Page 43 of Hexed Up

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Shit, ancient. No wonder your toes are hairy. Next it’ll be your ears and then your nose.”

“Why have you given up on finding the one, Molly?”

“You mean apart from the fact all men are shitheads?”

“Yes.”

I poke at my food. “My last few relationships were pretty awful. I was a fool.” I pick up my glass of wine and take a long gulp. It isn’t something I like talking about.

“If they didn’t treat you right, Molly, they were the fools.”

Why does he always say the right thing?

I change the subject and he tells me about his day and I tell him about the technicalities of brewing potions.

“You obviously love your work,” he comments when I’ve finished explaining the different types of potions.

“I do?” I say with a laugh. My work has felt like a constant battle to find and keep customers, to spread the work without getting caught, and with finding new and different potions to keep my customers engaged. It’s 99% running an illicit business, 1% potion making.

“Yeah, your whole face lights up when you talk about it.”

“Well, I do love the potion-making part of my job.” I swirl the wine around in my glass as I think about this, “If truth be told, I’m even sort of relishing the challenge of creating this counter-potion.”

“What do you love about it?” he asks, pushing his empty bowl to one side.

“I like experimenting with different recipes, tweaking them ever so slightly and producing different results. Believe it or not (and unfortunately for you) it’s taken me two years to perfect my love potion. And as a result I have plenty of very happy customers.”

“Is there a way you could do it … less illegally?”

“Maybe I like the illegality of it, Mr Shaw.”

“Do you?”

“No,” I answer truthfully, “I’m in a constant state of panic. Especially because my own sister is one of the leading Magical Enforcement Officers! I’m lying to my whole family the entire time – they think I bake for a living. But without my WitchingDiploma from the academy there is no way I can practise potion brewing legally.”

“So why don’t you get your diploma?”

I snort with amusement, but Horatio isn’t laughing, he’s deadly serious.

“I got kicked out, remember?”

“And you can’t go back? You can’t get your diploma somewhere else?”

“I …” I never really thought about it.

I chew on the last mouthful of my dinner and push my bowl to one side as well.

“Anyway, we should get to the important business of the evening: contract negotiations.” I open my note book as Mr Hottie pours me another glass of wine. “Where do you want to begin?”

“You really made notes,” he says, a smile hovering on his lips.

“I deduced you were probably an experienced and ruthless negotiator and I needed to be prepared otherwise you’d eat me for breakfast.”

“Gladly,” he says with a wink.