4. Chapter 4
N eil did not give up. He waited outside his garage every morning with a plain coffee mug in hand, steaming in the crisp fall air. His pestering absolutely wrecked Zephyr’s “race” time.
Until, with a triumphant flourish of a red marker upon her map, she changed her route.
To avoid his storefront and still have a chance at beating her record, Zephyr adopted a few back-alley ways to zip around him.
It worked until a delivery truck whipped into the one-way alley she was flying through.
Though the driver was the one going in the wrong direction, Zephyr took all the damage.
She twisted her broom, trying to turn around before—
The truck hit her and thankfully stopped quickly, brakes screaming. The force sent her tumbling to the ground, and her broom flew into the side of a building and dropped, magic sparking for a few moments before its glow dulled.
The truck paused a moment before backing wildly out of the alley, its out-of-state license plate vanishing from her blurry view as it fled the scene. She wished the magic barrier around Pumpkin Hollow also stopped distracted drivers from entering their witchy fortress, and not just mortals.
Zephyr lay there. She wanted to get up—she inwardly screamed at her body to move—,but the sky above her spun and spun until she felt she might be sick. Am I hurt? she wondered. The sun transformed into an overhead surgical light before her watery eyes.
A shadow finally shielded her from the illusion of her own making. Rain fell in small, consistent drops. Someone reached down and flipped up the visor on her helmet. She squinted to prevent rain from hitting her eyes.
“Does anything feel broken?”
Her reply was automatic, a habit from years of physical exams after races. “No.”
“Okay.”
Her helmet slipped off, rewarding her with fresh air. She inhaled deeply, keeping her eyes firmly shut until someone lifted her from the ground.
“It’s not safe lying in the street,” Neil scolded her as he carried her in his arms. He smelled a little harsh, like oil. But he was warm, and when Zephyr curled into him, the rain stopped.
She didn’t need to be coddled like this. It wasn’t her first injury, and nothing felt broken, and still, she stayed frozen, letting a man carry her like a stolen bride.
“My broom,” she muttered.
“I’ll go back for it,” he promised.
She believed him. When she looked at the sky now, the edges of an orange canyon clipped her vision. She blinked, reminding herself, it isn’t real . Her breathing grew faint until the ceiling of the Finnegans’ workshop cut out the sky.
“Here.” He placed her on an empty workbench, sitting her before him. He tapped her knee. “This needs to be cleaned.”
She stared down at the torn fabric of her leggings and the red flesh peeking out. “Gross.”
Neil ducked back outside while she examined her scrape. She’d had so, so much worse, but even that small strip of red brought back awful memories. When Neil returned with her broomstick, leaving it in a corner, she focused on looking inconvenienced and not shell-shocked.
Neil pulled a small medical kit from where it hung on the wall.
He said, “We have some new delivery drivers. They drive like maniacs, and I brought it up at the last town hall, but Pumpkin Hollow is slow to recognize non-magical issues. We’re self-centered that way.
” Neil stopped short of the bench. “Zephyr, what are you—”
She ignored him, pulling off her leggings with a wince. She wore a skirt over them, and she had never been exactly shy. Neil turned around until she kicked him with her uninjured leg.
“There’s no need for that. I’m sure you saw the calendar I did three years ago. Four years ago? The bikini one.”
He set the medical kit on the bench next to her and pinched his brow. He monotoned, “I must have missed that one.”
“Shame. I looked really good as July. I have extra copies if you want—”
“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?
” He leaned in close, and his eyes focused on her pupils.
When she only blinked, Neil shook his head and grabbed a pair of tweezers from the kit.
He began removing small pieces of gravel from her knee.
“Go back to your old route. The alley is a death trap. Too many blind corners.”
She snarked, “I wouldn’t need to change my route if you had anything better to do in the morning.”
He wiped her rock-free knee with an antiseptic wipe, and she grimaced. Neil said, “I’m not the one who’s being unreasonable. You need to slow down. Mostly for your own sake.”
“My own sake?” she echoed. “Make that make sense.”
“Forget I said anything,” he backtracked.
“Oh, don’t be shy now, Finnegan. You already got my pants off.”
He huffed an annoyed breath as he pressed a bandage on her wound, smoothing down the edges until it stuck. “Why did you come back here, Zephyr?” he asked.
“To my home ?”
“Is it?” he pressed. His tone was too serious, and she tensed. Neil added, “I haven’t seen you anywhere outside of your delivery route. Not at the town halls—”
“Those are boring,” she said with an eye roll. “And how are you so sure I’m not at these super interesting town events?”
“Because I look for you,” he answered, and he somehow didn’t sound at all embarrassed to admit that. It was just a fact. What button did she need to push to make him show some real emotion? He added, “You’re hiding. That’s why you came back to Pumpkin Hollow. To hide.”
Zephyr stared down at the floor. “Wow.”
He risked speaking again. “Racing through town is part of your hiding, too. If you slow down, you’ll get attached. To the town. Or your job. Maybe a person. And you won’t risk that anchor.”
She bristled. She hated being seen accurately. Especially since she had worked so hard on her outward, confident persona. It was fading away, and Zephyr didn’t know how to lose the woman she’d made. “I don’t need to be analyzed by someone as repressed as you,” she hissed.
His eyes flashed, and his left hand sparked with a quick run of lightning up his arm. He closed off his expression instantly, and the electricity vanished. “I’m not the only one who sees your recklessness.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Never mind.”
Oh, that infuriated her. She wanted to shatter that calm.
So. Damn. Bad. Zephyr hopped off the workbench, pushing past Neil as she made for the exit.
She made a grabbing motion with her hand, muttered a quick spell, and her broomstick flew from the corner Neil had left it leaning in and into her palm.
She had to weave around a truck with the hood propped open, a multimeter resting on the engine cover. And she suddenly had an idea.
This was her hometown, too. Maybe it was time Neil Finnegan remembered that.
DALE CHIRPED EXCITEDLY as Zephyr marched outside to the paint-stripped garden shed to the right of her home.
She bent down to grip the bottom of the shed door and wrenched it open.
The shed was a sad thing, leaning and dusty and one good windstorm from collapse.
What was inside , however, was anything but sad.
It was gorgeous. Expensive. It had taken her an entire year to find the exact one she wanted. And then she had waited another month while it was being painted candy red.
The Pontiac Firebird started flawlessly, and Zephyr blew a grateful kiss to the engine. Dale flew over, nesting in a cup holder as she pulled out of the shed and headed into town. She circled downtown twice, until a parking spot opened right in front of Finnegan’s Repairs.
Zephyr parked, avoiding the garage and heading into the small front office instead.
But it wasn’t Neil behind the counter. Instead, Zephyr found his grandmother, a white-haired witch with large round glasses that bore a telescoping attachment.
Hattie Finnegan focused on a small hand mirror.
She shined the mirror with a cloth, and it suddenly shot scary red beams all over the room until Hattie smacked the side of the mirror on the counter.
The beams vanished, and she placed the mirror glass-side down next to the old-fashioned register.
She looked up at Zephyr, her eyes keen and curious. “Don’t look into that mirror, dear. It will steal your lovely face.”
“Uh, okay,” Zephyr replied, approaching the counter far less confidently than she had planned.
Hattie glanced out the front window, eyeing the unmissable red car parked out front. “Engine trouble?”
Zephyr hesitated. “Well, I…I mean… Doesn’t Neil handle the cars? And you work on enchanted items, right?”
Hattie nodded, a knowing smile tugging at her lips.
“Is it something else? Your broomstick needs balancing? You carry that old mail satchel as well. I’ve worked on it many times throughout the years.
It swallowed the last mailman for three days.
He must have been happy to pass the mantle off to you. ”
“He was unusually chipper, even for a man at his own retirement party,” Zephyr agreed. “But no. It’s just the car, so I thought—”
“You want to talk to Neil.” Hattie stood up, cracking her back with a twist. “I’ll go fetch him.”
“Don’t tell him I want to talk to him!” Zephyr called after the witch as Hattie vanished through a side door into the attached garage. “This is strictly business!”
As Zephyr waited, she played with a stack of business cards left on the counter. She was careful to avoid the mirror. It was bad enough that her face was still used for advertisements. She didn’t need an enchanted—or perhaps cursed—mirror stealing it, too.
“What do you want?” someone grunted behind her.
Zephyr dropped the stack of business cards, wincing as they fell behind the counter like a failed magic trick. She turned around to see Neil already pinching the bridge of his nose. Good.
“My car’s making a weird noise,” she lied.
He seemed startled to hear a valid reason for her appearance. “I see.” He leaned back against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Go on. Make the noise.”