"Wound! You wound me!"
She shook her head, sure she had dodged a malicious teenaged prank.
She continued on her way when she heard him call behind her, "You're only becoming more intriguing!"
She lifted a hand in the air and waved to him behind her as she walked on. She smiled, a furrowed brow and confused thoughts wandering through her mind.
And then when he had shown up at her locker Monday between first and second period with that wide, uninhibited smile, proud to have found where she kept her books, she'd felt overwhelmed with bubbling excitement.
He'd seen her for the first time, really seen her, and liked her. Maybe it hadn't been a prank after all.
Until the report came out about the peach shortcake at the festival. And she remembered seeing him holding one of the small brown bakery boxes in his hand. That bubbling excitement popped.
She felt foolish.
Jeremy Bracker did not like or want her. She was not intriguing to him. He was under a hex and she was his curse.
"The sunflowers are nice," Eloise said. Chocolate-cherry sunflowers had bloomed overnight, lining the back of the garden.
Eloise, Ursula, Tilly, and Kelsea were the only ones left, sipping mulled wine, letting the night gentle around them.
"Hi, honey," Portia called from a branch hanging over the fire pit.
Tilly sat up and pointed, looking around at the others. "Did you hear that?"
"Your crow call you honey? Yeah," Eloise said nonchalantly.
"Uh, how are you so chill about that? Can we understand animals now?" Tilly asked.
Ursula frowned and looked to Casper, who raised his white and grey eyebrows. When he opened his mouth, letting out a bark that was not translated by any of them, Ursula shrugged, and Eloise laughed.
"Crows are corvids. They can pick up words and phrases. Unfortunately, we do not have animal language magic. But that would be pretty cool." She snuggled Lady Macbeth closer, wrapping the navy and green plaid blanket around them both.
Kelsea smiled at them. "Lady would mostly talk about food."
"Shh," Eloise admonished, then nuzzled the raccoon's cheek. "She didn't mean it, sweetie."
"Hey sugar," Eloise called from the kitchen table where she and Ursula sat playing cards with a candelabra of black tapered candles burning and one of Lady Macbeth's kits sat eating a bowl of grapes.
"So, you want to talk about the guy?"
Bess considered Ursula's question for all of two seconds before she shook her head with a smile and declined. She threw her thumb over her shoulder claiming homework before bed.
Casper curled up his long body against hers as she lay not reading the play for her humanities class.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, biting her lip at the text.
Unknown: So? You ever going to answer my texts?
She read the text and lay it on her stomach as she pet Casper's head slowly, thinking.
"What do you think?"
Casper nudged her hand with his head.
She picked up the phone and quickly typed out a text.
Bess: How did you get my number?
