“Don’t move.” Eliza kneels beside me in the snow, her hands gentle as she examines my ankle. “Can you wiggle your toes?”
I try, wincing. “Yeah.”
“Good. Probably not broken.” Her face creases with concern. “Can you put any weight on it?”
I try again, managing to stand with most of my weight on my left foot. “Not really.” Walking is going to be interesting.
“Come on,” Eliza says, sliding under my arm to support me. “Let’s get you inside.”
“I should go home?—”
“Reed, look around.” She gestures at the weather, which has turned into a proper storm… and not the sexy woman variety. “Nobody’s driving anywhere tonight.”
She’s right. Visibility is maybe ten feet, and the roads will be impassable by now. Our phones both start beeping with an emergency weather alert, like a punctuation mark on this disaster of a day.
“You can take over my couch,” Eliza says as we make our slow progress toward the house. “It’s not much, but it’s warm and dry.”
“I don’t want to impose?—”
“Reed, you literally just hurt yourself helping me take care of my animals. The least I can do is give you somewhere to wait out the blizzard.”
As always, her house feels like a refuge from the chaos outside. Eliza settles me on the couch with ice wrapped in a dish towel for my ankle, then disappears into the kitchen. I hear her moving around—opening cabinets, running water, and the gentle clink of dishes.
“Cocoa?” she calls.
“Please.”
She returns with two steaming mugs and settles into the chair across from me. “I wish I had warm nuts.” She shrugs. I fight the urge to make a joke. The silence stretches, filled with the sounds of wind howling outside and tree branches scraping the roof.
“Thank you,” I say. “For letting me stay.”
“Thank you for helping with the girls.” Eliza wraps her hands around her mug. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to help.”
“Why?”
The question catches me off guard. “Because I care about you and your ridiculous villains.”
She studies my face as if she’s trying to solve a puzzle. “Reed, about earlier, at the greenhouse?—”
The lights flicker once. Twice.
Then everything goes dark.
“Well,” Eliza’s voice comes through the darkness, dry and amused. “This should be interesting.”
In the sudden silence, with the familiar hum of electricity gone, I can hear my own heartbeat. And somewhere in the darkness, Eliza’s breathing.
18
Reed
“Stay put,” Eliza’s voice cuts through the blackout. “I’m getting a candle.”
I hear her moving around, muttering, and then a match strikes. The room fills with warm light as she places a candle on the table, then another, and then a small altar’s worth of votives.
“Very romantic,” I say, then immediately wish I hadn’t.
