Page 86 of Enchanted to Meet You

“Yeah. Sure. Of course.” He handed one of the drinks to me, and the other to Derrick. “Hey, bro.”

“Thanks, man,” Derrick said, cheerfully.

The two of us stood there, a drink in each hand, still in our coats, me with an evening bag dangling from my wrist, while I struggled to figure out what to say.Thank you for the carseemed inadequate.Do you know your wife is a witch who tried to murder me?seemed like overkill.

Fortunately Rosalie, a few feet away, got a signal over her headset, and suddenly banged on her tablet.

“Everyone? Everyone!” Rosalie’s years of cheerleading had taught her how to use her diaphragm to project her voice, so she could easily be heard over the jazz trio and all of the voices in the bar. “We’re ready to begin. If you could all take your seats...”

I was more than happy to follow the crowd into the Yacht Club’s dining room, where Esther, looking tall and elegant in slim-fitting black trousers, white blouse, and, for a change of pace, pink-sequined Converse, gestured to me from a table where she was sitting with a woman who looked like Gabby’s older, plumper twin.

“Over here,” Esther called, waving urgently, as if there was some way Derrick and I might miss her.

“Hi, Esther,” I said, when we reached her. “We were just talking about you. The mayor got your let—”

“That’s great. Could you sit here?” Esther patted the seat of the chair beside her, and then, when I lowered myself into it, hissed in my ear, “Gabby’s dad is stuck on the train from the city. There’s flooding on the tracks. He’s trying to get here as fast as he can, but for now, only her mom could come. Gabby’s really upset.”

“Oh, no.” I put down my drinks and my bag, then peeled off my coat and introduced myself and Derrick to Gabby’s mother.

She shook both our hands, but seemed especially thrilled when Derrick’s fingers gripped hers. I didn’t have to be a genius to guess why. The poor woman looked lost and a little out of place in the big room where she seemed to know no one except Esther, and then suddenly, a handsome guy with a warm grip slipped her an electric mickey? Bliss.

Especially when he followed it up with a grave, “You have a lovely daughter, Mrs. Aquino.”

“Oh, thank you,” she fluttered. There were two bottles of wine on the table, red and white, to accompany the coming meal, but Mrs. Aquino hadn’t touched either. She, like Esther, was only drinking cranberry juice. “And thank you, Miss Gold, so much for the dress. Gabriella loves it. It’s just such a shame her father can’t be here. But then again, if she doesn’t win, I suppose it’s just as well. I know how much he’d hate the idea of her being humiliated—”

“She won’t be,” Esther said firmly. I saw her hand, slender and brown against the stark white tablecloth, ball into a fist. “She’s going to win. She’dbetterwin, or—”

The flowers in the decorative centerpiece began to tremble, and the salt and pepper shakers tinkled against one another. I laid a hand over Esther’s fist and said, quietly, “It’s all right.”

The flowers stilled. The tinkling stopped. Esther took a sip of her cranberry juice, like nothing had happened.

But something had happened, all right. I was the only one who’d noticed, since Derrick was busy scanning the room (probably for demons), and Gabby’s mother was too nervous to focus on anything except the stage in front of us.

Which was why, when Rosalie stepped onto it a second later, Mrs. Aquino was the first to notice. She reached out to grasp my wrist with an excited squeak.

“Oooh,” she cried. “It’s starting!”

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Rosalie seemed anxious. She was barely giving her guests a chance to take their seats, let alone the waitstaff a chance to pass out the first course—a mesclun salad so sad looking, it would have sent Mama Giovanni’s head spinning—before taking the podium on the stage at the front of the room. “Welcome to our first annual Harvest Princess Pageant, in celebration of West Harbor’sTricentennial.”

Rosalie paused for both emphasis and the smattering of applause she’d known was going to follow the wordTricentennial. I took the opportunity to lean over to say to Mrs. Aquino, “I’m sorry your husband isn’t here yet, but I’m sure Gabby is going to do just fine. And please, call me Jessica.”

Mrs. Aquino grinned and pointed at herself. “I’m Anna.”

“Your donations are what’s made all of this possible,” Rosalie went on. “Because of you—and of course the generosity of both Hopkins Motors and Walker Hardware”—I saw Billy, at a table near the front of the room with both of his children, beam with pride—“nine of the truly remarkable young women who will be on this stage shortly will have more than a year’s worth of college tuition paid.”

It was a good thing the lights had been turned down low,because otherwise someone might have noticed how far back into my head my eyes were rolling.

“But before I introduce them, please join me in welcoming the man who helped choose the recipients of tonight’s scholarships, a true academic, published author, and historian, Professor Bartholomew Brewster.”

Suddenly my eyes snapped open.

“Bartholomew Brewster?” I whispered to Derrick, as everyone around us applauded. “But he’s—”

Derrick was frowning. He rarely smiled, but his expression looked grimmer than I’d ever seen it. In the dim light of the dining room, he looked positively murderous. “I know.”

I had to say it anyway. “He’s the Grand Sorcerer of the—”

“Iknow.”