Page 157 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

And Merry knows those things.

The knowledge moves through me slowly, touching places I’ve kept guarded even from myself. She knows what I want and what frightens me. She knows the private logic I used to make wanting someone feel less dangerous. And she knew it all before I had decided whether she was allowed to.

My face must change, because her eyes narrow slightly.

“What did you just figure out?”

I shake my head and lean back against the island.

I look at her for a long moment before I can make myself say it. At how she’s standing tall in front of me, her eyes going wild searching for the answers we might not have in between us. At how her breathing is stilted and ragged and almost desperate to catch up to her mind.

“You know things about me, too.”

And there it is. The part neither of us has been able to reach while we’ve been busy being shocked by bracelets and five hundred dollars and the statistical improbability of apparently dating our own anonymous internet confidante.

We both know too much.

Things we might have shared eventually, but not yet. Not like this. We told each other the truth when we thought it was going somewhere else.

“I think I’m going to go home,” I say.

Merry’s eyes move to mine. She doesn’t react immediately, and then she nods slowly. “Okay.”

I walk to the front, get my coat from the hooks by the door. We stop there awkwardly, close enough that under any other circumstances I would kiss her goodbye. I can tell she feels it, too. Her hand lifts slightly before falling back to her side.

“Goodnight, Merry.”

“Goodnight.”

CHAPTER 43

FLORA

“Have you spoken to Merry yet?” Maggie asks as she sits down at the table.

Mamá pauses with the refrigerator door open.

It isn’t dramatic. She doesn’t turn around immediately or demand to know who Merry is. She simply stops moving for long enough that I notice, one hand still wrapped around the container she was reaching for. And, for all she knows, Merry could be a coworker. A client at the café. A witch customer. An infinite combination of roles.

But Fausto notices, too, and with enough attention that his phone lowers a few inches across the table from me.

I look at Maggie and shake my head as surreptitiously as possible. She has been in my house for approximately four minutes and is already causing all sorts of chaos.

There was a reason I asked her to come here instead of meeting somewhere after work. Three days have passed since I left Merry standing in her kitchen, and while that has been enough time for the initial shock to settle into something I can examine without wanting to crawl out of my own skin, it has not made me particularly good company.

I didn’t want a bar. I didn’t want to sit across from Maggie at some restaurant and recount the most bizarre romantic development of my life—of anyone’s life!—while a server periodically appeared to ask whether we needed anything else.

I wanted my house. My mother making too much food. Fausto ignoring us at the table. Maggie sitting beside me with a glass of wine while I tried to cryptically explain why I still hadn’t spoken to Merry.

Maggie’s eyes flick to my mother. “Oh,” she says.

I stare at her until she understands exactly how much I hate her.

“Who is Merry?” My mother clears her throat and closes the refrigerator. When she turns around, her hands are holding an old carryout container from the Mexican restaurant down the block that she's reused hundreds of times, a very curious expression on her face. She looks almost… hopeful.

“No one⁠—”

“Her girlfriend,” Maggie interrupts, and the only reaction I can muster is a very loud groan and a slap to my forehead.