Then again, Zed said the rift drew supernatural creatures. Her mother had always been a witch, though she had no magic powers.
But if she hadn’t really seen Bernadette outside her trailer, what had she seen? A ghost? Some fae creature who assumed the form of her worst fear? Had the rift scrambled something in her brain?
For days, she’d kept the blinds drawn and wrapped herself in those blankets, unable to sleep at night, worried her mother was going to spring out from the shadows. She wanted to walk across that tiny gap and go to Brendan so badly, but then he would have realized that she was just an enormous mess of a human being. She wanted to cling to the illusion that she was almost normal, or at least let him believe it for a little while longer.
So, instead, she ate Clarissa’s excellent food. She looked up the carnivals her mother had worked before and traced their routes, trying to assure herself that her mother couldn’t have accidentally stumbled into town. And when she ran out of food, she told herself it would be pathetic to order pizza for every meal. Also, she was about to run out of clean clothes, and she wasn’t sure where the nearest laundry facilities were. It was time to emerge from her cocoon—not as a butterfly, but as a pallid psychic consultant with possible hallucinations.
It was shameful how many deep breaths she’d had to take before she could open the door. She stepped out into the morning and—
Yep, stabbed right in the eyeball by the sun.
She slipped on her sunglasses, surprised to find it was not cool, exactly, but her hair didn’t feel like it was glued to her neck under the weight of the air. She could almost imagine needing long sleeves. Someday. When her eyes finally adjusted, she realized Brendan was stretched back on his porch steps, his long legs crossed at the ankles and a mug of coffee in hand.
“Morning,” she said, her tone cheerful.
“Morning,” he called back. He gave her an obvious once over and grinned. “You are looking…well-rested.”
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t, you know, contact you over the last few days,” she chirped. “I just needed some time to myself.”
“Oh, I didn’t mind,” he assured her, rising to his feet. “But surely, you have to be ready to go back to work now, yes? No time like the present. Early bird, worm, and all that.”
“Sorry, the doctor hasn’t cleared me yet. And after that, I have to get Jillian’s approval, and I think she’ll be harder to convince than Will. I’ve been given very specific—and frankly, harshly worded—instructions not to venture out of the town limits without approval. My pie privileges could be revoked,” Cordelia said.
An ugly frown flickered across Brendan’s face and for a moment, she was overwhelmed by the desire to step back into her trailer. “You don’t think you’ve had enough of a break by now?”
“It’s not like we’re being paid by the hour,” she replied, her hand wrapping around the doorknob.
“Some of us would like to get out of this pit of a town sooner than later,” Brendan shot back.
What was with this shift in attitude from Brendan? He’d been so unconcerned about timelines before, assuring her that he didn’t want her to work unless she was fit for it. Had he really gotten so sick of Mystic Bayou in a few days that he’d lost all concern for her well-being?
Or was he more frustrated by her than their location? Was this because she hadn’t let things “progress further” the other night? Because she hadn’t even considered it. He knew what a risk touch was for her. Surely, he had to realize that…yeah, she couldn’t call it ‘intimate relations’ even in her own head—but it just wasn’t something she was going to rush into. And if Brendan didn’t realize that, then she’d given him too much credit and she’d been wasting her time.
She’d spent too many years with someone who let her know that she was only useful for her gift, she wasn’t about to consign herself to that again.
“I would appreciate more of an effort on your part, is all I’m saying,” he said. “There’s no harm in pushing yourself. The League expects results.”
“Well, I’m sorry I’m inconveniencing you with my refusal to let my vascular system explode,” she snapped.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said. “Be reasonable, Cordelia.”
“I don’t know who gives you advice about women, but they should have told you the worst thing you can do is tell her to be ‘reasonable,’” she called over her shoulder as she walked away.
To her immense relief, he didn’t follow.
Cordelia wasn’t even sure where she was headed. She just wanted to be somewhere far from Brendan and his confusing mood swings. She strode down Main Street, inhaling the scent of geraniums and fresh paint in her indignant fury. She barely saw the signs or contents of the buildings, until her eye caught on a familiar face through the window painted with THE ICE CREAM DEPOT in crisp white block lettering.
Cordelia pushed through the door, shivering a bit in the powerful air-conditioning. The Ice Cream Depot was an adorable little creamery with a strange postal-themed interior that shouldn’t have worked but did. Enormous tubs of ice cream were displayed in a sparkling clean glass case, the flavor plaques showing clever little names like Fairy-Made Fudge Pecan and Moooocha Java Chip. On the far wall, next to a bank of operating post office boxes that customers were invited to unlock to find prizes, they’d hung a “Cow of the Week” poster. This week’s lauded bovine employee was named Belinda the Brown Swiss and her poster stated she “enjoys the music of the band Styx and insists that Val Kilmer was her favorite Batman.”
When Cordelia burst out laughing, a voice behind her scoffed. “My Rob wrote that one. I don’t understand why it is funny. But the customers seem to love reading funny little stories about my girls.”
The blonde behind the counter was breathtakingly stunning, all high Nordic cheekbones and eyes as blue as a frozen, bottomless lake. All Cordelia could do was stand there and blink at her for a long silent moment while her self-esteem remained in the fetal position, hyperventilating.
“Are you all right?” the woman asked.
Cordelia nodded dumbly.
“Oh, Ingrid, you know that happens to most people the first time they see you,” Bonita said, nudging Cordelia out of her stupor. Bonita was seated at a small wrought iron table, enjoying what looked like a banana split.
“Hi, Miss Bonita, I had a feeling you might be in here,” said Cordelia.
Miss Bonita grinned, her cherubic cheeks nearly over-taking her eyes. “You had a vision?”
“No, I saw you through the window,” Cordelia said.
Bonita threw her head back and laughed. She stood and wrapped her arms around Cordelia, who couldn’t help but freeze up just a little bit. Bonita’s filmy blue and gray scarf brushed her bare arm and a memory fluttered into Cordelia’s mind’s eye—Bonita standing in front of her dresser, winding the scarf around her neck, sighing at her reflection. “You’re gonna have to accept it, you’re getting old.” It might not be so bad, Bonita admitted, if she had someone to share this whole aging process with. But she’d been alone since her Hank had passed, and she supposed that would be the way it stayed. Cordelia pulled herself out of the vision like she was breaking the surface of a pool, drawing in a deep breath.