Bell, Book and Scandal (Bedknobs and Broomsticks #3) - Josh Lanyon Page 0,32

going to walk out the minute I screw up.”

Really, she didn’t like that a whole heck of a lot better, and I understood that too, but it was also the truth that for the first time in my marriage to John, I didn’t feel like he loved me in spite of who and what I was.

I hadn’t realized how dark a shadow my insecurity had cast until this morning. Despite the gloomy weather and the alarming rate at which my assorted worries were piling up, I felt an unfamiliar sense of peace. Of certainty.

At least where John and I were concerned.

“I have news too,” Andy said a little ominously.

“Oh?”

“Trace asked me to marry him last night.”

I said carefully, “But you knew that was coming.”

Her voice shot up in very un-Andi-like agitation. “Not this soon I didn’t!”

I winced. “You guys have been dating steadily as long as John and I have been married.”

“That’s not that long, Cosmo!”

“Okay. Well. True. But you love him, right?”

“That’s beside the point!” Her voice wobbled dangerously. “You know it’s beside the point. You know my feelings about…” Andi’s voice cracked.

I felt her pain like my own. I still tried to argue. “How can it be beside the point?”

“Love is not the most important thing in the world!”

“Then what is?”

“How should I know! Duty. Honor. Tradition. We’ve taken our vows to put the needs of the sacred circle above the needs of the one.”

“Andi, there is nowhere in the Ten Precepts that says we can’t marry a mortal. In fact, it used to not be that uncommon.”

“Used to not be that uncommon is not common! We don’t live in the fifteenth century. It’s not common now. I can’t marry someone I’m going to have to spend my entire life lying to. I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”

“You could try telling him the truth.”

She gasped. “Really, Cos? You of all people?” and hung up on me.

Strike two. My best friend thought I was an insensitive jerk, and I couldn’t pay a visit to Solomon Shimon until tomorrow at the earliest. I decided to concentrate on something I could control, and spent the morning paying invoices, returning customer phone calls, checking the newspapers for upcoming estate sales, and selecting a few of our own treasures for markdown.

From my office I could hear customers come and go, hear the occasional comforting chime of the antique cash register, hear Blanche and Ambrose chatting companionably as they worked.

At lunchtime I headed over to Our Lady of the Green Veil to continue reading The Lady in the Lake—Raymond Chandler, not Lord Tennyson—to my friend Rex who was still in a coma after falling victim to a hit-and-run in early June. The accident—if it was an accident—had occurred the night of my wedding rehearsal dinner. A street person claimed that a black Mercedes Benz had deliberately run Rex down, but there had been no corroborating witnesses, and without a license plate number or a description of the driver, the police had made no progress on the case.

Although I’d known Rex for years and we’d traveled around Europe together after I’d graduated from college, I’d had no idea they were a private investigator until the accident. Rex had no romantic or business partner to tell us what they had been working on, so it was still a mystery whether the accident-that-might-not-be-an-accident was work-related. All along I’d suspected that Rex might have fallen victim to the Society for Prevention of Magic in the Mortal Realm, but that was partly because I’d only recently learned about the society’s existence, and because Ralph Grindlewood, who I knew was a member, drove a black Mercedes Benz.

In other words, it was pure speculation on my part. Lots of people drove black Mercedes Benzes, my mother included.

Anyway, four months later, Rex was still in a coma. Immediately following the accident, I and other friends had linked to create a healing sphere around Rex to give their body time to heal in stasis, but the protection of the spell had ended with the autumn equinox. If Rex did not soon awaken, their spirit would depart and their body would fade from the world.

In the meantime, all I and other friends could do was take turns sitting by their bedside, talking and reading and, yes, praying. The doctors remained hopeful but noncommittal as to whether Rex would ever regain consciousness.

I was back at Blue Moon Antiques when John phoned early afternoon to say he would be working late that night, but