Page 19 of Enchanted to Meet You

Rosalie’s face fell. “Wait. No, don’t dothat. That’s not—”

I had no intention of destroying Goody Fletcher’s book. But Rosalie didn’t need to know that.

“And I think we should leave Billy alone, too.”

Rosalie, her expression stunned, stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “What do you mean, leave Billy alone?”

“I mean neither of us should do any more spells on him. Maybe he’ll work things out for himself if we’d just let him be.”

“Work things out for himself?” Rosalie looked shocked. She’d stopped chewing her gum again. “Why would I want him towork things out for himself? Billy and I were meant to be together. Do you know who his father is?”

Billy’s father was Will Walker of Walker Hardware. There were seven locations in the tristate area. Everyone I knew owned a snow shovel they’d bought at Walker’s.

A Walker and Hopkins union would form one of the wealthiestfamily dynasties in West Harbor history—possibly all of Connecticut.

“Billy and I would be together by now if you hadn’t come along with your stupid cottage magic and ruined things,” Rosalie went on. “But fortunately, I know how to fix it. Just give me the book, I’ll do the spell and take him off your hands, and in a week, it will be like none of this ever happened, and everything will go back to normal.”

I thought about it. I had to admit, the idea was tempting. To be able to sleep through the night again? To have good grades again? To see Billy laughing and being the sweet guy he’d been before any of this had happened?

Yeah, I thought about it. But only for a second.

“No,” I said, and shook my head.

“What do you mean,no?”

“I mean no. What about Billy?”

“Whatabouthim?”

“Shouldn’t he have a say in this? If this whole thing has taught me anything, it’s that human beings have the right to their own autonomy, and should be free to love who they want without the interference of magic.”

Rosalie snorted. She actually snorted. “Oh, please. Boys like Billyneedwitches like me to tell them what to do, so they don’t make dumb decisions that will screw up the rest of their lives like he’s doing right now. So just hand over the book, and I’ll clean up the massive mess you made, and everything will be all right.”

But still I hesitated. Alarms were sounding in my head—and in my gut. Something was telling me that giving the book to Rosalie Hopkins would be a massive mistake.

“I can’t, Rosalie,” I said. “I’m sorry. The book says that what you give your neighbor comes back to you, times three. If you do a spell and your intentions aren’t—”

“Oh, no.” Rosalie’s pretty face twisted into a mask of rage. “Don’t youdaregive me that Rule of Three crap. You know as well as I do that rules like that don’t apply to witches like me!”

I knew no such thing. All I knew was that the bell had long since rung. At the sound of it, a first year I hadn’t even realized was in the restroom with us had burst from one of the stalls and, after giving Rosalie and me a wild-eyed glance, flew out the door, not even pausing to wash her hands. That’s how much she didn’t want to engender Rosalie’s wrath.

I should have followed her, because now all of that wrath was focused on me.

“You want to worry about myintentions?” Rosalie was breathing hard as she stared at me. “Then worry about what Iintendto do to you if you don’t give me that booktoday.”

I don’t know what I expected her to do to me. Hex me, maybe? Put a curse on me? But certainly not what she did, which was glance toward the restroom’s ceiling tiles and, a second later, raise her arm and cause them to unleash a torrent of rain down on me.

Of course it wasn’t really raining indoors. What Rosalie had done was set off the fire sprinklers.

But as far as I could tell, she hadn’t done it by lighting anything on fire. She’d done it with her mind, and by muttering a short incantation, none of the words of which I managed to catch. I was too busy ducking to avoid the deluge of water, and reevaluating my position on giving her Goody Fletcher’s book.

“Rosalie,” I cried from beneath the bank of sinks, where I’d gone to crouch to avoid getting soaked (it wasn’t helping). “We’re both witches. We should be working together, not against one another.”

Rosalie, who was standing in the alcove by the doorway where the sprinklers didn’t reach, and so hadn’t gotten a drop of wateron her, looked down at me pitilessly. “Nice try. But only one of us is arealwitch. And even worse for you? I’m a storm witch. And I’m going to keep making it storm until you givemethe book.”

“All right.” I couldn’t believe the words were coming out of my mouth. But I was freezing cold, soaking wet, and scrunched beneath a bank of bathroom sinks. What else was I going to say? “You can have the book. Just make the water stop!”

As suddenly as the cascade of water had started, it stopped, and Rosalie was all sweetness and light again. “There,” she said, smiling. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”