“No,” she says, swaying. “Wait. That’s not your business.”
I lift my arms, gesturing toward the farm. “I’m a thief, and I’ve pickedyourhouse to rob? Not the home across the road with the unicorns?”
She smacks her palm against my chest to punctuate each word. “That’s. Right.”
Oh. My. God. I rake a hand roughly through my hair. “Look, I’m not a thief. My family owns a line of hotels. You can look me up. Surely you’ve heard of the Maddox Hotel. It’s famous.”
“I don’t know.” She sucks her teeth and puts on a hard Southern accent. “Us country bumpkins don’t know nothing about you big city slickers. We ain’t got ’nough sense to use that there internet.”
There she is, getting amusing again. Smarting off with a mouth that’s just begging to be tamed. I scratch my temple, unable to keep the wry smile from my lips. “Somehow I think you’ve got plenty of sense.”
“Listen ...” Fire dances in her eyes. “I’ve had a hell of a day, and the last thing I need is you pulling a practical joke. Did someone set you up to this? Let me guess, my not-so-nice neighbors. Did they follow you out of town, tell you that they’d pay you to pretend to help me? Are they watching this whole thing?”
Where in the hell has she jumped to now? Fairyland? “What?”
She clasps her hands and presses them to her chest before batting her eyes like a damsel in distress. “Don’t tell me—you’re here to be my knight in shining armor. Wow. Thank you so much. You’re everything that I’ve always wanted—tall, with a complexion that probably turns golden in the sun, and handsome. And rich, you say? Wow. Please, help me, sir.”
She drops to her knees and tugs on my pants. I would stop her, but it’s way too tempting to see where this might go. Not to mention, she’s in the perfect position to unzip my jeans.
“Please,” she mock-begs. “You are the miracle we’ve been waiting for. Now the farm won’t go into foreclosure because, what? You’re going to buy it? Of course you are!”
She throws her hands up and rises, glaring at me. “I know your grand plan. You buy my farm and then turn around and sell it to Luke and Sally Ray.” She jerks toward the road and yells, “Your plan isn’t going to work, Sally! You’ll have to pry my dead body off the floor to get my property!”
This is ... more than I was planning for. “Listen, I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
She whirls on me, all wide-eyed, her words slurring just enough so that I know she’s at least three drinks in. She’s small. It wouldn’t take a lot to get her tipsy.
She waves a finger around. “There’s been no misunderstanding, Mr. Richie Rich. You can get the hell out of here. I can smell a setup when I see one.”
A piggycorn peeks out from behind the door.
The door.
Which means the swine is inside the house. Of course it is. Who am I kidding? She probably hides piggycorns in her back pocket.
The swine wiggles through the gap and another one pops up behind it, taking its place. That one wriggles through the space, and suddenly a dozen piggycorns are charging toward me, running at full speed.
The horde slips and slides over the planks, their hooves scrabbling for purchase. The first comes to a stop by sliding into the toe of my shoe. Behind it, one after the other, each pig skates into the one in front of it, coming to rest on their rumps until there’s a pile of piggycorns at my feet.
“Y’all!” Sunbeam shrieks. “Get off him!”
A dozen piggycorns gaze up at me. Tongues loll from mouths. Eyes blink. Tails wag.
The woman’s gaze drops down, and she says, “Go back inside, y’all. I’ll only be a minute.”
When the swine don’t move, she taps her foot impatiently.
That’s when a tree branch shoots out from nowhere, scoops up the piggies like a giant hand, and deposits them inside.
I jump back. “Whoa.”
Did I just see what I thought I did?
Maybe thereissomething to this whole “ley line” thing.
Awe fills my voice. “The land around hereismagical.”
“Yeah. And if you’re not careful, it’ll get you,” Sunbeam threatens.
