Jenny walked through Lessy’s front door holding a pan of freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. “I hope I’m not bothering you. I feel like I keep showing up here this week with one problem or another.”
“Girl, ain’t no thang. Besides, I couldn’t bake like you even if I did have time to try. Bill wishes you’d come by more.” Lessy winked. “Just kidding—he doesn’t need any more sugar. Combined with all the coffee that man drinks, it’s a wonder he sleeps at all.” Lessy laughed at her own joke.
Jenny was antsy and had been all day. She remembered back to this morning and the handsome stranger’s not so subtle hint about biting her. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d held any man’s hand or interest.
Lessy snapped her fingers. “Well, you’re back. I’ve been talking for at least a full minute, and you were lost in space, honey. What is going on?”
“You know it’s not normal for us to have strangers at the diner. Not very often, anyway. Well, there was this one today, and he just got under my skin. The way he looked at me…and talked.” Jenny sighed. “He was different.”
“Good different? Possibly a cute kind of hope-you’ll-run-into-him-again different? Or freak-you-out, we-need-to-talk-to-Mac kind of different?” Lessy’s brow rose, and her eyes narrowed. Jenny didn’t miss the protectiveness she was displaying. She’d expected her neighbor to be intrigued and wanting to hear mushy details about a possible dreamy romance. “Was this stranger rude? Did he say something—anything offensive to you?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. I think he may have tried to flirt with me.”
“You think? Well then, the fool isn’t very good at it, now is he?” Lessy rolled her eyes and started muttering under her breath.
“It was probably me. Maybe I just took what he said about biting me the wrong way.”
“He said what?” Jenny gazed at her friend’s face. Lessy never raised her voice. She was a kind, sweet, shower-people-with-praise type of person. “What did this guy look like? Was he all ‘Mr. GQ’ perfect, designer labels and all?”
She was shocked a second time by her friend. Jenny tilted her head, studying Lessy. Lessy couldn’t mind-crawl. It wasn’t in her wheelhouse as a witch. She was all white magic, a creator witch, and, by profession, an artist—that was it. “How did you know that?”
“Come with me.”
Lessy held out her hand. The second Jenny reached for it, she was pulled across the kitchen floor toward the back door and their patio. The closer they got, the more she was able to hear Bill’s voice mingled with another’s. Lessy put her muscle into opening the sliding glass door, to the point it bounced back shut a few inches.
She pointed. “Is that him? Is that the guy?”
Jenny followed the direction Lessy’s pointed finger until she was face-to-face with the same Kelly-green eyes she’d seen this morning. The stranger’s hair was disheveled, and a gorgeous smile graced his face for a mere second. When he saw her, it and the lines by his eyes and his dimples vanished, and his mouth opened.
Bill jumped up to Lessy’s side. “What’s going on?”
“He, your good buddy there, the one who has been all Mr. Nice Guy today, he…he…well, he said something off-handed to Jenny here about biting her. And you know that is just not the way you talk to a witch. I don’t care how much money he has.”
Lessy’s arm pointed and flailed and pointed again as she spoke, but the more Jenny stood there, staring at the man she’d assumed was only at the diner for coffee on his way to Goddess knows where, the less she heard what Bill and Lessy were saying. Instead, the air around her seem to still, and her cheeks started to feel hot.
“I… I’m… I’ve gotta go.”
She zipped back through the house and out the front door, not even stopping to decipher what her friends were saying. Instead of going down the sidewalk, she cut across the unkempt grass between her home and Lessy and Bill’s and jogged up the three steps of her own front porch. Jenny slowed only enough to make sure she avoided the broken step. The minute she was inside, she flipped the dead bolt into place and sank against the front door, then slowly slid to the floor.
“Oh my Goddess. He’s still in town.”
A knock on the door was hard enough for her to feel against her back. Jenny stayed still, her knees tucked tight to her chest, and tried to remain silent.
“Jenny, it’s me, Lessy. Open up, please? I want to make sure you’re all right.”
She moved forward onto her hands and knees, but before she could stand upright, she heard the mixture of two extra voices. Bill’s and that of the stranger’s—at least he was to her.
Eyeing the wood floor of her living room, she had only a short distance to cross until she’d be safely in the hallway. The only thing between her and her room were three very squeaky wooden planks, warped from years of use. The space was too far for her to step over them all at once with her short legs, and if she moved to avoid them, they’d see her through the picture window of her living room.
“You have no choice but to answer or run,” Gonzo said, joining her in the hallway.
“How astute. For being my familiar, you never seem to be looking out for me very well. You could figure out how to distract them so I could make a break for it.”
“I could.” Gonzo licked his paw. “Or I could quit whispering so they’d hear me talking to you.”
“You wouldn’t.” Jenny eyed her particularly smartass and very fat cat. “I guess I could also cut off all your extra snacks, couldn’t I?”
Gonzo stopped mid-lick, his sandpaper tongue still touching his long gray fur. He glared at her before turning and waltzing his way over to the couch. With a thud, he jumped from the floor to the cushion and gave another jump up to the back, perching himself comfortably in the middle of the window.
“She’s not here. Old Gonzo waits in her window like that until she’s home,” Bill said. “Damn it, Joshua, you can’t talk like that to witches down here. West Virginia is different, Assjacket is an entirely different realm. You’re a warlock used to living among mortals. I get that fitting in up on the East Coast and in New York City is hard, almost a full-time job to stay disguised, but, well…just be yourself here. Witches here, they’re not like those high-heeled arm-candy pieces you date from New York. Jenny especially.”
“I didn’t mean anything bad by it. It sort of slipped out. I admit it. Seriously, I didn’t mean to offend her, or, Goddess forbid, scare her. Please, I need to apologize. Do you think your friend went to the diner, Lessy? We could check there.”
His voice was different from this morning. Clearly, he was normally very sure of himself, but right now, he sounded distressed. It allowed Jenny to take a deep breath, for some unknown reason. If she could allow herself to pretend he was a decent warlock, maybe she could just put this whole craptastic day behind her. As she continued to listen to their conversation, it got harder to make out. The three were definitely not on the other side of her front door any longer. A few more seconds later, Jenny could tell they’d made their way to the sidewalk. She jumped up and skidded into her bedroom.
Pushing her hanging clothes aside, she yanked out two older suitcases that had been buried long ago behind jeans, T-shirts and her favorite sweatshirts. She placed them on her bed and opened both, their metal latches popping open as she pushed each button to the side. They were far from new, heavier than suitcases were made now. Inside the heavy plastic was cloth still thick with the fragrance her grandmother wore. The two pieces were part of a much larger set of luggage she’d been left along with a plea to come visit her grandmother in her new home bordering a white sand beach.
It’d been a decade since Grandma Von Zuzle had moved to Waikiki, and getting the suitcases out of the closet was the closest Jenny had been able to force herself to get to visiting her.
“What am I thinking?” She put her palm to her forehead and clenched her eyes closed, trying her best to keep the tears at bay. Jenny passed the end of her bed where the open cases sat and crawled up near the head of her bed. Clutching her favorite squishy pillow tight to her chest, she tried to breathe as the panic seeped in. “How can everyone else transport but me?”