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Chapter Twenty-Six
Claire
As many times as I’d heard the saying “feeling like you’re on top of the world,” I never thought I’d ever have a reason to apply it to me. Typically, it brought to mind images of annoyingly cheerful people.
And yet, at that moment, I realized with some shock that I was an annoyingly cheerful person.
I was humming to myself. I wasn’t even sure of the tune. What I knew was that I hadn’t hummed to myself in years. Not since I’d been a teenager.
While I’d much rather be back in Jack’s bed, the happiness hadn’t dulled when I was away from him. It carried over into everything else, making the colors seem brighter. The sky seemed to be an ultramarine blue. The trees, with their bright fall colors, blazed with fire.
I hadn’t exactly wanted to return to my everyday life, but I wasn’t unhappy about it either. While I’d been in heat, Jack had seen that Maggie had been taken care of. I’d spent so long taking care of everything around me. I wasn’t sure how to feel about someone else taking care of me.
And now that I knew what that felt like, there was the worry in the back of my mind that it would devastate me if all this went sideways. Was it normal to have doubts about a mating bond?
For now, I wasn’t going to let the fear take over. This sort of happiness was too rare not to enjoy.
Though, as Maggie stepped out of the school, that happy feeling dimmed for a moment. Maggie looked defeated.
What the hell had happened?
I watched as Maggie noticed me, made her way to the car, and slipped inside. When she was inside, I turned to her.
“What happened?”
Maggie’s lips pursed. “I don’t want to talk about it. At least not here.”
I considered arguing the point. Then I watched as her eyes scanned the parking lot. She watched the other students filing out, her body tense with dread. It was clear she was worried someone might appear who she didn’t want to see. Needlessly, I nodded and pulled out of the parking lot.
* * *
Other than home,there was one place in Mystic Springs that I knew could make Maggie feel safe. Fate’s Coffee was the only coffee shop in Mystic Springs. In her late teens, Maggie had developed a taste for coffee. I knew that if anything would get Maggie talking, it was a treat at Fate’s.
The coffee shop, like so many other businesses in Mystic Springs, was owned by witches. In this case, the coffee shop was owned by a couple of witch sisters. The humans in town didn’t understand why Fate’s brew was so much more addictive than the coffee they could pick up from The Sidecar or the coffee they brewed at home.
The coffee shop was nestled inside a little cottage near downtown. The sisters who ran the shop lived in an apartment above the cottage. The witches were certified crones, despite looking only as if they were approaching middle-age. It was rumored that they had escaped more than a few witch hunts over the centuries.
Inside, the coffee shop was decorated like an homage to all things mythology. A statue of Medusa greeted guests as they walked into the shop. Numerous paintings graced the walls that depicted mythological tales.
Once Maggie and I had our drinks, a Poseidon Elixir for myself and a Stoned Perseus for Maggie, I fixed my gaze on my sister.
“Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s Matthew Trenwith.” Maggie glanced around the coffee shop to make sure no one could overhear our conversation.
“Today, he magicked my locker so it wouldn’t open. Then, he cast a spell in Social Sciences so that anytime I opened my mouth, my voice sounded like an old toad croaking.”
Maggie sighed, continuing. “That was bad enough because the entire class did nothing but laugh at me. However, Miss Dodd, my teacher, is a human. She thought I was messing around. That got me sent to the principal’s office.”
Later, I would have to unpack the rest of that story. Now, I was concerned about Maggie’s trip to the principal’s office.
“The principal is a warlock,” I said. “Surely he understood what was going on.”
Maggie nodded. “He did. But the other students were relentless. Making frog jokes. And I know that teacher will hate me for the rest of the year.”
I thought about seeing Matthew’s mother at the book club meeting. Then, I thought about Maggie’s teacher punishing her unfairly for something she couldn’t control. It was a feeling I was familiar with myself. I suspected most witches were.
“No,” Maggie said. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts about what I could do to the people who were terrorizing Maggie that I hadn’t realized that I hadn’t spoken for a few minutes.
