Page 26 of Curses and Cauldrons

“Your mother and mine play tennis. Mrs. Blackthorn said you were very interested in settling down.” Anastasia adjusts her dress, hiking up the hem just a tiny bit more. Her voice is shaky at first, but she slowly recaptures a completely out-of-place self-confidence.

My phone vibrates in my hand. For the first time since I was a fucking teenager, my stomach swoops. My heart picks up, and I’m…nervous.

There’s a message from an unknown number.

If you had theme music that played any time you entered a room, what would the song be?

Anastasia presses her body into my side. I don’t bother looking at her. “I’m not interested. Go away.”

Bram chuckles, and Odie signs, “Vicious.” Ambrose is still occupied with the blonde and not paying attention to the rest of us.

“Actually, why don’t you stay.” I push out of my seat. “I’m sure my brother would love the company.”

Anastasia eyes Bram like she’s considering sliding in next to him.

“Fuck off,” he barks, with a flash of darkness bleeding into his eyes. He turns to glare at me. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got some business to take care of.” I turn away from the table without another word and make my way to the exit. Josephine didn’t exactly invite me over to her house, but she’s opened the lines of communication. I was looking for an excuse to leave, and now I have it, even if all I do for the rest of the night is wait for another text from the witch.

The imperial march. What would your song be?

Should I have waited more than a minute to respond? Probably. I’m sure I look like a desperate fool who’s been staring at my phone all week, just waiting for a sign of life. I basically told her as much at the parade. Knowing this and doing something about it are two different things.

I step outside into the cool night. I didn’t notice a single person as I pushed my way through the club. My eyes are glued to my phone, watching three little dots with far too much intensity.

Instead of an answer, a link to a video pops up. I click on it and bark out a laugh when Rick Astley pops up on screen singing, “Never gonna give you up.”

Did you just Rickroll me?

13

JOSEPHINE

“You’ve had a special request.” My mother rips a Post-it off a stack on her desk. It has little spring flowers that border the outside of the paper. She pushes it toward me, along with my morning cup of coffee.

I don’t know if I’ll ever understand my mother. On the outside, she’s perfect. Chin-length dark hair cut in a sophisticated style. Her clothing is a nod to the fifties without being a complete throwback. Her house is decorated just so. And yet, on the inside, she’s an empty shell of a person. Or maybe one filled with hatred and vitriol. I wonder how she ended up this way.

There’s an address scrawled in her elegant script in the middle of the paper. I squint at it in confusion and then blink up at my mother. “This is on the Tenebris side of the river.”

“And?”

“At the Grand Mystic Resort…” I trail off, not wanting to rehash our recent conversation. According to Francesca Delvaux, it’s fine for us to gallivant all over the Tenebris coventerritory, but Maiden help the young mother who dares to stop for lunch on the Lumen side of town.

My mother slowly lowers her laptop, closing it with a click. Her fingernails are manicured with a perfect pearly pink. My own nails are short and ravaged by my teeth. “Since when do you question where I tell you to go? This customer had a specific request for your services and paid extra to have you make a house call, as it were.” She waves her hand. Obviously, it’s not a house call at a hotel, but we both know what she means.

I don’t often do massages outside of the spa, but occasionally a customer pays a hefty fee for the service. Honestly, I don’t mind going to help someone who isn’t mobile, but that’s not the reason my mother takes the booking. It’s the money. She can charge extra to send me to meet clients. I hate it. There’s always an inherent risk in going someplace else where a stranger is waiting for me.

Once, when I was eighteen, a client decided he had the right to touch me since I was touching him. I froze at first, but then ran away in a panic. The man called and complained to my mother, who punished me for leaving in the middle of a job. She didn’t care that it hadn’t been safe for me. Despite the punishment, I refused to go on private jobs for several years until she started threatening to send Penelope instead. I backed down.

This address is part of Roman’s hotel, though. The last time I was there, he pinned me to the wall and questioned my intentions. That was before the incidents in the library and the apothecary, though. Before I caved and texted him after googling icebreakers for three hours. I’d like to believe things have changed between us. We've been exchanging messages over the past few days, but talking to someone in person and texting are very different things. Still, even now, my fingers itch to see if I have any texts from him.

If he catches me at the resort, will he freak out or be happy to see me? I’m a little afraid I won’t know what to say to him in person. I’m sure Roman won’t have that problem. He's too suave to be tongue-tied. He certainly didn't have any trouble using his tongue in other ways that night in the library.

“Why are you so flushed? Are you getting sick? Don’t think that will keep you from your appointments. We have paying customers, and I won’t put them off because you’re too stupid to take care of yourself.” My mother has moved onto her phone and is flipping through social media, not even looking at me as she lectures.

“I’m not sick. I just think it’s a bad idea for us to be sneaking into Tenebris territory.”

She slams her phone down on her desk. Her eyes narrow and her chin lifts, giving her the appearance of looking down on me even though she’s sitting. “We of the Lumen coven are not cowed or controlled by the whims of the Tenebris coven. They don’t own the west side of Mystic Hollows.”

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