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Audrey
Laterintheweek,the bell above the shop chimed as my friend Brooke pulled open the door. The large box she balanced on one arm wobbled, and I grabbed it before it fell. Her light pine scent tickled my nose. The silver bracelets on her tanned arm jingled as she righted herself and adjusted her long, tangerine hippie skirt. Taking the box over to the counter, I peeked inside and smiled at the little Mason jars full of honey. It would be a good day indeed.
Brooke had four acres with a greenhouse and her own bee hives. She regularly brought in fresh honey with experimental flavors to sell. Her two most popular, Hot Apple Cider and Strawberry Sunrise, flew off the shelves almost as fast as Violet’s handmade jewelry. When I first opened my shop five years ago, I’d built my business largely on what my grandma wanted to clear out of the attic and the contributions of my ridiculously talented friends. As such, I gave them a steep discount to sell their items in my shop. It was a win for all of us.
“Thank you for catching that.” Brooke blew her golden curls out of her face, revealing large gray eyes that always looked curious, like she was on the verge of asking a question, and a splash of freckles across her small nose. “I’ve been a mess this week. There was an earthquake on my property Saturday night. You might not have felt it. No one else in town seems to know about it. But it pissed off my bees good enough, and let me tell you, it is not fun collecting honey from an angry hive.”
My grandma and I glanced at each other. What did it mean that Brooke had also felt the earthquake, but no one else around here did? Could she be a descendant of the original twelve? A very interesting development, considering she had only moved to the island on a whim six years ago. She didn’t have any family here, they all lived in Arizona.
I took out a few jars of honey and stacked them on the shelf I reserved for my friends, next to my vanilla and cranberry candles. “Did anything else happen after the earthquake?”
Brooke knew about the legend, and accepted it as fact much more readily than Wes, even though he grew up here and was raised on it the same as me. Probably because she was a Cancer. It was in her nature to be fluid and accepting, and she didn’t lack imagination.
“As a matter of fact, something did happen, but I’m still not sure if it was real.” She looked down at her hands. “My fingers tingled, and it felt like something inside me clicked into place. Like my puzzle found its one missing piece. It didn’t last very long, so it’s possible it was just a case of my equilibrium being thrown off. Why?”
My spine straightened. That sounded exactly like the way I’d felt before I got distracted by other activities with Wes. “Did anything else happen? Like light coming out of your hands?”
She shook her head. “Just the feeling of being complete. A bizarre kind of calm that was really more of a shimmer. There and then gone.”
“What does that mean?” I looked at my grandma, who shrugged in response. We were kind of winging this magic thing. The only information we could go by was a story passed down verbally over hundreds of years, and, well… we all played Telephone in elementary school.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Brooke asked.
“That was no act of nature on Saturday night.” I filled her in on the details of the golden light that erupted from my hands and the rain that followed.
“This is so wild. Though I’ve got to admit, magic is an easier pill to swallow than an earthquake only I could feel. I was beginning to think I’d imagined it.” Brooke joined me at the counter and began removing jars of honey from the box, as if this was no big deal and she got news that magic existed every day. That’s probably why we got along so well. “I’m glad your shop is okay. My house was a wreck.”
I thought back to the woodland animals fleeing, boulders smashing through tree lines, and the branch that crashed to the ground right where I’d been standing before Wes shoved me out of the way, and shuddered at the kind of damage I would’ve been facing if all that had happened indoors. “Luckily, I wasn’t home.”
“She was down at that hot spring behind her property.” My grandma wiggled her eyebrows. “Skinny dipping with Wes Latham.”
Brooke squealed, and I rolled my eyes.
“I did no such thing.” I was not about to tell either of them the deal I’d struck to make that piece of property mine. “Everyone had clothes on. I was wearing that old T-shirt Seth left behind because I’m too cheap to buy a robe, and Wes got an attitude about it for some reason. We fought, then the earthquake happened.”
My grandma tapped a finger to her lips. “Hmm, I wonder why he’d be bent out of shape about you holding on to and wearing your ex-boyfriend’s T-shirt.”
Brooke held her clasped hands to her chest. “Because he’s in L-O-V-E with you.”
“Don’t start.” My grandma, Brooke, even the damn paperboy had it in their heads that Wes had a thing for me. Which he absolutely did not. We could barely stand each other. He never thought I was good enough for his sainted brother, something he made perfectly clear the night he convinced Seth to leave. “Can we please not talk about Wes anymore?”
“Kind of hard to avoid.” Brooke nodded behind me. “Since he’s here and all.”
The bell over my shop door chimed and my shoulders tensed. I turned, grinding my teeth as Wes flashed that sex-on-a-stick grin at me. His windblown hair fell over his forehead while he drank me in. Slowly. Purposefully. My skin heated wherever he lingered. He moved closer, his gaze becoming more intense, like he was mentally stripping me down. Thanks to Saturday night, it didn’t require a lot of imagination on his part. My throat had gone dry, and I licked my lips. A flicker of surprise lit his dark eyes as he zeroed in on my mouth. Was the air-conditioning broken? Because it had suddenly gotten very hot in my shop.
“Whew.” Brooke fanned herself. “I’m pretty sure the sexual tension between you two just impregnated me.”
“Maybe you should go jump in the ocean to cool off.” I glared at her. “And don’t mind Wes. He probably got lost on his way to foreclose on some single mothers.”
“Keep thinking the worst of me, Baby Teeth.” He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, his fingertips brushing my pulse point. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to work out all that frustration one of these days.”
The underlying promise in his voice made my pulse race, and I dug my nails into my palms. How dare he use his bedroom voice on me. If Brooke and my grandma weren’t here, I might’ve taken the opportunity to mess with him right back, but as it was, they looked about two seconds away from swooning and I was fresh out of smelling salts. Time to move this along.
As he lowered his hand, a tiny spark zapped me in the curve between my neck and shoulder, but not in a painful way—quite the opposite. My nipples pebbled, and a warm tremor spread through my core. Damn it. Not again. I shifted my gaze to find Wes’s hand glowing with an emerald green color. Dimmer than Saturday, but still there. He pinched his index finger and thumb together, creating another spark of mini-lightning.
This was so not fair. Wes didn’t even believe in the legend. How did he already have more control over his magic than me? Meanwhile, I’d spent all week throwing every bit of effort I had into the wind, only to get nowhere.
I put a hand on his chest to push him back a step, and a quick burst of energy shot through me. Not as strong as Saturday night, but it still felt like I’d jumped on a wave and had no choice but to ride it hard and fast until the end. My hand lit up with a golden hue, and the jar of honey I’d been holding froze. Pinpricks of frost speared off the glass.
