“We talked to Graham right before he left. He said it should be pretty safe since you don’t have the egg anymore, and the only one who’d be after you for a personal reason is still in New York.”
I relaxed. “That’s good to hear. Sure. I’ll come along. I’m ravenous anyway.”
“Great. Shelby will be out soon.”
Shelby must be another one of the Redrock wives.
As I waited, I quickly called Jack, a colleague who worked at the same real estate office, to ask if they could cover a home showing for me. I didn’t necessarily trust Jack not just to steal the sale from right under my nose; the real estate industry in New York was cutthroat like that. But hey, desperate times and all.
Shelby was a petite woman with generous curves. She had soft brown eyes, and she’d pulled her reddish-brown hair up into a messy bun. A pincushion was wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet, and she followed my eyes there after our quick introduction.
“Oops! I keep forgetting to take that off.”
“You also have a measuring tape draped around your neck,” I said.
“That too.” She removed her sewing accessories and placed them on the counter. “Let’s go. I’m famished.”
The birria was really good, exceptional even. Better than anything I’d had in New York, and that was saying a lot since we were spoiled for choices there when it came to food. The three of us sat at the table by the window so we could look out into the street as we ate.
“For some reason,” I said, “I thought Darlington was a small town. But this is not giving small town vibes at all.”
I looked out at the building across the street that we’d just come from. Built in the Gothic Revival style, with steepled roofs, pointed arches, and an abundance of decorative elements, it towered over the smaller buildings around it. But it wasn’t thetallest building in the area by far. Cars hummed past, and the sidewalk teemed with people, some in suits, some in leather jackets, a few with horns or scales. This wasn’t some sleepy small town. This was a city pulsing with life and magic.
“Darlington has grown a lot since The Wall fell,” Shelby said, dipping a chip into her frijoles puercos. “But even before, it wasn’t a small town. Not by a long shot. I think they described it as a small town at first so that the general public wouldn’t freak out that a whole-ass city of monsters and magic had avoided detection for so long. Like, what do you mean satellite imaging missed it?”
“Oh, that makes sense. Experts did say the crazy technology we have now is why The Wall fell. Too many cameras, and I guess the satellites didn’t help. Did you always live here?”
“Yup! I did. But I didn’t know about the monsters and the magic.”
“Really? But it’s everywhere!”
I wasn’t exaggerating. A woman with iridescent wings zipped past on a scooter. The group of kids at the street corner weren’t kids at all now that I had a good look; they were… goblins? Not to mention, according to the placard on the wall, the Mexican place we were currently at was owned by the friendly neighborhood chupacabra. Was that even a thing?
I also had the distinct feeling that something was watching me. But I wasn’t sure if I was being paranoid.
“Yeah, it is everywhere. But I’ve lived here all my life, and I thought it was just a quirky local thing. It’s also more heavily marketed now.”
“How did your family end up here?” I asked, trying to make small talk.
“I come from a line of green witches. Plant magic. It skipped a generation, and Mom decided to raise me like a normie. My grandparents assumed I didn’t have magic either, so they never mentioned it. It was hard for my mom to grow up knowing she was missing something. They were just trying to do what was best for me. Grams was ecstatic when she found out I had magic after all.”
“Ooooh, you have magic?” I asked, awed and remembering Eva and her spell.
“Very little. Watch the napkin.” Shelby concentrated, and the napkin on the table folded itself in half. “It’s not very impressive. Gargoyles are supposed to be naturally attracted to women with some magic in them. But so far, Lillian, Emily, and I all have just a teeny, tiny bit. Emily’s magic is so weak that she didn’t even know about it until we started looking for it. We’re nothing like Tansy. She’s sorceress-caliber.”
“Wow, really? I had no idea.” I wondered for a second if Graham’s attraction to me was solely because of the supposed magic that ran in my family, but I refused to let myself dwell on it. I turned to Lillian. “What about you?”
“I can’t cast spells, but I can do this.” She raised her hands up in the air, and they suddenly turned into paws. She also had themost adorable cat ears. “Shifting is considered a type of innate magic, like a talent."
“You’re a shifter! That’s so cool.”
Lillian’s face turned red. “Not a full shifter. This is all I got. Paws and ears. Like Shelby, we all have magic, but very little. I’m part snow leopard.”
“That’s still really cool. All I did was witness my ex murder someone and steal an egg.”
“Did you want to talk about that?” Lillian asked, her ears and paws changing back.
“Maybe when it doesn’t feel so surreal. Right now it feels like everything’s a dream and I’m going to wake up in my own bed in the morning.”
