June wandered toward the bookshelf, eyes scanning the spines, then plucked a book from the shelf.
“Westerns, huh?” she asked.
“What about it?”
She lifted one shoulder. “You just strike me more as a Dostoyevsky guy.”
I snorted. “If he didn’t have shootouts on horseback, I ain’t interested.”
She laughed. “He didn’t.”
Her eyes strayed from mine, finding the open bedroom door. Her gaze didn’t linger, but it was enough to make heat crawl up the back of my neck…purely because I wondered if they taught her how to read sinful thoughts in seminary. If she somehow knew that I was thinking about what she’d look like naked, bent over that bed and taking my?—
“Have you got anything to drink?” she asked suddenly. “I’m um…pretty parched. Hot out there.”
“Yeah,” I said, too fast, too loud. “Water. Maybe a pitcher of sweet tea from Willow…I’ll be right back.”
I fled to the kitchen like the narrow stretch of linoleum could shield me from whatever had just passed between us. My pulse was too damn loud in my ears, my hands itchin’ as I pulled open the fridge and yanked out the pitcher. It sloshed too close to the rim, but I managed to pour two glasses without spilling.
She was still in the living room when I returned, flipping through a battered copy ofThe Lesser Key of Solomon. Once again, it almost looked like she was surrounded by light; it took me a second to shake it off.
“You have a weird collection,” she said, closing the book and setting it aside to take the tea. “Why the stuff on magic and folklore?”
I grunted. “Try bein’ cursed and see if you don’t develop an interest in magic.”
June didn’t laugh. “But you’re not cursed anymore—at least, that’s what Rhett and Willow say.”
“Not so easy to shake that shit off.”
She held her glass and took a slow, thoughtful sip, then rested it on the arm of the chair. “So the books stay?”
I nodded. “The books stay.”
She nodded like that made perfect sense—as if it wasn’t a little spooky to hang out in an abandoned church with a man who kept grimoires and sigils all over his house, who made room for the ghosts in the old sanctuary.
“Fair enough,” June said. “I’ve got a few myself—mostly from when me and Delilah were roommates in Nola. Taught me to hang rosemary above the door, just in case.”
“Do you?”
June tilted her head. “You asking if I believe in it, or if I practice it?”
“Either. Both.”
She smiled again. “I believe in protection…whatever form that takes.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. There was a risk that, if we stayed here, I’d talk to her about the occult and westerns and everything in between for hours…until I ultimately gave in and took her to bed.
So I took a long sip of my sweet tea and gestured back toward the door.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s see how much damage we can do before the sun sets.”
June looked one more time at the open bedroom door, and my stomach twisted.
Then she followed me back to the sanctuary…where it was safe.
Where sin wouldn’t be so easy.
CHAPTER 5
