“I’m afraid it’s a curse,” she said, the words barely a whisper.
“But magic isn’t real,” Roan said.
Abigail simply raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad that you think that,” she said, “but I’m afraid it isn’t true.”
“How could it not be true?”
Roan didn’t want the answer, so he simply stomped out through the back door to inspect the garden.
This was a dream. Magic wasn’t real. He was simply dreaming about the ball that Beastie had destroyed last week.
He leaned down, picked up a stick, and threw it over the back fence, muttering a curse under his breath when it hit some invisible wall and bounced back toward him.
That wasn’t what he wanted to see—he wanted to see it sail straight over.
And the ball was here, and it was the same ball that Beastie had destroyed last week.
Had the owner of the ball made a second one to throw over his fence and lose again?
Things couldn’t be repeating like this in real life—this had to be a dream.
He marched indoors and informed Abigail it didn’t work before making his way back to his office.
He could have tried the gate, perhaps, but he didn’t feel like using his body to discover if the barrier existed there, too. He’d already gotten hurt too many times.
His head was beginning to hurt again, whether from the magic that had been pointed at him or the effects of being knocked unconscious, he wasn’t sure. But he didn’t usually feel pain in his dreams, and Abigail seemed so certain that it wasn’t one.
If it was a dream, it was a beastly dream.
He clenched his teeth as he glanced around his office.
What did he need to do if this was, in fact, real, and he wasn’t going to wake up in the morning with all of this behind him?
What steps were important to make sure that he and Abigail would make it through this experience?
First, he needed to get all those sleeping men out of his tavern. He didn’t want to stare at them for however long this might take—the idea of them sitting there in a peaceful slumber while he and Abigail lived and worked around them was entirely unappealing.
But he couldn’t shove them outside, and he couldn’t put them through the front door. He could maybe put acouple of them into the pantry, but then Abigail would have to see them.
In the storage room, however…that could work.
How many men had been in the tavern? There had been seven or eight, perhaps.
They would fit in the storage room, and if they woke up, it wasn’t as if they could do too much damage there.
Yes, the storage room would work.
He marched out of his office and poked his head into the kitchen. “Can you help me move them?” he asked.
“You want to move them?” Abigail’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you sure that’s a good decision?”
“I don’t see any other option,” he said, “unless you want them sleeping around us the whole time we’re trapped here.”
Abigail shook her head. “No. I was just thinking how eerie it was,” she said. “And I don’t want any more of them falling like Conrad did.”
“Conrad fell?” Roan asked.
“I kept his head from hitting the floor,” Abigail said, wincing. “Though I couldn’t catch the rest of him. That was when I looked over and saw you.”
