Steve Majic has the look of a shopkeeper who has spent decades leaning over tiny labels and listening for the click of a stubborn lock. His weather-browned skin is dry at the knuckles and faintly glossy across the bridge of his nose, where years of lamp heat and dust have settled. He moves with a precise, sideways shuffle, keeping his left shoulder close to shelves as if the aisles were narrow even outdoors. His expression is welcoming until he counts something; then he becomes so still that customers sometimes mistake him for a wax display. The unexpected detail: he carries a tiny tin of sugared fennel seeds and offers one to nervous customers like a village auntie.

Steve is hospitable enough to remember how every regular takes their tea, yet suspicious enough to inspect a customer's shadow for magical tampering. He enjoys a clever bargain but dislikes winning one at another person's expense. In a calm shop he is chatty and gently teasing; under pressure he becomes brisk, practical, and almost impossible to distract.

Steve inherited a narrow magic shop from his mother, who taught him to identify enchantments by their smell before she taught him to read. As a young apprentice he once sold a charm that seemed harmless, only to learn it had been used to make a tenant forget the address of her own home. He tracked her down and spent the next winter helping her recover her memories, an experience that changed his rule from 'sell what people can pay for' to 'ask what they intend to do with it.' Now he runs a cramped storefront under the cheerful sign 'Majic for Everyone,' though rent is overdue and the sign's promise is increasingly difficult to keep. His former tutor, Sheska, wants him to sell a sealed cabinet of dangerous curios; his niece, Borsha, helps with deliveries and suspects he is hiding something. Steve is trying to keep the shop independent while a wealthy collector pressures him to liquidate its rare stock.