Page 67 of Impractical Magic

“Yep. Not everybody can say they’ve had the impact on their hometown that you have,” he joked.

“I guess not.” She smiled. She was enjoying getting to know this new person, this adult Nate. He was as sweet and funny as his teenaged self, but there was a sturdiness to him now. A seriousness, but not in a bad way—a seriousness of purpose.

“This is where I was going to take you all those years ago,” he said softly. “On our date. The date that wasn’t.”

Scarlett’s eyes widened. “Oh no, really?!”

“Yeah.” A wistful smile played on his lips. “I was going to pack a picnic basket. Steal a couple of beers from my dad.”

“Wow, you were gonna pull out all the stops, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I had a whole pine-y, Heathcliff-y thing going on back then.”

“If Heathcliff had just brought Cathy a couple of beers, that whole mess might have turned out differently.” Scarlett impulsively reached out and grasped Nate’s hand. “I’m sorry I missed out on our date. I truly am.”

“Me too.” He squeezed her hand back. “But you couldn’t help it.”

“No, I couldn’t. Not after what happened to Papa. Still, though. I hate that it happened that way.” To lighten the mood, she added, “I’m also sorry I can’t just conjure us a picnic basket right now. But the way things are going . . .”

“Oh yeah, best not. We don’t want to end up like poor Linda Injabire.”

“Hey, speaking of the . . . uh . . . the current mess . . .” Scarlett began.

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I had the dubious honor of conversing with Madame Louise Demain today.”

“Oh boy. How’d that go?”

“She scared the shit out of me,” Scarlett admitted.

“Yeah, that’ll happen. Look, the thing you need to understand is that she treats everybody that way. FedEx won’t deliver to her house anymore because she insists on telling the drivers when they’re going to die. That’s just Louise.”

“Well, what do you think of her otherwise? Like, beyond her charming personality. Is she smart?”

“She’s a time witch.” Nate shrugged. “They don’t make dumb ones. Why do you ask?”

Scarlett sighed. “Because she indicated that I, personally, am supposed to fix the infestation and save magic. That the power is within me . . . literally.”

“What, like, in your kidneys?”

“See, I knew somebody was going to make that exact joke.”

“Sorry.” He chuckled. “All joking aside, what do you think she meant?”

Scarlett shook her head. “No idea. But I’ll tell you what . . . as creepy as Louise was, something even weirder happened when I left the shop.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “I saw Violet with that magician, Maximillian. I don’t like the look of that little partnership at all. Maximillian makes me nervous. I don’t care that Luna thinks he’s a sweetheart or that Del thinks he’s an idiot. I’m starting to think both my sisters are wrong.”

“To be honest, Scar, the whole witches versus magicians thing . . . I’ve never really understood it. Seems to me like your kind and magician kind are all in the same business, basically. I mean, aren’t you?”

“Well, what I’ve always been told—and, of course, Mama has a whole speech on this; she’d lecture us over and over—is that witchcraft is a way of being, while magic is a hobby.”

“In other words, you all think they’re fakers and they all think you’re snobs.”

“Essentially.” Scarlett chuckled. “Yep, that’s the long and the short of it.”

“You know, it’s just occurring to me now, but . . .” Nate’s expression darkened. “I’ve had a weirdly large number of magicians in the hardware store lately. They come in all the time now—always different ones, too. Never the same face twice.”

“Are they trying to get into the magic storeroom? Because that could be trouble.”