"Oh?" She says, in the vague hope that if she gets him talking again more information about any of this stuff will fall out. Seriously, you would think the profit motive would be able to make runecasting information happen, at least to the extent of labels.

"She was in here wanting to look at my spells and shit," he snorts.

"At your diagrams? Yeah, I'm curious about them too, but I can see why you'd want those to be proprietary."

"Pfft."

"Maybe if I run into her I'll see if she wants to swap notes. Odds are any given runecaster knows plenty of things I don't, I wouldn't mind trading."

"If it keeps the both of you off my back. Winged lion, goes around in midform, never seen her not wearing jeans."

She takes note of this description, then gets another idea. "Say, these unlabeled ones, do you have a list of what they're all for or is it as mysterious to you as to me?"

"Some of 'em I have a guess but I'm not sure of any of 'em or they'd be labeled."

"Fair enough." She thinks it's time to start work on reverse-engineering enchanted objects. She adds "I'll get out of your hair now; have a good day!" and moves to leave.

He scans the shelves to be sure nothing's missing, then says, "Bye now."

That guy seemed really stressed out about industrial espionage. Poor guy. Margaret isn't worried about someone stealing her spells, but then she lives with her parents and doesn't depend on magic for her livelihood. And probably never will, unless she hits on something really big--there's a lot to be said for jobs you can tell random people that you do.

She keeps wandering the Avalon, now looking for either more magic-related stuff or a good place to eat lunch. That mention of the winged lion also has her thinking about the possibility of putting out flyers, "new runecaster looking for a study group" or something.

They have an array of lunch places. Delicatessen, soup place (soups of the day: potato leek, chicken noodle, Italian wedding), Caribbean food, burger place with prominently advertised shakes and interesting varieties of fries from garlic sweet potato to yucca, Japanese hole-in-the-wall, place that does brunch three meals a day and has a special on chicken and waffles, pasta place, shellfish specialty shop, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican.

Sitting at the burger and shakes place, working on a burger and shake and some seasoned fries, is a girl about Margaret's age in jeans and wings and a lion tail.

Ethiopian looks good, but jeans and wings and a lion tail tips the balance in favor of burger joint. She gets a burger and a peanut butter banana shake and the garlic and herb fries and sits at a neighboring table, glancing at the other girl and debating what to say.

Nom nom nom. Tailswish. She doesn't seem to find Margaret very interesting.

Well, why would she? Eventually Margaret screws up her courage and turns toward her. "Excuse me, but I have an odd question--did you ask the guy who runs the magic shop about his work earlier? He gave your description as someone who might want to talk about runecasting."

"- uh, you could summarize it that way. You're getting into runecasting?"

"Yes. I've read a few books and done some spells, mostly enchanting objects, but it's all self-taught. Oh, and my name's Margaret."

"Bella. Nice to meet you. Congratulations on not having self-immolated."

"Thanks. Uh, likewise? I'm curious what you've found out so far, all the books I've found have been annoyingly incomplete."

"Yeah, it's not great. You check the library already?"

"Yeah, but just the once, there might be stuff that's checked out and I didn't see it--I just moved to Seattle a few days ago."

"Welcome."

"Thanks. There was a book in my old town that had some usable diagrams, that was nice. I have copies if you'd like a look."

"Huh. Sure, why not. Diagrams for what?"

"Let's see, there's invisibility, healing, space-warping, one that boils water, one that's described as a "shield" but I haven't tried it, and a couple others."