Page 12 of Meet Cute Magic

She nods but then looks up at me with a mischievous look. “Maybe your brain was muddled because of your mental stress from the completely freak accident this afternoon.”

I take a step closer to her until I can feel her body heat through my thin T-shirt. Her breath grazes along my chest as her head tips up to look at me. She’s wearing sneakers now, not her usual heels, so this is the first time I realize just how much shorter she is, a good foot at least.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re here, or are you going to try and cute your way out of this?”

She smiles as if she won some kind of standoff I didn’t know we were in. “Cute? You think I’m cute?”

“No,” I say, far too quickly. A smile hits her face. “I just think you think you can be cute and get out of things.”

“Is it working?” she asks, and for a split second, I think about smiling back because sometimes, despite myself, she’s funny. Annoying as can be, but funny. But I know that would only encourage her more, so instead, I shake my head before taking a step back.

“Tell me why you’re here,” I demand, taking in her black outfit, complete with a black hat like she’s some kind of catnapper. The sweater and pants are skin tight, something I shouldn’t be tracking, but Rosemary Mayfield has curves that would make any man’s head turn.

“I told you, I have a terrible sleepwalking tendency.”

“Then I’m just going to have to call the police, and they can figure this out.” I start to turn away.

“No!” she shouts, her soft fingers wrapping around my wrist. She starts, a confused look on her face before she shakes her head and speaks again. “No. Don’t. Please.”

I shift my body back to her, taking my hand back and crossing my arms. “Then tell me what you’re doing here.”

She looks up at the ceiling, then at the mess on the ground, her eyes locking on my grandfather’s old flask before she looks at the ceiling again, cursing too low for me to hear. “If you don’t tell me exactly why you’re here, I’m calling the police.”

She groans audibly. “You’re never going to believe me,” she says in an almost-whiny tone.

“Try me.”

“I’m serious, Jack. You’re never going to believe me.”

“Either tell me or tell the police,” I say, reaching for my phone in my pocket.

“No! No. No. I don’t need my sisters finding out what I’m doing.” I find it interesting that she’s more concerned about her sisters than the police, but I don’t have time to linger on that when she takes in a deep breath, closes her eyes, and lays out the most colorful lie I’ve ever heard.

“Okay, so I’m a witch, right? Like, a real one. Magic, spells, blah blah blah. It’s a family thing, and when my grandmother was young, she met a warlock and turned him down for a date, and he really didn’t like that, so he cursed my entire family line. Now, whenever we fall in love, something bad happens, and it’s ruined. I was dumped yesterday—” She sees my brows furrow and wrongly assumes I’m confused about her past relationship and not the whole she’s a witch with a family curse part, because she corrects herself. “Don’t worry, I’m mostly over it, but it’s really this curse that is ruining my life. So I decided to conjure up the warlock who cursed us so he could break it. And I do the whole rigmarole, spices, herbs, five candles, salt ring, you know the drill.”

I do not. But I keep nodding.

“And then a ghost pops up and we make a deal: I make him a potion so he can cross to the other side, and he’ll break the family curse so I can finally fall in love.” She takes in another deep breath as if she’s preparing herself for what she’s going to say next before she cringes. “He’s your grandfather, and he says I need that flask in order to make the potion.”

I stare at her for a long moment before she smiles, and suddenly, I understand that she’s not joking. She really believes this, really thinks that she’s some… witch? Who broke into my shop to gather a family flask and break a curse? A curse, of course, cast by my dead grandfather who was apparently a warlock who didn’t handle rejection well and is now haunting her house.

“You’re out of your mind.”

She groans, like she feared I’d say that, before she shakes her head. “I swear, I’m not. He’s haunting my place right now, giving me shit about what I’m having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” My interest piques since no one loved a meal more than my grandfather, but I swipe that away. “I have a long list of ingredients for this potion, but that flask,” she points to the silver flask engraved with PDH on the front, “is first on my list of things I need to make it.”

A beat passes before I shake my head and sigh. “This is really fucked up. I expect a lot of crazy shit from you, but bringing up my dead grandfather in order to get out of trespassing charges is a bit extreme, even for you.”

“I’m serious! Why would I make something up like this?”

“Why do you do half the shit you do?”

Her jaw goes tight, but she doesn’t argue, instead changing the subject. “How would I even know that flask existed? How would I know your grandfather’s name is Phillip?”

I shake my head. There is always a reasonable explanation for things. Always.

Even though my business revolves around games with fantastical worlds, storylines, and features, and even though much of my love for those worlds is from the equally fantastical stories about vampires and trolls and witches and warlocks my grandfather used to tell me at bedtime, I know they were just that: stories. Every myth has a perfectly logical explanation, and this one does too.

“You were probably here today casing the joint. Those figures are worth thousands of dollars.” She scoffs. “You probably just saw the flask now and used it as an excuse, guessing that was my grandfather’s.”