Welcome to the Pick’s Pocket, where the spirits are high, but the stakes are higher. In the depths of the Sedrian swamp, Pickett, the accidental swamp witch, spins tales to keep her ramshackle bar afloat. Only her loyal sidekick, Edie, knows the enchanting act is just a clever ruse. Yet, Pickett harbors more than magical secrets; a looming loan threatens to snatch the very bar they call home from beneath their feet. As if unpaid debts weren’t enough, the undead decide to crash the party, sending patrons fleeing and Pick’s Pocket into peril. With a loan shark demanding more than magic tricks, Pickett finds herself juggling not just spirits, but the haunting threat of financial ruin. Now, Pickett must pull off the ultimate vanishing act to save her bar. But can she keep the loan shark at bay, the spirits in check, and settle her debts? Or will her magical mishap lead to a hilariously haunting disaster?

Chapter Two

Pickett didn’t give the kid a chance. As soon as the rum boy dropped off the shipment, she dragged him into the back room and shoved a coin in his hand. She told him in no uncertain terms, “You’re going to sing for us tonight.” To which he looked ready to vomit.
Kellum was about as typical a Sedrios boy as anyone could hope to meet. As far as Pickett was concerned, it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He came from a small town and carried many of those old superstitions around with him. The ones that told of drowned children, fog, and swamp witches. Good for building a local folklore Pickett profited from. Bad for all the people who grew up in those towns deprived of the rich soil of life that might allow them to sprout interesting personalities. Most of them were about as thrilling as the barley they grew, and they didn’t even have the world experience to know how dull they were.
Perhaps the cleverest thing Kellum had ever done in his life was march out of his muddy little village and get a job transporting rum from merchant traders on the coast to whoever would buy from him. Nine days out of ten, that was the only use Pickett had for him. He could keep his sweet opinions about wild things that lived in the trees and his observations about what a right and friendly person this or that drunk was. She got enough of the village talk from her patrons. So long as he brought his wares, it was more than enough company for her.

This was the one day out of the ten that he would prove himself to be more than a booze peddler. So as soon as he’d dropped off the bottles, she’d barred the doors and made the situation clear. He would stay until nightfall, perform for half the gathered tips, and she’d let him leave with a fuller pocket and not transformed into a worm.

It took an hour to convince him, an hour to tolerate his giddy enthusiasm, then a most-unwanted hour to tolerate his sudden horrible case of nerves, which hit right as the evening crowd began to shuffle in. If this was what it was like to be a manager, no wonder Romona’s was such a mess. “Look,” Pickett snapped, “all you have to do is go up there, sing some of those songs you picked up from the coast, and you get half of whatever’s in the basket.”

Pickett circled Kellum once, then twice for good measure. His hair was messy, but in a roguish sort of way. His clothing wasn’t anything special, but unbuttoning the collar and wrapping a cloth around his neck made him a little more flashy. Not Romona Ovlovey flashy and certainly nowhere near Pickett’s own fashion, but it was better. Besides, as long as he turned around enough to give the audience a glimpse of that very taut backside, they’d get all the show they needed. She grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re always singing anyway. Might as well let me pay you for it.”
“Yes. But . . . You see, I’m only singing to myself.” Kellum shifted from one foot to the other, then yelped as the wood under his food bowed and cracked, filling the air with the scent of fresh rot.

Damn. Pickett should have repaired that board the last time she had any money in her pocket to do so. “You see?” She gestured at the floor. “I could use the money. You could use the money. Money is good. So go earn us some.”
Kellum stared down at her, his bright blue eyes wide with fear. “I’ve never done it on a stage before. In front of people. I’m sure these folks’d be much happier to see Ms. Ovlovey.”

“Fuck Ms. Ovlovey,” Pickett hissed. “Ms. Ovlovey picked brighter stages than this one and you know what the Pick’s Pocket means to every trader and traveler in this stinking swamp.” Kellum ducked his head. “But, well, still. I’ve never done it in front of a crowd before. I feel like simple old Kellum’s not enough for a whole audience.” Pickett couldn’t stop the roll of her eyes. She should’ve been running the bar. Edie was the one capable of batting her eyes and winning over a simple creature like Kellum. Bless her, maybe it was easier to make friends because Edie actually believed all the kind things she had to say about people.

Of course, when Pickett glanced up at Kellum, he’d gone two shades paler and very nearly wet himself like Ovlovey’s manager. What had she been thinking?

Pickett pasted on a sickly smile. “Let me just . . . I’m going to handle some of that fine rum you’ve brought for us. You just sit still. See if you can remember any of your songs. You brought your fiddle?”
“I play the mandolin.”
“Same difference.”
The Pick’s Pocket was well and truly fucked six ways to the end of the fucking world.

Pickett slipped behind the bar, reaching automatically for one of the bottles Kellum had brought. They didn’t have their most exceptional crowds that night: a couple of merchants, one of whom had a tag-along, another pair could have been anyone from anywhere, a couple of mercenaries, travelers, anything, really, some probable farmers or hunters, and someone with a baby goat with a rough rope looped around its neck. The kid paced, antsy and bored, and occasionally turned and sprinted toward the table, smacking its head into one of the legs and causing the beers to spill. One of these days Pickett was going to get good at enforcing the “No Animals” policy, but this was not the night for it. She needed every tiny bronze shim she could wring out of them. The last thing she needed to do was put them off by denying them their . . . What? Pets? Trade? Dinner? One never knew what someone intended to do with a goat.
Edie glanced up and arched a brow. “Well? Is he ready?” “Like a tomcat in a swimming race. You’d better go talk him out of his head. I don’t want to clean up the sick if he upchucks all the butterflies in his belly.”
Edie rolled her eyes and gave Pickett’s shoulder a gentle swat. “Be nice. But I’ll talk to him. Northfellow’s asked for his usual.”
“Oh, so he wants the good old days and the warriors he used to fight alongside.” Pickett slumped onto the bar. “Let me just see if we’ve got any of that in a barrel in the back.”
“Be nice. He’s a harmless old fellow.”
“I’m always nice. Couldn’t find a nicer swamp witch.”
“That’s not saying much.”
Pickett rolled her eyes. “If being nice paid, then paupers would dine on cake and moneylenders would starve.”
“If you say so.”

Edie smiled indulgently, and Pickett watched her go, a tightness in her chest that was at once familiar and unfamiliar. “How’d you get a pretty young thing like that to chain herself to this miserable dump?” Arn, a fisherman with a hairy mole on his upper lip asked as he, too, watched Edie depart. “How does a proprietress with your sour attitude lure in a stray like that?”
“Sour attitude? I’ll have you know I’m sweet as honey. That’s how you lure in good help.”

Arn snorted into his drink. It just proved one thing Pickett had known for a long time.
The truth was often harder to believe. “I could enchant her given half the chance,” he mumbled. Pickett shot him a glare. “Try it and I’ll feed you to the swamp beast, Arn.”
Arn snorted. “Ain’t a real thing, and you know it.” Pickett honestly didn’t know one way or another, but she wasn’t about to go hunting the waters for a giant, man-eating monster. Best to let it live in legend the same way she did. At least, the way she had until now, until she couldn’t anymore.

As she dumped a hefty slug of bibblewood juice into a glass, she considered raising it to toast the death of the Pick’s Pocket. Romona Ovlovey had abandoned her. Kellum didn’t have the stones to stomp out onto that stage. Either she learned to turn her swamp witch story into a real show or most of these merchants and traders would decide it wasn’t worth the trouble of staying too long at a place like this. And what would happen to her? What would happen to Edie? Pickett set the glass back down on the wood of the bar that needed a fresh coat of wax. Maybe better for things to fall apart when the place was on the verge of doing the same. She poured a generous portion of rum atop the juice and slid the glass across the bar toward the Northfellow. He grunted, blinking so violently that his thick, wiry white brows shook like swamp grass in the wind, then took his rum and juice and sipped appreciatively before hunching over it like he was a cat with a dead mouse.

Nobody much knew his name. The few times he’d said something that could have been his name, it had been something strange and difficult to pronounce, and Pickett vaguely felt as though she was insulting him when she tried and failed. So he was, had always been, and would always be, the Northfellow. And what would happen to him? He practically lived on that stool at the corner of the bar, smelling like fish and fermenting body odor. He’d be just as hopelessly lost as Pickett and Edie and the handful of other regulars who had to wander out along the rickety wooden walkways of the swamp in order to find a place to drink and not hate the whole world for a few hours.

The Northfellow clutched the glass close. Close enough that she worried he’d squeeze it enough to crack it. He’d better not. She only had actual glassware to serve because a trader had gotten horribly drunk, nearly bankrupted himself buying rounds for everyone and accidentally exposing himself. A dozen real glass pieces had been what he’d been able to use to at least pay the debt off to her. She hadn’t seen him since. Probably because he’d exposed himself to a local meja’s secretary and that’d come back to bite him.

Pickett prepared a few more drinks, dropping them off at the tables. Coins were dropped. Beer and rum were spilled. The baby goat nibbled at her boot before she shook it off with a scowl and shooed it back to its distracted owner. “Well, if our business is done for the night, I’d best be going.” A merchant grunted, pushing himself up from his seat. One of his companions gestured toward the stage. “You don’t want to wait for the entertainment?” “What entertainment? Good night, lads.”

And just like that, he and all the coins in his pocket headed for the door. Fuck Romona north and south. Without entertainment, her customers had no reason to stay longer than their business. More than that, they had no reason to keep spending their money. Frantically, Pickett tried to work out some way to force him to stay. Some new sort of drink, perhaps? The offer of a round for his table if they all stayed and paid for another?

Before she could cast out a desperate offer, a figure stepped out from the back, skirts swirling around their ankles as they spun onto the stage.
Pickett blinked. Black fabric with bits of gray lace twirled into flowers along the hem.
That was one of Romona’s dresses. Had she been so eager to take her new job that she’d left a dress behind? Not that Pickett had time to mill over it as the figure spun around, black skirts flaring like a dark blossom.

A polite applause rose among those patrons who remained, but it was replaced with gasps and scandalized whispers as Kellum spun around. He wore Romona’s dress, Romona’s hat, even a touch of rouge on his cheeks. The nervous rum boy was gone and in his place was a star. The merchant at the door paused, then wandered back to the bar. His gaze was fixed on the man on the stage. Pickett grinned and slid him a glass of bibblewood juice and rum. Without glancing over at her, he dropped a couple of shims onto the bar and drank. Pickett had no idea what Edie had said to Kellum. As she poured another drink and added more coin to her till, she didn’t care.
Kellum threw his arms into the air, lifted his chin, and opened his mouth. And there it was. That voice. That beautiful voice that grated so often on Pickett’s ears latched onto each and every patron like a hook. So much so they might as well not have heard the dreadful lyrics, a typical port song he must have picked up from one of his rum merchants.

She told me she had never known
A lover in her past.
Yet as she raised her skirts I saw
A red and angry rash.

Great guffaws of laughter rose up. That magnificent, stupid rum boy. Had Pickett ever said an unkind thing about him? Surely not. He was nothing short of a sensation as he danced from one end of the stage to another. The patrons of the Pick’s Pocket began to clap along, laughing and cheering as Kellum swirled, even shaking his hips as he sang.

I knew I ought to hesitate
And yet he coaxed me in.
But as I rolled his breeches down
I knew I’d never win!

Another round was called. Then another. One table after another, all of them cheering and laughing as Kellum, in Romona’s dress, won more laughs than any before. Edie laughed, skipping back behind the bar, her pale face flushed. “Isn’t he incredible?” She laughed, seizing Pickett’s hand and giving it a tug. Edie’s fingers were deceptively rough and strong, the only thing about her that didn’t give the appearance of being soft and gentle. If she wanted, she could easily drag Pickett out. But she didn’t. Pickett huffed and nodded. “How’d you get him on the stage?” Edie batted her eyes. “A girl has her secrets. And the dress was his idea. He said it was easier to do this if he wasn’t doing it as Kellum.” “Oh?” Pickett arched a brow. “Then if that’s not Kellum, who’s up there performing?” “To be decided later.” Edie squeezed Pickett’s hands. “Come on. Let’s have a dance.” Pickett pulled her hand back. “You’re the dancer. You have your fun. Someone’s got to keep the Northfellow in his drinks.”

The Northfellow, however, gazed at the patched-wood wall, his eyes glassy and his white, scraggly beard dipping into his drink. Edie pulled a face and pulled at the edge of Pickett’s patchwork cape. “He can keep for a song. Even you, Pickett, need to let yourself have a little fun. Dancing is good for the soul.”
Was it? It was an awfully charming thing to believe. And Edie had one of those guileless
smiles. The sort that could grab a person and drag them down, down, down into a pool of joy. Edie was the sort of person the world loved to hurt.
“I danced with someone once.” Pickett sniffed, crossing her arms. “It wasn’t for me. But you go. Watching you enjoy yourself gives me enough pleasure.”

Edie stared for a long moment, but she didn’t reach for Pickett again. “Well, I’ll see about what tips I can muster,” she said, pulling the woven basket out from under the bar. And then, she danced from table to table, winking and twirling her skirts. Bronze shims and copper pips found their way into her basket and, on one occasion, Pickett could swear she saw Arn’s plump friend Slurne toss in a silver scale before reaching out, trying to touch Edie’s bottom. But Edie twirled out of the way just in time, smacking the back of his head with the heavier-than-usual basket. Kellum gave a proud stomp as he leaned over, winking at the goat’s owner.

An innocent no longer can
I honest claim to be.
Yet every sailor thinks he’s got
My sweet virginity!

The crowds roared with laughter. Kellum twirled and sank into a deep bow before reaching for his mandolin to start another. Edie returned to the bar, dropping the basket in front of her. It clanged just a bit louder than it had in the past.

Perhaps, impossible as it seemed, Romona had helped them by abandoning the bar.
Pickett grinned and poured a slug of rum for herself, for Edie, and for her new main act.

When C.M. McGuire, author of Ironspark, was a child, she drove her family crazy with her nonstop stories. Lucky for them, she eventually learned to write and gave their ears a rest. This love of stories led her to college where she pursued history (semi-nonfictional storytelling), anthropology (where stories come from) and theater (attention-seeking storytelling). When she isn’t writing, she’s painting, crocheting, gardening, baking, and teaching the next generation to love stories as much as she does.

Find her work: seeemmcguire.com, Instagram, Cursed Dragonship Publishing