“It’s fine,” I say to Finn, my head starting to throb. I want this to be over. “Just leave me alone, okay?”
Things move quickly after that. Dominic calls a tentacled man wearing a finely tailored tuxedo over to us, and they discuss some kind of report.
“Dom, come on, man. You don’t need to report this. Why can’t we just forget about it? She said it’s fine. I-I thought we were friends.”
“Report it? To whom?” I ask, eager to be filled in.
The tentacled man, whose name I learn is Otto, nods, patting his rounded belly. “All over it.” He starts tapping on his phone, and I notice the Mapletown Sheriff’s Department logo on the back of his phone case. An officer in uniform shows up afew minutes later, putting Finn in handcuffs and hauling him outside.
Dominic replays the events from his perspective once the officer returns inside, and when he’s done, he nods in my direction. “Did I miss anything, um…?”
“Lindsay,” I tell him. “Lindsay Abbadelli. My grandmother was Penelope Abbadelli. She lived in the Victorian house on the hill up the street. And no, you’ve covered everything.”
I notice a twinkle in Dominic’s light blue eyes, making them look almost silver, as his gaze roams over my face, down my neck, and lower, as he asks, “Natalie’s friend?”
“Yeah.” Why is he looking at me like that? What did Natalie say about me?
The officer thanks us as he leaves, and Dominic smiles at me, lopsided and boyish, distracting me entirely from the previous events of the night. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Oh, god. “Whatever you’ve heard, just know it’s my parents’ fault, and my therapist agrees.”
He lets out a deep belly laugh, throwing his head back and exposing his thick neck. My tongue darts out to wet my lips as I follow the veins and jagged white scars down into the neckline of his shirt, and I’m barely cognizant of it until his eyes land on my lips and he swallows. Do I suddenly have a neck fetish?
“Here,” Dominic says, guiding me through the crowd with his hand a respectful inch from my lower back. Even without the contact, I can feel the heat of him through my clothes. “Allow me to turn this night around for you.” He has me take the empty stool closest to the kitchen. There’s an opening on my right that allows the bartenders to go in and out, so there’s no one else on that side of me. I feel protected here, on the outskirts of the crowd. “What can I make for you, Lindsay?”
I consider my options and shrug. “That whole thing killed my buzz, I’m afraid. I’ll take an ice water.”
When he places the water in front of me, he rests his forearms on the bar, lowering himself until he’s at my eye level. “To each their own, but to make up for that earlier nonsense, drinks are on the house until you choose to leave.”
“Seriously?” My mouth hangs open. I’m a sucker for freebies.
He seems amused by it. “Absolutely. This is the best night of the year. If I’m being honest”––he leans in––“I’ll be more than a little heartbroken if you leave here with a bad taste in your mouth. That’s unacceptable. So if you want to go back to drinking and dancing the night away, I’ll make sure everyone else in this bar leaves you the hell alone. How does that sound?”
“What’s going to happen to him?” I ask, pointing to the front door.
“Finn?”
I nod.
“He’ll be required to enter a rehab facility for his behavior, since it’s illegal. The facility is in Iceland, and the program takes a year to complete. If he passes the exam at the end, he can leave, but he won’t be able to return to Mapletown. He’ll be randomly assigned to one of the other towns populated by our kind.”
“Wait,” I mutter, trying to process this. “Grabbing someone without their consent is illegal here? And he’ll never be able to set foot in Mapletown again?” That seems…harsh? Or maybe it’s precisely the outcome he deserves, and I’ve grown too used to the lack of accountability for sexual predators in the human world.
“Correct.” Dominic watches me for a moment, and his expression softens into a look that feels like a hug. “Mapletown is protected territory from most humans, but one wrong move could expose us. That would put everything and everyone in danger. You think we want a guy like that leaving here tonight, thinking he can behave that way with no consequences?” He letsout a sigh. “His next offense would be worse. Violent. You and I both know it.”
“Wow,” I reply in a stunned voice that sounded a little too breathy. Am I getting horny over Mapletown’s laws? Maybe. Definitely.
No wonder Natalie wants to stay here forever. I never thought much of this place growing up. We’d come visit Nonna Penny, and it seemed like a boring, quiet little town without anything fun to do. Your average rural stretch of land where no one ever leaves and nothing ever happens. Well,nothingmight be a stretch, but at least violence against women is minimal. That’s something. A big-ass, meteor-sized something.
Out of the corner of my vision, and I spot a calico cat figurine sitting on the bar a few inches to my left. “What’s that?”
He follows my gaze. “Oh, that’s Polly.”
“Polly?”
“Yeah, she was the original familiar of Mapletown. Martha Crane’s familiar.”
“Oh, the witch who founded the town and created the bubble around it?”
