Octavia said, “Oh, I’ve got the wrong color thread,” and went down the hall to her room.
“I guess you aren’t seeing Pam anymore?” I asked Amelia. “You and Tray are getting to be a regular thing.” I tucked my white T-shirt into my black pants more securely. I glanced in the old mirror over the mantel. My hair was pulled up into its usual ponytail for work. I spotted a stray long blond hair against the red of the coat, and I plucked it off.
“Pam was just a wild hair, and I’m sure she felt the same way about me. I really like Tray,” Amelia was saying. “He doesn’t seem to care about Daddy’s money, and he’s not worried about me being a witch. And he can rock my world in the bedroom. So we’re getting along great.” Amelia gave me a cat-eating-the-canary grin. She might look like a well-toned soccer mom—short, gleaming hair, beautiful white smile, clear eyes—but she was very interested in sex and (by my standards) diverse in those interests.
“He’s a good guy,” I said. “Have you seen him as a wolf yet?”
“Nope. But I’m looking forward to it.”
I picked up something from Amelia’s transparent head that startled me. “It’s soon? The revelation?”
“Would you not do that?” Amelia was normally matter-of-fact about my mind-reading ability, but not today. “I’ve got to keep other people’s secrets, you know!”
“Sorry,” I said. And I was, but at the same time I was mildly aggrieved. You’d think that I could relax in my own house and loosen the tight wrappings I tried to keep on my ability. After all, I had to struggle every single day at work.
Amelia said instantly, “I’m sorry, too. Listen, I’ve got to go get ready. See you later.” She went lightly up the stairs to the second floor, which had been largely unused until she’d come back from New Orleans with me a few months before. She’d missed Katrina, unlike poor Octavia.
“Good-bye, Octavia. Have a good time!” I called, and went out the back door to my car.
As I steered down the long driveway that led through the woods to Hummingbird Road, I wondered about the chances of Amelia and Tray Dawson sticking together. Tray, a werewolf, worked as a motorcycle repairman and as muscle for hire. Amelia was an up-and-coming witch, and her dad was immensely wealthy, even after Katrina. The hurricane had spared most of the materials at his contracting warehouse and provided him with enough work to last for decades.
According to Amelia’s brain, tonight was the night—not the night Tray asked Amelia to marry him, but the night Tray came out. Tray’s dual nature was a plus to my roommate, who was attracted by the exotic.
I went in the employee entrance and right to Sam’s office. “Hey, boss,” I said when I saw him behind his desk. Sam hated to work on the books, but that was what he was doing. Maybe it was providing a needed distraction. Sam looked worried. His hair was even more tangled than usual, its strawberry waves standing out in a halo around his narrow face.
“Brace yourself. Tonight’s the night,” he said.
I was so proud he’d told me, and he’d echoed my own thoughts so closely, I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m ready. I’ll be right here.” I dropped my purse in the deep drawer in his desk and went to tie on my apron. I was relieving Holly, but after I’d had a talk with her about the customers at our tables, I said, “You oughta stick around tonight.”
She looked at me sharply. Holly had recently been letting her hair grow out, so the dyed black ends looked like they’d been dipped in tar. Her natural color, now showing about an inch at the roots, turned out to be a pleasant light brown. She’d colored it for so long that I’d clean forgotten. “This going to be good enough for me to keep Hoyt waiting?” she asked. “Him and Cody get along like a house on fire, but I am Cody’s mama.” Hoyt, my brother Jason’s best buddy, had been co-opted by Holly. Now he was her follower.
“You should stay awhile.” I gave her a significant lift of my eyebrows.
Holly said, “The Weres?” I nodded, and her face brightened with a grin. “Oh, boy! Arlene’s going to have a shit fit.”
Arlene, our coworker and former friend, had become politically sensitized a few months before by one of her string of man friends.