Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Whoa… What Just Happened?
Declan
Going to yoga was a terrible idea for reasons that had nothing to do with yoga itself.
First, I should be prepping for poker night. My low-grade panic over it was making my bones ache. Ever since I’d told Elwood about my plan to lease the bakery, everything about my contribution to the event’s food table felt more significant. And if tomorrow didn’t go well…
Second, if I couldn’t prep, I kind of wanted to just stare through the window at my new bakery—well, my potential new bakery. The contract hadn’t been signed yet.
And lastly, I wasn’t convinced we’d arrive there in time for it. And if we were going to miss it, I would’ve been happier to have just stayed home in the first place.
Avery was a sweet, scholarly hedge witch who always had bits of leaves caught in her curly hair and a notebook sticking out of her bag, but she drove like she was part snail.
Even Hazel, who was in the front passenger seat and much more accustomed to Avery’s driving than me, was rocking gently as if that’d help us arrive at our destination sooner. Any minute now, I expected her to hang one of her spiderweb blankets out the window to act as a sail.
“I always loved this stretch of road,” Avery mused, as she maneuvered the hybrid sedan around a bend in the road. “It’s so peaceful.”
If this drive was any more peaceful, I’d be asleep before long. I guzzled the dregs of my coffee, wishing snapping my fingers would fill my cup again. It was a true shame that magic didn’t work that way.
I yawned. Sleep had been the last thing on my mind when I crawled into bed last night. I'd been too excited about the bakery. I stayed in my room at Elwood’s because I knew that I’d be awake all night. And with the pub so busy this week, I hadn’t wanted to keep Gideon awake.
He’d been a little disappointed, although I’d made sure we’d both been very happy and sated before we parted ways.
But if I’d stayed with him, I’d have just kept him awake as I hunted for inspirational photos to add to my Pinterest boards, compiled lists of all the things I wanted to change in my new bakery, and brainstormed my menu.
I was itching to go hunting for décor, grab a bazillion paint samples from the hardware store, and finalize a menu.
I had so many notes on my phone that, at about three in the morning, I’d started color-coding them, just like Eugene had his murder board.
And then there were my wish-lists. My online shopping carts were overflowing with things from chalkboard sandwich signs to gorgeous cake stands.
But until the lease was signed and the place was mine, it’d be premature to spend money on the place. I didn’t want to jinx it by counting my cupcakes before they were baked.
Another yawn hit me. Hazel turned in her seat to study me.
“You're a little pale, dear. Are you getting enough protein? Or did you eat something that didn’t agree with you this morning? You humans always eat so many different things, it’s no wonder your tummy aches.
Mr. Webber and I… we eat a steady diet of live flies.
You know your food is delightfully fresh if it is still twitching. ”
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
My coffee churned in my stomach, and bile teased the back of my throat. I rolled down the window for some fresh air and prayed Hazel would quit talking about flies. Somewhere outside the car, a bird squawked, as if alarmed at my discomfort. And I knew it was Licorice.
“Oh, dear,” Hazel muttered. “I’m really quite concerned about you.”
Before Hazel pulled out some emergency bug supplies from her purse—God, I really hoped she didn’t actually carry around anything like that—I tried to think of something to distract her.
“The roads are quiet today,” I said. “When we came out this way for the brewery tour the other day, there was a lot more traffic.”
Avery hummed. “I heard the brewery is closed for now because the police are still poking around out there. I don't think Roy’s neighbors will be too upset about that.”
That sounded like the perfect opening for me to ask Avery about the hexes Hazel had mentioned a few days ago.
It didn’t make sense for Avery to make hexes for Roy if Kim was her friend, but someone must have.
And if the price was right, people did all kinds of things, including things that went against their morals.
I suspected saying, “Oh, by the way, did your hexes get Roy killed?” might make things a little awkward.
All I came up with instead was an amazing single syllable. “Oh?”
Luckily, Hazel understood what needed to be done. “I guess you won’t need to make those hexes for Kim now.”
“Jinxes,” Avery said as she nodded. “But, yeah. I hadn’t wanted to do it anyway. Jinxes sound harmless on the surface, but they can get out of hand, too.”
I leaned forward, not wanting to miss anything that Avery said.
“I still have a lot to learn. Elwood hasn’t taught me how to hex,” I said.
Although the likelihood of Elwood teaching me that was somewhere between slim to none.
“Are they difficult? Or since your magic is so different from mine, I guess it might not be something I can do.”
“Jinxes, hexes, and even curses are mostly about intent,” Avery said.
“Only a little magical ability is needed to make a basic one. Where people need more magic is if they try to get fancy or complicated.” She met my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“But what I do isn’t really a hex; it’s more of a jinx.
Minor inconveniences that don’t last long, a few days at most, like your drink dribbling down your chin each time you try to use your favorite cup or having your hair stay frizzy no matter what product you put in it.
Things like that.” She shrugged. “Kim said she wanted a hex, but she knows I don’t do anything too dark.
I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the authorities. ”
“But she asked for a hex?” I asked.
“Kim’s a shifter, so she doesn’t understand a lot about my—or our, I guess I should say—kind of magic. Just like I couldn’t tell Kim, a cat shifter, how to shift. If you aren’t a witch, it’s common to confuse jinxes, hexes, and curses.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know there was a difference either.” Based on her description, I figured that jinxes were at one end of the spectrum and curses at the other, leaving hexes somewhere in the middle. Perhaps we should be happy that whoever used the hexes hadn’t decided to use a curse instead.
I also wondered if Gideon knew the differences. I suspected he did. He knew more than the average shifter, either because he was friends with Elwood or because he was the alpha.
Alpha… the word pinged around in my head.
Wait, now that I was dating the local alpha, did that mean I was expected to do alpha-adjacent things, too?
Alpha-mates were a thing in books, right?
Did that carry over to real life? That seemed like something we should talk about.
I wasn’t really sure I was cut out for a leadership role in the community, particularly since I still knew so little about magic.
“Well, my friend Daisy—” Hazel glanced over her shoulder at me.
She stared at me for a long minute, and I tried to think why.
Then I remembered she was going to ask her friend about Roy’s brewery since she’d been there recently to paint a logo on their buildings.
“—she said she overheard them complaining about Kim. Apparently, she’s been phoning the law on them.
So, even without the hexes, she seems to have been making their lives a little more complicated. ”
“Oh, I didn’t know she’d done that,” Avery said. “I wonder if that’ll make them think she was involved with Roy’s death somehow. Because you know they’ll have kept track of all those complaints.”
Before I could ask anything more of Avery, we coasted past the sign for Serenity Yoga Studio.
The signage was simple and modern with its lower-case sans-serif font and stylized lotus flower.
Professor Schmidt would’ve bemoaned its cliched symbolism, but I thought it worked because it was exactly what you’d expect.
Avery followed the dusty gravel driveway past an old two-story house to a barn.
The brewery buildings were no more than a quarter of a mile away to the north.
I understood why Roy had been eyeing this bit of land.
The open pasture stretching between Roy’s buildings and Kim’s was flat and close to the road, the perfect place to build.
I dragged my gaze away from the brewery when Avery squeezed her car between a couple of SUVs. When I climbed out of the car, I’d expected to be surrounded by animal odors or the scent of freshly mown grass. But the place reeked of something else entirely, and it wasn't pleasant. At all.
Licorice was already here. She hopped along the barn’s roof, fluttering her wings. I felt bad that she’d followed me all the way out here. I wondered how Avery would feel about Licorice coming inside the car with us on the way back to Ravenstone.
My phone pinged, and I glanced at the screen. A text from Josh. Ugh. Why did he keep bothering me? I opened my messages and sent back a quick, Leave me alone. Then I shoved my phone in my pocket again.
This couldn’t continue. I knew Gideon wanted me to block him, and maybe he was right.
I’d kept Josh on my phone to make it easier to work through changing all the contracts and obligations that’d tied our lives together, but we’d completed most of those.
And this continued harassment was ridiculous.
You know what? Fuck it.
I’d figure out how to get my name off the apartment agreement some other way.
I pulled out my phone again and brought up the text thread with Josh.
Little dots appeared beside his name. He was texting me.
Again. I tapped on his name and with one more little tap I blocked him.
A giddy sense of relief bubbled through me.