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He never did find out. The doorbell chimed with a customer entering, and she released him. He felt weak in the knees, hardly able to stand—but that must have been the freezing hex wearing off.

Back in his right mind (and legs), he left the office, determined to tear Lucy a new one, but his resolve immediately shattered.

Lucy was tending to a customer in the romance section, but the young man’s expression was impatient, annoyed. When he spoke, his tone was off, and Lucy’s response sounded strange.

“Um, well, we have a lot of new romance books with pink covers, so I’m not—” she tried. Lucy attempted a laugh, but it rang false in his ears.

“It’s a really famous book,” the man said, exasperated. “It has a pink cover—”

“Do you have a title?” Lucy asked.

“If I knew the title I’d have told you by now,” he snapped.

Hands curling into fists at his sides, Grayson looked at Lucy, waiting for her to chew the customer out with the same precision she used to put Grayson in his place. He knew she could handle herself and did not wish to overstep.

But she only seemed to get smaller, and any irritation at Lucy that Grayson had felt at being hexed immediately melted away, replaced with anger at this customer.

“If you describe it to me a little—” Lucy started. Grayson hated how small her voice sounded. She looked to be shutting down completely.

“I already told you!” the man said. “It has a pink cover! Are you always this dense?”

Grayson was shocked by the man’s audacity and further shocked to see Lucy standing so still and quiet. She was nearly unrecognizable from the fiery girl who’d thrown her slippers at him over a week ago.

“I’ll try and look,” Lucy said, backing away from him toward the shelves. She pulled a book with an illustrated cover out. “Is this it?”

“No, this isn’t even pink, I said it was pink,” he said. “I’ll just look for it myself.” His tone lowered as he muttered to himself, “Fucking useless.”

But he was loud enough for Lucy to hear. She flinched, and Grayson’s vision swam red. He marched over, fuming.

“We don’t have what you’re looking for,” Grayson growled at the man.

“Finally, someone who looks like they know what’s going on,” the man said, ignoring what Grayson had said. Lucy quietly slipped away. “Can you help me?”

“No, I can’t,” Grayson said, gritting the words out. “You best get on.”

The man looked shocked. “Seriously?”

“There’s the door.” It took every ounce of self-control Grayson had at his disposal to be so civil.

“Wow,” the man said, drawing the word out. He shook his head. “I’m never coming back here again.”

“Great!” Grayson snapped. “Now get the fuck out!”

The man huffed, leaving, but the anger pumping through Grayson’s veins had him wired. The image of Lucy flinching flashed through his mind, and his hands shook.

Taking in deep breaths, Grayson tried to calm down.

It was fine. The man was gone.

Grayson searched for Lucy and found her in the storeroom, absent-mindedly looking through boxes, an empty look on her face.

“Are you … okay?” he asked, voice soft.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” When she looked up at him, her ordinarily lively eyes seemed dulled.

Grayson frowned. “That guy was a massive prick.”

She gave him a half-hearted shrug. “It’s retail,” she said. “We get rude customers, it isn’t a big deal.”