Chapter 5
“A in’t anybody ever told you not to do such?” Betty nagged Isa, who’d snapped closed the small pocketknife Lily’d pulled from her denim apron.
“Huh?” Isa asked Betty, eyeing her with skepticism.
“You’re not supposed to go closing knives you didn’t open, girl. Don’t you’ns know it’s bad luck?” She clucked in affront, a hen teaching a young chick what’s what.
“I’m not superstitious,” Isa countered, arching a brow Betty’s way and ready to go toe to toe with her. This happened often, and Lily would squash it if she couldn’t tell both of them secretly loved bickering with one another.
The customer, who happened to be the Baptist preacher’s wife, gave a huff, at Betty and/or Isa, Lily couldn’t tell, and grabbed up her bag of Christmas candles before walking out the door. Betty stared daggers at her back. Isa snorted a derisive laugh. Many in Holly Hollow respected the woman who’d stiffly walked out her door, but she always acted a bit uppity for Lily’s liking, and Betty’s Methodist sensibilities took umbrage at the judgement passed on her by a Baptist.
“Okay, Betty. Now, what is it you’re needing?” Lily asked, trying to get everyone back on the same page. Betty had come in late in the day, after already shutting down her shop at lunchtime, to ask her some questions about the new accounting software.
“Lordy, Lily, I feel like I’m going plum crazy,” she said as she reached into a huge wicker bag and pulled out an ancient laptop to plop down hard on her counter.
“Yeesh, how old is that thing?” Isa asked.
Lily might’ve asked the same, but she’d stopped herself. Betty was old, proud, and set in her ways. Wasn’t surprising she had a laptop that looked like it’d seen better days and sounded like a brick when it hit her counter.
“It works just fine.” Betty pulled out her reading glasses and flipped open the laptop. Then they waited a good five or six minutes while the thing booted up.
“Okay, look here, Lily. See this? I know it’s supposed to pull direct from my cash register system, but somehow or another, it’s not actually connected to the darn thing.”
“Well let’s see what we got here, Betty.” Lily pulled the old machine her way and marveled at the heft of it.
“Shouldn’t Madison be doing this?” Isa said, a sneer on her lips.
“I don’t mind,” Lily assured Betty.
“Oh, no, Miss Betty! I didn’t mean it like that. Ain’t no thing to help you out,” Isa added, tossing a blindingly white smile at the woman, who caught it and tossed back her own. “Just, you know, y’all pay her for this, right?”
“Sure enough,” Betty huffed out, obviously aggravated.
“Here’s your issue, Betty. Your laptop needs an update to run the software correctly.” Lily mentally crossed her fingers the ancient machine would support both the update and the software. Betty and Ralph may need to get a new laptop, but she’d do what she could before they went spending money they didn’t need to spend.
“Seems to me Madison should be doing all this… for both of you. She don’t–.” The phone rang before Isa really got going, and Lily said a little thanks to the spirits for that early Christmas gift. It didn’t hurt nothing to vent about people, but she didn’t like to rehash old issues and dislikes over and over again.
Isa reached beside her stool to scoop up the cordless and chirped, “Lily’s Lights, this is Isa. How can I help light up your Christmas today?”
Lily chuckled. They used no standard greeting for a phone call at her shop. As long as they said her shop name when they answered, Lily was fine with whatever else. She usually didn’t say much more, but Isa liked to put a little sass or silliness on it, which made her laugh.
“Hello?” Isa said, her black slash of brows turning down into her frown. A few more beats then “hello?” again.
A dark pit opened up in Lily’s stomach. “Hang up, Isa.” She tried to go for blasé, but there must have been a tightness to her voice because both Isa and Betty stared her down.
Isa clicked the button. “What’s that about?”
“Nothing. Must’ve been a wrong number or misdial or something.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Betty pressed.
Lily waved away their concern. “Not a big deal. Gotten a few of those recently is all.”
“How many?” Isa asked as she crossed her arms over her chest, teenage demand written all over her.
“Not many.”
Betty eyed her up and down, but she let it go. Mostly. “You’d tell me and my Ralph if something weird was going on with you, right?”
“Sure would, Betty.” Lily smiled wide and bright. She loved her, loved she wanted to care for her, but she and Ralph had enough on their minds without worrying about weird phone calls.
“Bet,” Isa said, but her tone remained unconvinced. She also, surprisingly let it go at that. Mainly because she herself had to go. “Gotta go, gang. Off to choir practice.” She hopped up from her stool, went to the back to grab her bag, then moved back to wave at them. “Toodaloo lovelies!.”
“Slow down, girl. Sheesh. I need to head on out, too. Got to go check on my beans.”
“Will you bring me some cornbread tomorrow?” Isa asked, batting her big black lashes at Betty. Lily kind of wanted to do the same. Betty’s cornbread was famous in these parts, and if she had on beans, she had a whole big pan of cornbread waiting for them, too.
Betty gave the teen a side hug as she said, “Sure thing, sugar. It’ll be waiting here for you tomorrow.”
“Nice,” Isa said. Both headed toward the door, and she looked over her shoulder to shout, a touch too loud, “Later, boss lady.”
“I’ll bring you some cornbread, too,” Betty called out, waving at Lily as Isa let her exit the front door first. Lily smiled at them both as they walked down the street together, Isa slowing her usual quick pace to match Betty’s much slower shuffle.
“W ell, shit,” Lily muttered to herself an hour and a half later when she’d finished closing up. It hadn’t exactly been a sunny day, but it’d been a clear winter gray when Isa and Betty left. Now, though, it was raining buckets. Actually, sleeting buckets, if the pings against her front window glass told her anything.
She’d already taken a little longer to close, and even lingered after finishing up, because of the weather. Looked to be no break in sight, so she needed to get on with it. Just sucked because she didn’t have an umbrella or in the shop. It sat uselessly in the back seat of her car.
Lily internally cursed herself, but bundled up as best she could. Her puffy coat and wool cap would help, but she was going to get drenched. She cracked open the backdoor and stepped out in a rush.
She twirled around quick as a rabbit to lock the door before she noticed not a drop of anything had hit her yet. Then she caught his scent.
She turned to find Boreas standing on the edge of her parking space looking grumpy but not cold. Or wet. Both she, him, and her car appeared dry as a bone.
“What are you doing?” She meant with the magic, but really she could ask the question about anything the god did because none of it made a lick of sense to her. She wanted him with a force she’d never experienced, but damned if he didn’t drive her up the wall with his hot and cold nature.
“It is sleeting,” he said on a grumble.
“Okay, Captain Obvious,” Lily said as she moved to her car.
His shoulders tensed at the sarcasm, and it made Lily feel bad. “Sorry. Thank you for the help. Once again.” When she reached her car, she didn’t get in. Instead, she turned to him and leaned her hip against her door. “Let’s have another chat.”
He stepped closer, frustration stretching his face tight, until he loomed only a foot away from her. His scent hit her even harder, right in the gut, and the sight of his glistening bronze skin, bunched muscles, and sharp-clawed fingers and toes made the weird pull she felt toward him thrum hard in her stomach. She became a bass string hitting a low, reverberating note.
“Lily, it is cold. The roads are getting more hazardous. You should be on your way home.”
“Nope. I feel like chatting.” She needed to know more. Know him. Sit with him. Above all else, she needed to do something to appease the pull she felt toward the god who continually helped her but kept apart from her.
He growled and she chuckled at the sound. After a minute-long stare down, he finally huffed and said, “At least get in the car, please.” Boreas moved to her passenger seat, which was the only reason she opened the driver’s side and slid inside.
“Start your vehicle.”
“Yikes, bossy,” she muttered.
Boreas closed his eyes, took a deep visible breath, then turned those ice blue eyes on her. “Apologies, Lily. I am merely concerned for you.”
“Very concerned, given all you’re doing for me lately. What you’re not really doing is talking with me much. What’s up with that?”
“I only wish to assist you in whatever you might need.”
“Yeah. With my business, with weather protection, too, apparently, but nothing else?”
“What else do you require?” He looked hopeful, as if all he wanted in this life was to do things for her.
“I’d like to talk with you a spell. Spend time with you. Get to know you.”
“Unnecessary.”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s very necessary. Unless you want to keep acting like a creeper.”
“Creeper?”
His one word, growly answers were getting annoying, and she was too tired for this mess. “Yeah. A dude who sneaks around doing secret things but doesn’t engage. A creeper.”
His head turned her way, and she had a flash of a hawk in the quickness and inhuman quality of the movement. “You believe I am such a creeper?”
She didn’t, not really, but only because her body told her he was safe, for her at least. “No. Not really. But I don’t know why. Because you’re kinda acting like one, Boreas.” She rested her hand on his large forearm draped on her middle console, and felt the zap of him on her skin. She shivered in response and watched his pupils dilate, blowing wide open at the simple touch. She wasn’t the only one that felt whatever invisible rope stretched between them.
“Why do you always run away?” This was the million-dollar question. Lily’d never chased a man, didn’t want to start now, but Boreas felt so very different, and her need for him overrode most other things. To a point. She still focused on her business. Still kept her self-respect. She, however, couldn’t get him off her mind or out of her system, especially when he didn’t truly explain anything or offer her relief from the ache she knew they both suffered. If only he stayed, talked, they could have more.
“I do not run,” he said, hard and firm.
“You sure as hell don’t stick around after you do something for me.”
He sat, rigid and silent, for several long beats before he spoke again. “Do you still have the leather book?”
An odd change of subject, but Lily nodded yes. It sat on her workbench only a few feet away from where they talked.
He did give her more then. “It is a spell book. One for gods like me. I think I may have forced you to find me. With the book.”
“What?”
“There are spells, magic, things you do not understand about the book and what we are to one another. However, it all comes down to one simple fact: none of this is your choice.”
He looked downright miserable at the idea, but it still didn’t make any sense to her. “Boreas, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Something in me calls to you, I know that without doubt. Something I can’t name but I know it’s burrowed far down, a basic part of who I am, like my laugh or my brown hair. I don’t know anything about this magic business, but I know myself that much. No one, no thing, is making me want to be with you.”
“Yes it is,” he gritted out, either anger or shame flaring red across his cheeks. “It is unfair to you.”
“Don’t you think that’s for me to decide? If you’re so damn worried about me having a say in things, then maybe you should listen to what I want and, you know, give me an actual say in things.”
He blinked at her then and she thought she had him, until he shook his head no. “You do not understand.”
“Then make me understand,” she said, reaching for his hand this time, gripping it tight and leaning across the console to get close to his face. “What I know right now is I feel right when you’re around. I feel you in my gut, in my brain. That can’t be a bad thing to explore, right?”
He sat a hair’s breadth away, and his eyes faded from ice blue to a soft, glowing white. Fascinated, she tilted her head, leaned in closer, and breathed out, “Beautiful.” By god, he was right there, so close she felt the hint of his lips on her own. Their breath mingled in the same way she wanted their limbs tangled. She almost surged up to close the last centimeter between them and taste those full lips, lick those delicious fangs of his, but before she could blink, he exited her car.
Literally, he jumped out of the car. He’d somehow gotten out of her door without her even registering the movement. He did, however, lean down to look back at her with more distance between them. She marked the missing glow and sadness in his eyes. “Goodbye, Lily.”
“Goddamnit!” she yelled out as she smacked her steering wheel. The god was long gone, having jetted up into the sky as soon as he’d uttered those two parting words. She didn’t know if she’d see him again. Might even bet on him being too skittish to come back. Yet the thread connecting them still hummed tight in her gut. If he felt the same, she wanted to believe he’d come back despite his reservations. Yet, she’d learned long ago that words, actions, and feelings were like mixing new candle scents. Just because she thought it should all work didn’t mean it came out lovely in the end.