She hadn’t seen the video, then.
“We’ll get this straightened out,” Jonesy assured her. “Then we’ll start to heal together.”
Embry nodded; words crowded in her throat. She wanted to know who the faculty suspected, if not her. If they had more details than she and her friends had scraped together. How many extra keys were floating around to Marlow Theatre?
Instead, she swallowed hard and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Oh. I should be using my planning period to actually plan—Goddess knows I need to figure something out if the musical is dead in the water… Oh, terrible turn of phrase.” She shook her head. “Long story short, I’m not thinking straight, as you can tell, and hoped a few shots of espresso could get me through the rest of the morning. I would’ve gone to the café on campus, but I really needed to get out, you know?”
Embry did know. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Good, good. You need to take care of yourself as they sort out this nasty business.” Jonesy squeezed her forearms one more time and then drew Embry’s hands together to pat. “I’ve got to run, but please let me know if you need anything, hon.”
“Will do, Jonesy.”
And with that, the teacher bustled into the shop.
Of course, Jonesy immediately spotted Rye coming the other way and talked to him for a good five minutes before he could extract himself.
Which gave Embry plenty of time to come up with a plan completely separate from the one she and Rye were currently running. Okay, well, she’d thought of this exact thing weeks ago, but a certain grumpy boy next door had discouraged her follow-through.
As Rye left his conversation with Jonesy after an embrace,because, well, Jonesy, Embry tracked her across the length of the café. Right up until she stepped in line behind Merle.
Rye exited the shop in the exact moment Embry’s spell whispered into existence.
“Okay, I’m cleared for my errand—Jonesy is fine with my absence from class and rehearsal this week.”
Oh. Right. He did have somewhere to be today—maybe he really did mean nothing, not even his devotion to volunteering, was more important than helping her. Wow, that—
“Woodcross, are you casting a spell?”
“Shhhh, I’m concentrating.”
Rye sighed and stared at her long enough before also turning to the glass that she knew he was following her gaze. Right to where the lip of the ceramic tile an inch in front of Merle’s battered boot edged up just enough that when he moved forward, he tripped.
Jonesy—hands-on, big-gesture Jonesy—lunged forward and caught his elbow as Merle stumbled. His hat flew off in the commotion, landing gently between their feet—and, very conveniently, atop the tile, which now shifted back in place.
The widower witch and the scorned fiancée faced each other, her gripping his elbow and somehow the front of hisLOBSTERISLIFET-shirt. Then Jonesy burst into laughter—a sound so sweet and infectious that grumpy Merle O’Grady couldn’t help but crack a smile himself.
“Woodcross, you didn’t,” Rye groaned.
“Shhhh, I have to see if it works.”
It did. The mutual laughing melted into a near bumping of foreheads as both Merle and Jonesy bent down to retrieve his hat.
“You know love spells are illegal,” Rye whispered in her ear. “And I know you have one memorized because you tried to con me into reciting the words in a soliloquy you wrote my freshman year.”
Okay, this was true. Because what thirteen-year-old with access to a conservatory full of witchy history wouldn’t look up an illegal love spell if given the chance? It was just as tempting as thumbing through one’s first dictionary for all the four-letter words that were off-limits at home. And, though Embry would never actually use an illegal love spell on someone—because what kind of long-term disappointment would it be to force someone to fall for you?—she did find it hilarious, sneaking it into the play she and Rye were writing in his backyard. Especially if he happened to aim his performance at their single audience member: a nearby squirrel.
Embry pursed her lips. “It wasn’t a soliloquy; it was one-sided dialogue with an adoring woodland creature.”
To her surprise, Rye laughed, his hand gently brushing her forearm as he reached to rub his brow. “Goddess, we did write the best little plays.” They did. It had been what made her want to act in the first place. “Even if you did try to stick me with a lovesick squirrel.”
Ignoring the zing of adrenaline accompanying the new touch, Embry roughly pushed a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear and waved a hand at the couple in a way that just happened to inch thema little bitcloser together. “No illegality needed here. They’re totally doing this on their own. All they needed was to meet.”
Though a bitterer witch might have tripped Merle as payback for his push to delay her Ascension, Embry did it with the sole aim of making two lonely worlds literally collide.
So they watched as, indeed, the curmudgeon and the extrovert continued to chat. Van called them up, and suddenly Merle was very clearly paying for Jonesy’s drink as his savior.
