So yeah, there’s some self-pity going on.
I’m able to easily slip into the crowd with Cristina, going unnoticed and disappearing into the throng of people. This is good. It feels normal. I’ve returned to being someone no one sees. It’s my comfort zone. We all need one of those.
Cristina orders us a couple of beers and we sit at an open table. “What about the book?” she asks, brows pumping.
I sigh. “Well, I didn’t take it with me to work on Monday, so it’s still at my house. You think Dot wants it?”
She laughs. “Can you imagine us showing up with it to the nursing home?”
“Can you imagine usnot?” The book isn’t mine to keep. It belonged to her. “Think she’ll take it?”
“Hard to say. Maybe. Maybe not.” Cristina eyes me while she sips her beer. “Probably not.”
“You’re right, but I still need to check, because it doesn’t feel right to keep it.”
A commotion from the other side of the bar makes the crowd hush into the kind of quiet only reserved for when really bad things happen.
“Who letherin?” a man growls.
I hear Isaac say, “She’s free to go wherever she wants. There aren’t any locked doors in this town. I let you in here, Luke, and we all know how you cheated yourfriends—me included—in poker.”
Cristina sits up and peers around me. Her lips part as her eyes widen. “Don’t look now, but Luke Preston is at the bar, and he’s looking over here.”
Oh, crap. Luke Preston. The scourge of this town, the man who runs the bank and who co-owns the unicorn farm, Happy Trails, with his wife, Sally Ray.
“I say she leaves,” he demands.
I turn around, and Luke is nose to nose with Isaac, who stands behind the bar.
“Nobody wantsthat witchin here.”
Luke’s gaze locks on mine, and his eyes are inky dark with anger. Everyone’s gone quiet, and their eyes are either fixed on me or on Luke.
“Let’s calm down.” Isaac pats the air. “She’s not hurting anybody.”
“Yeah? Well, how do I know she’s not going to cast some spell like she did to Maddox?” Luke sneers at me. “What were you planning to do, Coco? Spell all of us? Turn this entire town into a bunch of zombies?”
My insides tighten.This.This is exactly what I was afraid would happen.
Luke Preston is not my friend. He’s a jerk, and one who holds a lot of clout in this town.
My cheeks heat. The tops of my ears burn. This is literally the worst position I could have found myself in, and there’s no one to blame but myself.
If I hadn’t made that potion, then none of this would have happened.
My shoulders tighten because Ialsoknow that if I hadn’t made that potion, then I wouldn’t have had the very brief and wonderful experience of being loved by Stone Maddox.
And that made it all worth it.
I don’t think I’ve realized that until this exact moment, when an angry mob is about to burn me at the stake.
Once again, better late than never.
“We should go,” Cristina says.
“No.” Don’t ask me where that word came from. It shot out of my mouth of its own accord, deciding to take charge.
“Coco,” Cristina warns.
