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He was barely out of the living room when my phone rang. Since it was inside my purse and I’d set the bag down on the floor next to the sofa, I didn’t have to reach very far to pull it out.
Josie, of course.
“Selena!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right? I just got out of a meeting and heard what happened!”
“I’m fine,” I told her, even as I allowed myself a slight smile at her words. Well, that explained why she hadn’t called me within five minutes of the accident. I did not doubt that if she hadn’t been in that meeting, she would have known about my crash right away. “And the baby’s fine. Calvin and I are home, and the Jeep’s at the repair shop. We don’t know yet whether it’s totaled.”
“How awful! Do you know what happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, knowing I needed to be circumspect here. It was all fine and well to discuss hexes and sigils with my husband, but Josie still wasn’t entirely on board with all the witchy stuff. Better to make it seem as though the accident had a completely mundane cause. “Mechanical failure, maybe. We’ll have to wait for the mechanic to look it over and see if he can find anything.”
The question was, would such an inspection even reveal anything out of the ordinary? A sigil designed to invite disaster might have worked on the Jeep…or it could have affected me and my handling of the vehicle directly, in which case there really wouldn’t be anything mechanical to find. If that turned out to be the case, then I’d have to take the blame for the accident. Most people would probably excuse the mishap by saying I was in a state where I really shouldn’t have been driving in the first place, but I doubted my insurance company would see things that way.
Well, I’d deal with that later. Right now, I had bigger things to worry about.
“That’s terrible,” Josie said. “Isn’t the car still under warranty?”
“It is,” I replied. “And, like I said, we’ll just have to wait and see what the mechanic has to say about what went wrong. But Calvin and I have decided I’m going to stay home after this. I only had one more day to work this week anyway, so I’ll just let Chloe take over a little sooner than we’d expected.”
Josie didn’t reply immediately. Was she trying to think of the most tactful way to say that she wasn’t sure I should leave my store in the hands of someone so young and inexperienced, especially one who also happened to have a murder charge hanging over her head?
While my friend wasn’t necessarily the most tactful person in the world, she seemed to realize saying something like that when I was already under a lot of stress probably wasn’t a very good idea. After that uncomfortable pause, she responded, “Well, it’s good that you have Chloe here to watch the store while you’re out on leave. Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet,” I said. “She and her parents were meeting with Alec Scurlock this afternoon, and I expect she’ll call once she has some concrete information to pass along.”
“It’s good that Alec is on the case,” Josie replied at once. “I’m sure he’ll be able to make all this go away soon enough.”
That was my hope, too, but it was way too early to say for sure. I settled for making a noncommittal sound, then said, “Thanks for the call, Josie, but I’m kind of beat after everything that’s happened. I’ll see you on Saturday at my mom’s house.”
“Of course,” she said. “You just let me know if you need anything.”
I promised her I would, and then I ended the call and set my phone down on the coffee table. Right then, Calvin came into the living room, a glass of ice water in either hand.
“Josie?” he said, and I nodded.
“I’m kind of surprised she didn’t call sooner,” I told him. “But yes, she just wanted to make sure I was all right.”
My husband’s expression was almost amused. He gave me one of the glasses of water and then sat down on the armchair next to the couch, probably so he wouldn’t jostle me and my poor, abused feet, which were currently propped up on a pillow.
“I’m glad she checked in,” he said. “Especially because I know she’ll spread the word all over town, and maybe that way, you won’t have to field so many phone calls checking to see if you’re okay.”
I wrinkled my nose, but at the same time, I knew he was right. Once word of the accident made its way around town, I had no doubt I’d be getting a bunch of calls from friends and well-wishers wanting to confirm for themselves that I truly had managed to survive the crash mostly unscathed.
“We’ll see,” was all I said, and he only smiled.
“The important thing is for you to get as much rest as possible,” he told me. “And I also think that I’m going to beg off work tomorrow, too. It’s only one day, and I know I’ll feel better if I’m here with you rather than at the station.”
As much as I would have liked for him to be at my side keeping watch, I didn’t know whether those measures were necessary.
“It’s perfectly safe here,” I pointed out, and I could see the way his jaw set from where I sat.
“Maybe it is,” he said. “But we both thought your Jeep was perfectly safe, too, and look how that turned out. Whoever is trying to cause havoc in your life, I don’t want to give them any openings. It’s much better to play it safe and hope they’ll give up once they realize they won’t have another chance to try to hex you again.”
I reflected that Calvin had come a long way over the past couple of years, or I doubted he would have mentioned hexes in such a casual tone. And he had a point. His deputies would understand why he wanted to be home with me. To tell the truth, it would have looked a lot stranger for him not to stay with his nine-months-pregnant wife after she’d been in such a terrible accident.
“Okay,” I said, and set down my glass of ice water so I could reach out and take him by the hand. His fingers were warm and strong and callused, utterly reassuring. That was the hand of the man who’d been at my side for almost the past three years. How could I possibly think it was okay to let him go to work when we had no idea who was lurking out there, just waiting for another chance to create some major havoc in my life?
“I think we’re both officially on leave now.”
