“Why are you carrying a week’s worth of groceries?” Kerri asks.
“I swung by Devi’s before coming here. She asked me to bring them, but she wasn’t home,” I explain.
My Faerie godmother, the infamous Devi Eros, almost never leaves her home on account of being a wanted criminal.
Kerri’s eyes widen. “Maybe that’s the emergency. Was there anything out of the ordinary? Any sign of forced entry or violence?”
I shake my head and grab a glass from the cupboard, Lady propped over one shoulder. “None.”
I move to the refrigerator, fill the empty glass to the brim, and gulp it down. The cold water soothes my budding migraine, Lady’s soft purring mellowing the tension beneath my ribs.
Kerri tucks away the perishables in the fridge. “Are you still struggling with those nasty headaches, sweetie?” she asks.
“Nothing a good aspirin won’t fix,” I say.
Her brows knit together. “Nonsense. I’ll brew you something that’ll keep those away for a few days.”
“There’s no need—” The rest of the sentence dies in my throat as Kerri fills the old, bumpy teapot and clicks on the stove.
There’s no use arguing the virtues of modern medicine with a witch.
A tired sigh quakes my chest. “I should be at a dance studio right now. Rehearsing my wedding dance.”
“I know, I know. With your rich, gorgeous fiancé,” Kerri teases. “How’s dear Lawland doing?”
I press my tongue to the back of my front teeth. “Lachlan. Which you know perfectly well.”
Of all the ways she telegraphs her dislike for my upcoming wedding, that’s the one that most gets on my nerves. She’s a witch who deals with hundreds of refugees every year. For her to pretend she can’t remember my fiancé’s name might be the lamest trick she’s ever used.
Her rich hazelnut eyes dim with a hint of shame, or perhaps worry. “I’m sorry, sweetie. This marrying-a-mortal phase of yours will take some getting used to.”
“And what if it’s not a phase?” I shoot back, annoyed.
She raises her palms to the ceiling. “And what are you going to do? Stop practicing, move into his fancy house on the lake, and birth his one and a half kids?”
“That’s the plan,” I say flippantly, my temper tickled by her relentless probing. “And why would I stop working because I’m married?”
Lady squirms, agitated, and I set her back on the floor.
Kerri licks her lips. “I wasn’t talking about medicine, Maxine.”
She was talking about witchcraft, of course, and my cheeks warm.
I don’t think of myself as a witch. My twin, Nickolas, is the witch in the family. He’s good with runes, knows all the spells, and prays every night, while I can barely brew a simple sleep potion.
“Well…” I suck in air, searching for a way out of this conversation.
Mabel wants me to be more involved in the coven going forward, but the thought fills me with dread. I do love Kerri and the others, but it’d be like having an intern run the whole hospital.
“The only witchy thing I’m good at is gardening. That, and making lightbulbs burn out in a room when I’m angry. That hardly makes one a witch—it’s just a pain in the arse,” I say.
“Still. How are you going to justify your quirks to your oblivious mortal husband?”
It stings that she doesn’t contradict my previous statement, even though I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.
“I’m a mortal, too,” I point out. I infuse the words with as much calm and determination as I can muster, but she waves her hand dismissively, as if the correlation only exists in my head.
“You know what I mean. Where is that young woman who spent her afternoons trekking through the autumn woods with her feet bare and a hooded cape? The one who wanted to open up a women’s clinic next to Devi’s tea parlor?” she asks with a sad smile.
