Page 64 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

Also, if I’m being completely honest, because The Third Fairy told me to stop treating wanting things like a problem to solve—and I guess I have decided this means I should start saying yes to parties hosted by men who don’t own bed frames.

I take a drink.

It’s stronger than I expected.

“Jesus.”

Veronica looks pleased. “Good?”

“I think it burned a layer off of my esophagus.”

“Drink slower.”

She walks away when someone calls her name, leaving me beside the kitchen island with Dani, who has moved on from eating candy corn individually to combining different colors from the harvest mix and insisting she can taste a difference.

I open my mouth to tell her she knows exactly what ingredients are in each and that she should find a hobby when I see Flora.

Every thought I’ve ever been able to conjure about candy corn immediately disappears.

She’s across the room near the patio door, turned partly away from me while she talks to a woman I don’t recognize.

For a moment, my brain does the strange little shuffle it always seems to do when I see someone somewhere they don’t belong.

Except Flora belongs here. Obviously.

She belongs wherever she wants to be.

It’s me who has apparently filed her under The Spindle, along with ceramic mugs and the smell of coffee and that little section of counter where I nearly concussed myself last time I saw her. And moonlight.

Seeing her without any of it around her feels oddly intimate.

Her hair is different tonight. Loose and wild instead of pulled back for work, falling over her shoulders as she leans toward the woman beside her to hear something over the music. She’s holding a drink in one hand. Her other hand moves when she talks, which I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before.

She’s laughing.

I have seen Flora smile, in our limited interactions, of course. But I don’t think I’ve seen her laugh.

Something about that distinction feels important.

“Merry.”

I don’t know who is calling my name, but I don’t answer.

“Merry.”

A finger snaps once in front of my face.

I blink and find Dani watching me, one meticulously groomed eyebrow raised.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Merryweather Hawthorne, were you staring?”

Heat creeps into my face before I can stop it, which is irritating because I could have convincingly denied it if my body hadn’t reacted so immediately to Flora’s presence.

I look back across the room anyway.

Flora is still near the patio door, although the woman next to her has moved closer to say something into her ear. Flora tips her head to listen, smiling as she does, and something inside me shrinks a little.