Chapter 38
After this morning’s dream, I find it almost impossible to focus on my students. It’s not like I have a choice. Third graders can’t be trusted, and a prophecy isn’t reason enough to waste a sick day.
We muddle through math and manage not to make anything explode during potions lab. Almost everyone grows a full-sized tomato plant from the seeds they brought with them today. The bell rings to signal the end of the day, and their giddy little faces rush the door.
“Don’t forget we have a test on multiplication tables Monday.” I hand out a worksheet as they file through the door. “Review them over the weekend. Everyone who earns a hundred percent will get early Halloween candy!”
They cheer.
My job is perfect for me, but my energy is drained.
The easy solution is to brew a potion to soak up magic from the earth during an hour-long barefoot walk in the grass, but gluttonous short cuts aren’t right when a night with friends and a full night’s sleep have the same effect… and I need to deal with my vision.
One good thing about today is that it gave me time to think about my dream. The possibilities. The ramifications. I have more questions than answers, but that’s more than I had this morning.
I need help.
When my classroom is empty, I pack my bag and shoot a text message to my best friends to meet at the Hex and Hearth. Lyric and Calvin are insightful. They’ll help me figure out what to do about my vision.
Dane is the only man I know who consistently smells like sage and cloves.
We are acquaintances. Friendly but not friends.
We’ve worked together on a few town projects that required us to pool our magical strengths, giving me insight into his character.
He’s caring and altruistic, and my observations of those traits brought on a crush I’ve tried to ignore.
I need to find out if he’s the missing element in my freedom—or if he knows a spell that might break the curse.
But I need to be cautious. My prophetic dreams don’t always come true exactly the way I dream them. Dane might kiss me and slam me into a vision, curse unbroken.
But…
Freedom smells like sage and cloves.
The possibility is too tempting to ignore.
The downside of all this is that I am woefully unprepared to flirt with Dane. When you’re a teenager frightened by your curse, you avoid boys. As a college student, the library and science labs were my happy places, not frat parties or hockey games.
I’ve lived my life in a bubble, avoiding even the possibility of ingesting anyone else’s saliva.
I mean, knowing my dad would fall off the roof and break his leg wasn’t something a four-year-old had the maturity or vocabulary to understand.
I thought everyone saw the future, that people’s injuries were my fault, until my parents explained the truth of my curse.
Bad things happen, but I don’t cause them.
I can’t stop them either. Dad would have broken his leg either way.
My pain is that I know and can’t stop it.
Now I need to ignore the voice screaming at me—the one telling me that kissing Dane is the worst possible choice—and figure out instead how to flirt with him and seduce him.
I need reinforcements.
They will hate it, but I have no other choice.
After a quick stop at home to change into jeans and a lace tank top, I walk to Hex and Hearth. Mid-day Tuesday is as busy as a Friday night but in a weird way, so it feels both comfortably full and hauntingly empty.
Don’t try to do a head count. You’ll always get lost halfway through. It’s like the bar doesn’t want anyone to catalogue who’s here and who’s not, and that makes it a haven for magical beings like me and my friends.
Hex and Hearth has been part of Driftwood Pointe longer than anyone’s memory. Elara, the owner, is similarly mysterious. I’ve seen pictures in the archives from almost two hundred years ago in which I swear she’s standing in the back row, her distinct raven hair with silver streaks clearly visible.
Rowan stands behind the bar today polishing a glass. He has one of those familiar handsome faces, like he’s an old friend whose name you can’t quite place.
I approach the bar. “Martini, two olives.”
He raises a dark eyebrow and continues to polish the glass.
“Please?”
He sets the glass down and polishes another.
I sigh. “Fine. Bartender’s choice.” It doesn’t matter what I order—Rowan makes the drink you need, not the one you want.
He slides a ginger ale across the worn wooden bar.
Ginger ale.
Like I’m sixteen, not twenty-six.
But whatever. If Rowan thinks I need a night without alcohol to keep my wits about me, he’s right. Even if I do wish for a little liquid courage.
Now I wait without letting my nerves get the best of me.
Lyric is next to arrive. In black, knee-high boots and a mini skirt, she’s seduction personified. If I could learn to embody half her allure and mystique, I would rock this weekend. That kind of confidence would give me the courage to approach Dane despite my lack of experience.
She slips into the chair next to mine and kisses my cheeks, Parisian-style. “What’s with the SOS?”
A white Russian appears at her elbow, and she sends a flirtatious wink to the wolf shifter at the end of the bar.
“How do you know it’s him?” The glass appeared out of thin air, and half the men in the bar stared at her ass as she walked over.
She rotates the napkin. A phone number is scrawled in blocky script. “That’s his handwriting.” She takes a sip. “And no more dodging my questions.”
“I need your help.” I tell her about my vision.
Her eyes widen with every detail, and her mouth drops open when I tell her about the kiss. “You think the guy in your dream was Dane?”
“Cloves and sage are his signature scents.”
She traces her finger around the rim of her glass. “He does use them a lot in his spells, but I heard his magic has been glitchy lately. One he cast seventy years ago reversed and tossed the guy on the beach. No memory of how he got there.”
“Do we know anyone else who smells like cloves and sage?”
“I don’t make a habit of walking around smelling random dudes, but maybe Sable knows.” She tips her head toward the man who bought her the drink. “Shifters have a stronger sense of smell.”
“I’m not comfortable asking a stranger. I don’t want to explain everything.”
“So you’re going to ask Dane out and… what? Hope for the best?”
I gnaw the edge of my lip. “I think so?” Goddess, this is the worst plan ever. Hope is not a strategy, Sienna.
She squeezes my hand. “There is no confidence in your voice, girl.”
I lock our gazes. “Everett.”
Her face blanches. “Oh, witch, what is going through your head right now?”
Evoking his name is no small thing. She was friends with Everett too.
He is the only boy I’ve kissed. In high school, he convinced me that if we kept our mouths closed, none of his saliva would get in my mouth to trigger a vision.
He was wrong, and while he was trying to get to second base, I saw him die in a horrific car accident.
Forty-three days later, they lowered his coffin into the ground with the entire eleventh-grade class crying at his graveside. Lyric took his death as hard as I did—we’d both known it was coming and hadn’t been able to stop it.
“After he died, I cast a spell. I dreamed up the most amazing, fantastical man I could imagine and cast a spell that he would be my soulmate. I figured true love is the strongest magic, so if I found mine, it would break my curse. What if Dane is my true love?”
To my soulmate with this vow, my bonded soul is given.
The only man worthy of my love is the one who honors my word, respects my power, and encourages me to grow beyond the ordinary.
The moon shines from his eyes. He rides a motorcycle.
He is strong enough to carry me across a threshold.
He can tie a cherry stem in a knot with his tongue. He will get pedicures with me.
Back then, my teenage heart had been wrecked. I’d thought no man could be selfless, single-minded, and devoted to me, so tying my heart to a mystery man, I thought, would keep me safe until I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I’d found my soulmate.
A biker who gets pedicures? One in a billion.
Dane has a motorcycle. He gets manicures, so maybe he gets pedicures too.
Lyric sips her drink, buying time. “True love is a big ask.”
“That’s why I need your help.” I gesture to her body. “Teach me to be like you. I need your confidence.”
She pouts her bottom lip. “This can’t be taught, baby cakes.”
“Dane never looks at me the way men look at you. On the Fourth of July, at the town picnic—when we were assigned to make burgers together—his eyes never left my face. He never checked me out. I need him to think I’m the most desirable woman in the room, so if you can’t teach me, then what am I supposed to do? ”
“Be yourself?” But her voice wavers.
“If me being me were enough, Dane would have made a move by now. Guys chase the women they’re attracted to, right?
He’s had dozens of opportunities. This is a small town.
I see him every time I’m at the Hex and when we volunteer for town functions.
Heck, we frequent the same farmer’s market stalls on Saturdays for fresh produce.
He has a thing for beets.” I thread my hands through my hair and squeeze the roots.
“Something changes about me in the next two days to put us in bed together. If you can’t teach me, I don’t know what to do. ”
Shooting him winks across the bar, adding my phone number to his contact list—those moves aren’t me. Raiding Lyric’s closet for a sexier black dress isn’t the answer. I need to learn to flirt.
“Do I need to tell you not to change for a guy?” She wags her finger at me. “That’s not how love works. If he’s the one, he will love you for who you are.”
“He doesn’t know me, so I need a way to get his attention.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “I have one other idea, but it’s stupid.”
She shrugs. “We can start with stupid and make it genius.”