"Tomorrow at eight," I said.
"Don't be late. Tammy locks the back door at eight-fifteen and she means it."
I finished my coffee. It was good—strong, a little bitter, nothing like the watered-down decaf I'd been drinking for years because Sal said caffeine made me jittery. I ordered a second one for the road, and Lori watched me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Approval, maybe. Or recognition.
Walking home, grocery bag in one hand and coffee in the other, I passed three antique shops. Every single one had crystals in the window. I'd thought it was a tourist gimmick. Now I wondered.
The cottage was cold when I got back. I put the groceries away, set the avocado on the counter where I could see it, and stood in the kitchen looking at Aunt Amelia's dried herbs and her shelves of books I'd been pretending were decoration.
I wasn't pretending anymore. I didn't know what I was doing, exactly, but pretending wasn't it.
From somewhere in the house—the bathroom, probably, because she had a flair for the dramatic—Rosaria's voice drifted toward me, faint but unmistakable:
"It took you long enough. And you bought the wrong coffee. I do not know why I expected otherwise."
I closed my eyes, counted to five, and started unpacking.
CHAPTER THREE
I drovepast Bayberry House twice before I actually parked.
The first time, I told myself I was looking for the address. I wasn’t. I’d driven past it every day since I moved to Starfall Bay—big Victorian, wraparound porch, exactly where Lori said it would be. The second time, I slowed to maybe fifteen miles an hour and watched the warm light spilling from the windows like someone checking the temperature of a pool before getting in.
A woman I’d met twelve hours ago in the produce section had told me to show up at a restaurant after hours to meet other women with supernatural abilities. That was the situation. That was what I was doing with my Tuesday night. My old Tuesday nights had involved folding Sal’s shirts while watching home renovation shows. This was, objectively, more interesting. It was also possibly insane.
I pulled into the small lot behind the building and turned off the engine. The dashboard clock said 7:58. Lori had said eight. Tammy locked the back door at eight-fifteen and meant it. I had seventeen minutes to either go inside or drive home and pretend none of this was happening.
My phone buzzed. Carmen:How are you doing? Eat something real tonight, not cereal.
I typed back:Going to a thing. Making friends. Very normal.
I did not specify that the friends were a healer, a telekinetic, and a woman who could read your emotional state like a weather report. Carmen worried enough.
The back door of Bayberry House had a small light above it and a welcome mat that said “Come in, We’re Open” in letters so faded they were more suggestion than instruction. I sat in the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tried to organize my reasons for going inside.
One: Lori seemed sane. Grounded. The kind of woman who’d tell you the truth even if you didn’t want to hear it, and she’d told me there were others like me.
Two: Rosaria wasn’t going away. The hot flashes weren’t going away. Whatever was happening to me, ignoring it hadn’t worked for the past three days and probably wasn’t going to start working tonight.
Three: I was so lonely I’d had a full conversation with my toaster that morning. Not with Rosaria in the toaster. With the actual toaster. About whether it was worth buying a new one or if the uneven heating was part of its charm.
The toaster hadn’t answered, which was actually a relief, because at this point I half-expected it to.
“You are stalling,” Rosaria said from the rearview mirror.
I adjusted the mirror so I couldn’t see her. She reappeared in the side mirror instead.
“Go inside, Gina. These women may be useful. And sitting in a parking lot feeling sorry for yourself is not a productive use of my time.”
“Your time? You’re dead. You have nothing but time.”
“I have a murder to solve and a daughter-in-law who is sitting in a Subaru having a crisis of confidence over a dinner invitation. Go. Inside.”
I went inside.
The back door opened into a hallway that smelled like rosemary and something sweet, maybe pie, and I followed it toward a warm glow and the murmur of voices. Bayberry House was gorgeous even with the lights dimmed—all warm wood and mismatched chairs and local art on the walls. The kind of place that made you want to sit down and stay a while.
Then a wine glass exploded.
