Enchantress (Witches Academy #8) - Tamara Ferguson Page 0,5

eating breakfast the following morning.

He’d had a restless night of tossing and turning, envisioning all kinds of crazy things while he’d been trying to sleep.

The woman he’d been thinking of was definitely hard to forget, he realized when he finally decided to get out of bed. He’d never seen her before in his life.

So why did he keep thinking that he knew her? She must have been part of that crazy past again, the one that he didn’t quite remember. Hopefully, Gramps would give him a call back sometime today. After going out to eat and having a few beers last night, Birch had decided to wait until the morning to try and get in touch with him since it had been kind of late.

What would he do today? He was getting a little tired of driving around and trying to find the right place to live. And truthfully, he’d been a little thrown yesterday afternoon, because there’d been a house on that island, and Birch had realized that the island seemed to be the place he’d been looking for all this time.

The house had been dark and gloomy, along with the landscape. He would have to wait and see if what he was thinking was meant to be. In a strange way, Birch had a feeling that everything he’d been working for in his life had been leading him here to Crystal Rock.

He sure wished he could understand why.

As he finished his coffee, he decided to do a little exploring in the Inn’s shops. There’d been one particular gift shop which had caught his attention through the display window because of some of the unique items they carried, and Birch suddenly felt like he needed to have some kind of a good luck charm to hold onto.

After paying and leaving a generous tip, Birch strolled through the restaurant and then through the lobby toward the annex leading to the shops. The store he was looking for was immediately to the right, and Birch realized there were even a few more items in the window than he’d earlier this morning.

His attention was drawn suddenly to a glowing stone which was laying in a box in the display window.

“Hi, there,” he murmured to the woman who was standing behind the jewelry counter.

She smiled. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Right now, I’m just looking. I noticed some interesting items this morning when I was walking by outside. Christmas is right around the corner.”

“Tell me about it,” she answered. “Just let me know if you need to see anything close up.”

“Thanks,” he murmured, walking toward the glowing stone, which appeared to have him hypnotized.

Birch’s jaw dropped as he got closer. He could see an image of a woman in the stone, and it was as vivid as a movie. She was in a jeep, and it appeared to be in a parking lot somewhere…

Wait a minute, he thought, as his eyes moved upward, and he gazed outside through the window. It was the parking lot belonging to the Dragonfly Pointe Inn.

There she was, the woman he’d been dreaming about last night, driving away in a purple jeep.

He wanted to go running after her.

Birch shook his head as if he was in a daze. He felt like he was losing it. Birch looked through the window again, and he felt a deep sense of disappointment when he realized she was gone.

“Hey. Could I see this stone that’s in the window?”

“Sure. I think it’s a key chain,” she murmured after stepping away from the counter and reaching into the display window. “I just put this here about fifteen minutes ago. We have a new artist here in town, and Danielle Loughlin, the owner of the Inn, fell in love with all of her pieces and wanted them on display right away.”

Thoughtfully, Birch gazed at the glowing stone, still seeing the woman behind the wheel of the jeep.

Birch decided to test his theory. “Do you see the glow that I’m seeing in the stone?”

“It does have beautiful coloring doesn’t it? It’s a quartz. The light you’re seeing must be the reflection from the sun shining in.”

Just as he thought, the woman couldn’t see what he did in the stone.

“You said there are other items that the woman just brought in? May I see them? I’d like to purchase this too, by the way.”

“Of course,” she answered, laying the box with the keychain on the counter before pointing out some paintings to Birch. “She’s given