Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Putting the magic into the magic festival
Declan
When Gideon and I left the café, I was reluctant to go our separate ways.
It was weird. I’d never been a clingy person, not even when I was a kid.
Still, I found myself scrambling for ideas on how I could extend our time together.
I couldn’t think of a single thing as we crossed the street to where The Den sat right there on the corner in front of us. Damn it. I was out of time.
Gideon stopped outside the pub and turned to me. Was he trying to think up some reason for us to hang out together a little longer, too?
“I guess I should see if Elwood needs help carting things over to the festival,” I said.
“I should check in with Sable.” He nodded toward the pub. “The last couple of days have been busier than normal. I was thinking of sending Gabe on a last-minute supply run when he starts his shift, but I need to check our inventory first.”
“Do you think you’re busier because of the festival or because people want to talk about what happened to Winston?”
“Probably a bit of both.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You aren’t going to go snooping or asking questions on your own, are you?”
I averted my eyes.
“Dec…” he said.
He’d shortened my name, like a nickname.
It was something friends did… or people who were more than friends, too.
It made me all warm inside, which unfortunately meant my cheeks were also growing warm.
The stupid things always gave away how I was feeling.
It’d been mortifying when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t much better now that I was an adult.
“If I see Jim—”
“No.” He cut off what I was going to say. “Wait until I can be there with you. If he’s the murderer…”
An image of Winston’s dried-up husk of a body with that crystal sticking out of his chest flashed through my mind. Yeah, okay, Gideon might be right. If a vampire couldn’t fend off his killer, how would I?
“Okay. I promise not to corner Jim,” I conceded. “I’ll be too busy helping Elwood set up his booth, anyway.”
Gideon smiled, clearly happy at having gotten his way. I couldn’t even be grumpy about that because his smile was pretty amazing.
How could I be so drawn to this man so quickly? I’d only known him for a couple of days. And I’d only just broken up with Josh. Didn’t the relationship gurus always say to wait several months or even a year after breaking up with someone before dating again?
Although, looking back, Josh and I had both checked out emotionally a long time ago. Did that count toward the recommended wait time? Or was this a rebound thing? It didn’t feel like a rebound, and I really hoped I wasn’t wrong about that.
“I’m going to hold you to your promise to stay out of trouble,” Gideon said.
“Hey, I didn’t promise that…”
His smile widened. Jesus. How was I supposed to resist that smile?
“How about this?” he asked as he leaned toward me. “Stay out of trouble, please. For me. Okay?”
That wasn’t fair. How was I supposed to think when he was so close? He stared at me as if waiting for my answer.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Good.” His lips brushed against mine.
His mouth was soft and warm. An intense feeling of connection to this moment and this man cascaded through me, but before I could react by kissing him back or, you know, plastering myself against his body for the second time today, he was already stepping back.
I wanted to follow, but I managed to stay where I was.
Standing on the street in front of his pub wasn’t the right place for me to literally throw myself at him.
“I’ll see you later.” Gideon grinned at me as he reached over and adjusted my glasses, which had been knocked askew during our kiss. “I’ll call everyone together for a misfits’ meeting tonight. We can go over what we learned.”
“Right. Yes. Tonight.” I sounded ridiculous, but I was surprised I managed to even say that much when my head kept circling back to Gideon kissing me. The kiss had been surprisingly chaste, but it left me wanting more. A lot more.
I stared at the pub door for a long moment after Gideon disappeared through it. My brain took an embarrassingly long time to kick into gear again. I sucked in a couple of deep breaths to steady my racing pulse before carrying on toward The Mystic Menagerie.
As soon as I opened the door to the shop, I was hit with the familiar earthy scent of burning sage.
I walked in and found Elwood in the far corner.
He was standing barefoot on top of a stepladder, waving a bundle of smoldering sage through the air.
His toes curled over the top rung as he leaned precariously toward one of the corners, but given the depth of his displays, he was still several feet away from reaching it.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as I dashed over to steady the ladder.
“Too much negative energy around here lately. The murder was next door and…” Elwood scowled. “I just needed to clear it out.”
“Now? By yourself?”
“Yes,” Elwood said as he climbed down. “There. I’m done. It feels better in here already, doesn’t it?” He eyed me speculatively.
Oh, was this a magical test? I closed my eyes and tried to sense the energy. Maybe my magic was defective.
“Sure.”
“Lying doesn’t help.”
“Fine,” I mumbled. “I don’t feel anything different.”
Elwood clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Magic manifests itself differently for everyone.”
Then he took the still-smoking smudge and fanned it toward me, starting at my head. I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face. I didn’t think smudging was going to be my kind of magic, but I waited in place as he moved the cleansing smoke down my body.
“Don’t you need to do that to yourself, too?” I asked when he set the remaining stub of the smudge stick on a ceramic tray on his counter.
“I started by cleansing myself,” he explained as he watched the smoke curl through the air for a moment as the last of the stick turned to ash. “Excellent.”
He picked up the tray with the ashes and started walking toward the back door.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“I have to bury the ashes now.”
“A lot of vendors have set up already,” I said before he could disappear outside to dig a hole in the small garden behind his store.
Most people used that narrow stretch of land between the alley and the building for parking, but not Elwood.
He had a lush but disorderly herb garden.
The disorderly part always made my dad’s eye twitch.
“This can’t wait,” Elwood said, not even slowing his steps.
“So why don’t you put me to work while you’re out there? I’ll help.”
Elwood didn’t answer.
He returned a few minutes later. I hadn’t done anything while he was outside because I didn’t know what his plan was for the festival.
“You were gone for quite a while with Gideon,” Elwood said as soon as he returned. “Did you figure out who did it?”
Huh? Oh! Right! The murder. Oops. For the last hour or so while I ate lunch with Gideon, I’d almost forgotten about the murder.
I’d never connected so easily or quickly with someone as I had with Gideon.
I’d shared things with him I hadn’t told anyone, at least not for years.
I’d even confided in him about wanting to be a baker.
That had felt like such a dirty little secret for so long because it wasn’t something Josh or my parents had wanted to talk about.
They thought it was silly, particularly after I’d spent so much money and time on my university degree.
But Gideon hadn’t dismissed my idea. In fact, he’d sounded supportive.
And then there was that kiss…
“Uh, no.” I shook my head. “We have some ideas, but…”
Okay. That was a lie. I totally thought Jim did it, but it seemed wrong to throw around that accusation, even to Elwood, without more evidence.
“Where’s Gideon?”
“He wanted to check on things at The Den.” God. My cheeks heated as the memory of his mouth pressed to mine rocketed through me again.
Elwood’s eyes twinkled as he checked out my face, which was really hot now. “It’s going that well, is it?”
“Oh, hush, old man,” I said. “He’s just being friendly.”
“Hmmm… is that what they call it nowadays?”
“Come on,” I said, ignoring him. “This is the perfect festival for your store. It’s a huge opportunity, but only if you use it.”
Elwood rolled his eyes. “You sound like your father.”
“Well, he can be right sometimes,” I said.
For most of my life, I’d believed my dad was right about everything.
I hadn’t gone through that awkward teenage stage where I didn’t like my parents, like most of my friends had.
I enjoyed spending time with my parents.
I trusted them. That was one of the reasons I’d ended up in advertising.
Even when I hadn’t enjoyed my career, I’d still believed my parents only wanted the best for me, and I valued their opinions.
But now that I knew about magic, I wondered if my dad wasn’t as infallible as I’d always thought. What if he’d been wrong about me opening a bakery? What if that was what I was meant to do?
As we packed up some of Elwood’s inventory, I imagined what it would be like to have my own shop, too. I’d had the same dream for so long that I could easily picture it. For one of my class assignments in university, I’d even designed a website and a marketing plan for a small bakery. Just because.
The color scheme would be duck egg blue and rich cream with charcoal accents.
The glass display cabinets would be filled with mouthwatering treats all in neat little rows.
But I also wanted cake stands with multi-tiered cakes dressed in fluffy icing and three-tier tray stands filled with gorgeous and tempting pastries.
I wanted decadence and vintage charm and yumminess all wrapped up together.