Page 34 of The Accidental Witch

Self-conscious of the parts of her hair still patchy from the fire, she smoothed it back against her skull, propping herself up on the fluffy pillows, also a lot like what she’d imagine clouds felt like. “What’s that?

“How did you get this bedroom that looks like a spa retreat and I got the one with a carousel and a pink canopy?”

Giggling, she tucked the duvet under her chin. “Pink is probably a nice color on you. Maybe Nina was doing that color wheel thing she was telling us about when she first met Marty, and they sold makeup for Bobbie-Sue. If I recall, when I was looking at the charts Marty had, pink is definitely in your color wheel.”

Now he laughed, too, deep and gravelly. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe Nina just wanted to show me who’s boss and put me in my place.”

She grinned. “Both things can be true.”

He smiled at her, folding his hands in his lap and crossing his leg over his muscled thigh. “Fair. Now, you need to get some sleep. You’ve had an eventful day.”

But she had questions. “I’m not really all that tired, now that I’ve showered. I think it woke me up—all that gloom and doom Lost Lands, blah blah, blah overstimulated me. Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed, I dip. Sleep is my best defense.”

Whenever she felt overwhelmed, she took a nap. She was aces at napping, and she spoke the truth—itwasher best defense.

It was how she blocked out her mother’s constant criticism. It was how she hid from turmoil. It was how she’d coped her whole life.

Greer gripped her hand with an urgency. “Listen, it’s not a place to take lightly, Robbie. There’s a reason someone dropped you there, in a place where you don’t even remember being taken to.”

Her expression went sheepish. That was true. There’d been no moment in time when she could remember actually leaving the grounds of Nina’s castle. Everything had just changed from cold to hot, snow to sand.

“Sorry. It’s not that I’m not taking this seriously. It’s just a lot to absorb. Do you think whoever that witch was who told me to run might have had something to do with it? I mean, she knew my name, Greer.”

His brow furrowed. “Yeah, that is weird. I don’t know how anyone in the Lost Lands would even know about you. I have to be honest, none of this is making sense.”

Robbie fought a shiver. “Maybe she was telling me to run in general, rather than run from whatever that thing was, breathing down my neck like some creepy stalker. I mean, maybe it was a warning?”

He rolled his tongue in his cheek. “Maybe that’s true, but about what? Either way, I’m not taking any chances. I’m not leaving your side until we find someone from my damn coven to explain what’s going on.”

That made her heart pitter-pat, but then she reminded herself, now wasn’t the time to have a crush on a cute guy. Now was the time to focus on how she’d handle her life going forward. When she’d left her mother’s nest, if you will, she’d decided there would be no distractions until she knew where she was going, and that included men.

Greer was gorgeous and smart and even funny sometimes, but her life being what it was, with her future so uncertain, didn’t leave room for her to explore a crush.

She didn’t know what lie ahead, after these people felt safe enough to let her be on her own. For sure, there’d be a couple of messy court appearances due to her mother’s criminal charges, and that was all she could handle right now.

Fighting her growing attraction to him, she diverted her thoughts by quietly asking, “Tell me again why people end up in the Lost Lands?”

He lifted his hard jaw. “You have to do something really bad to be banished there, Robbie. A very powerful witch has to take you after you’ve been found guilty of a crime.”

“Something like what your grandmother did?”

He looked down at his hands, his eyes almost sad. “Even the Lost Lands wasn’t punishment enough for Gwinnifer. But the Lost Lands is one step away from expungement.”

That word…Expungement. So disturbing, rather a prettied-up version of execution. “How awful,” was all she could manage. She hadn’t asked for specific details about his grandmother’s crimes. It was enough to hear she’d sucked the essence from people. She’d been afraid to dig deeper.

”Before we get into the Lost Lands, there’s something I need to explain about me and Gwinnifer and my coven, and why I haven’t personally gone to them to ask questions about how we move forward.”

That she’d opened her big mouth and asked left her feeling like dog poo. How insensitive of her to pry into his personal business. “You don’t have to say a word, Greer,” Robbie reassured him. “I don’t want to meddle.”

“You’re not meddling. You deserve to know where I come from, where I am, and how I got here.”

Biting her bottom lip, she wanted to crawl under the covers for the pain smeared across Greer’s face. Robbie hated that she’d dredged it up. “Are you sure?”

“I am,” he said with obvious resolution.

As he began to explain what Gwinnifer had done to him, to his mother, everything he’d told Wanda when they’d talked earlier that night, her heart grew heavy in her chest.

Her own mother was a dreadful human being, but she hadn’t literally killed anyone. Not by her own hand, anyway. Though, she certainly could be considered a killer by proxy.

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