Part of me still believes that the bracelet might save me from the consequences of the broken vow. But another part of me feels like I never really deserved this peaceful lifeanyway, like my doom was always hanging overhead, waiting to crash down on me. Why should I get to have love and happiness after all the terrible things I’ve done? Sure, most of them happened before I parted ways with my family, but that doesn’t absolve me. It doesn’t make me worthy of peace or joy.
Rick opens the rear door of the diner, and I follow him inside.
“I’m not worth your sadness,” I confess. “I’ve killed people. I’ve eaten them. Crunched their bones, pulled on the tendons, watched the skin stretch like melted cheese.”
He shuts the door and whirls around, exasperation on his face. “Gross. We’re in a kitchen, Marlowe.”
“You should know how disgusting I am. Or was.”
“That doesn’t matter to me.”
“It doesn’t matter that the person you claim to love is an actual murderer, basically a cannibal? I sort of feel like that’s an issue, like it would matter to normal people. Even your average supernatural would feel some type of way about it. And you just, what? Shrug it off? No big deal?”
“Maybe it’s a big deal. Doesn’t change how I feel about you.” He gives me a swift kiss and walks over to the kitchen counter where a few pies sit beneath glass domes. I guess they’re brought into the back every night rather than being left out on the bar.
“I think you’re a very strange man,” I say. “Very unusual.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
He throws me a grin, eyes twinkling, less sorrow in them for a moment. “I love you, too.”
Rick cuts two pieces of blueberry pie, one slice of pecan, and one slice of cherry. He places them in takeout containers. “Grab a couple forks. Over there.” He nods to the canister full of utensils. “We’ve got the pie. Where do you want to eat it?”
“I know a spot.”
He puts our snack in a bag, and we head out the rear door. I count the backs of the shops we pass—one, two, three, four, five—until we come to the one with the lavender awning.
This is the back entrance of Moonstruck Needfuls and Niceties, a shop filled with crystals and candles, crocheted goods and small felted animals, magnets and notebooks. In the back there’s a nook filled with antiques and vintage goods. I always find something I like here, something to add to a random corner of the rambling house at Spyglass Stables.
The Moonstruck building also happens to be taller than most of the ones along the town’s main street. It features a widow’s walk, balconies, and a decently solid fire escape that runs down the back of the building.
I grab one of the rungs of the ladder. “You feeling up for a climb?”
Rick grumbles something about wounds and ill-fitting borrowed clothes, but when I start climbing, I feel the weight of him on the ladder behind me. Briefly I wonder if he should have waited; I’m not sure if the ladder can hold both of us. But we’re already toying with fate. Might as well push the recklessness a bit further.
When I reach the top, I transfer from the small landing outside the fourth-floor window to a narrow ledge. Then Iclimb a slanting part of the roof and scramble over the railing onto the widow’s walk. The activity pulls at the lacerations on my body and loosens a couple of my bandages, but I ignore the pain and press the gauze and the tape back down.
Rick clambers over the railing of the widow’s walk, and we make our way around to the front of the building.
He doesn’t ask if our presence here is okay with the building’s owner. He just assumes that either it is, or I don’t care, and he’s fine with both scenarios.
I advance to the railing and gaze down into the square, lit up with what seems like thousands of twinkle lights. The stage is illuminated with pink and gold beams. People throng the square, sipping drinks, enjoying treats, and walking hand in hand with lovers or arm in arm with friends. Some of them balance sleepy children on their hips. The atmosphere is warm, safe, and joyful.
Kryhollow is playing a song I don’t recognize—one of their new pieces, probably. It unsettles me a little, like all change does. But I know that after a few listens, I’ll adjust. Maybe I’ll even come to love it as much as their earlier work.
Rick moves in beside me, a solid, steady presence, and I realize that I have, in fact, adjusted to his existence. He has taken his place in my heart as someone indispensable to my daily life, vital to my happiness.
“See?” I gesture to the square and the stage. “Best view in the house. Or in the town.”
“Then why are we the only ones up here?”
“Because Mrs. Brisbane doesn’t like many people. I’m one of the few she tolerates. Anyone else would be too scared to come to this spot.”
“Scared?”
“She’s a hawk shifter. A really big and powerful one.”
