Page 3 of Found Objects

“I appreciate that.”

She reached for me, and I took her hand in mine.

“Thank you for saving us. I was so scared of what he was going to do to Katey, and I knew Lucky was…”

She didn’t finish because we both knew the dog would have been dead. James carried a hunting knife on his belt.

“Well, it’s fortunate that I couldn’t sleep and was out for my evening walk.”

She shivered. “Oh, Mere, honey, you shouldn’t walk in them woods alone at night. You never know what’s out there.”

But I did know, and I was the scariest thing out there, no question. It was kind of her, though, given all that had just happened, to be worried about me.

“Let’s just get you all settled in, all right?”

She nodded, crying softly again as Katey hugged her puppy in the back seat.

ONE

As I hadn’t made it home until after four, I got in later that morning than usual. Not surprising, though, as I’d stayed until both Missy and Katey had fallen asleep, as they were both too terrified to close their eyes at first. Of course, once his people had passed out, so did Lucky. He just splooted, legs splayed, head on the blanket, appearing to sort of puddle out of sheer exhaustion.

“You have to be a real sonofabitch to traumatize a mother, her child, and a puppy,” Crystal O’Shea muttered as she joined me in the main intake room after I got them settled.

“Don’t shoot him when you see him,” I told her. “He’s drunk. He’ll probably pass out on the grass.”

She smiled slowly. “You know, you always say that, and the men always do. Are you aware of that?”

I grinned back. “It’s just a guess.”

She nodded. “Yes. It always is, isn’t it?” Quick shrug from me and she leaned forward. “You know, some people say you’re a witch, Mere.”

I scoffed. “You know better. You’re the witch, Crystal, not me.”

She didn’t argue, and from the wind chimes out front, the constant aroma of burning palo santo, and the sigils in each room, we both knew it was true.

“May I make you a cup of black tea before you go?” she asked, her brown eyes warm as she looked at me.

“That would be nice.”

When she got up, she ran her fingers through my hair as she passed. “I don’t know, Mere, you feel magic to me.”

“That’s because you like me.”

“That could very well be,” she said with a smile.

I chuckled, and so did she.

Now, finally arriving at work, after ten, I noticed a new car in the parking lot of The Bower on my way in from the road. Now, many people would ask, how can you tell a new car from one that had been there before? The answer was simple; the town was the size of a postage stamp, so the cars that belong to the locals, I knew on sight.

From the parking lot, I walked under the arch that led from the lot to the courtyard and stood there a moment, lifting my face to the breeze. It was a cloudy, crisp mid-October morning, which was my favorite kind. The air smelled faintly of wood smoke, pine, and earth.

Once I crossed into the restaurant—it was all open now, not cold enough yet to not have people sitting outside—I walked to the counter, just checking on the ebb and flow of my place.

“Merritt,” Evelyn “Evie” Sanchez said as she gently shoulder-checked me, having just walked out of the kitchen. “Are you listening?”

But maybe she hadn’t just walked out and I’d been standing there longer than I thought.

“What?”