“Okay, no burgers,” she mumbled.
“You ready?” Rufus, who’d been leaning on the side of his SUV, pushed off. “All set to go?”
I scratched Lady behind the ears. “We sure are.”
“There’ssomething that I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Rufus said.
“What’s that?”
We strolled through downtown. It was after supper and since I wasn’t stuffed thanks to the salad I’d eaten, Rufus suggested ice cream from a local creamery. I was all about that, so we walked past the shops, me eating apple pie ice cream with Rufus walking beside me, his hands deep in his pockets.
“What if you found out about something very bad about me?”
I dropped my spoon on the ground. Lady didn’t miss the opportunity to lick the ice cream off it before Rufus bent and grabbed it. He used a quick cleaning spell to sanitize it, and I jabbed it into my cup of ice cream.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this conversation was a continuation from the one we’d had earlier, when I basically asked him the same question.
“Do you always carry around a cleansing spell with you?”
He shrugged. “You never know when you might need to get your hands wiped off. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Right.”
I hoped that would be the end of the discussion, but he pushed on. “Like I was saying, what if you found out something bad about me? Would that change your opinion of what you think?”
“About you?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Why are you asking me this?”Great way to stall, Clem.“Did something happen?”
“No, I just thought I’d ask.”
I sneaked a peek at him, trying to gauge whether or not he was telling the truth. “Did you meet the person who said they might know who you are?”
“Not yet, but I’ve been having dreams. Strange, odd things. You were in one of them.”
I nudged his arm. “I had clothes on, right?”
A blush ran up his neck. “Yes, you had clothes on. No, but it was like…it was like I was a different person and I was being mean, trying to work dark, black magic. It wasn’t anything like what I would do now.” He rubbed his face. “The evil inside was awful to feel. I didn’t recognize myself.”
A little grunt of sympathy escaped my mouth. “I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”
He nodded. “That’s why I wanted to know. It felt so real, as if there was some truth there. Something that lived in my gut that was churning out darkness.”
I pointed to a bench. “Want to sit?”
“Please.”
I sat on the wrought-iron bench and stretched my legs in front of me. I dropped my free hand to my lap and Rufus took it, studying my fingers. A chill ran down my arm and I shivered.
“Clementine, would you? Would you hate me if you found out something horribly dark about my past? Something that haunted me and would follow me everywhere I went?”
Now I was beginning to think that Rufus had learned something. One simple dream couldn’t have made him realize all of this, could it?
“I feel like there’s more you’re not telling me.”
He hesitated. “There isn’t. There really isn’t. I’m just feeling that whatever I find out, it might not be good. I may not even want to know the truth.”
