Chapter 28
Camilla
“Ms. Ramos,” a female voice calls from the front of the bakery.
My stomach sinks as I walk to the front room. “What are you doing here?” I ask the petite blonde that I don’t know but hate with every fiber of my being, hoping she picks up on my tone and takes the hint to leave. Is she here to rub it in? Stone made his choice and he chose her.
“I’m here to learn and understand the proximity.” She answers as if her reason is as clear as the stars in the sky. What a hell of a nerve!
“Proximity to Stone?” I ask, as my blood surges through my veins hot and angry, boiling over like lava.
“Who else?”
There’s something off about this woman. If I could even call her a woman.
She looks more like a teenage girl. What bites my biscuit even more, is that she’s everything I’m not.
Small, petite and beautiful. If that’s all she was, I wouldn’t feel so dejected, but there’s a radiance about her as well.
All this gives me just reason to hate her.
“You don’t need to worry about Stone and I,” I explain.
“I told him not to come back, I don’t ever want to see him again, so you can turn around and leave now.
” I circle my fingers in the air giving her a visual.
She’s lucky that’s what I’m doing this with my fingers and not holding them up and telling her to read between the lines.
The blonde tilts her head and looks out of the newly replaced front window, then back into the main room that we’re standing in, and uses moves her hands in a way that makes it look like she’s measuring something.
“Not yet,” she says, as if her focus is on something else, and I’m an afterthought. “I need to measure all the angles and evaluate the energy that’s trapped here.”
Angles and energy? Great, he cheated on me with a wacko that’s looking to start something possibly supernatural. I take a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”
She releases a frustrated breath. “Stone will have a satisfactory view of the middle and right side of the shop, but the left side is a blind spot,” she shakes her head.
“And I’m assuming the baking will be done in some other part of the building that’s not visible from the street.
Also, your blinds in the apartment upstairs, they’re closed.
If he’s to have a good view, you’ll need to keep them open. ”
This is getting weird. I’ve met jealous girlfriends before, but this one takes the cake. Does she want him to look through my windows and watch me? That’s downright creepy.
“I don’t know what you really want here, lady. But it’s time for you to leave.”
“No,” a look of fear crosses her face as she shakes her head. “I’m not done. I’m still gauging how to release the energy.” I am about to lose my shit on her.
“What energy are you talking about?”
“The negative energy that lives here. The first step is to burn a sage stick. I’ll bring one along with the protective charms and a talisman for the kitchen, and then we will all hold hands and incant.”
She expects us to hold hands and sing kumbaya? “What the hell are you talking about!” I explode, turning the heads of the Stone’s boss and short man Magus that’s working with him.
“Stone wants to make sure nothing can harm you when you are here. He asked me to vanquish any negative energy and create protections so that you’ll be safe in his absence.”
“He wants the woman he left me for to use some sort of voodoo to protect me?”
“He didn’t leave you. You left him,” she corrects.
Her comment interrupts the all out anger flowing through me. Is it possible that I misunderstand and jump to conclusions when I saw them together?
My mind backtracks as my heart beats faster.
Harder. I feel it in my ears and in my throat.
If they were dating, I doubt she’d be here claiming he has any sort of concern for me.
It would likely be the opposite. Was I completely off base believing that Stone was ready to toss me aside for a romantic relationship with this woman?
Or am I making excuses to see what I want? What my heart desires?
“Back up. Who the hell are you?”
“Willow Bishop.” She says her name like it’s supposed to mean something to me.
“Willow Bishop,” I repeat, trying to keep a modicum of patience.
“She’s a witch who specializes in offering protection to those that live here.” My head snaps in the direction of Stone’s boss. “Women,” he mumbles. “Takes you five times as long as a man to get to the same place.” He shakes his head in disapproval before continuing.
“What do you have to do with me?” I ask Willow, totally confused.
Before she can answer, Stone’s boss Eril does.
“Stone met with her because he was trying to protect you. All he thinks about, everything he’s done since the moment he saw you has been for you.
Doing free work here, paying half of your overall labor fees so you can have everything you want here.
Making arrangements for you to be looked after.
” My nerves quiver. I’m not sure if it’s because of what the man just revealed or because he scares the daylights out of me.
“Do you have a problem with me? Have I done something to you?”
“Damn right I have a problem. I’m going to lose a good man and my best worker, no thanks to you.”
Now I’m pissed. “I don’t control Stone or what he does.”
“Of course you do. You don’t understand because you’re not one of us,” he says with narrowed eyes, shaking his head. Stone’s boss turns back to the marble he’s hanging on the wall. Does he actually think he’s going to unload on me and not explain?
He’s right, I’m not one of them. For the first time since moving here I feel like I don’t belong. “What does that mean?” I look between him and Willow. “What the hell is happening with Stone? Where is he going? And how do I have anything to do with it?”
“The blockhead is going to be perched up on the bank in an inanimate state for the next decade.” The short man, Magnus says.
“He hired me,” Willow explains, “to protect your space from any evil on the spiritual plain that may linger here and try to attach itself to you, because he won’t be able to protect you. Unless it’s nighttime and he has a clear view.”
I brush my hair back with my fingers. There’s a heavy tension in my chest. I hear the words they’re speaking, but they don’t make any sense, but with each new revelation, anxiety stacks on my chest and brain.
“What do you mean he’s going to be inanimate for the next decade?
“It’s self explanatory,” Stone’s boss comes to stand in front of me, breathing hard and scaring the bejesus out of me.
“The man’s a damn gargoyle. It means he’s going to be a lifeless attachment on that bank,” he points to the building across the street.
“Watching and guarding our community, to keep us safe.”
“But why are you angry with me? I have nothing to do with that.”
He narrows his eyes. “If you attached yourself to him he could join a rotation. He would be out of commission a few days and nights a month instead of for a decade or longer.”
I glance at Willow, not convinced there’s no romantic interest between her and Stone. “What about her? Why doesn't she attach herself to him?”
“Oh, I don’t provide those services. Mr. Flint hired me to cleanse and sure up your area with magic.”
“Not to mention that he doesn’t love her, he loves you!” His boss says in a loud voice that sends shivers down my spine. “It was a damn business meeting. She just told you that!”
It was a business meeting. That’s why he said I should’ve gone over when I saw him at The Mummy’s Tomb.
Because he wasn’t trying to hide or play me.
I think back. I never gave him the chance to explain.
When I found the check I wrote him ripped up on my work counter, I thought he tore it up out of guilt. It wasn't that at all.
Hope starts to fill my chest. Then his boss’s words hit me like a thousand pound safe. Stone’s going to become a regular, run of the mill gargoyle unless... I need to make sure I’m clear on this.
“When you say attach myself, you mean—”
“He means marry,” the short man yells. His patience is as lacking as his height.
“If I marry Stone he won’t become inanimate for a decade?” I want to make sure I’m clear on this before I make the decision to compromise my belief about marriage. About marriage in my life.
“Ms. Ramos,” Stone’s boss speaks again, with a little less intensity.
“Stone means a lot to me. He reminds me of my son. He’s strong and stubborn, but he’s also loving and devoted.
The dumb blockhead won’t even consider someone else because a gargoyle’s love is eternal.
Isn’t it poetic justice that he fell so deeply in love with you, a human whose love is fleeting? ”
Those words strike something deep inside me. I might not have cheated the way Miguel did, but I took my love away from Stone all the same. His pain, his sacrifice is on me, and I can’t live with that.