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“Dominic,please,” I huff, hating beyond measure the desperate note that’s crept into my voice unchecked. “I wouldn’t have called if we had any other options. This is not easy for me, and you know it. The school is really struggling right now, these are my students I’m trying to help. Also, it wasn’t my idea. Melanie–”
“Melanie is a bitch.”
Huh, okay. That’s the one thing we can agree on.
Before I can say anything though, he continues. “I haveactualwork to do. Work that doesn’t involve throwing parties for small-town, hopeless cases like yours. Goodbye, Shy Girl.”
I pull the phone from my ear, and double check that he did, indeed, just hang up on me. “Well, that went about as well as expected,” I mumble, plopping down on my couch.
I don’t know at what point I’d started to actually hope, but here I lie, thoroughly and suddenly disappointed–as if there was even the slightest chance my soulless stepbrother might actually do something kind. But honestly,anyoneother than me stood a better chance at getting him to bend. He’s always been a jerk to me.
A fucking bully, to be precise.
I scrub my hands down my face, watching the swirls in the crumbling plaster of my ceiling morph into blackholes of despair. As much as I hate to admit it…
The Avalon Halloween Ball is my favorite day of the year.
Bitchy Melanie or not. Rich sponsor or not. I have to find a way to save it, resorting to desperate measures if I have to. Maybe itistime to try the whole black altar thing…
I’m startled out of my witchy musings by my cell vibrating right next to my face. Narrowly avoiding falling right off the couch, I snatch it up and swipe at the screen. I’m greeted by a text message from an unsaved number.
Unknown: I’ll meet you tomorrow. 1pm. The coffee house by the old church. Don’t be late.
I blink several times, reading the message over and over as if it will eventually make better sense. Did I accidentally summon some kind of bossy demon just bythinkingabout attempting black magic?
Am I a witch?
“The fuck…? Dominic?”
It can’t be. That wouldn’t make any sense. Why would he change his mind literally two minutes after dismissing me? And why would he bother to drive more than a couple hours to Avalon just to meet me for coffee?
Well, then again…
He’salwaysgone the extra mile to torture me.
2
DOMINIC
The winding roadsof Avalon are a far cry from the towering skyscrapers and crammed sidewalks of Manhattan. As I drive at a snail’s pace through the narrow lanes, past the storefronts that look like they haven’t changed since the 1800s, I’m reminded why I was so relieved to put this whole town in my rearview in the first place. The air of numb complacency is suffocating, clinging to every person, building, and fucking tree like a thick fog.
Everybody’s grandma knows everybody’s grandma, and they’re all perfectly content with just being small-minded, small-town people. Fuck, just theideaof growing old in a place like this is enough to make me physically ill…
So why did I even come to this town full of irreverent people?
Oh, yeah.Her.
I arrive at the coffee house twenty minutes early, parking across the street where I have a clear view of the entrance. The building is an old, converted church, its weathered stone façade now adorned with a bright, tacky sign reading ‘Heavenly Brews’.
I roll my eyes at the painfully unoriginal pun, just like I used to do every time I passed it as a teenager. The bad joke is almostas ridiculous as the fact that this place is an old church, but everyone in town knows it as the coffee housebythe old church. That’s because it sits beside the crumbling ruins of an even older church, complete with glassless windows and an overgrown graveyard.
So many churches in such a small place.
I check my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, drumming my fingers impatiently on my steering wheel as I warily eye the cobbled street that stretches before me. The urge to start the car and head straight back to my city is a lingering temptation, though not as strong as the one to stay.
Just as I’m about to write both impulses off completely, a flash of golden hair catches my eye. My heart stutters in my chest as I watch a young woman who can only be Shiloh march down the street, a reluctant sort of determination in her every step.
She’s something entirely different from the awkward teenager I remember, yet undeniably familiar. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, a chaos of escaping strands framing her face as if meant to tell the world she doesn’t give a damn about her appearance. Yet, the effect is frustratingly appealing.
