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To my relief, he didn’t push it after that, but instead headed toward the door, which had been left slightly ajar after he entered. “Tomorrow,” he said ominously, then swept out.
I didn’t bother to respond, but only went over to the door and locked it behind him. That task done, I glanced around the store. Everything was in its place, everything as it should be, and yet I still felt as though something had gone seriously wrong with the world.
Well, I’d deal with all that the next day. For the time being, I was just going to head to bed and figure out tomorrow, tomorrow.
At least the store opening had gone well.
I put myself together decently the next morning, mostly because I planned to go straight to the shop after breakfast with Lucien. Well, unless he turned me into a toad or something. A few weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was even a possibility, but Archie’s experience had taught me not to take anything for granted.
“Who was that man?” he asked, planting himself on his haunches in the entrance to the bathroom as I applied mascara.
“What man?” I responded.
Archie let out a soft hiss. “The man you were arguing with last night.”
“You were eavesdropping?”
“Hardly,” Archie said, now sounding bored. “I was sleeping on the landing, and your voices carried quite clearly up the staircase. You didn’t sound very happy with him.”
“That’s because I wasn’t,” I said. Because I figured it couldn’t hurt to give my resident cursed cat some background, I added, “He’s — he’s a sorcerer from L.A. He’s also a world-class ass, and I’m less than thrilled that he tracked me down here. But done is done, so now I have to deal with it.”
“And how are you going to ‘deal with it’?”
“I’m meeting him for breakfast.”
“That’s supposed to solve everything?”
I slipped the tube of mascara back into my cosmetic case and pulled out my favorite MAC lipstick. Thank the Goddess that I could still mail-order the shades I knew and loved, although I was going to miss going into the store in person to try out new colors.
“Honestly, I don’t know if it’s going to solve anything,” I said after I’d applied a light coating of Antique Velvet to my lips. “But I have to try. At least this way, there’s a slim chance I’ll be able to persuade him to let me stay here in Globe rather than haul me back to L.A.”
At once, Archie’s golden-green eyes slitted in alarm. “You can’t let him do that. I was just starting to get comfortable here.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, Archie, it’s all about you.”
Being Archie, he didn’t seem at all embarrassed that I’d called him out on his selfishness. Not for the first time, I wondered if he’d been the same way as a human, or whether his selfish streak had emerged over the decades while he was hustling to stay alive as an alley cat.
“It should always be about ourselves,” he said, sounding huffy. “After all, who else can we trust to look out for our own best interests?”
For a second, I considered asking him whether he was a devotee of Ayn Rand, because his comment sounded exactly like that author’s self-serving philosophies. But since I didn’t want to get sidetracked, I decided to let the matter go.
“I’m going to try appealing to his better nature,” I told the cat, even as I privately wondered whether Lucien Dumond had a better nature to appeal to. Still, I had to try. “Or at least, I’m going to do my best to persuade him that there’s no reason why he’d even want me back in L.A. With any luck, I’ll convince him that I’m a mediocre witch and no one he needs to waste his energy on.”
“I’d be happy to help you with that argument,” Archie said with a sniff. “Considering you’ve been here nearly three weeks and you still haven’t turned me back into a human.”
More than once during that time, I’d done my best to tell him I really wasn’t that kind of a witch. Obviously, those words hadn’t yet sunk in. I needed to save my arguing energy for dealing with Lucien, though, and so I just shrugged as I stowed my makeup bag back in its drawer. “I’ve been doing what research I can, Archie. There are only so many hours in the day. I did just put a store and an apartment together in three weeks, you know.”
The cat made a harrumphing noise — coming from that throat, it sounded more like he was about to cough up a hairball — and stalked out of the bathroom.
Just as well. Although I was used to him hanging around while I put on my makeup, it was sometimes annoying to have to dodge questions while applying lipstick.
I went to the little hand-painted box on the dresser that held my jewelry and pulled out my favorite dangly amethyst earrings. The weather had started to warm up, so I wore a scoop-necked black T-shirt over my favorite purple and black sequined skirt, and black ballet flats instead of boots. It had always been one of my favorite outfits, and I hoped it would give me some courage for the coming confrontation.
Because I definitely wasn’t getting dolled up just to impress Lucien Dumond. I had my planned lunch with Hazel as well. Good thing we’d decided to meet at one; that would give me plenty of time to get this breakfast with Lucien over with.
Ten minutes until ten. I grabbed my purse and hurried downstairs, then went out the back door into the alley. That was one drawback about my new home; it didn’t have a garage or even a carport.
But Brett had helped me put up one of those canvas and steel car shelters, and that had helped to keep my poor Beetle from getting hopelessly dirty. Even so, I knew I’d need to take it to get washed pretty soon, since the shelter didn’t keep all the dust out.
