here when he came by on Monday afternoons. Fuck, he hadn’t considered that he might get Casey in trouble. “But I can go if—”
“No, no.” Slipping her reading glasses off her nose, she pointed at Casey with them. “Maybe you can get him to stop grumbling about whatever he’s working on.”
He turned to Casey. “What’s going on?”
“I’m just working on my archeology group project,” Casey grumbled, waving at his laptop. “And I’m annoyed that I have to. I thought I was done with it.”
Right. For the class two of his teammates had dropped out of. “I thought you liked this project.”
“I do. But I would’ve liked it better if it wasn’t a group project, and if Kendra and Kristen had actually told me they’d dropped the class so I could’ve done the missing sections weeks ago. I mean, who does that?”
“What’s the project?” Joyce asked absently, skimming through what looked like a brochure on an estate sale.
“We have to put together a biography on our chosen archeologist and then compile it into a website. The websites will all be piled together to form GH’s new Digital Encyclopedia of Archeologists.”
“That sounds like an interesting project. Who’s your archeologist?”
“Archibald Wainwright.”
Joyce’s eyebrows flew up. “The underwater archeologist?”
“Uh-huh.”
Making a little hm sound, Joyce rounded the cash desk and headed to the front of the store. Ethan exchanged a bemused glance with Casey when the lock clicked on the front door.
She was back in less than a minute. “Pack up Sasha and let’s go, boys.”
Casey stared after his boss as she disappeared into the storage room. “Um, go where? Also, are you allowed to just close up like that?”
“It’s my store,” she called from the other room. “I can do what I want. Now let’s go.”
Okay then.
Joyce drove a massive pickup truck, as it turned out. She took them away from downtown Glen Hill and kept driving for another ten minutes, where the homes became fewer and the yards became larger. Ethan sat on the bench seat with Sasha’s crate in his lap, left thigh wedged up against Casey’s right. On Casey’s other side, Joyce hummed as she drove.
Casey’s knee bounced as the truck jerked over pot-holed roads. No doubt he’d neatly arranged his day for maximum productivity, and this little detour was making him antsy. Especially since they had no idea where Joyce was taking them.
Ethan placed a hand on Casey’s thigh, stilling the motion. Shooting him an apologetic half-smile, Casey settled his hand on top of Ethan’s, twining their fingers together.
Joyce eventually brought them to a house that must’ve been right on the outskirts of Glen Hill. The driveway was a narrow gravel road with yellowed grass and leafless trees on either side. It appeared to continue on past the house Joyce parked next to, leading to what looked like a couple of squat mother-in-law cottages, one in pale yellow siding, the other in red.
Passing Sasha’s crate to Casey so he didn’t jostle her as he got out, Ethan jumped onto the gravel and breathed deep, inhaling the scent of earth and . . . cow? It was very faint, as though the nearest farm was a couple of miles away.
He’d always thought Glen Hill was a quiet town, but out here, it was silent in comparison. Mild wind through leafless trees. Squirrels chittering. The buzz of insects that weren’t yet hibernating, and the chirp of birds not yet gone south for the winter. Beyond the house, rolling hills colored the landscape in muddy yellow and winter-brown. They must’ve been lushly green in the summer.
He took Sasha from Casey, and Casey jumped down next to him, taking in their surroundings like Ethan had. He placed a hand at Ethan’s hip, the gesture so absentminded and sweetly intimate that Ethan’s heart clenched in his chest and he grinned at nothing.
The driver’s side door slammed closed, and as Joyce rounded the truck, Casey said, “Is this where you plan to murder us and hide the bodies?”
Chuckling, Ethan pinched Casey’s side.
Joyce merely smiled serenely. “Yes, this is where I do all of my nefarious deeds. I plan on using your bones to make love potions.”
“I don’t think that’s how you make love potions,” Casey said reasonably, following Joyce to the front door. “Seems counterintuitive, don’t you think? Are you sure you’re a real potion master?”
Ethan trailed after them, shaking his head. “At least he’s made one friend outside of the Mountaineers’ freshmen,” he said to Sasha.
Joyce led them inside the two-story Adirondack-style house, where they removed