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“What are you doing?”
Looking up at her, I flashed her a wicked smile. “Had I known that was an option, I’d have picked the bath.”
Hollie placed the plate on the table that contained a sandwich, chips, and some fruit. She sat down, put her plate down, and began to eat.
“You have nothing to say to that?”
Shrugging, she replied, “I’m sure something smartass will come out of your mouth if I do.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What do you mean?”
She looked up and our eyes met. “I’m not the type of woman you typically go for, Lucas. Besides, we don’t like each other in that way.”
“We don’t?” I asked.
Her throat bobbed as she worked to swallow.
“Seems to me you might like me a bit since you’ve gone to all this trouble and offered to stay until the candle burned out,” I said.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m just trying to make up for a mistake.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes before I broke it. “Are you going to tell me what spell you thought you were putting on me?”
“No.”
“That’s not fair, you know. You show up with these crazy ideas, and I go along with them, and you won’t even tell me what you were trying to do to me?”
“It’s not like that, Lucas. I had been drinking, and I let Kristin talk me into it.”
“And now you believe you’re a witch?”
She gave me a one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know what to believe, but it’s the only reason I can think of for why you had all the bad luck.”
“Hollie, it was just a few days of bad luck. That’s it.”
“And earlier? The broken lamp? Your black eye?”
I reached up, touched under my eye, and winced. It hurt like a son of a bitch.
“You can’t explain it, but I can. Listen, I know it sounds crazy, Lucas. A couple days ago, if someone would have come to me with all of this, I would have said the same thing. But something changed. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You truly think you’re a witch?”
“Not in the way you think. Being a witch isn’t about broomsticks and pointed hats and black cats. It’s a belief. It’s being in touch with nature.”
“And the moon and stars?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I reached for her hand once again. She didn’t pull it away, and that made my heart beat a little stronger in my chest.
“You said you felt it when I was hurt. What did you mean?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to describe it. Something told me you’d been hurt. Like an intuition. A feeling rather than a conscious reasoning. I just knew.”
“Like when you answered me before I even asked the question, and don’t say I asked it out loud because I know I didn’t.”
Exhaling, she replied, “Yes. My aunt told me that when I was younger, I came running into the house upset because my brother had fallen and gotten hurt. When my parents rushed outside, they saw him fall and get hurt. I had somehow seen it or knew that it was about to happen before it did. It was then that my mother decided she would not practice the craft in front of me.”
