"Really?"
"He sucks, babe."
"Yeah."
Portia cawed above them and a cat joined the rest of their walk to The Lost Souls as night chirped around them.
"Ursula picked me a beautiful bunch of mint. Coconut mojitos?"
"Yes."
"Did you really hex his hairline?"
"Yep."
A text dinged on both of their phones, and when Tilly pulled it out, she stopped on the cracked sidewalk underneath the low-reaching oak tree where her crow sat watching as she clicked on a link, read a headline, and showed it to Jen before they quickly made their way to The Lost Souls House.
18. Peachy Headlines
"What can we do?""Once again, here we sit, minding our own business while someone else uses magic and points the finger at us." Jen was talking around a mouthful of blackberry tart, and her left foot was tapping wildly against the wood floor. Tilly laid a gentle hand on her thigh, though her anxiety was rising.
"Are they targeting Eloise or all of us?"
"What is with targeting me?"
"It's because you're pretty and the funniest of us," Kelsea whispered, drawing a laugh from her.
"I think it was a message for all of us."
"Any chance Carmen did anything to the peach tarts before you got there?" Carol had her journalistic eyes on this.
Eloise snorted as she reached for another tart, her hand colliding with Jen's dark hand. She waited for Jen to take a tart before she answered. "Carmen may be mean, but she's not diabolical. You have to be smart to be diabolical."
"Rude," Ursula pointed out.
"Fine," Eloise conceded. "I'm not saying Carmen isn't smart. But I don't think she has the time to cook up something like this." She bit into the tart as she frowned and then added, "And besides, she's so averse to magic, can you see her finding a way to hex the peach tarts just to point a guilty finger at us?"
"Yeah, that feels more in the Cassie area of expertise."
"Who is locked up," Jen pointed out. She had successfully eaten four blackberry tarts, the stress of the day wearing on her shoulders in a particular way. She'd started her day with a dirty chai from The Black Cat, odd looks from people making her pause, but continued until she walked to her nutrition and lifestyle store, where a poster calling for a vote to unseat Cora was plastered to the glass door. Once peeled off, her anger piqued, she sat in her office, about to call Cora when two of her clients texted in that they would be canceling their memberships and urging others in town to follow suit.
A quick search and she found the article.
Someone had hexed the peach shortcake at the Fourth of July festival, causing anyone who had taken a juicy bite to fall madly in love with whomever the first person their skin brushed against.
The accusations were not veiled.
Then came the fallout.
A warning to the town was posted on Salem's official site; wherever there was a town building, there was a poster of what to look out for.
Jen knew what it was.
They were bullet points on how to discriminate.
She'd shrugged off her light blue jacket as her skin heated and her anger rose. Cora didn't pick up the phone, but then she imagined she and her team were in battle mode. She sent her a text and then got through her day, with the few clients whohad decided to stick around, some loyal and others mostly out of curiosity.
And now here she sat, nervously eating tarts without tasting them as they discussed who might be out to get them.
