Three other women stuck their heads back into the kitchen at my yelp. We settled ourselves in the living room for one of our weekly coven meetings, but the change of scenery obviously could only last so long. Everyone squeezed back into the cramped kitchen, filled with brass pots and pans hanging from the ceiling.
Gertie twisted a strand of silvery-gray hair behind her ear to expose a line of gold earrings as she dropped herself into one of the chairs next to me at the table. She reached over to look at the cut herself.
I looked away.
To be honest, I wasn’t positive how I had managed the freak accident. One moment, the orange had been in my hand, prepared to be turned into a citrus garnish for Celeste’s cranberry bread. The next …
I huffed, though even I had to admit that it sounded more like a pout. “It’s par for the course today.”
“Having a bout of bad luck?” Gertie tutted, shaking her head along with Celeste. She covered my palm back up with the towel so that the gore was away from view.
At least neither of them had mentioned the possibility of stitches. I could barely look down at the shallow slice. My stomach turned, queasy, as I knew there’d certainly be splotches of dried dark red visible in between the printed poppy flowers.
“You could say that.” Though, to say I was having the suckiest of all weeks in the history of stupidly sucky weeks would be an understatement.
Everything went wrong. From the moment I woke up in the morning to when I went to bed was chaos. The world was trying to tell me something, if not punish me for some unknown reason. I’d spilled coffee on my favorite band tee. I’d dropped full bowls of hair color at work after mixing the ideal creamy blond. I’d nudged perfectly good mugs onto the floor with nothing to cushion the fall. Now, I’d cut myself while attempting to peel a piece of fruit, causing myself physical harm.
It was only getting worse.
Not to mention, pitiful.
“It sounds like someone cursed you,” Gertie joked with a laugh.
Even Lu, our high priestess in training and the singular person I knew I could always trust no matter what, snorted. Her rings on her fingers clanked against the edge of the counter as she lifted herself onto it.
“Ha.” I said the word dryly.Cursed.
That was all I needed alongside the million extra shifts I’d been taking on at the salon and the fact that I hadn’t been able to sleep in days.
“Don’t worry, Ana. All things will pass. So, what was it we were talking about?” Gertie turned our attention back to the group, who squeezed in close, finding new spots to sit, like on the counter or in the many different style chairs.
Faith, our resident librarian and the most eclectic of the group, pouted her hot-pink-colored bottom lip as she looked at me and my hand. She sat down across from me at the breakfast table. Essie, Celeste’s daughter, tucked herself into the corner on the high stool alongside the broom.
The youngest among us, Essie was tiny, blond, and the picture of warm spring days. However, she had such a strange sense of self when she let herself be open without fear, which didn’t happen often, especially not with her own mother glancing at her with confusion and raised eyebrows when she did.
“We weren’t discussing anything,” Lu replied immediately, looking away from them all. “The decision was made, and I’m happy with it. Let me be happy.”
“What were you talking about?” Celeste clicked the timer off above the oven just as it chimed. She reached in, pulling out the perfectly risen loaf of sweet bread. She set it down on the top of the stove to cool on another flamboyantly patterned oven mitt.
Lu groaned. “I don’t understand why this is an entire conversation. It’s not a big deal.”
I raised my eyebrows, intrigued by whatever I had missed when I volunteered for snack-making duty with Celeste. That was the only good thing about this mess today. She would never force me to work in the kitchen again after this. I was a bleeding risk she wouldn’t take when it came to her recipes—none of which included a ritualistic sacrifice of literal blood sweat or tears. “What’s not a big deal?”
“I don’t want to walk at graduation.” Lu shrugged. “Big whoop.”
“She already has her cap and gown though!” Faith jumped in to argue, leaning out of her seat. “You get to wear a fun hat with the frilly tassel. I love that stupid hat with the tassel.”
Biting my lip, I couldn’t quite stifle my laughter. “Is that why you went to school and have so many student loans, Faith?”
Faith grinned, not embarrassed in the slightest.
“I can wear a fun hat whenever I want. It was Ryan who even convinced me to pick the graduation stuff up with him,” said Lu.
“He wants you to walk,” Celeste said.
“Of course he does. He’s basically the king of big gestures and grand occasions,” Lu complained. “Yell for him if you want to get another person on your side. He already tried to guilt me into it, so you all really don’t have to.”
“He’s upstairs?” I knew that he lived with Lu and Gertie in the house we had all used as home at one point or another, but I figured he was at least out tonight.
