“Respect is earned, sir. Perhaps if you want it, you should earn it.”
“Maybe I don’t want it.”
“I think you do,” he said knowingly.
“Just make the cookies,” I demanded.
“I will not,” he said in his dignified yet offended tone. “Whatever you have planned with this poison, you will have to do without me.”
“I’ll fire you,” I growled, rising off my chair.
“Then that is your choice.” He sniffed.
Some of the steam went out of me and I dropped into my seat. “I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” His voice held a note of finality.
“Not in my world.”
“In all worlds. Some choices are harder than others. Some choices seem impossible but aren’t always as difficult as they seem.”
His words sounded good. They made me wish he was right. But he didn’t get it. No one did.
“So what is your choice, sir,” Hobbs asked me. “Shall I pack my things?”
I looked between Hobbs and the bag of nightshade. “You do make damn good coffee,” I said finally.
Hobbs smiled. “Well, yes, I do.” When I didn’t say anything else, he picked up the bag and glanced at me. “I’ll just get rid of this.”
I watched as he threw the bag into the trash. Everything I went through to get that stuff and here I was allowing my butler to throw it all away.
I must be crazy.
“You made the right choice,” Hobbs said like it was over.
I left the kitchen and headed upstairs. What Hobbs didn’t understand was that I might’ve made the right choice today, but tomorrow would be a whole new set of choices.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Cupcake - A small cake baked in a cup-shaped container.
Piper
I couldn’t get the vision out of my head. No matter how hard I tried to distract myself, no matter how much Chinese I ate, I still kept coming back to the picture that only lasted seconds in my brain.
Frankie was going to die.
No,I reminded myself,the future can change. It doesn’t have to happen.
God, please let it change.
Sometimes having the gift of sight didn’t feel like a gift at all. Many people say they’d rather know when they were going to die… not me. I don’t want to know. Knowing was too hard. It was too stressful because then life would be reduced to the ticking of a clock. Of how many hours, seconds, minutes you had left. There’s no way you could fit in everything you wanted to do, and I think the knowledge of your impending death would be crippling and keep you from actually living anyway.
Frankie wasn’t just my best friend. She was my family, the person I counted on most, and the only person in this world I really trusted. Since the death of my parents it sometimes felt like it was Frankie and me against the world. I depended on her. If she died I’d be completely alone.
“Piper,” she said, interrupting my worried thoughts. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I mustered a smile. “Yes. I ate way too much.” I put a hand to my stomach like I was about to burst.
