Glastonbury Books
1 Cook Lane

Housed within a stately old blue and white Victorian positioned right at the six-way intersection on the southern end of the heights, Glastonbury Books is the quintessential old-fashioned bookstore, complete with dark wood paneling, soft lighting from wall sconces, mahogany bookshelves packed with dusty tomes and brass rails mounted near the ceiling that hold wheeled wooden ladders, allowing easy access to the higher shelves. The owner, one Vincent Wright, is a distinguished, dignified older man with thinning white hair, a hawk-like nose, remarkably clear green eyes that still shine with vast intelligence, and a generally dour attitude toward anyone he does not know. Glastonbury Books is a serious occult shop, dealing only in those books and materials that will produce genuine results, and Wright takes a dim view of naïve, 'fluffy bunny' neopagan types as well as those who seem to be dabbling in the Black Arts on a lark.

Once a given customer has been vouched for or has shown their motives to be pure, however, Wright's demeanor changes entirely. He's nothing but helpful and even friendly toward serious students of the occult and those who are using magic to specific, well-intentioned ends, and will even carry on lengthy conversations and ongoing correspondence with his more loyal and likable customers. In many ways, Wright views himself as a gatekeeper, barring the door between the world most people know and the shadowy world that lies beneath against those who would trespass blindly. He's been forced to resign himself to the fact that some of the other occult shops in town occasionally stumble across something genuine, and that the unwise and unwary can and will stumble into danger, but as long as he yet draws breath, he will not be held personally responsible for the next ill-conceived demon summoning or necromantic ritual.

As such, most to all of a given magician's needs can be met by Glastonbury's stock -- the store carries all of the more common ingredients and tools, a vast number of spellbooks and treatises on magical theory, the particular underground magazines and newspapers published and read by those in the trade, and a number of items of greater rarity. Of course, the stock is organized according to a truly bizarre system that only Wright himself can navigate with any certainty, and first-time customers should expect pointed questions at the least and demands for some manner of reference at worst before they will ever be allowed to make a purchase. The process grows progressively easier with each subsequent visit, but Wright always takes great care to ensure that the books and tools he sells will be used responsibly.

It should be noted that Wright is no champion. Under the right circumstances, he might be persuaded to intervene, to help devise a counterspell to some curse or summoning or to go bail out an amateur witch who's in over her head. For the most part, however, his goal is prevention, and his domain ends at his shop's property lines. He watches those who pass through Glastonbury Books carefully, he makes sure to get the right things to the right people while keeping the misguided and malevolent at bay, but that's it. This is not to say that he is in any way weak or cowardly; he has demonstrated a good deal of strength and mystical potency in those rare occasions when he has been forced to defend his shop directly. It is simply that, for whatever reason, he does not care to intervene in the affairs of the outside world.