Page 34 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

She glances at me. “Witch stuff?”

I nod.

The server stops by our table, and I order a beer and something involving fried potatoes that Maggie immediately says she’ll share. By the time he moves away, she’s taken her cardigan off completely and draped it over the chair beside her.

“How’s that going?”

“The Third Fairy?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Busy.”

“How busy?”

I think about my mother’s dining room table, which I haven’t actually seen the surface of since the spring. “Busy enough that I packed twenty-three orders today and still have eleven left.”

Maggie’s eyebrows rise. “Flora.”

“What?”

She reaches for her wine. “That’s a lot of orders.”

“I had some left over from the weekend.”

“That doesn’t make twenty-three not a lot.”

“It’s not that many, really.”

“Okay.”

There was a time when Maggie would have argued with me. She would have told me I was ridiculous and laughed loudly at my easy dismissal. She would have asked me exactly how much money I’m making a day, then probably tried to calculate what that meant yearly while I told her to mind her business.

Instead, she takes a sip of wine and lets me have the metaphorical last word.

I don’t like it as much as I thought I would. And the realization comes quietly enough that I almost miss it.

“I also spent an unreasonable amount of time messaging a customer,” I add.

Maggie looks at me again. “Problem customer?”

“Not exactly.”

My beer arrives, saving me from having to explain Primavera1959, which is good because I’m not entirely sure how to explain her.

A week ago, she was the woman demanding a refund for a spell that had apparently worked incredibly fast but incredibly wrong. Now, I’ve somehow created a multi-step reversal process that involves assignments and follow-up correspondence and considerably more of my attention than I normally give a single customer.

She’s…Interesting.

I take a sip. “Custom order, which I don’t get many of,” I say finally. “It’s complicated.”

“Those are your favorite.”

“No, I prefer the abundance ones.”

“Well, they used to be, then.”

I turn toward her.