“I didn’t say that,” Mel muttered.
“So tell me.” Jessica shrugged. “We’re catching up, aren’t we? Picking up right where we left off and all that.”
“Jess, we can’t pick up right where we left off. This isn’t—”
“Come on.” Jessica laughed, but it came out harsh and not anywhere near as easygoing as she’d hoped it would sound. “You used to tell me everything. No secrets, right?”
“Yeah.” Mel narrowed her eyes. “But that was when we were…you know. Different people.”
The woman dipped her head to brush her bangs out of her eyes and glanced around the café again, like there was actually a chance someone else might be interested in their conversation. Jessica waited, hoping to draw it out of her friend. Or whatever they’d been to each other before Mickey brought it all crashing down on top of Jessica’s life only.
That was definitely a smile. Mel never could hide it completely. Not from Jessica.
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m not stalling.”
Jessica folded her arms. “Then give me something—”
“I’m not telling you his name,” Mel hissed. A crackle of dark-purple light buzzed at her fingertips, and she quickly lowered her hand into her lap, looking around again to be sure no one had seen her.
“It’s that serious, huh?”
“Stop.” Mel pursed her lips, clearly trying to look unamused. It didn’t erase the tiny smile left over. “We’ve been dating almost a year, and we’re actually…really happy.”
“Hesitantly happy.” Jessica huffed out a laugh when her friend shot her a playful but still slightly warning frown. “Yeah, I caught the pause in there.”
“We’re happy, okay? It’s going really well.”
“Awesome.”
“Thanks.”
They stared at each other, and Jessica shifted in her chair.
She shouldn’t have brought that up. Time to find something else.
“I’m guessing you’ve had a career change at the very least in the last eighteen months, right?”
Mel barked out a laugh and quickly hunched her shoulders like that was the way to lower her voice. “Good guess. I’m actually painting now.”
“No shit. Really?”
“Yeah.” The pink-haired witch grinned and played with the straw in her water glass. “Mostly acrylics. Pastels sometimes, if I’m in the mood. A few commission pieces in… I don’t know, March or April pretty much set me up for the summer. And then I had a couple months to work on a new collection.”
Jessica’s smile this time wasn’t anywhere nearly as tight as it had felt through the rest of this conversation. She studied her friend’s face and the light behind Mel’s blue eyes. “You’re finally doing it.”
“Yeah. Guess I am.”
“That’s amazing, Mel. I’m honestly really happy for you.”
Mel snorted. “Well as long as you’re honest. Hey, I actually have an exhibit going up in a few days at a gallery in the Art District on Santa Fe. You should come.”
“Right. And buy the whole collection with a felon’s salary. You wouldn’t believe how much that pays.”
The other witch playfully rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’re rolling in it.”
“Totally.” Except for she was fairly sure she had an unlimited supply of funds with her new job. Tabitha was right. It still didn’t pay nearly enough.
“You don’t have to buy anything, Jess. Just come support a friend with a new art collection being shown in on Santa Fe.”
“Not really my kinda scene.” Jessica shrugged. “I mean, I can get behind good art. Yours especially. Just not the Art District.”
Mel offered a half-hearted shrug, then looked slowly back up to meet Jessica’s gaze. “It would really mean a lot to me to have you there.”
Shit. Of all the cards she could’ve pulled right now…
“Fine.”
Sitting up perfectly straight in her chair, Mel grinned again. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Why not? It’ll get me out of the…house.” She’d almost said “bank,” and that would have opened up a whole new can of magical worms Jessica wasn’t sure she was ready to pop.
“Thank you.” The pink-haired witch huffed out a laugh. “I thought it was gonna be a lot harder to convince you.”
“Well, you invited me to lunch on a good day.” Jessica reached for her water glass, remembered it was empty, and tapped her fingers on the table instead. “Just text me the where and when.”
“Yeah, I will.” Mel studied her friend, narrowing her eyes, then propped both elbows on the table and rested her chin on her fists. “Okay, your turn.”
“Nah, we should just leave it at all your success.”
“Jessica, we haven’t even gotten our food yet.” Mel raised an eyebrow. “And you said you’d start talking after I spilled the beans about my life. What are you doing?”
“Definitely not following my dreams and making it big as a not-so-starving artist.”
The other witch chuckled. “Come on. We had a deal.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jessica glanced around the café, looking for Chuck their server or really anyone who’d bothered to take a look at their table. “You’d think they’d stay on top of refilling our waters at least, right?”
“Uh-huh. Who’s stalling now?” Mel smirked, her eyes wide and her chin still propped up on her fists.
“Fine.” Jessica took a deep breath and nodded. “I kinda just fell into this gig, okay? Like a last-resort kinda thing that turned into…well I guess pretty much the only resort at this point.”
“Okay. Good buildup.”
Playfully rolling her eyes, Jessica leaned forward over the table toward her friend. When she met Mel’s gaze again, she felt her own smile fading. “Ever heard of a place called Winthrop & Dirledge?”
Mel’s eager grin disappeared, and she leaned back quickly, jerking her arms off the table to stuff her hands in her lap. “No.”
That was a loaded no.
Which meant Mel was definitely hiding something.
Chapter Two
Jessica frowned. “No as in you’ve never heard of it? Because the look on your face says something completely different.”
Mel grimaced and shot another quick glance around the café, this one filled with a hell of a lot more caution. “Tell me you’re joking. Please.”
“Sometimes I wish I were.” Jessica shrugged. “The whole thing does tend to feel like one big joke most of the time. You know what it is, right?”
“Yes, I know what it is,” the other witch hissed, hunching forward and lowering her voice. “Are you seriously telling me you work there?”
And this was the part where Jessica left out the juicy, endanger-her-best-friend details.
She stared right back at Mel, mulling over her options. Then she shrugged and sat back in her chair. “I took an apprenticeship. Like I said. Last-resort kinda thing.”
Mel took a long, slow breath through her nose. “An apprenticeship.”
“Yeah. You know, where you work for someone else while they teach you the tricks of the trade—”
“Jess…” The other witch closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “I know what an apprenticeship is.”
“Great.”
“And I know—” Mel glanced around the café again, sitting up straighter in a pretty obvious attempt not to look suspicious. “And I know there are a hell of a lot of magicals talking about that place right now. It’s a serious hot zone.”
Jessica forced herself not to laugh. Mel had no fucking idea.
“What have you heard?”
“Enough to know that if there’s any way for you to get out of that apprenticeship, you need to do it. Like, yesterday.”
“Huh.” Tilting her head, Jessica studied her friend’s urgency, and a knot of guilt grew tighter in her gut. “I’ll look into it.”
“I’m serious, Jess.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Wann
a share any of these rumors that so clearly freaked you out?”
“They’re not important.” Mel shook her head and went back to playing with her straw. “Just stay away from that place. For real. It’s not…safe.”
Jessica wanted to tell her nothing had been safe for her over the last eighteen months. Not since Mickey gave up her name and her address and a whole list of crimes she’d never committed. Not since she’d cast the Shattering on herself, stripped over half her own magic out of her body, and stuffed it into a tin box in her underwear drawer. She wanted to tell Mel the bank was probably the safest place in the whole damn country. That when she was standing inside Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking, she had enough of the bank’s magic at her fingertips to take out a dozen magicals bursting through the door and trying to get their hands on something that so clearly didn’t belong to them. That she’d already done just that.
Instead, she held Mel’s gaze and nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll look into it.”
“Okay.” The pink-haired witch sniffed, glanced down at the table, and raised her eyebrows.
Now neither one of them had anything to say. Great fucking lunch date.
“Here we go.” Chuck the server appeared beside their table with their plates. “Soup and grilled cheese. And Caesar salad. Can I get you guys anything else?”
Jessica stared at the meal in front of her and muttered, “Looks great.”
“Awesome. Oh, hey. Would you like me to bring you some more water?”
“That’s usually how it works when a glass is empty, right—”
“More water would be great,” Mel said, looking right up at the man with a tense smile. “Thank you so much.”
“Yep.” With a fleeting but highly wary glance at Jessica, Chuck darted away from their table and disappeared through the kitchen door.
“Don’t take it out on the server, Jess.”
Jessica scoffed. “Who drinks all their water before their food gets here and doesn’t want more?”
“He’s just doing his job.” Mel grabbed her fork and picked at the grilled chicken strips on top of her salad.
“Yeah. A job that includes water refills.”
The other witch looked sharply up at her with a warning glare.
“Don’t worry, Mel. I’ll still tip him.”
Mel shook her head and stuck a huge forkful of salad into her mouth, staring at the tabletop as she chewed.
Awesome. They were back to square one and being pissed at each other. What the hell were they doing trying to force this?
They kept trying to force it through the rest of their lunch, just with very little conversation. Apparently, there wasn’t really much else to say, especially now that Jessica knew her friend would completely lose it if she said anything about Winthrop & Dirledge and her apprenticeship not really being an apprenticeship anymore.
When they finished eating and Chuck brought them their checks, Jessica pulled two twenty-dollar bills from her jacket pocket to pay for her nineteen-dollar lunch. She set them both down in the checkbook, closed it with a snap, and stood. “I should get going.”
Mel looked up at her with wide eyes and pointed at the checkbook. “Don’t you wanna wait for your change?”
“Nope. Told you I’d tip.”
“Wow. That apprenticeship’s really paying off then, huh?”
Jessica shrugged. “It has its moments. Thanks for calling, Mel.”
“Thanks for calling me first.” Mel set her own cash down in her checkbook, frowned at the three ones sitting on top of her single twenty, then put another two down before standing and pulling her purse off the back of her chair. “It’s really good to see you.”
“Yeah, you too.” Sticking her hands in her jacket pockets, Jessica glanced longingly at the front door of the café. She couldn’t get out of here fast enough. “Let me know if you…wanna do this again, I guess. Or not.”
The pink-haired witch chuckled wryly and glanced around the café again. “Why wouldn’t we hang out again?”
Jessica swallowed thickly. Either her friend was fishing hard, or Mel had lost all her common sense over the last eighteen months. “I don’t know. Just trying to give you options.”
“Okay, well I’ll go with what’s behind door number one. You’re back, Jess. You’re out. And if you’re leaving it up to me, of course we’ll hang out again.”
“Right. Then just hit me up.” With a quick nod, Jessica headed toward the front door of the café, skirting around tables and the happily eating customers.
“Wait a minute.” Mel took off after her. She bumped against the back of an older man’s chair and paused to apologize before racing toward the door. The bell around the handle jingled when she caught the glass door right before it closed, then she shoved it open. “Jessica.”
Jessica turned around on the sidewalk. “You probably have a bunch of painting and stuff to do, right? I don’t wanna take up any more of your day.”
“Okay, stop.” Breaking into a jog, Mel caught up to her friend and readjusted the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Look, I can admit we didn’t exactly ease into the conversation over lunch. I’m sorry. I just… I never had a chance to actually talk to you about what happened.”
“Could’ve come right on down to MJ Pen, Mel. They’ve got some pretty convenient visiting hours.”
Mel closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “I know. That’s my fault too, and I wanted to come see you. But I… We all went underground, Jess. Mickey lost his mind, the jobs dried up, and then he threw you under the bus like you were some stranger he’d picked up off the street to take on one of his roles. He could’ve done the same to any one of us—”
“Yeah, but he did it to me.” Jessica cocked her head at her friend. “If it got the rest of you out from under his boot, then it was worth it, okay? Just a year off my life.”
“Jess…”
“No, really. The only thing I had going for me at that point was Corpus. Nothing else. My record was already shit, nobody else wanted anything to do with me. I didn’t have nearly as much to lose as the rest of you.”
Mel leaned away from her like she’d just been slapped. “You had me.”
Jessica gave her a thin, tight smile. “Yeah. I did. And look where you are now, right? You’re painting. Selling your stuff. Doing whatever you’re doing with this mystery guy you won’t tell me about.”
“Stop.” Mel glanced away, the corner of her mouth turning up in a self-conscious smirk.
“You keeping him a secret ’cause you don’t want me to start comparing before-and-afters? Or because he really isn’t anything special?”
“Okay, seriously. Stop.” Raising an eyebrow, Mel met her friend’s gaze head-on and wiped all the amusement off her face.
Jessica laughed. “See, that’s the face you make when at least one of the options is true.”
“We’re not talking about him. Drop it.”
Looking her friend up and down and trying not to grin, Jessica backed slowly away down the sidewalk and spread her arms. “I’m not in prison anymore, Mel.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m the only one who gets to tell me what to do. And a year isn’t nearly long enough to suck all the curiosity out of me.”
Mel barked out a laugh that sounded like half disbelief, half amusement. “Don’t you dare.”
“Well I wouldn’t have to if you introduced us.”
The pink-haired witch rolled her eyes. “You’re still coming to the gallery, right?”
“Is he gonna be there?”
“He hasn’t decided yet.”
The grin Jessica tried to hold back finally broke through. “Text me when and where. Maybe I’ll show up.”
“Oh my god.” Mel gazed up at the pale gray sky and shook her head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I know. Go paint something.” Jessica turned fully around and ran a hand through her hair as Mel’s surprised laughter echoed across the parkin
g lot after her.
This was exactly why she didn’t talk about the past. If whoever this guy was could make Mel laugh like that, Jessica had to figure out who the hell he was.
By the time she made it back to 8th Street and saw the faded, peeling gold marquee above the front door of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking three blocks down, the autumn chill had snuck its way through Jessica’s leather jacket and jeans. She shivered as she stomped down the sidewalk, her hands thrust into her pockets to keep her fingers from freezing off.
Just a year spent locked up, and she’d forgotten all about walking a few miles in the chill. Served her right for stepping out of that magical hellhole at the end of May.
The second she crossed the intersection at 8th and Cheyenne, the heavy weight of the glass pendant resting against her chest flared with a renewed warmth. It sent another shiver coursing across Jessica’s shoulders and down her back. Glancing quickly up and down the nearly empty street, she pulled the collar of her jacket and shirt away with one hand to take a peek at the pendant. The bright-blue glow had returned.
Interesting.
She eyed the front of Winthrop & Dirledge beyond the small building renovated to hold at most six tiny apartments inside. Apparently, there was a range on the pendant beyond the actual building, however small.
As if it had heard her thoughts—and it probably could even this far down the sidewalk—the pendant pulsed a brighter flash of blue light.
Man, the thing was impatient.
Jessica quickened her pace toward the front door of the magical bank, pulling Tabitha’s keyring from her jacket pocket with numb fingers.
But even that wasn’t Tabitha’s anymore, was it? It was Jessica’s.
She fumbled to separate the right key from the others, and when she finally slid it into the lock, the bolt holding the frosted-glass front door in place turned all on its own. Jessica pulled her hand back and frowned, then the front door swung open in invitation.
With a sigh, she jerked the keys out of the lock and stepped into the brightly lit lobby of the bank she’d owned for just shy of two weeks. “You just had to make me fight with the keys first, huh?”
The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2) Page 2
