Page 156 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

“Flora.”

I press my lips together.

“Please don’t sit there looking calm while I remember every humiliating thing I have ever told you.”

“I’m not calm,” I reply instinctively.

“You look so fucking calm.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice keeping things on the inside.”

She considers that, decides it’s true, and looks away. But until this moment, those words belonged to Primavera. They existed inside the narrow boundaries of Whisp, separate from the woman whose body I know and whose earrings are still sitting on my dresser.

Now there is no boundary. No carefully constructed wall to protect anyone’s feelings.

My stomach tightens.

Her messages weren’t casual confessions. They were pieces of herself she had placed somewhere she believed was safe. I had received them as The Third Fairy, with the distance and authority of a stranger. Now I’m holding them as Flora, and the weight is different.

Merry pushes away from the counter and starts walking again.

“You didn’t tell me,” she says, shaking her head as she moves. It takes me a moment to understand. “About the shop and the spells? The fact that you have an entire secret internet life where people pay you to tell them to wander around Seattle under a full moon.”

“No,” I say. “I never told you.”

“Why?”

The question isn’t accusatory. I look toward the dark window above the sink. Our reflections float faintly against the glass, separated by most of the kitchen now.

“I don’t tell many people.”

Merry knows enough about me by now that I don’t have to explain everything underneath that. The shop is mine. Private in a way that The Spindle isn’t. What began as something small became income and ritual, and a strange collection of strangers who trusted me with things they couldn’t say anywhere else.

Until one of those strangers stopped being a stranger.

“I never thought it would matter to you,” I say. The exact combination of words coming out of my mouth sounds disingenuous, and it makes my skin itch. It’s a lie that is too small to survive this room. It mattered to me. I had simply convinced myself that keeping it separate meant I could keep myself separate, too.

Merry lets out a breath and tilts her head back, eyes planted on the ceiling above her.

“Why would I not care about what makes you you?” She rubs the back of her neck, then lets her hand fall. “But then again, I never told you about the witch either.”

I look at her.

“I mean, what was I supposed to say? Just so you know, right before we met, I spent five hundred dollars on a love spell and then tried to get a refund because I thought it had accidentally sent me my male CEO?”

The laugh escapes me before I can stop it.

She turns away, but she’s smiling, too. It’s absurd, of course it is.

And for a minute or so, the absurdity gives us somewhere to stand. Eventually, Merryweather goes still. Her shoulders lower and her smile disappears, and she puts both hands on the edge of the counter and looks down between them.

When she speaks again, her voice is quieter.

“I told you about you.”

The kitchen seems to contract around us.

And I feel the weight sink in my stomach. Because it’s the same for me: the things I could admit from behind The Third Fairy that I wasn’t sure how to admit to her—to anyone—as Flora.