Page 90 of Vengefully Matched

“Certainly,” said the woman. Priscilla.

She followed Agatha in, and when Agatha went to close the door, and lean against it, Priscilla watched her, stalking back and forth across the room like some sort of dangerous, sleek jungle cat. Emotion warred on her face, and Agatha had the fleeting thought that maybe she should have asked a few more questions before letting a stranger into her personal space. Still, her body, and her intuition, said this woman was not a threat.

“You don’t recognize me at all?” the woman finally said. Her features were tight with worry, her pouty mouth set in a line.

Agatha shook her head. “I feel like maybe I’ve seen you in passing. You do look familiar, but I can’t place you, I’m sorry. The coffee shop on campus, maybe?”

Priscilla looked horrified. She tugged at her sleek black side braid. “Campus?”

“Yeah, where I work.” Agatha frowned. Maybe not the coffee shop, then.

“You work…” Priscilla sounded as though this was incomprehensible, which was strange. A university adjunct wasn’t the most glamorous job, but surely it wasn’t shameful enough to provoke this kind of disbelief.

“At a college?” Agatha crossed her arms. She must really be a stranger, so it was odd that this Priscilla felt so familiar. She toyed with the idea of giving her a piece of her mind about how condescending it was to react that way to her job, but something stopped her. Maybe it was those killer cheekbones. Agatha decided she was willing to let it slide and see where this interaction could take her. For science. And research.

The other woman dragged a hand down her face, letting out a deep sigh.

“Listen,” started Agatha, walking toward the woman carefully, noting the way she froze, the way her eyes tracked Agatha’s movements, her body. “Maybe we could, you know. Get to know each other?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. She was on deadline, for god’s sake, and she didn’t have time for a whole song and dance where she pretended she wanted anything other than to be as close to the mystery woman as possible. She couldn’t explain it, but she didn’t just want this woman. She trusted her implicitly. And besides, Priscilla was smoking hot.

Moving as if on instinct, which was wild, because she had literally just met this person, she reached for Priscilla’s face, tracing a finger down the side of it. The other woman’s skin was so soft. She couldn’t not touch it. Priscilla caught her hand.

“Wait,” she said, clutching the hand to her face, and then dropping it. “We do know each other.”

Agatha frowned, then stepped back. Something familiar tugged at the edge of her mind, but she knew she would have remembered someone who made her feel like this. She might be scatterbrained at times, but it wasn’t as though Agatha could forget an entire person.

“I’m sorry,” she started.

The woman shook her head. “Can I just make a quick call?” She tugged miserably at her braid again.

This was odd behavior, to pace the living room and then insist on pausing for a phone call. But upon quick analysis, Agatha determined that she could trust her feelings. Priscilla felt like home. She knew in her bones she could trust this woman. And besides, Priscilla was definitely hot enough to excuse that kind of crazy.

“Sure,” she said, crossing her arms.

Priscilla pulled out a phone, tapped it, and raised it to her ear. “Az. Found her.” The relief in her voice was palpable.

She couldn’t hear the response from whoever Az was, but that reaction was a bit alarming. Maybe her face showed it, because Priscilla looked concerned, raised a hand, and continued. “I mean, I finally found the most beautiful woman in the world.”

My brother, she mouthed.

That was definitely crazy behavior, calling her brother at this precise moment, but again. Those lips. The smooth strip of her stomach visible beneath the cropped sweater. Who was she to turn down a little bit of crazy?

Agatha bit her lip. Fine. The woman was still hot enough to allow it. She wasn’t proud of that mental calculus, but there it was anyway.

“The thing is, if memory was an issue here, what kind of spell would fix it?” Priscilla spoke haltingly, as though she was choosing her words carefully.

She puzzled over that one. What could this woman possibly mean by spell? It couldn’t be spelling and letters, and it didn’t sound like she meant a fainting spell. She couldn’t possibly mean a magic spell, unless…

Agatha whirled around, checking the corners. There was no one else here. No hidden cameras she could think of. She’d been renting this cabin for years, though she couldn’t quite remember how many, and she’d never had any issues.

Still. Was she on some kind of reality television show, about to be punked?

Priscilla was nodding and listening, and then for a second, she looked like she was going to start snapping her fingers. She hung up the phone, stuck it in her pocket, and returned the full strength of her gaze, dizzyingly alluring, to Agatha. “Can I make some tea?”

“Sure,” said Agatha. She might let this beautiful stranger do anything, foolish or not. Tea seemed pretty tame on the spectrum of possibilities.

Priscilla walked to the kitchen area, which was just around the corner, and then Agatha remembered that after a full day of work, she ought to back it all up and shut down the computer for the night. With any luck, she wouldn’t want to pull the research out later. She hoped she’d be knuckles deep in a different sort of passion.

“Tea is in the cabinet, and there should be a kettle sitting on the stove,” she yelled, making for the dining room table and her computer.