AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What if I hurt someone?” I frowned. “What if someone hurts me?”
“Hurt is a given in life. Whether you go out looking for it or wait for it to find you, it’ll happen. When you get to my age, you start to realize that it’s better to keep on living. Before you know it, your clock will be running low, and you’ll be wondering what the hell you did with the time you had.”
“Gee, Gran, you really know how to make a girl feel better.”
Grandma Betty gave a bark of laughter. “That’s what I hear. Anyway, talk to me about this handsome vampire we hate so much. Why are you taking the sale of the building so personally? I doubt anyone else has hexed Dominic Kent, despite the fact that there are many more tenants in the building than you.”
“Maybe it wasn’t logical. It was just that I was so focused on this being my last connection with Daisy that him prying it away from me felt like a personal attack.”
“Feelings don’t have to be logical.”
“Then, there’s the fact that we met one another, and things escalated. There’s a push and pull between us that I can’t explain. Sometimes it’s like he wants to protect me. Other times I’m convinced he wants to sink his fangs into my neck.”
Gran gave a curious little smile. I couldn’t quite decipher what was behind it, but it felt like she knew a secret that she wasn’t letting me in on.
“What?” I pressed.
“Are you going to hex him back?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid that this hate hexing game will hurt me more than it hurts him.” I turned to Gran. “What would you do?”
“Kill him with kindness.”
“Huh?” I looked at Gran. “You don’t mean, like, actually kill him—right?”
I was pretty sure my grandma was using it as a figure of speech, but again, a few of my grandmother’s comments over the years had led me to believe she might’ve been a teacher by day, but that she might’ve moonlighted as a ninja by night to make ends meet.
“No, of course not.” Gran reached out, squeezed my chin between her fingers, and playfully gave my head a shake. “But I just might if he makes my baby cry again.”
“How do I kill him with kindness?”
“You’ve been focusing on the hate hexing part of this business,” Gran ventured. “I’m out of the business of bad curses these days, but I’ve been making some Happy Hexes for the old folks around here.”
“Gran.” I blinked at her. “Are you saying you grow herbs in your garden to get the other grannies around here magically high?”
“High on life,” Gran corrected, but the way she winked at me told me otherwise.
I made the sign of the cross and prayed that my grandmother was not moonlighting as a low-key drug dealer in her retirement community.
“Help me, Fates,” I muttered.
“Come into my lab,” Grandma Betty instructed, leading me toward a structure that I’d assumed was a greenhouse, but now I wondered if it was just a front. She cracked her knuckles as she stood before a slew of dried herbs dangling from the ceiling. “That vampire’s not gonna know what hit him.”
Chapter 14
Dominic
By dusk, I was a little surprised that I hadn’t heard from Trixie yet.
I’d spiked her coffee with the potion from Belinda in the morning, a potion that Belinda had assured me was “very mild” and “completely natural” and “not at all malicious”.
I was starting to have my doubts about the potion’s potency, but Belinda had stopped responding to my paranoid text messages around dinnertime, and Vix’s efforts to find the pink and sparkly potions master had been in vain.
It wasn’t that I thought Belinda had lied to me about the potion she’d crafted. She knew better than to do that. But potions were inherently unruly, and as I sipped a bourbon on my balcony, I was starting to feel anxious that something untoward had accidentally happened to Trixie.
Belinda had told me she’d just scramble Trixie’s directions a little bit. A playful thing that would wear off in an hour or two. I hadn’t had any better ideas, so I’d let her run with it. But as midnight approached, I was really struggling, wondering if Belinda’s potion had reacted poorly with Trixie.
Alternatively, I supposed it was possible that Trixie had just taken the prank as something stupid and was blowing me off. That wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame her for ignoring me. I hadn’t done much except torment her lately.
