Page 88 of Enchanted to Meet You

How much of what I knew about him was fake, too?

I stood up and slipped from the room, leaving my coat and bag behind. I’d find Derrick, get a reasonable explanation out of him, and be back in time for whatever this ceremony was. What was it his brother had said? We can’t choose family.

No, we certainly can’t. None of this was Derrick’s fault.

Was it?

Except that when I got out to the bar area, Derrick was nowhere to be seen. There was no one there at all except the bartender, busily cleaning glasses, and the jazz trio, packing up to go home.

“Excuse me,” I said to the musicians. “Did you see a man in a motorcycle jacket come through here just now?”

“Tall, blond, chiseled cheekbones?” asked the drummer.

“That would be the one,” I said.

He pointed toward the double doors to the parking lot. “He went that way. He was on his phone.”

Of course. Derrick was always on his phone. Who was he talking to? I had no idea.

Maybe it was time I found out.

I was about to hit the double doors to go looking for him in the parking lot when someone called my name. I turned and saw Rosalie standing behind me.

“Jessica.” She no longer wore the cat-who-swallowed-the-canary grin. If anything, she looked somber. She still clutched her tablet, but she’d ditched her headset. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I turned back to the doors. “Now is really not a good time. And that was a very shitty thing to do, Rosalie. I don’t knowwhat’s going on between those two, but there’s obviously bad blood, and you just—”

“I know. And I’m sorry. Jessica, I’m pretty sure we’ve both been played.”

That caused me to drop my fingers from the door handles. “What? How?”

“I think it has something to do with this.” She lifted the tablet. “Does this look familiar to you?”

I knew I shouldn’t. I had no reason to trust Rosalie Hopkins. Sure, she and her husband had given me a car, but honestly, after everything they’d put me through, theyowedme that car. That didn’t make us even.

But somehow I found myself crossing the bar to see what she wanted to show me, aware that the guys in the jazz trio and bartender were watching my every move.Oooh, cat fight!they were probably thinking. I didn’t care. I had to see what Rosalie was talking about.

When I got to her side, I saw the last thing I was expecting on the tablet between her French manicured fingers.

It was the prophecy. A photo of the exact same page from the grimoire that Derrick had given to me a week ago, predicting the prevention of the destruction of West Harbor by the Chosen One and Bringer of Light.

“What?” I snatched the tablet from her hands in order to get a better look. “How did you get this? Who gave it to you?”

Rosalie glanced at the men in the room, all of whom were staring at me in alarm due to the intensity of my reaction.

“Uh,” she said. “Why don’t we step into the ladies’ room to discuss this, so we can have some privacy.”

Even though the last time I’d stepped into a ladies’ room with Rosalie, it had not gone well, I agreed. I needed to knowwhat was going on. Besides, back then I’d been a young and naive witch. Now I was older and, if not wiser, at least less willing to believe Rosalie’s crap.

She started ladling it on the second the door closed behind us.

“Jessica, I’m so sorry,” she said, taking the tablet from me, then gliding over to the nearest couch to sit down on it.

That’s right. There werecouchesinside the West Harbor Yacht Club ladies’ room. Two of them, in some kind of retro pink-and-green Laura Ashley floral pattern. I guess they were there for women to stretch out on in case they fainted from having seen a circumcised penis, or something. I don’t know.

There were also baskets of Tampax, Halloween candy, and hairspray by the sinks. Those I remembered from the few times Dina and I had been there as tweens. A part of me wanted to inhale the candy, but I knew I had to focus.

“Rosalie, did Professor Brewster send that to you?” I demanded, pointing at the tablet. “And tell you that you’re the Chosen One?”