Page 6 of Enchanted Village

“Dear god,” Liza said, panting as she came to stand next to Margaret. “Are you all in one piece? Any limbs I need to try to reattach?”

Margaret chuckled. “No need. The kurlop’s already—”

But Liza held up a hand, following Margaret’s gaze to where Silas’s retreating figure was just disappearing around the bend.

“Hold on,” Liza said. “Was that a man? Were you cavorting with a man in the woods?”

“Cavorting seems like a bit of a stretch,” Margaret said. “More like casually met.”

Liza arched an eyebrow and hooked an elbow around Margaret’s arm. “Start from the beginning. But before you do, get me back into civilization before I become more mud than witch.”

Chapter Four

Of course, there wasn’t much for Margaret to tell Liza—much to her friend’s chagrin. There had barely been an interaction to speak of, and besides, Margaret didn’t have time to waste discussing the man.

“You did it again, didn’t you,” Liza said as they wove their way back through the cobblestone streets.

“I did what, exactly?” Margaret asked, rolling out her shoulders. Maybe she should’ve warmed up before chasing and carrying a creature first thing in the morning.

“Blew off a perfectly reasonable man,” Liza said primly.

Margaret laughed. “Liza, I didn’t blow off anyone. He just asked me a few questions. That’s all.”

Liza hmphed. “And he didn’t use any of those questions to ask you out?”

“Of course not,” Margaret said. “It was maybe . . . two minutes of an interaction. Or five. But the point is, it was nothing. We didn’t even exchange names.”

Well, that was only partially true. Silas had given her his name. She hadn’t given him hers. At least, she didn’t remember doing so. Maybe she had? She’d been so distracted by the kurlop.

Still, Liza didn’t look convinced. “Well, he should have. Why didn’t he?”

“You might want to ask him that,” Margaret pointed out. “Though I wasn’t wearing my man-catching gloves . . . maybe that was the problem.”

Liza swatted her. “I’m just saying. If not this handsome stranger, why not someone else? It’s been ages since that guy that used too much Spell-o-Gel in his hair—”

“Dawson,” Margaret filled in helpfully, grimacing at the memory of her one attempt to run her hand through the man’s hair. “And it hasn’t been ages. That was last month!”

“A month too long, in my opinion,” Liza said, pausing to wave her wand to charm a scarf that was flying away through the air back into the hands of the wizard pursuing it. “And before that, you’d been practically celibate for—”

“Liza!” Margaret snapped, glancing at the child playing in the leaves near them. Thankfully, the child did not appear to have the vocabulary to understand what Liza was talking about and simply smiled bemusedly up at the pair of them before returning to the satisfying crunch of the leaves.

“I’m only saying,” Liza said. “You’re falling into that pattern where you sequester yourself from all potential suitors. A man could walk up to you, flirt baldly in your face, and you would go on your merry way.”

“I do not sequester myself,” Margaret pointed out. “I am just . . . busy. As a business owner—”

“Absolutely not. I veto that argument,” Liza said, voice as crisp as the leaves currently being crushed on the ground as she held up a judgmental finger. “Preliminarily. I am also a business owner, and I—”

She paused, keeping the finger aloft before turning, aghast, to Margaret.

“Is this why I am also woefully single?” Liza asked, the well-enacted faux horror on her face making Margaret laugh. “Are our jobs to blame?”

“Stop that,” Margaret said with a snort. “You know as well as I do that you’re only single because you’re too smart for any of the men in the village. That, or you’ve already dumped them.”

“I could say the same about you,” Liza argued. “But the difference is I give the men a chance. You, on the other hand . . .”

She let the insinuation hang in the air between them for a moment before finishing off with one word: “Sequester.”

The truth was that Margaret really had given dating an earnest try. Really. Honestly, she had. It wasn’t just Dawson and his gel. Before him, yes, there had been a string of unfortunate dates that didn’t go anywhere—and Margaret put the blame firmly on the men for those—but before that there had been two semiserious boyfriends. Maybe even three, depending on how someone defined semiserious. But they always got so . . . squirrelly about her business. About her commitment to it.