“It was just lust! It’s not the same.” What had she been thinking anyway, doing skinny dipping in front of the man? She brought this upon herself.
“But you’ll never find out if there could be more if you reject him from the start.” Gran’s voice softened. “You’ve gone to such lengths to get him back.”
“That doesn’t mean he owes me anything. Especially not love.” Shanna picked at her skirt. “Any progress on your end? Did you find the book with the rest of the conditions for the ritual?”
“The …?”
“So we can break the bond once we have the Mercurial Crystal?”
“Oh! Right. Yes, yes … I have it somewhere …” Gran’s voice faded, and she was gone for a minute. “Got it! There are a couple of things to be done before the ritual. Long story short, you’ll need to mingle. Romantically.”
“What?” Shanna almost dropped the phone and scrambled for it in the air.
“As in, a date. You, as one of the people involved in the bond, must go on a date.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I want the long story.”
“Really? All ten pages?”
Ugh. Fine.Gran was fully capable of reading an entire book about witchcraft to her, and currently, Shanna didn’t care for it. “So, just a date? No other conditions, like what has to happen on the date?”
“Nope.”
It was strange, and shecouldask Gran to mail her pictures of the pages … although the last time she’d tried, she got three pictures of Gran’s face from various, surely unintended angles. Not even someone more tech-savvy like Simon could help with that.
“Okay. I guess I’ll do that. We’ll probably get on the way soon. Talk again tomorrow.”
“Bye, sweetie!”
Jinx also barked goodbye.
Shanna sat on the bench for ten minutes more, until Chris exited the room and came over.
“Any luck?” Shanna asked.
“Nope. We’re running out of the more obvious candidates.” Chris plopped down. “I told him we should try Mafia members.”
“Is there a reason the Mafia would want Simon dead?”
“Nah. But it would be cool.” Chris stretched out her legs and crossed them.
Simon popped out and, upon spotting them, tapped his wrist as if showing the time.
“I’m already packed!” Chris yelled. She turned to Shanna as he disappeared inside. “Why are you weird around him, anyway?”
“What?”
“You’ve been acting weird since yesterday. Like you want to ask him out to prom, but you’re an awkward nerd and he’s a jock, so you don’t know how to do it.”
“I think if anyone, Simon would be the nerd.” A very attractive nerd with a mouthwateringly sculpted body, especially when it was also glistening from him having taken a dive in the ocean …
And she shouldn’t be thinking about yesterday anymore.
“That’s not the point.”
Shanna slumped her shoulders. “Gran told me one of the conditions that need to be fulfilled before we break the bond is to go out on a date.”
“Oh. So youdohave to ask him.”
