Page 39 of The Accidental Witch

He smiled with pride, ungluing his eyes from her and clearing his head of the fantasies he’d been having about Robbie. “I’ll say. You’re a good teacher, Vampire.”

“Hey, I was wondering,” she said, crossing her ankles. “Are there other male witches like you in this invisible town of yours?”

He smiled and nodded. “Yep.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I thought if you were male you were a warlock?”

“In some covens that’s true. In mine we call ourselves witches.”

“Did you have a broom, too, dude?”

“No, no broom. My mother had one, though. His name was Gary.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “No shit. Where the fuck is Gary now?”

He missed Gary. He’d been family for a long time until his mother passed. “Gary retired. According to my coven, he was pretty broken up about my mother’s death, even if he’d never show it to me, but because I have no magic, there was no reason for him not to move on. So I let him go.”

Nudging him with her shoulder, Nina nodded, the curtain of her silky black hair fully grown back in now. “Shit. I heard about your mom, buddy. What a shitty, shitty thing. Damn sorry that happened to you.”

Anything to change the subject of his mother, Greer said, “Hey, I heardyou’repart witch. I could always use an assistant, ya know.”

She snorted. “Fuck that. I’m the shittiest witch that ever lived, pal. My spells are absolute turds in a toilet bowl, and my familiar, Calamity, finally gave the fuck up and moved on to a better witch than I’ll ever be.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

She scoffed, scuffing her feet on the brick floor. “Don’t be. The less I tried to use that stupid fucking wand, the easier it was to forget it ever happened. Not Calamity, mind you. I dug her, even if she was mouthy, and she still visits. But the whole witch thing? I’m a vampire through and through. Period.”

As they stood in silence, Nina nudged him again when she caught him eyeing up Robbie. “So you got the googley eyes for her?”

He chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting his chin. “Define googley eyes, Ms. Statleon.”

“Aw, come on,Men’s Weekly. You like her. It’s fucking obvious. I can’t believe you two aren’t hunching hard by now. It’s been almost two weeks.”

Greer frowned, his brows scrunching together. “Hunching hard? What the hell does that mean”

She lifted her shoulders and gave him a cheeky grin. “You know, banging. Doin’ it. It’s not like you can hide that you like each other. We can all see it. It happens in every fucking case we’ve ever had.”

He gave her a questioning glance. “What happens?”

She clucked her tongue, driving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “The victim of the accident and the hero who helps make the boo-boo all better hook up and live happily ever after. After we take out the bad guy, that is.”

To his regret, that sure wasn’t happening here, but he didn’t want to show his cards to Nina “The bad guy?”

“Yeah. There’s always a bad guy, Greer. Don’t you forget I told you that, either. This might be taking a little longer than the norm, it’s a slow fucking simmer, for sure, but it’ll happen. Mark my words, some motherfucker will show up and want what Robbie’s got. Whoever the fuck it is, they’re a crafty motherfucker, but they’re out there.”

But who would try and steal what Robbie had? There was no one around to steal anything.

“Interesting,” he replied.

Marty sidled up to them, laptop in hand. She set it on the top of the reception desk. “Did you see this on the news this morning?” she asked, showing him an article online about Robbie’s mother, Agatha, who was now, along with her brother Steadman, in jail, awaiting a grand jury trial. “It’s about her mother and brother.”

He’d avoided googling Robbie, realizing there was likely tons of information on her and her family. He’d heard the story straight from the horse’s mouth. She’d turned her mother in.

That was enough for him. He didn’t want to drag her over the coals asking for details, and he didn’t want to fill his head with the bullshit the press fed the public.

He also didn’t want to distract her with the reminder she was no longer allowed to see the children she loved so much.

The pain on her face that night as she told him how she’d once visited them said all he needed to know about her devotion to the hospital.

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