Page 12 of Dirty Valentine
He blinked again, his eyes magnified behind his thick lenses.“Sure,” he said.
“Then I’m going to give you my opinion,” I said.“This girl qualifies as creepy.You should be careful.You’re too smart to ignore red flags when they’re right in front of you.”
Lily looked up.“Finally, someone with sense.Leena wants Sheldon to take her on a romantic midnight picnic.”She closed her textbook with a thud.“In the cemetery.”
“To be fair,” I said carefully.“People do a lot weirder stuff than that.”
“In Olde Town Cemetery,” Sheldon added.“She says the energy there is perfect for communing with spirits, especially now that someone has been murdered.”
“Ah,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Sheldon.“And you said what, exactly?”
He shuffled his feet nervously.“I said I’d think about it.”
“Sheldon,” Lily said with the patience of a saint.“Normal women don’t ask their boyfriends to have picnics in cemeteries.They ask for dinner and a movie.Maybe flowers.Not séances and sandwiches with a side of supernatural.”
“But she’s not normal,” Sheldon said, as if this were a selling point.“She’s unique.Interesting.She reads tarot cards and knows all about crystals and energy fields.”
“She also works at a donut shop and thinks black lipstick is appropriate workplace attire,” I pointed out.
“There’s nothing wrong with self-expression,” Sheldon said defensively, which was rich coming from someone who looked like he’d been attacked by a makeup counter.
“There’s self-expression, and then there’s dating Wednesday Addams,” Lily said.“What’s next?Is she going to ask you to help her perform ritual sacrifices?”
Sheldon’s silence was telling.
“Oh my God,” Lily said, sitting up straighter.“She already has, hasn’t she?”
“It’s not what you think,” Sheldon said quickly.“She just mentioned that some herbs work better when they’re blessed under certain moon phases, and that sometimes you need to offer something to the earth spirits to show respect.”
“What kind of something?”I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“Just small things.A lock of hair.Maybe a few drops of blood.Nothing major.”
Lily buried her face in her hands.“We’re going to find you dismembered in a pentagram, aren’t we?”
“That’s not how pentagram magic works,” Sheldon said with the confidence of someone who’d clearly done research.
“The fact that you know that is exactly my point,” I said.
A car horn honked outside, and Sheldon immediately perked up like a dog hearing a dinner bell.
“That’s her,” he said, checking his reflection in the window and immediately regretting it when he saw the eyeliner smudged under his left eye.
“How do I look?”he asked, trying to fix the makeup disaster with his finger.
“Like you’re about to become a cautionary tale,” Lily said.
“You look…” I searched for something constructive to say.“Very committed to the aesthetic.And take an umbrella.It looks like it’s going to rain.That won’t be good for your makeup.”
“Just remember,” Lily added, “if she suggests anything involving blood, candles, or ancient burial grounds, the answer is no.”
“What if it’s just candles?”Sheldon asked hopefully.
“No,” Lily and I said in unison.
Sheldon grabbed a black jacket I’d never seen before and headed for the door, the baggy jeans making swooshing sounds as he walked.
“You two worry too much.Leena’s just…spiritually aware.”
