As soon as the words left my mouth, the woman tripped on thin air. The top of her smoothie popped open and the pink sludge crashed against her chest and poured all over her front.
A snort erupted from my mouth before I could control myself. She turned, like she was covered in blood instead of smoothie, her mouth hanging open like a fish. She made a little sound like a dog’s squeaky toy.
“Well! Aren’t you two going to do anything?” Her face turned pinker than her spilled smoothie.
Unable to help myself, I shrugged. “Must have been those invisible ninjas.”
I couldn’t have stopped the grin that covered my face even if I wanted to, so I embraced it and rose, then snagged one single tissue out of the box on Beth’s desk. I walked toward her, but instead of stopping and offering her the tissue, insult though it would be, I pulled the door open and held it for her.
Her mouth finally snapped closed. “I hope you both go to hell!” She stormed toward the door I was holding open, chunks of smoothie dripping off her chest and landing on her legs as she went, as though it was some weird, perfectly choreographed disaster.
I gave her a little wave with the tissue. “And make sure you watch out for those invisible ninjas!”
Her eyes flashed with rage, and she rushed out the door. Once she was outside, I watched her finally grimace at the state of her clothes as she moved along, and couldn’t help but laugh. That pink color was never going to come out of her white running top and matching yoga pants.
Beth walked over and peered down at the floor. “I don’t know how this is possible, but she didn’t spill a single drop of that smoothie.”
My breathing suddenly froze. Oh no, not again.
Beth looked at me in wonder, and I tried not to look too guilty. I had an idea of how it was possible, but I hoped it wasn’t written all over my face. I mean, I didn’t even want to believe it myself, but I was beginning to think I had something to do with these karmic things happening.
Beth looked at me, then back at the spot on the floor where smoothie should’ve been splattered. “Did you do that?”
“M-me?” I stuttered. “I wasn’t even near her.”
Beth made a humming sound as she turned and walked back to her desk, shooing another cat out of the way as she sat back down, and I returned to the big chair in front of her, feeling nervous. “I know damn well you were human when you left Mystic Hollow, so you can’t be a shifter or a vampire. Are you some sort of witch that can hide your powers?”
What in the world was she talking about?
“No, I didn’t do that. I mean, I’ve had some freaky things happen over the past few days, but are you really talking about vampires and shifters?”
Beth leaned in closer and stared directly into my eyes as though she could find the truth within them, which made me want to look away, but I couldn’t. Then she held her hands in front of me, her palms facing me like she wanted me to give her a high five, before moving them up and down and around in circles, bracelets jangling as she went. I looked at them with my eyebrows furrowed and my back pressed into the back of the chair.
“What are you doing?” I squinted at her. Beth had always been quirky, but this was new.
“I’m reading your aura,” she said. “But it’s not easy.”
“Beth.”
She ignored me.
“Beth!” I yelled.
She jerked her hands back and gave me a startled look. “Why are you yelling?”
“Because you’re talking about reading my aura, whatever that even means, and vampires and shifters. What the hell is going on?”
She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she looked around. “Hey, Marble!”
A cat, which appeared to be aptly named, as she was a calico with marbled white, brown, and orange fur, trotted over. “Yeah?”
I nearly fell off the chair. My head spun.
“Say hi to Emma,” Beth said to the cat. She said that to the cat.
“Hi, Emma.” Marble looked me over in that haughty way only cats can manage. “She might pass out.”
Then Marble picked up one of her front paws and licked it before walking back across the front of the office and settling into the beam of sunshine that the dark tabby had been in earlier.
“She just talked to me,” I whispered. “That cat.”
Beth leaned forward. “Are you telling me you really don’t know?”
“That cats can talk?”
“Well, yeah.”
I shook my head. “Can they talk to everyone? Is that cat a special talking cat?”
Beth shook her head. “Sorry, no, it’s my powers. I can talk to cats, well animals in general, and they can talk to humans when I’m in the immediate vicinity. It’s my special witch Zoolingualism.”
It was like something in my brain burnt out, leaving nothing but smoke behind.
“I turned my ex-husband and his little bitch into toads,” I whispered.
Beth’s jaw dropped. “How in the world did you do that?”
I had no idea. “I think, if I’m not totally nuts and all this stuff really happened, I did it because I saved a little old lady from being hit by a car.”
Recognition dawned over her face. “Oh. Okay. Has stuff like what just happened been happening?”
My brain was still blinking like an empty word document waiting for someone to fill it, but that didn’t stop my mouth from working without my consent. “Someone cut me off in traffic and all their tires simultaneously and suddenly popped.”
Beth nodded sagely. “Yep. Hang on.”
She jumped up and hurried through the office into a back room, but returned quickly with a book in hand. She began scanning the text, occasionally licking her finger so she could move through the book
