Page 35 of My Faire Lady

She unstrings the lanyard from her neck, hanging it on a hook beside the register. “Jack, I’ll be back in half an hour.”

He gives her a grunt, face buried in the spine of a comic book. “Don’t be late.”

The bell chimes over the front door, and Lottie gives me a knowing look as she rounds the counter and joins my side.

“Where are we going?” I say, holding the door open.

“Just across the street.”

I scan the cracked lot. On the other side of the painted lines, a lonely building stands—a flickering neon light hanging in the clouded window.

I lift a brow. “We’re going there?”

She doesn’t break her stride. “They have the best sandwiches on the east coast.”

We cross the blacktop, and I pause long enough to unlock my car and throw the shopping bag in the passenger seat. She pulls open the door to the deli and waves me in, following close behind.

Behind the counter, a middle-aged man looks up from a roll of waxed paper, eyes lighting up. “Lottie! You’re early today.” His hands make quick work of the paper, and he passes a wrapped sandwich to a woman at the register. His eyes meet mine, and he lifts a bushy brow. “Brought someone along this time?”

She glances at me over her shoulder, and her eyes flicker over my face for a heartbeat. “Yeah, can we get two of my usual?”

Rather than joining the line of people looping through the deli, Lottie leads me through a small doorway into a dining area lined with narrow booths, their leather seats cracked with age. We claim a table in the back corner, its top sprinkled with a half-finished puzzle.

I study the lid—a moonlit garden—and prop it against the wall. “Is this your puzzle?”

She hums and fingers through the pieces, sorting them by color. “Derry has kept this table reserved for me since I started working at the craft store. He runs the deli with his husband, and they’ve always kept a puzzle here for me. I’ve been working on this one for a couple weeks now.”

Diners from the lunch rush slowly fill the seats, their voices blending together into a low drone. But despite the braiding of noises, a stillness hovers in the air, so subtle only I’d notice it—the absence of magic.

I find a piece belonging to the stem of a tulip and press it into place. She adds the petals.

“So, this is what your life is like?” I say.

Leaning back in the chair, she crosses her arms and studies the crowded dining room. “I guess it’s not the most exciting life, is it? I work full-time at a craft store and spend my lunches doing a puzzle at a deli shop.” She shrugs and breathes out a scoff. “It’s not nearly as interesting as growing up on thousands of acres of woodland, playing pretend on pirate ships and castles.”

She traces a finger over the grooves of a puzzle piece, and her words linger in the air. For a moment, I picture my life as a human. Nonmagical. I stitch together an image of my existence if it wasn’t a secret—if I held a purpose more than keeping creatures alive and safe from the rest of the world.

Would I know Lottie?

Would she be able to know me?

A fist clenches around my heart, and I shift in my seat, chasing the thought away. “Your life is more exciting than you think. You can do whatever you want. If you want to move to a different country and start your life over, you can.”

“And you can’t?”

“No.”

She looks up at me from under her lashes, her stare burrowing under my skin. “Why not?”

I turn the question over in my mind, considering it from every angle as Boden’s words from over a week ago filter through the cracks. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen, if we lost the land.

The question itself is so trivial, but the answer? I settle on, “I have obligations. Responsibilities.”

She tilts her head, another question balancing on the edge of her tongue, but Derry swings into the dining room with two plates balanced on his hands.

He sets two sandwiches on the table and adjusts the apron strings around the back of his waist. “It’s about time Lottie brought someone here.”

She finds sudden interest in the puzzle, and pink blooms over the pocket of skin between her collarbones. Her fingers pick up pieces at random, and she turns them over, setting them down without trying to find their place.