take a small bite, looking out at the little courtyard behind Abby’s house. There’s a turtle sandbox, a little swing hanging from the only tree, and what I think is a water table. Kids require so much stuff, and the smaller they are, the bigger their toys seem to be, for some reason.
“Who else knows?” Easton asks.
“Just the people at the wedding,” I tell him. “The important ones.”
“So, I’m important now?” He playfully nudges my arm.
“Eh, you’ve proven yourself useful.”
We both laugh and Abby comes into the kitchen. She’s wearing sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, and her hair is in a wet, messy bun on the top of her head. It’s the first time I’ve seen her not all put together like she usually is, and it’s oddly refreshing.
“Oh, you’re still here,” she says when she sees Easton. “Is everything okay?” Her eyes shift back and forth from Easton to me.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Easton needed some help identifying a demon.” I can see him trying not to pout out of the corner of my eye. “He thought he saw a kappa in the Chicago River, but those haven’t been spotted in this part of the world in centuries. It’s way too cold up here.”
“I’m not going even ask what a kappa is.” Her eyes widen and she shakes her head, coming over to the counter to pick up her phone. It’s right where she left it and she opens a text message.
“Penny fell asleep in the stroller so Phil’s going to walk her around and enjoy the sunshine,” she tells me, knowing I was hoping to see my little niece. “They probably won’t be back for another hour or so.”
“That’s okay.” I plant my hands on the counter and slowly push up. “I’ll stop by later tonight before we go back to Thorne Hill to say hi and bye to her, if that’s okay.”
“I’m on call tonight so I might not be here,” she says with a frown. “But Phil will, so feel free to stop by.”
“I should go now then so you can take a nap before going into work.”
She nods. “I plan on it. I had fun today, Callie. We should do this again.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like I’m lying right through my teeth. “We should.” Do the spa day again but leave the whole getting shot thing out.
“It was nice to see you again,” Abby says to Easton, putting on a polite smile. I’m still too frazzled right now to remember if she knows the whole story about Easton. She remembers him from ten years or so, I’m sure. I was sixteen and came back to Chicago for the first time in years after Tabatha took me in.
I wanted to spend a few weeks with my sister. She was the only one out of the whole Martin bunch who treated me well, who loved me, and who protested against William Martin sending me off to that laboratory. But as soon as our so-called father saw me walking through the gates of the family estate, he set up a fancy internship for Abby that probably broke hospital protocol, now that I’m thinking about it. I suppose that didn’t matter. Money talks, after all.
It was the breaking point for me, and at the time, I saw it as Abby choosing the Martins over me. From then on, I didn’t talk to Abby again, not until she showed up at my bookstore months ago with an invitation to Penny’s party.
I was stuck with the Martins for several weeks. Tabatha and Evander took a holiday to visit family, and I couldn’t go home until they returned. And then I met Easton, the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He was the definition of trouble and that was part of my attraction to him.
If it pissed William Martin off—sign me up! I fell hard the way teenage girls with emotional scars do, and it didn’t take long to become friends with Easton’s sister, Melinda. Flash forward several weeks and our relationship came to a screeching halt when I found out Easton knew all along I was a witch, and he only pretended to care about me to get close and come in for the kill.
“You too,” Easton tells her. “I’ll walk out with you, Callie.”
I give Abby a hug, take one last look around the house to make sure nothing it out of place, and then grab my purse, step back into my shoes, and leave through the