Page 61 of An Espresso Machine’s Guide to Love & Mischief

But it also means I can’t lift the machine.

“Fuck. Don’t you work out?”

Me? McKay cries in outrage. I’m in great shape. I jog every day!

“You shouldn’t skip arm day,” I tell her as I pull the espresso machine across the table, inch by painstaking inch. When I reach the edge, I slowly tilt it off the side and onto the cart. Metal hits metal with a clash, and the cart rattles. “Shit. I hope no one heard that.”

I hope everyone heard it, McKay snaps.

I push the cart across the dining room, glad that it’s well-made and virtually silent. “We’re getting out of here.”

No! McKay protests. Suddenly my knees lock and refuse to move. I’m staying here!

“Let’s go,” I grind out.

I’m not going anywhere with you.

I try to move my leg, but it stays put. “I’ll take you someplace nice,” I promise. “Better than this building filled with kidnappers.”

Better here than anywhere near the Movin’ On people, she says.

“I’m not with them.”

Your friends are.

“No, they’re not! Neph is a cafe owner from a small town. She’s my bestie, not part of some secret spirit-trapping organization. Here!”

Since we’re sharing a head and a body, I figure I can show McKay memories. I don’t want to, but I need her to trust me, at least a little bit. Enough to get her to cooperate and loosen her hold on the body so I can escape.

I remember one of the times when Neph and her guys borrowed a shopping cart so they could take me all around town. We talked and laughed and took a bunch of group photos that they hung behind the bar.

McKay is quiet for a moment, and I can hear the distant mutter of her thoughts like someone speaking in the next room.

We kidnapped you from your friend, she says softly.

“Finally, someone listens to me!” I say. “I just want to go back.”

But I want my body back.

“I know the feeling,” I say. “But I can’t escape while in an espresso machine.”

Yes, you can. Give my body back and I’ll take you back to your friend, she says. You don’t have to take bodies without consent like Trevor.

I feel a wave of rage just thinking about the asshole, followed by a wave of worry. Why the hell do I care that the guy’s unconscious? I need to get out of here before he’s up and about and hopping into another unsuspecting clown—or worse, a mime like that one who tricked me in Lyon.

I should give McKay her body back and let her take me home. It’s the right thing to do. Sort of. Assuming I can trust her…

What if she’s lying? What if, the minute I hop back into the espresso machine, she traps me in there for good? She said that Movin’ On can do that to spirits against their will, and her sister works for them. She probably knows how to do it, too.

She also said no one escaped an object before. What if I can’t do it again?

There’s chittering in the kitchen, and I turn toward it. “What was that?”

Someone dangerous, McKay warns.

Someone dangerous to my kidnappers might be helpful to me—the enemy of my enemy is my friend, just like when I was trapped in that Saudi prince’s palace and befriended his rival. Okay, seduced. But it all worked out in the end.

I hurry to the kitchen door—well, more stumble as much as hurry. These limbs feel strange. Either I’ve forgotten what it’s like to control legs or McKay’s feel too different from the ones I used to have. I was taller than her, and I did Pilates every day, so I was definitely in better shape.