Page 59 of Love's a Witch
“It’s not easy at all.” Deidre stood, tossing her phone into her leather tote bag and hitching it over her shoulder. “Unless you’re still friends with the family who cursed you, that is.”
“Oh no.” Lyra looked at me, stricken, and my heart fell.
The house witch had a point.
How was I supposed to track down the family of the person who had cursed us? As far as I knew, they’d disappeared from Briarhaven after the witch had been thrown into prison.
“Good luck.” Mandy Meadows’s tone indicated she wished anything but, and I’d had enough of her attitude this morning.
“Thanks and all that. This has been enlightening. Lyra, shall we?”
“Yup, I’m good here. Thanks, this was fun!” Lyra beamed at Mandy, whose face softened as she looked at my sister. I’m tellingyou, nobody can bring themselves to be rude to Lyra. It just wasn’t possible.
“Sloane, pop by the shop after if you’re heading into town. We can make a list of people to ask for more historical information. Maybe we start at the Silver Quill?” Raven gave me a reassuring nod.
“Or with Knox. His library would hold records,” Felicity added.
My cheeks heated.
“Yeah, Sloane. You could go to his library. Again.” Lyra snickered as I turned and beelined from the room, even though Raven’s eyebrows had moved to her hairline.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Oh, stop, it’s just a bit of harmless fun,” Lyra muttered at my back as I hustled through the ice queen’s front room and out to our car. I was so annoyed I even forgot to spill my coffee on the way out.
An opportunity missed, for sure.
“The last thing I need is people to think we’re an item.”
“?‘An item.’?” Lyra laughed so hard she clutched her stomach, and I glared at her as I started the car and waited for the struggling heat vents to kick in.
Our car had been shoveled out of the snowbank this morning.
I didn’t have to ask who had done it. And I was certain it wasn’t our perpetually scowling neighbor.
“What’s wrong with saying that?”
“You sound like you’re ninety. ‘An item.’ Like the gossip blogs are going to be writing about you on Instagram.”
“Have I ever told you you’re my least favorite sister?”
“It’s not possible.” Lyra preened for me. “Everyone loves me.”
“Have I mentioned you’re also incredibly annoying?” Pulling away from the curb, and Mandy’s ice palace, I headed toward town. “Come on. Let’s stop at Mystic Munchies to get Broca a surprise, and then we’ll go to the apothecary to see what Raven has to say that she didn’t want to say in front of the group.”
“And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll run into Knox.”
“Why would that make us lucky?” I glared at a gritter that passed on the street, shaking my car as it spread salt. Sir Salter Scott. Not bad, as names went.
“I don’t know, Sloane. Why do your cheeks go red and you squirm in your seat every time he is mentioned?”
“I can’t hear you,” I shouted, turning the radio up, as Alanis Morissette raged about irony.
CHAPTER SIXTEENSloane
Briarhaven is a cesspool of eejits. The last thing I’d ever do is be caught dead in that sad excuse of a town when there’s so many more cosmopolitan and beautiful places in this world.”
My mother’s words played in my head as I drove toward downtown Briarhaven with Lyra humming in the seat beside me.
