Page 31 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

James blinked. “What?”

“It says I can have hot chocolate with marshmallows. I don’t want hot chocolate, but I do want marshmallows. So, black coffee with marshmallows, please. Oh, and one of those rice cereal bars.” I like sweet. I just prefer it on my own terms.

James rolled his eyes, but didn’t otherwise comment as he rung up our order. At least this explained why he couldn’t be to the house until later. Most employers won’t accept “spending the morning hanging out with strange women, figuring out how to perform an act of large and terrifying sorcery” as a reason for not coming to work. Maybe the world would be a better place if they did.

Cylia paid while I wandered off to find us a seat, studying my surroundings. There were watercolor paintings on the wall, done by a local artist—mostly landscapes and delicate studies of flowers. A bookshelf was shoved into a corner near the bathrooms, with a sign reading “take a book/leave a book” hanging next to it. I kept going, hoping to find an open table with two seats. Finally, I saw one, tucked into the farthest corner of the coffee shop.

It would have been nice to have a better view of the windows, but beggars can’t be choosers. I settled in one of the open chairs, curling my legs up under myself, and relaxed into the leather. If I closed my eyes, I could have been literally anywhere. I could have been home.

God, I missed home.

“You look comfortable.” There was a clatter as Cylia put our drinks down on the table. I cracked one eye open. Real ceramic cups, on real saucers. “The barista charged me for cocoa, since there’s no setting for ‘putting marshmallows in coffee like a savage,’ and cocoa normally comes with whipped cream. The third mug is full of whipped cream.”

I leaned forward, suddenly interested. “So it is. Did you want any?”

“Be my guest.” Cylia sipped her own coffee—if you could call it that—before giving it an impressed look. “Okay, I think I could fill a hummingbird feeder with this stuff. I like it.”

“Better you than me.” I spooned whipped cream into my coffee, stirring until it dissolved. Half the marshmallows dissolved in the same time. When I finally tasted my drink, it was sweet, creamy, and filled with that subtle swampy taste that can only come from incorporating real marshmallow into something.

“Says the woman drinking sludge. That’s sludge. I always knew you were abusing your body, but I’m starting to suspect you died of scurvy years ago and haven’t slowed down enough to notice.”

I toasted her with my cup. “To leaving a beautiful corpse.”

“Or something.” She took a larger gulp of her own drink, looking around. “This is a nice place. Cozy.”

Most of the clientele looked to be about our age—mid-twenties, nothing better to do. Apart from the table of teens with their Dungeons and Dragons and a few retirees sitting near the counter, we could have been part of the daily demographic. That was soothing, too.

“I wonder what people do around here for fun,” I said.

“Drink coffee, apparently,” said Cylia. “There isn’t a roller derby league. I checked. And don’t look so concerned—it’s not like I was going to suggest we try out. Even though I bet we could have taught the locals a thing or two.”

I smirked.

There are three positions on a flat-track roller derby team: the jammer, who goes fast to score points, the blockers, who try their best to keep the jammer from going fast to score points, and the pivot, who can switch between those two roles under specific, carefully controlled circumstances. Some people think jammers have big egos, since there’s only ever one jammer per team on the track at a time. Those people are not necessarily wrong. They’re not necessarily right, either … but it’s true that many jammers are not great at sharing. Cylia and I, when we’re at home, are both jammers. We were still jammers in Maine, just jammers without a team to jam for. Somehow, this had evolved into a friendly rivalry, in which we both insisted we knew the rules of derby best, and would one day show the world … as soon as we had the chance to strap on skates again.

It’s amazing what the mind can get up to when faced with the endless tedium of driving across America. Endless, endless America. If I’d tried to focus on one more non-evil corn field, I think I would have lost my mind.

Cylia snapped her fingers. I jumped.

“Hello, and welcome back to the scene already in progress,” she said brightly. “I’m about done with my drink. And my banana bread. I was going to walk down the street, see what else there is around here worth seeing. You want to come with?”

“I’ll stay here, if that’s cool with you,” I said. “Let me get a feeling for the way things work around here, and maybe have another cup of swamp coffee.”

“Got it,” said Cylia. She stood. “If I’m not back in an hour, meet me at the car?”

“Deal.”

I sipped my coffee as I watched her walk away.

None of us had a fixed address we could use on a cellphone contract. Even if we had, phones can be tracked. The more sophisticated cellular technology becomes, the more tools there are for using it to find people. We needed to stay out of sight, and so we’d been solidly low-tech since fleeing Lowryland: Cylia had a pay-as-you-go for emergencies, but we kept it turned off to keep it from being traced.

I didn’t miss having a phone as much as I’d expected to. Sure, scrolling endlessly through Twitter was a good way to kill a few minutes, but so was reading a book, or watching the people around me.

They seemed pretty normal, as small-town populations went. They came and went with the frequency I expected, and the bathrooms were used often enough that I knew they couldn’t be entirely disgusting.

James wandered over with a pot in his hand. “Refill?” he asked.

“It would dilute my marshmallows,” I said.