Free Open All Hours (Carnival Magic 2) by Eden Royce

she was ready to make her opinions known. “Enough of the Dr. Phil earbash, yeah? You two can do your horizontal twerking later.”
    Leesa almost choked on her coffee. Vol’s eyes widened until they looked like jar lids.
    “So Leesa has told me…everything,” Tip continued. “Sort of. She fiddled around in something that wasn’t her business -- Sorry, luv,” she added in a less than comforting tone.
    “Hey, I was doing my job. It’s --”
    “Right,” Tip cut her off. “So this woman said it wasn’t a curse, and it could be undone. But you need a powerful caster to reverse this spell.”
    Ellie ran a fry through a puddle of Dijon mustard on her plate. “Yeah, so?”
    Tip rolled the silver ring in her lip. Her black lipstick had faded, but she made no move to retouch it. “Yeah, so…I’m volunteering.”
    Ellie sputtered while Arthur and Vol exchanged glances. “What?” came from all of them in unison.
    Leesa nodded. “Tip is a w -- uh… the person for the job.”
    “If I’d known this was what you guys have been scurrying around to find, I could have helped sooner.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, why didn’t I know about…this earlier?” Ellie asked.
    Tip’s face softened. “I hadn’t told anyone, luv.” Leesa noticed that “luv” sounded more sincere when Tip addressed her best friend. “I’m sorry, but I have my reasons.” She looked away.
    “So why help now? You could have hidden it and we’d never know,” Vol said, a frown creasing his brow.
    “Shape changing should be done because you want to or because it is in one’s nature. It shouldn’t be forced upon someone by magic. Tonight, I’m just doing my customer service at the magic returns department. But if any of you so much as breathes that I’ve done this, you’ll be a leopard slug in two minutes flat.” She took a slurp of her cookie-dough milkshake. “And you don’t want that. Those things have penises coming out of their heads.”
    Both men cringed.
    Ellie laughed. “That’s my girl. What do you need? We’ll all be there to support you, won’t we, guys? Isn’t that helpful to spells, the mental strength of friends and believers?”
    “Yeah, if this was Dungeons and Dragons,” Tip said. “Just kidding. It would be great to have you all there.” She took a napkin from the metal dispenser on the table and scribbled on it, then shoved the note at Ellie. “Here. I need these things.”
    * 3 white roses
    * 1 live moth
    * 4 pieces of lead
    * cube of antimony
    * kilogram of salt
    * a cedar tree branch
     
    Ellie pushed the list to Arthur, who slid it to Vol. “Why have I got to get these things?” he asked, squinting at the list. “Shouldn’t we split the list?”
    “I’ve got to get back to the Show. I have to get things back on track after the code blue,” Arthur said. “That’ll take most of my day and early evening.”
    “And I’m helping with that, then going home to finish up a report for work.” Ellie pushed her plate away.
    Vol looked at Tip. “And I have a uterus,” she said. “Just get them. I need to rest up for tonight.” She raised a thin, pencil-black eyebrow at Arthur. “I assume I get the night off? With pay?”
    “If you can do this, you’ve got a place in the Show, if you want it,” he said.
    “Nope. Although a raise wouldn’t go amiss.”
    “We’ll see,” Arthur replied. Tip was pushing it a bit, because he did pay her well. “When and where?”
    “Soon as Gentle Ben gets the stuff. Where? Someplace quiet, but not too quiet. Large but not too large…”
    “We get it, we get it. How about here at the diner?” Vol asked.
    “Hate to say it, but we have to be prepared that the woman from earlier will show up. Too many humans here at the diner. If anything goes down, we risk exposing the shifters.” Ellie was the voice of reason.
    After a pause, Arthur offered up the carnival. “If anyone gets suspicious, we can say it’s part of a new act. That will at least buy