

"T-H-O-T-H..." Erica mumbled, repeating the spelling of the word as she scribbled it down. "Huh. Yeah, no idea what a Thoth is. I'll Google later. Hey, maybe they have a website."

Peeling the note off of the pad, she stuck it to the monitor portion of her laptop and started scribbling a new note: name, email, cell and store numbers. Fran seemed to be at least partially in the know, and Erica thought it might be prudent to keep in touch. "Here. This is me. Let me know what you find out, yeah?"

Francess took the paper, pleasantly surprised at the shopkeeper's curiosity. "Okay, sure. Here." Taking the pen, she jotted her information down, too. "Oh!" She touched her forehead, as if a thought originated beneath her fingertips. "I meant to say earlier, I know a girl like you, who says she can move things with her mind. I never saw it happen, but she told me about it. We're not... friends exactly, more like acquaintances. Uncomfortably close acquaintances. But if you wanted, I could pass your information to Mel. Maybe you could practice together." She lifted a shoulder and placed her purchases in a plastic bag, preparing to depart.

Erica cocked her head to the side, considering. She'd always been suspect of people who claimed to carry her own special talent; she knew it could be happened upon in a variety of ways, some far less savory than others. But still, it couldn't hurt.

"Cool," she agreed, reaching up to tuck her pen into the knot of her ponytail for safe-keeping. "S'long as you think she's, you know, normal and shit? Fine by me. Take it easy, Fran. And dude, take care of that coat. Sweet find."

"I will." Francess smiled and waved before exiting into the crisp afternoon.