Chapter 11
SPARKLY HEA
One month later
The house was chaos, but the good kind.
Cassie stood in the doorway of what had been the formal dining room—a space she’d never used for formal dining because she was forty-seven years old and had exactly zero occasions that required a formal dining room—and watched Liam pull up rotted floorboards with the kind of methodical satisfaction that probably shouldn’t have been attractive but absolutely was.
“Found the source of the smell,” he announced, holding up something that might have been a dead mouse thirty years ago. “Looks like your aunt’s cat had a collection.”
“Elspeth had a cat?”
“Elspeth had several cats, apparently. This is the third one I’ve found.
” He dropped the mummified remains into a bucket with a casual ease that suggested this was not the worst thing he’d dealt with in his renovation career.
“You sure you don’t want to just seal this floor back up and pretend we never looked? ”
“And live with the ghost of dead mice haunting my floorboards? Pass.”
Luna wandered in from the hallway, took one look at the bucket, and made a face of profound feline disgust. “That’s disturbing even by my standards.”
“You’re a cat. You’re supposed to like dead mice.”
“I like fresh dead mice. Those are vintage. There’s a difference.
” She hopped onto the one remaining section of intact floor and began grooming herself.
“Also, Margaret called. She’s bringing something called ‘ambrosia salad’ for Sunday dinner and wants to know if Liam has any dietary restrictions she should know about. ”
“I told her I don’t—”
“She doesn’t believe you. She thinks all Scottish people are secretly lactose intolerant.”
Liam sighed the sigh of a man who had learned that arguing with the women in this household—cat included—was a battle he would never win. “Tell her I’ll eat whatever she brings.”
“I’ll tell her you said that with enthusiasm and gratitude.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Too late. Already sent.” Luna’s tail flicked smugly. “You’re welcome.”
The doorbell rang before Liam could respond, which was probably for the best.
Cassie picked her way through the construction zone—past the exposed joists and the pile of salvaged hardwood and the toolbox that had somehow become sentient enough to organize itself by size—and found Diane on the porch, holding a bottle of champagne and wearing an expression of barely contained glee.
“You’re never going to believe what happened.”
“Diane, I’ve summoned a man from Scotland, turned my ex-husband’s car pink, and made my garden gnomes grow to three feet tall in the past two months. My threshold for ‘never going to believe’ is pretty high.”
“Dana got fired.”
Cassie grabbed the champagne. “Get inside immediately.”
They ended up in the kitchen, which was the only room in the house that wasn’t currently being renovated, infused with magical residue, or occupied by construction equipment. Jacques the toaster had been playing soft jazz since they arrived, clearly reading the celebratory mood.
“Okay,” Cassie said, pouring champagne into mismatched mugs because the wine glasses were packed somewhere in the garage. “Tell me everything.”
“Everything everything?” Diane was practically vibrating. “Because the details are chef’s kiss levels of karma.”
“Every single detail.”
“So you know how Dana’s been taking credit for other people’s work for, like, ever?”
“Intimately aware, yes.”
“Well, apparently she finally did it to the wrong person. Remember that big presentation last week? The one for the Henderson account?”
Cassie nodded. The Henderson account had been her project before the Incident.
She’d done all the groundwork, created the strategy, built the pitch deck.
And then she’d started glowing in the middle of a meeting and had to be escorted out while her coffee mug floated three feet above the conference table.
“Dana presented it as her own work. Obviously. Because Dana’s entire career is just stealing other people’s work and adding her name to it.” Diane took a long sip of champagne. “Except this time, she stole from Jennifer Chen.”
“The Jennifer Chen whose husband is on the board?”
“The very same.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.” Diane’s grin was feral. “Jennifer recognized her own work immediately, went to HR, and it turns out Dana’s been doing this for years.
There’s a paper trail. There’s a documented pattern.
Someone actually went back through old files and found at least seven instances of blatant plagiarism, including—get this—the campaign that got her promoted to senior manager. ”
“The one with the—”
“The one with the tagline you came up with. Yeah.” Diane raised her mug. “To karma being a vindictive bitch.”
They clinked mugs.
“Santé,” Jacques offered from the counter. “à la chute des voleurs.”
“Did the toaster just toast to the fall of thieves?”
“He’s very invested in workplace justice.” Cassie drained her champagne and poured another round. “So she’s actually gone? Like, gone gone?”
“Walked out with a box of her things yesterday. Apparently she cried in the parking lot.” Diane didn’t sound remotely sympathetic. “Oh, and your old boss asked about you.”
“Linda?”
“She wanted to know if you’d consider coming back. Apparently the department’s been a disaster since you left, and nobody can figure out how you kept everything organized.”
Cassie laughed. Actually laughed, from somewhere deep in her chest. Two months ago, she would have jumped at the chance. Begged for it, probably. The validation of being wanted, being needed, being seen—she would have done almost anything for that.
Now she just shook her head.
“Tell her I appreciate the offer, but I’m building something new.”
“The magical Marie Kondo thing?”
“It’s not—” Cassie sighed. “Margaret suggested it. There’s apparently a market for witchy home organization services. People want someone who can tell them if their clutter is holding bad energy or if their furniture arrangement is blocking abundance.”
“Can you actually do that?”
“Turns out, yes? I did a test run at Margaret’s last week.
Her guest room had been giving her insomnia for years.
I walked in, felt this weird pressure in the corner near the closet, and when we moved the dresser, we found a box of letters from her ex-husband from forty years ago that she’d completely forgotten about.
” Cassie shrugged. “She burned them, rearranged the furniture, slept through the night for the first time in a decade.”
“That’s actually incredible.”
“It’s weird is what it is. But it pays, and I don’t have to wear real pants, and nobody’s going to put me on ‘medical leave’ when my eyes glow during a hot flash.
” She glanced toward the dining room, where the sound of power tools had resumed.
“Plus, I can set my own hours. Which is useful when you’re renovating a haunted house with a grumpy Scottish handyman. ”
Diane followed her gaze. “Speaking of which—how is that going? The ‘he moved in by choice’ thing?”
“Good. Really good.” Cassie felt her cheeks warm, and the wall behind her flickered a soft, traitorous pink. “He’s… he just fits, you know? Like he was always supposed to be here.”
“Without the magical binding.”
“Without anything magical at all. Just—” She waved vaguely, unable to articulate the simple contentment of waking up next to someone who knew exactly how she took her coffee and never once made her feel like she needed to be smaller. “—just this.”
“That’s disgusting and I’m thrilled for you.” Diane topped off both their mugs. “Now. When do I get magical powers? Because I feel like I’ve been very supportive through this whole process and I deserve some chaos of my own.”
“That’s not how it—”
“I’m serious. I want to make my dating app matches combust. Metaphorically. Or literally, I’m not picky.”
“Peut-être que vous devriez commencer par des dates moins terribles,” Jacques offered.
“The toaster’s judging my love life now?”
“He judges everyone’s love life. It’s his thing.”
The front door opened, and a familiar voice called out: “Mom? Why is there a gnome in the middle of the walkway holding a tiny ‘welcome’ sign?”
Cassie’s heart seized. “Sophia?”
“Surprise!” Her daughter appeared in the kitchen doorway—ginning, gorgeous, exhausted from what was clearly a very long drive, and absolutely beaming. “I have three days off and I wanted to meet the man who finally got you to stop crying during rom-coms.”
“I don’t cry during—”
“Mom. You sobbed through The Proposal. That movie is a comedy.”
“It has emotional moments!”
Sophia dropped her bag on the kitchen floor and pulled Cassie into a hug that smelled like car air freshener and Sophia’s particular mix of shampoo, body wash and perfume. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, sweetheart.” Cassie squeezed her daughter tight, feeling tears prick at her eyes. Happy tears. The only kind she seemed to produce lately. “You could have warned me you were coming.”
“And miss the look on your face? Never.” Sophia pulled back, surveying the kitchen with the assessing gaze of someone who’d grown up in this house and knew every crack in the ceiling. “So. Where’s the hot Scottish handyman?”
“How do you know he’s hot?”
“Diane’s been texting me updates. Also, you literally glow when you talk about him. Your skin is doing it right now.”
Cassie looked at her arm. Sure enough, a soft golden shimmer was radiating from her skin like she’d been dusted in highlighter.
“That’s new,” she said weakly.
“You’re a witch, Mom. Nothing about this situation is new for you at this point.” Sophia grabbed a mug and helped herself to champagne. “Now introduce me to your boyfriend before I start making assumptions based entirely on Diane’s very detailed descriptions.”
Liam emerged from the dining room covered in sawdust and looking approximately seventy percent confused by the sudden appearance of a college student in his kitchen.
“You must be Sophia.”