“Willard, you are a lifesaver.”
He pressed a finger to his mouth to shush me. “Don’t go telling Malene. The knowledge might give her a heart attack.”
I laughed as Willard moved to the front door. He locked it and put theOut to Lunchsign up. “I was just about to take a break anyway. My techs are out, and it seems I can spare a few minutes to chat with the two of y’all.”
Rufus and I sat at the counter while Lady lay at my feet. Willard brought her a bowl of water and started chatting with us from the rectangular cutout that joined the kitchen with the shop.
“Where’s all your help? I mean the cooks.”
“I had the feeling that I was about to be needed, so I sent them all to lunch.”
A sizzling sound came from the kitchen, and the smell of cooking meat drifted over the counter and flew straight up my nose. My stomach growled.
Rufus cocked a brow, and I hugged my belly, wishing my stomach would remain silent.
“You sent all of them,” Rufus asked, his lips tugging into a sly grin. “Because you had a feeling?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing exactly what Rufus was hinting at. His words and tone suggested that Willard had some sort of magic hidden up his sleeve. I shook my head, silently telling Rufus that he was wrong, absolutely wrong.
“Sometimes I have feelings,” Willard said between flipping burgers, “like today. I knew that a wizard would be stopping by. What I didn’t know was that Clem would bring him with her.”
My blood turned to stone. Had I heard him correctly? No, Willard couldn’t have said what I thought.
Rufus leaned back in his stool. Water dripped from his dark hair, splashing onto his shoulders. He leveled his gaze on mine, his dark eyes laughing at me.
“I’ve been telling Clementine that there is magic all around her in this town, but she refuses to believe me,” Rufus said.
Willard came around the partition with two plates in his hand. Cheeseburgers sat surrounded by a moat of French fries.
“Here you go.” Willard wiped his fingers on a towel tossed over his shoulder. “In a place like Peachwood, we often only see what we want to see.”
My jaw dropped. “Willard, what is going on? Peachwood doesn’t have magic. There’s nothing here. The people aren’t magical. Okay,” I said, rethinking that, “I may have met some sort of wizard mafia today, and now you’re talking about wizards, but that’s it, right?”
“Gotta stay away from the wizard mafia. They aren’t any good,” Willard murmured.
“You’re telling me.”
Willard smiled and wiped down the counter. “We see what we want to. When you came to Peachwood, did you want to have anything to do with magic?”
I picked at my fries, which were too hot to eat. “No,” I admitted. “I’d just been attacked magically.”
“By whom?” Rufus asked.
I ignored his question. “I needed peace and quiet, so I came here, looking for solace.”
“And that’s what you got, wasn’t it?” Willard asked.
“It was, but now I’m discovering that everything I thought about this place is wrong. I didn’t want to live in a world with magic, and yet here it is.”
The pharmacist thought about that. “Not everything or everyone is magical. A lot of the folks who came to Peachwood did so for the same reasons as you—they wanted a refuge, a place where they could live normally. Heck, I’m one of those. So are plenty of others.”
I stared up at Willard as if seeing him for the very first time. His gray hair just brushed the tops of his ears and his sage-green eyes held kindness and compassion. The lines that signaled his age looked as if he had earned every one—their etching on his skin making Willard look wise instead of haggard.
“Clem, the truth is, until you were ready to talk about magic and have something to do with it again, the power in this town was shut off from you. You didn’t want it, and your desire was honored.”
That made sense, but I wasn’t sure I liked it. “What about Sadie? She was my best friend. Did she know? Was she a witch?”
Willard shook his head. “That would have been Sadie’s business, not mine. But as for you,” he said to Rufus, “what do you think happened?”
