“Haven’t you ever heard of personal space?” I demanded, elbowing him in the ribs with my only available arm. Thinking I might need both of them, I put the bag of potions on the ground beside me. Not wanting to treat the Fendi purse so callously, I kept that around my arm.

  “Where you’re concerned, no I haven’t heard of personal space.”

  “Well, consider this a lesson,” I said and further elbowed him. He responded by taking a step back and wrapping his arms against his broad chest.

  “Don’t think you’re going to weasel your way out of my question,” he said, once he was a safe foot or so away.

  “I was buying potions. What do you think I was there doing?” I spat back.

  “It looked like you were trying to intimidate her,” he answered. There was no teasing in his voice either. He truly sounded angry.

  Golden brows drew tight over his eyes, which shone a searing green as his power ran over his skin. It wasn’t magic the way I understood it. Magic I knew came from nature, from the Goddess, from the universe. The power vampires possessed came from that unnatural spark, the animating force that was opposed to true magic. A horrid, traitorous part of me wanted to run my hands over his skin, pull him close enough that I could bathe in the cool fire of his aura.

  But Mother hadn’t raised me to play with dead things.

  “Well,” I started haughtily, nose in the air. “I guess you’re blind as well as deaf, because I was just shopping.”

  Lorcan continued to glower at me. “Shopping for potions you can very well make yourself?”

  “I’m no good at brewing. Never have been and her… prices can’t be beat.”

  “I’m not a fool, Wanda.”

  “Ah, I see you’ve remembered my name. Very good!” I smiled sweetly, but he’d have none of it.

  Before I could stop him, he picked up the paper sack of potions, which I’d placed on the ground beside me. Despite my protests, he rummaged through the bag before producing a handful of vials.

  “Circe Oil, for... romantic encounters,” Lorcan read off the ingredients before continuing on to the next potion, and then the next.

  My cheeks began a steady burn as he read off the potion names. Then he looked at me with a broad grin. “Six seduction potions? Not really necessary, sweetling. You know I won’t need much persuading.”

  Never, in my one hundred and forty years of life, had any man humiliated me like this. My entire body was shaking when he finally dropped the potions back into the bag and fixed me with a skeptical stare.

  “As if I’d waste one on you!”

  “Then, perhaps you’re hoping to spice things up with the local men in town?”

  “No!” I yelled at him. “I need the potions to treat the clothing I made!” I fished inside the bag, glaring at the potions until I seized the Circe’s Oil and shoved it into his face. “Paired with the right spell on a satin nightie, this little number will reinvigorate someone’s sex life after it’s fallen into a slump.”

  “Ah,” he said and nodded, like he suddenly approved of the potion. “And that one?”

  “Caliph’s Beloved, paired with my magic, will help some poor woman achieve orgasm, even when her lover only does the bare minimum.”

  “Is there really a market for that?” he asked, frowning at me. “My lovers have never and would never need such a thing.”

  “Though I sincerely doubt the truth in that,” I grumbled, “to answer your question, yes there is a market for Caliph’s Beloved!”

  “And that one?”

  “Courting Oil on a nice dress allows you the opportunity to be at the right place at the right time in order to meet a good long-term partner.” I dropped the vials into the bag again with a sound of disgust and gave him a shove. He let me do it, taking a wary step back. His anger had dwindled, but he wasn’t exactly smiling. I glared at him once again. “Hard as it might be for you to grasp, my world does not revolve around you!”

  He studied me for a moment or two. “Then you aren’t going to attempt to run Poppy out of this town?”

  I glared at him. I didn’t like the fact that he was so concerned about what happened to the irritating gypsy. “Obviously, I can’t do that, Einstein!” I faux-yelled at him. “You seem to own every property in town, and also thanks to you, I’m locked into the duplex for the next year! Not to mention my credit is crap owing to the fact that I don’t have any, and my savings is completely wrapped up in my shop! I still have to pay you rent, which means I don’t have the time or energy to worry about some stupid gypsy!

  “She’s not stupid.”

  I hated how he kept coming to her defense, and my anger showed in the tone of my voice. “Rest assured, Tybalt Dalloway, I’m not going to make your girlfriend move away.” I hadn’t meant to sound so… jealous high schooler, but there it was.

  “She isn’t my girlfriend.”

  “Right, because that sasquatch is already filling the role. So I guess you and that dumb human can sulk about it together!”

  “Though the human quite clearly has feelings for her, I do not.”

  “Blah!” I yelled at him. “Then why do you keep defending her?”

  “Because I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s young and naïve, but she’s a good kid.”

  “She’s a grown woman!”

  “Compared to me and my long life, she is merely an infant.”

  “And I don’t care,” I snapped at him. “I don’t care about you, I don’t care about her, I don’t care about the yeti or the human. At this rate, I don’t care about anything other than my survival!”

  I spun away from him then, cheeks still flaming as I shoved the paper bag of potions into my purse. The door to my shop was just a foot away. Thanks to my cute little abomination, I had the only key to the shop. If I could make it inside and lock the door, Lorcan would have to make a scene trying to get to me. The human authorities would get involved, and I was more than sure Lorcan wouldn’t want that. Our kind, er his kind, wanted to avoid humans whenever possible.

  I had my hand on the knob when Lorcan seized my elbow.

  “Wanda, wait,” he began as he yanked me backwards and then the unthinkable happened.

  His backward tug was enough to tip the precariously balanced paper sack over the lip of my purse. I watched, in one of those moments that seem infinitely longer than they really are, as the bag hit the pavement. Glass shattered and around a dozen streams of brightly colored liquid streamed from the bag.

  Lorcan and I stared at it in a shared moment of quiet horror.

  And then something inside me just... snapped. The toxic brew of emotions I’d been doing my best to suppress over the last week bubbled over. A thousand needle pricks ran over my skin, my hands clenched into fists, and I opened my mouth to curse him. But what actually came out was infinitely worse.

  Tears hazed my vision, I hunched forward and sobbed. And when I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. My knees gave out, and I slid down the window to the ground below, backside smarting all the while.

  I turned my face into the building, trying in vain to hide my tears. I shouldn’t be crying! My body burned with the utter shame of it. Crying! In front of a vampire! In front of the whole damn street!

  I could kill him for reducing me to this. I would kill him. He deserved it.

  The potions were replaceable. I knew that.

  But to invest in yet another thing and have it literally go to pieces before my eyes was too much. I had no home, no coven, no friends, and no future. Nothing but the vampire responsible for taking it all away.

  “Feck...” Lorcan whispered as he bent over and reached down, as if to help me up. “Wanda, I…”

  I lashed out wildly and scored a lucky hit, slamming my fist into the side of his face. And that only resulted in my fist aching. Of course, Lorcan was just fine. The bastard.

  All the same, Lorcan took a step back, just as the sasquatch’s basso rumble rolled over the street like localized thunder.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?” he demanded, crossing the lane in two long strides.

  Roy towered over Lorcan like an enormous furry mountain. From my vantage point, his head actually eclipsed the amber glow of the streetlights.

  He craned his head down toward me, absorbing my blotchy face, the tears collecting in the neckline of the gray angora sweater, and then shifted to the sodden bag of broken potions beside me.

  He rounded on the vampire and let loose an animal snarl so savage, I recoiled, pressing as close as I could to my front stoop. Haven Hollow was a sleepy town, and even Main Street wasn’t busy at the moment. A good thing too, because any tourists would be scurrying the other way, craning their necks to try and spot a bear.

  “You’ve gone too far this time, Rowe,” Roy growled, voice more animal than man.

  “And you would do very well to mind your own business,” Lorcan responded, his eyes just as narrowed.

  But Roy was enraged. And he didn’t look like he was going to calm down any time. “Clearly the lady has a problem with you.”

  “The lady?” Lorcan started with a laugh. “You mean… my heir?”

  Roy glared right back at him. “Whatever she is to you doesn’t matter to me. She wants you gone and that means I want you gone.”

  Damn the gypsy girl for taking the big, beastly man. I could have frenched him right here, right now. I hadn’t seen any man quite so beautiful in a long time.

  “Big Foot does not frighten me,” Lorcan said as he glared at Roy.

  Roy took a step nearer him. “We can take this up with the council, if you prefer.”

  “You would do well to keep your nose out of the business of others,” Lorcan responded, but a second or so later, he disappeared, blending in with the night.

  Roy knelt so he could look me in the eyes and I had to figure I looked terrible: eyes swollen, cheeks puffy, nose running, and horrible, hiccuping sobs still gripping me.

  “Just... hold on. I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

  Roy straightened out of his crouch and loped across the street toward Poppy’s store. The human man was waiting in the entryway and exchanged a few words with Roy before crossing the street toward me. The sasquatch disappeared inside the shop.

  I needed to get inside my own shop before I made even more of a spectacle of myself. Mother would be apoplectic when Hellcat gave his next report, and I was more than sure he was plastered to the window, watching every second of my meltdown. Disgraceful.

  My knees wobbled when I tried to stand, and only the intervention of a pair of strong male hands kept me from sinking to the concrete again. They braced my waist, very warm even through the sweater. When I lifted my streaming eyes, I found the generically handsome human giving me a polite, if not sheepish, smile.

  “You looked like you might need some help,” he offered.

  “What’s your name again?” I asked, wishing I’d bothered myself with remembering it—Melvin or Martin or something.

  “Marty.”

  “Right.”

  He smiled and he was even more handsome… well, for a human. Not only that, but he appeared to be a decent sort.

  “Wanda, was it?”

  I nodded.

  Marty got a better grip on my waist and half-carried me to the front door, helping me unlock it before opening the door for me and seeing to it that I was in a better state than I had been a moment earlier. Hellcat immediately took notice of us and trotted up to him, sniffing Marty disdainfully.

  “Cute cat,” Marty offered.

  “Cute?” Hellcat responded with a growl. “Foolish mortal! I am anything but cute… and you would do well to watch your mouth lest I…”

  “Do nothing,” I finished for the little rodent.

  “Excuse me?” Marty asked.

  I shrugged. “Oh, it’s just my familiar. He’s pissed you called him cute.”

  “Oh,” Marty answered as if he dealt with talking pets every day. Then he looked at Hellcat. “Ugly cat,” he said as I laughed. Hellcat skulked off and Marty turned to face me. “How are you doing?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. Mainly because I didn’t understand these people. They smiled too much, and they were too eager to please—too nice. There had to be a price tag attached somewhere.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Being so nice to me.”

  He stared at me for a second with a half-smile, as though I were being cute. It fell away when he realized I was dead serious.

  “Witches don’t help each other?” he asked.

  “No, not unless they want something.”

  Marty struggled for words, but eventually settled on the ever eloquent; “That sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I cocked my head to the side. “I guess it does.”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes and took a few deep breaths as Marty kept up a stream of questions—probably in order to keep my thoughts occupied and away from my breakdown. Did I really enchant clothing? How did that work? How long had I been doing it?

  And strangely enough, it helped. By the time I’d finished explaining the basic mechanics of spellcraft, I could finally breathe again.

  “You know, you’re not so bad… for a human,” I said, giving him a smile I was still struggling to feel. And then something occurred to me. “How come you weren’t surprised when I said I was a witch?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had so many surprises lately, nothing can really surprise me anymore.”

  “I thought humans weren’t supposed to know about the supernatural?” I continued.

  He nodded. “They’re not supposed to know.”

  “Then?”

  “I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and then was sworn to secrecy when I signed one of Ophelia’s contracts.”

  I nodded, not in the mood to ask him just what had happened. Frankly, I didn’t really care.

  “Although, you’re the first and only witch I’ve ever met.”

  “Well, I hope to be the last,” I said honestly.

  He nodded and grew quiet for a second or two. “Hey, um… would you want to… grab, you know, coffee sometime?” Then he paused. “Do witches even drink coffee?”

  “I do,” I answered with a little smile.

  “Drink coffee or want to get some with me?”

  “Drink it.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t mind going for coffee… if things were different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t like taking a losing bet.”

  Marty frowned. “Why do I feel like I should be offended?”

  I laughed. I mean, he was charming. “It’s pretty clear you’ve got… feelings for Poppy.”

  Marty went very still. “Wow… it’s that obvious?”

  “I’ve been alive for a hundred and forty years. I know when a man is pining.”

  He chuckled and had the decency not to look surprised or alarmed when I revealed my age. “Funny. You don’t look a day over a hundred and five.”

  “Not funny.”

  He grinned. “Just kidding.”

  My door opened, and the gypsy woman in question walked in, Roy following in her wake like an enormous, burly shadow. She clutched a paper sack carefully under one arm. She stopped a few feet shy of us before offering it to me.

  “Here. I found the copy of your receipt and picked out replacements for every potion that broke. I even included new candles. I wouldn’t trust the ones in your bag to work properly. They were anointed by fifteen different potions, so who knows what would happen if you tried to light them now.”

  I stared at the paper bag, then at her round, hopeful face.

  And, I prickled. “I don’t need charity.”

  “You bought them, and they broke before you got them home. It’s not charity, it’s a warranty.” Her tone was stern, like she wasn’t going to back down. “Besides, we’re neighbors. If you don’t take the bag now, I’ll just walk over tomorrow morning and shove it in your mailbox.”

  I took the bag from her outstretched hand, stowing it at the bottom of my purse before anything else could happen to it.

  I was at a loss for words.

  I just… I didn’t understand why everyone was so nice—why they were trying to make me feel better—why they even cared. There was one person in the entire world I’d stick my neck out for, and I’d known her since the moment of her birth. These people didn’t know anything about me, and as far as Poppy was concerned, I was her enemy. And, yet...

  “I need to give you something for the potions,” I muttered, not comfortable with the fact that I owed her something. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. I wanted to be independent. “But, I’m sort of… broke.” There was no sort of about it.

  “Invite me over for dinner some night and we’ll call it even,” Poppy suggested with a shrug and smile.

  “I would,” I started, not even believing my own ears. A witch inviting a gypsy over for dinner? It was unheard of! “But I can’t cook and even if I could, you wouldn’t have anywhere to sit…”

  And that was when words just started dribbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. I found myself explaining how the moving truck had crashed and all my valuables had been destroyed. Then I moved on to the fabrics and clothing that had been stolen out of my closet and how I barely had a penny to my name. Before I knew it, I was sobbing all over again.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Few Hours Later

  “It’s unnatural,” Hellcat hissed as we both stood in the center of my living room, eyes wide in disbelief. After Hellcat said he’d tell Mother I was sleeping in the shop, I’d opted to return to the duplex. The little rodent really knew how to make a bad day even worse.

  “Very,” I answered, not really sure what else to say.

  “I don’t like it.”

  For once, my familiar and I were in total agreement.

  Nothing happening in the house was natural.

  It was maybe twenty minutes ago that my doorbell rang. And as soon as I’d answered it, I found Poppy, Marty and a gangly blonde preteen Poppy had introduced as her son, Finn, standing on the landing.

  Before I could hex them, they came pouring in, each of them talking over the other one until I wasn’t sure why they were here or when they were going to leave. Shortly after I closed the front door, the doorbell rang again and this time it was Roy who was standing on the landing. Behind him was a U-Haul truck and the back was open. Two men to whom I had yet to be introduced were busy unloading what appeared to be… furniture?