Chapter 47 Coco
Coco
I’ve been fired.
It was inevitable, but seeing the letter on my desk hits differently than envisioning it, because it’s real.
Word travels fast in a small town. No surprises there. To be honest, the one thing that is surprising is the fact that I didn’t receive a call over the weekend informing me of the town’s decision.
Looks like the mayor held a private meeting after the wedding fiasco.
Oscar Rutledge, the man Dot couldn’t stand, hovers in the doorway, waiting for me to pack up my stuff and head out. It takes all of five minutes. I’ve only had this job a month. It’s not like I started squirreling away ramen noodles in my drawers for late-afternoon pick-me-ups.
“Sorry, Coco,” he says.
My shoulders sink. Oscar’s old, with gray-streaked hair, bushy eyebrows, and a permanent frown. I can see how he and Dot would’ve butted heads, but I’ve barely gotten to know him.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, dropping the last of my things into the cardboard box they provided.
I leave the office and hit the parking lot. Folks walk the streets, heading to the shops.
A few of them are locals—like Mrs. Malfree, who’s walking her pug.
She spots me and I wave, but she lifts her nose and looks the other way.
Looks like the shunning has begun.
What they don’t realize is that I’ve put my town first. I never would’ve dabbled in anything if not for my love of Mystic Meadows. Well, that and self-preservation.
The birds chirp as I unlock my car. In the park across the street, kids play on the swing set. Life goes on, doesn’t it? Even when one person falls apart, life still continues somewhere else.
I’m not sure that makes me feel better, but it certainly puts things in perspective.
“Why are we here?” I ask Cristina several nights later.
“Because you need to get out. You can’t stay in your house alone every night.”
I glance up at the exterior of Sparkle Bar. The swinging wooden placard portrays a smiling unicorn. If only I felt like smiling on the inside.
“Come on,” she says. “You’ve got friends there.”
She tugs on my sleeve, but I stay put, both feet glued to the sidewalk. “Stone sometimes comes here.”
What if he’s in there? I haven’t seen or heard from him in a week. He hasn’t even called about his things. He’s rich, so it’s not like he needs the shirts and pants. He can easily buy more.
But still . . . I’d hoped he would contact me.
It’s no less than I deserve, I suppose.
“Stone’s not here,” she says. “I already made sure.”
That’s good. I guess. Exhaling a deep sigh, I say, “Okay. Let’s go.”
We head inside, and to my relief, the bar is busy. The jukebox plays, and people laugh as they toss darts and shoot pool.
This week would have been unbearable if Dad hadn’t called. My parents needed someone to fulfill prepper go bag orders, so they hired me. It’s not glamorous, but it’s work, keeping me busy while I heal.
Don’t worry, there’s still a hole in me the size of a fist.
So yeah, there’s some self-pity going on.
I’m able to easily slip into the crowd with Cristina, going unnoticed and disappearing into the throng of people. This is good. It feels normal. I’ve returned to being someone no one sees. It’s my comfort zone. We all need one of those.
Cristina orders us a couple of beers and we sit at an open table. “What about the book?” she asks, brows pumping.
I sigh. “Well, I didn’t take it with me to work on Monday, so it’s still at my house. You think Dot wants it?”
She laughs. “Can you imagine us showing up with it to the nursing home?”
“Can you imagine us not?” The book isn’t mine to keep. It belonged to her. “Think she’ll take it?”
“Hard to say. Maybe. Maybe not.” Cristina eyes me while she sips her beer. “Probably not.”
“You’re right, but I still need to check, because it doesn’t feel right to keep it.”
A commotion from the other side of the bar makes the crowd hush into the kind of quiet only reserved for when really bad things happen.
“Who let her in?” a man growls.
I hear Isaac say, “She’s free to go wherever she wants. There aren’t any locked doors in this town. I let you in here, Luke, and we all know how you cheated your friends—me included—in poker.”
Cristina sits up and peers around me. Her lips part as her eyes widen. “Don’t look now, but Luke Preston is at the bar, and he’s looking over here.”
Oh, crap. Luke Preston. The scourge of this town, the man who runs the bank and who co-owns the unicorn farm, Happy Trails, with his wife, Sally Ray.
“I say she leaves,” he demands.
I turn around, and Luke is nose to nose with Isaac, who stands behind the bar.
“Nobody wants that witch in here.”
Luke’s gaze locks on mine, and his eyes are inky dark with anger. Everyone’s gone quiet, and their eyes are either fixed on me or on Luke.
“Let’s calm down.” Isaac pats the air. “She’s not hurting anybody.”
“Yeah? Well, how do I know she’s not going to cast some spell like she did to Maddox?” Luke sneers at me. “What were you planning to do, Coco? Spell all of us? Turn this entire town into a bunch of zombies?”
My insides tighten. This. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen.
Luke Preston is not my friend. He’s a jerk, and one who holds a lot of clout in this town.
My cheeks heat. The tops of my ears burn. This is literally the worst position I could have found myself in, and there’s no one to blame but myself.
If I hadn’t made that potion, then none of this would have happened.
My shoulders tighten because I also know that if I hadn’t made that potion, then I wouldn’t have had the very brief and wonderful experience of being loved by Stone Maddox.
And that made it all worth it.
I don’t think I’ve realized that until this exact moment, when an angry mob is about to burn me at the stake.
Once again, better late than never.
“We should go,” Cristina says.
“No.” Don’t ask me where that word came from. It shot out of my mouth of its own accord, deciding to take charge.
“Coco,” Cristina warns.
“No. I’m tired of hiding,” I murmur. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”
It’s a strange thing to go from feeling small and nonexistent to being seen. Stone had a lot to do with that, and so has my family lately.
I knew the firing was coming, and of course it’s risky to be out in public at a bar. But it’s time I face the music.
Luke stomps over, the heels of his boots hitting the floor so hard it sounds like the boom of a shotgun.
He reaches the table and glares down at me. He really is intimidating—angry eyes, big, muscled shoulders. This man is no shrinking violet.
I should be shrinking, but I’m done with that.
Luke raps his knuckles on the tabletop. “You need to leave this town. Get the hell out of here and never come back.”
“Why?”
He drops his head back and laughs. “Why? Are you kidding me? Because of what you did. Because of what you are. There’s a lot of things we’ll accept in Mystic Meadows, but devil-worshipping is not one of them.”
“I don’t worship the devil.”
He spins around, arms wide. “She doesn’t worship the devil,” he shouts to the crowd, people he clearly sees as his loyal supporters.
“Did you hear that, folks?” he adds, trying to get a response from the crowd. “Coco says she doesn’t worship the devil.”
“I’m warning you, man,” Isaac tells him.
“Warning me about what? I’m not hurting her. I’m not even touching her. I’m just telling her like it is—that her kind is not wanted in this town. She’d do best to vacate the premises and leave Mystic Meadows. For good.”
Knots of worry twist inside me. This whole scene makes pressure build in my hands.
Several weeks ago I would have shoved my hands in my pockets, knowing that blue sparks would come and that they’d hurt.
But that was before, and I’m not the same person I was then.
“I’m tired of what this town believes,” I say quietly.
“What’s that?” Luke says, cocking his ear.
“I said, all my life I’ve heard what you said: Creatures with magic are good. People with magic are bad. But I didn’t have a choice in this. When the ley lines came back, when the magic returned, it entered me, too, and I refuse to believe it’s wrong.”
“It is wrong,” he sneers.
“How can this be wrong?”
I lean over and place a hand to the floor. With an exhale, I push all the power building in my body through the floorboards. My body glows from the inside out, down to my hand and into the floorboards.
The room goes quiet.
Folks might be about to jump me. I don’t know—I’m not looking.
The magic inside me flows into the ground. I feel it talk to the land, mingle with it, coax it lovingly as if the two are meant to be partners and not combatants.
That’s what took me so long to learn. I’m not separate from this land. I’m part of it, someone who needs to work with it and help it. Protect it.
“Stop,” Luke warns.
“No,” I whisper.
“She’s going to kill us all!” he screeches.
“Quit your whining. I’m not going to harm anyone.”
A second later, I prove this as long-stemmed flowers pop up from between the cracks of the floor, unfolding into beautiful irises with bold blue and gold petals.
I pull my hand away and stare at the flowers. “Sorry, Isaac. They probably won’t last too long. Maybe a day.”
He scratches his head but doesn’t speak.
It’s okay. I wouldn’t know what to say, either.
But that doesn’t stop other people from figuring out what to do. They stare at the flowers in surprise, until a woman bends over and starts picking them.
“I’m gonna put these in a vase at home. You know how much irises cost at the store?”
Then more people pick the flowers, and more, until almost all of them have found homes, and I sit up, watching in awe.
No one condemns me. No one says I’m evil.
People simply pick flowers until they’re all gone.
“Y’all are sick!” Luke storms out of the bar, yelling about devil-worshipping.
It’s funny. He’s the only person who seems to think that.
This is proven when a petite redhead comes over and says, “Can you make some more?”
“Isaac?” I ask.
He nods. “Make as many flowers as you want.”