I sighed and nodded as I climbed out. “Talk soon, then.”
I closed the door and watched him drive off, wondering what I was going to tell him the next time we talked.
“Tell him you don’t have time for a human who bolts away from you rather than giving you a chance to explain. Or don’t tell him anything. We don’t need him.”
I started to respond, then realized I hadn’t said the part about wondering what I was going to tell James out loud. For that matter, now that I was thinking about it, he’d made a few references in the brief time we’d known each other to things I’d only thought about. I did a quick mental scan and caught just a trace of foreign magic—his magic—before he could withdraw from my mind. I spun on him, seeing red as I flung up my mental barriers.
“That’s what you’ve been doing all this time, you ... you ...” I’m not a bit ashamed to say that the words that came next weren’t fit for polite company. Suffice it to say, I cussed him ’til a fly wouldn’t light on him.
He held up his hands, but when that amused smirk crossed his features, it was the last straw. I drew back my hand and slapped him hard enough that it should have knocked that insufferable expression right off his face. When it didn’t, my anger exploded, and I pulled up my magic and focused the full brunt of it on him. Two seconds later, a little pink stuffed pig with golden wings lay on the sidewalk where Luther had stood.
I glanced around to make sure nobody had seen, and with a satisfied smirk of my own, I scooped him up and headed inside.
“You should count yourself lucky I didn’t turn you into a real pig and leave you out here. It would still be less than you deserve.” I swung the backdoor open and strolled inside, little pink pig and all.
Chapter 7
Jake and Eli were in my workspace looking through the book.
“Hey, Sage,” Eli said. He’d showered and put on fresh clothes, and his shoulder-length damp hair was still free of the ponytail he’d taken to wearing it in.
“Hey,” I said. “Nice shirt.” Pirate shirts were a bit of an obsession of his, and he was wearing a new one. It had All for Rum and Rum for All wrapped around a skull and crossbones rocking a bandana and a big gold hoop earring.
“Nice pig,” he replied, then narrowed his eyes at me when I grinned.
“I know that look. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said, then shoved the pig up on the shelf with a satisfied grin.
“Don’t nothing me. You don’t just carry stuffed animals around, and the last time I saw you, you were with Luther.” He slapped a hand over his mouth. “No, way. Tell me you didn’t.”
I lifted a careless shoulder. “Maybe. He was eavesdropping on my thoughts. And apparently, he’s been doing it this whole time.”
“How long are you going to leave him like that?” Eli asked, looking closer at it.
“’Til I can stand to look at him again,” I replied, turning to Jake.
“I totally get the pig part,” Jake said, not taking his eyes from the book, “but what’s with the wings?”
Eli grinned. “Oh, that’s easy. I’m assuming that’s when she’d actually give him the time of day after a stunt like that.”
“And that’s why we’re besties,” I said with a satisfied nod.
“Okay, well enough about that,” Jake said, “though I’d like to go on record saying that considering we know nothing about him, it might not have been one of your more brilliant ideas.”
“What might not have been a brilliant idea?” A gravelly voice said, and Axel strolled into the room, his black and white tail plumed out.
“That,” Jake replied, pointing to Luther.
“What about it?” Axel asked, following his gaze. “Personally, I’m not a fan of cute fuzzy things unless I’m looking in the mirror, but if that floats her boat—” he paused, then tilted his head sideways, studying the pig. “Ohhhh. Tell me that’s not your ex.”
“It’s not my ex. It’s Luther,” I said, but before I could launch into an explanation, he waved a paw.
“Turn him back. Right now, Sage.”
“No,” I said, brows lowered. “I’m not. He had it coming. He invaded my privacy—”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need their help and turning him into a pig—or anything else—is no way to play nice. Not only that, you don’t know what fire you’re playing with.”
“I don’t care what kind of fire I’m playing with,” I said drawing my brows down. “He disrespected me, so he can cool his jets for a minute. I’ll turn him back, but if I take that from everybody, then I’m nothing but a doormat.”
That was the last I was going to say about it. “So here’s what we learned.”
I told them everything, leaving nothing out.
“Okay, then,” Axel said, climbing up onto the desk and perching beside the book. “This one seems like a no-brainer to me. Green for envy. We’re looking for a curse that directly addresses envy.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t seem like envy to me,” I said. “I mean, yeah, sort of, but it was more insecurity. Or meanness.”
“No,” Jake said. “He’s right. At the heart of it, she measured how much people cared about her, and more specifically, about how much they cared about her in comparison to others, by the gift they got her. The impersonal ones and the ones that cost less than what the giver may have gotten for somebody else are the ones that sent her off the ledge. Her jealousy set off the curse no matter what the underlying causes of it were. I’d bet my
