Page 46 of The Most Wanted Witch

Don’t put it down. This is insanity.

“Sure. You can tell yourself that, but we both know better. That’sbloodcocoa.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head back, giving me a look of superiority never seen before on Bibbi. She wore it pretty well.

“You mean like blood money? Because I don’t think there’s blood cocoa. I think there’s plain old cocoa that no one died for.”

“As far as no one dying for it? If you regard your standards in a rotting pile as no damage done, then sure, I guess that’s true.” She continued to stare, watching me with that look of judgment.

“You’re getting crazy. You do know that, right?” And so was I, because I’d had the same debate internally minutes before she walked in. I’d decided I was crazy, but that was before she’d stared at me, making me wonder if she was right. I didn’t want my standards to be in a rotten pile. That sounded absolutely horrible.

Don’t put the cocoa down. You want the cocoa. You want it bad.

I couldn’t hold out against her looks. They were too damning, and it was too early for this kind of heavy choice. I put the cocoa down and reached for the tea.

“Well done. I knew you had it in you,” she said as if we were running a combat mission together.

“We’re going to have to get better tea if this continues.” It tasted like sucking on an old penny.

“Agreed.” She smiled and raised a mug to me, letting her gaze go all the way down to the two feet I was standing on. “You look much better. The way your leg was puffed up last night, I didn’t think you’d be up on it for a week.”

“Yeah, I guess I needed a good sleep, is all.”

I took a seat at the table, propping my bad leg up on to the other chair, feeling like it shouldn’t be this good yet even if it was. Had I taken something last night to help it? There was this nagging feeling in my head that something important had happened. Trying to pin it down felt like roaming around in a pea-soup fog trying to find a cloud.

Bertha and Musso strolled in, with Zab after them and Oscar a minute or so later. The smell of Bertha’s cooking began to permeate the air as Zab remarked on how warm the back room was for this early. I’d assumed he’d come down and warmed it, but apparently not.

I leaned closer to Bibbi, who’d taken the chair next to me and was working on her knitting again.

“You ever have an idea or a dream and it’s like”—I raised my hand to my head, as if I could pluck something out—“right there? You know it is but you can’t quite get to it?”

“Only every day,” Bibbi said. “Stop trying to think about it. That helps me sometimes. Then it’ll hit you out of the blue. Or it won’t, and you’ll have forgotten you cared in the first place. Either way, you’re good.” She went back to her knitting.

I was still sipping my bland, acidic tea. “Bertha, do you have any good tea blends?”

The woman could cook like she was born with a spoon in her hand. She must have some finesse in other areas.

“Oh, yes!” She nearly jumped up and down in her eagerness to prove her skills in the beverage arena. She was putting a mug down in front of me not two minutes later, waiting for me to try it.

Musso was standing behind her, looking at me with fear in his eyes. Nothing scared that man. I took a sip and understood. Suddenly I longed for the bland bitterness of the old stuff.

Then I lied like my life depended upon it.

“Wow, this is…amazing.”

Bertha glowed, and Musso sagged, as if he’d just been given a stay of execution.

“That bad?” Bibbi whispered as Bertha went back to cooking.

“Don’t ever try it.”

Hawk walked into the room, and I forced my attention on Bibbi’s knitting so I had something else to focus on.

“You made a lot of progress since last night,” I said, pointing to her knitting.

She’d barely made any. Saying anything was better than sitting in silence while I pretended Hawk wasn’t in the room.

She held it up. “I mean… I guess?”

Hawk stopped beside the chair where my leg was propped up. He gave me a nod as he looked at it. It was the most interaction we’d had since our last fight.

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