Page 48 of De-Witched

“Understood.”

Yes, he understood. He understood that, even though it’d be smarter to let her back away, to distance himself, she’d become too essential for him to give up entirely.

He let her talk the first half hour as they scrubbed at the wall with sponges, then brushes, applying muscle to the paint that refused to lift. He didn’t mind letting her voice wash over him, finding the rhythm unusually soothing.

They’d managed to get half the lettering down to a faint pink line when he said, “I spoke to Sonny.”

She blew a curl out of her face as she bent to wet her brush. She’d bundled her hair into a rough, straggly ponytail. He couldn’t say why he found it appealing. “Hmm?”

He told himself to stop looking at her butt as she bent over. “You need money.”

“I told you that.”

“You identified the problem,” he allowed. “The next step is how to reach your objective. You make a plan.”

“You sure you’re not a robot?” She shook off the excess liquid and straightened. “Do you have a plan, or did you just want to rub my lack of one in my face?”

“Would I do that?”

She sent him an arch look.

“You need visibility,” he said, returning to the point. “You need sympathy and awareness. At the bottom of it all, this is a charity, albeit for animals. What do charities do when they need more money?”

“You want me to go door-to door?”

“Host a gala,” he corrected. “Invite the local businesses, ones that are good fits with the brand, the companies that could use the tax break and are looking to mask themselves as do-gooders. When we do a new product launch, we invite all the tastemakers, the press, even rivals to make as much noise as possible.” That, at least, he’d been good at, organizing details and deploying his assistants to speak and cajole on his behalf. “You need to make some noise, draw people in.”

She thoughtfully scrubbed the wall, back and forth. “A gala? Isn’t that too upscale for what we are?”

“You want deep pockets; you need to go to their level. It would need to be a ticketed affair, a dinner paid per plate or an auction—but that would be harder as you would need to secure lots. A dinner, talks, maybe an appearance from some of the more well-behaved residents.” He spared her a pointed lift of his eyebrow. “Not Chuck.”

“You love him, really.”

“Hmm.” He played his hand over his brush, the bristles sharp against his skin. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a little out of my depth.”

“You told me your family is part of Chicago’s social scene.”

Surprise blinked through her eyes. “I did?”

It had been when she’d been needling him, dropping her own crumbs, little realizing he’d collected them to form his own impression. He didn’t say that. “I would’ve thought, growing up in a family that donate to charities and attend functions, you’d be planning events like this in your sleep.”

“Maybe...if I hadn’t been busy taking care of my mom. After that...” She shrugged. “Do you know none of her so-called society friends visited her or helped at all? A lot of them sneered at us behind her back. Oh, but when she got healthy again and was donating the Turner money, oh, then, it was all smiles and laughs and air-kisses.” Her disgust was palpable. “I wasn’t about to go into that world of fakes that rejected us. So, I looked for a job, real people. I only took my trust fund because my mom said she’d wire money into my account every day if I didn’t.” She added on a grin, “But I got rid of it quick enough by investing in my own property and then proposing the bar to Emma and Tia.”

He was unwillingly fascinated. “You could have drifted on the money.” Most of the society witches he knew did just that, men and women.

“I prefer to work,” she said simply. “Like you, Gabe.”

The parallel took him aback, more because of how true it was. “I suppose.”

“I bet most society women in New Orleans aren’t like me,” she prompted with a grin, inviting him to comment.

But he couldn’t. Because nobody was like her. And to say that aloud felt like admitting too much.

“The worlds sound very similar,” was all he said. Human or witch, society stayed society, apparently. Maybe they had more in common than he thought. How unsettling.

As if reading the edge on his face, Leah let the subject float away, returning to their original topic. “Anyway, that’s why I’d be out of my depth. I’ve attended charity things, but organizing one sounds like juggling knives. Spending that money and having everything hinge on it? I could stab myself in the foot.”

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