“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes. Who didn’t need money? What about food? Electricity? Taxes, for crying out loud. “So, this isn’t an actual job.”
“It’s an opportunity. To alter the course of your life and reshape the person you are today.”
He was a hell of a salesman. I had to give it to him. “How?”
“You’ll become your own faery godmother.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You, Joey Whitmore, will go back in time. Imagine it. A shot to change the course of your destiny. You already named one date in your past that you want to change. I’m sure there are others.”
He was insane. All that much scarier because he looked as though he believed the crazy words coming out of his mouth.
My tongue darted out and I licked my lips nervously. “I should probably be going.” I rose, eager to get away from the handsome and mentally unstable person.
He stood and blocked my path. A jolt of apprehension went through me but he didn’t touch me, just held my gaze. “Ask me how I made the tea.”
“Did you put something in it?” Thank God I hadn’t drunk any of it.
“Just water and tea leaves. But ask me how I heated the water.”
I huffed out a breath, “I don’t see how that matters but I’ll bite. How did you make the tea, Robin?”
“With magic.” He held out his hand. I stared as the same amber light that illuminated the house filtered from his palm. There were flecks of gold and a yellow so pale it was almost white. It looked like something out of the movies. Except it was happening right before my eyes sans the special effects department.
My lips parted and with a shaking hand, I reached forward. “How…?”
“You said your car died. How about your cell phone? Smartwatch?”
I shook my head, my gaze glued to his hand. “No smartwatch. But yeah, my phone crapped out.”
“That’s because human technology can’t function in the presence of true magic. Magic shorts it out.”
“Like an EMP?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up and his brilliant sapphire eyes reflected the glowing amber light in his palm. “Sort of.”
I sank back down onto the chair. “But magic isn’t real.”
“Oh, it’s very real, Joey.” He closed his palm and the magic winked out. “People don’t want to believe magic is real because most of them will never be able to control it. And control matters to people. But magic is real and I can teach you how to use it.”
I shook my head. There had to be an explanation for all this. Maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought. Maybe I’d knocked myself unconscious and it was all some elaborate dream brought on by too much ice cream in my coffee.
“Don’t you want that chance?” Robin raised an eyebrow. “To save yourself the pain? To teach yourself how to be better?”
“In exchange for some open-ended favor,” I snipped.
“Don’t think about the favor. Think about how you could make a difference. Not just in your own life but in the lives of those you love. Friends. Family. The sky’s the limit.” He crouched down so we were once again eye to eye. “Magic is the key to all of it, Joey. And I am offering you the chance of a lifetime. No more regrets.”
He put his hand on my knee. I jumped at the touch, the heat of his palm. It was an oddly intimate touch. Then again this was the strangest interview that wasn’t an interview but an opportunity for personal growth I had ever been on. My heart thudded against my ribs. I felt strange, almost giddy.
“I need to go.” I blinked, shaking off my stupor.
“Think about it,” he said. “I’ll be in touch with you soon.”
He rose and I missed the feel of his hand. Then shook myself. Magic was real. And I was almost sure he had put a spell on me.
“Joey?”
“I feel strange,” I muttered. The room started to spin. My vision tunneled to a pinprick and the last thing I heard was the sound of his laughter.
Chapter 3
“Never trust a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or a wolf in wolf’s clothing. A predator’s a predator no matter what covers his backside.”
-Notable quotable from Grammy B.
“Joey? Hey! Let me in. It’s colder than a pair of witch’s britches out here!” Darcy’s frantic knocking pulled me back to consciousness. I blinked and then pushed myself up off the fainting couch in the parlor and stumbled to the front door.
“Well, don’t you just look like something the cat dragged in?” She thrust a full bottle of Jose Cuervo into my arms and then proceeded to unwind her scarf. “Rough day?”
I put out a hand to steady myself because, for some odd reason, the room was spinning. “Let’s put it this way, getting fired was the high point.”
“Yowch.” Darcy hung her parka and scarf on the antique hall tree, toed off her outdoor boots, and then slipped on her ballet flats before retrieving the bottle of booze. “Well, just FYI, the whole damn town is talking about you. Merna Fleming was in line in front of me at the grocery store and I heard her tell Doris Leech that she saw you leave the café before the lunch rush. And then I ran into Brandie Rutgers at the post office and she said Rodney Carmichael called the paper and put out a help wanted ad online. Want me to mince on down there and give him a knee to the old bait and tackle?”
She’d do it, too. Darcy was one of those short, blonde feisty types that got things done. No one ever saw her as a threat. Between her diminutive stature and preference for wearing pastels, she was the quintessential killer bunny rabbit. Maybe her way of busting balls first and taking no prisoners was not always the most diplomatic way possible, but I appreciated her loyalty.
Slowly, so as not to exacerbate the dull ache in my temples, I shook my head. “I don’t want to have to bake a cake with a nail file in it when you get yourself locked up for assault and battery.”
“So, are we gonna just fart around all night or are we gonna get our drink on?” Darcy didn’t wait for me to respond. She knew where we kept the goods and headed down the hallway to the kitchen. “Although from the looks of you, I’m guessing maybe you started without me?”
“What are you talking a—?” My reflection in the hall mirror stole the rest of the question directly out of my mind. It was a ghastly sight. Hair disheveled, grease smeared across my forehead and down my nose. Pants cuffs covered in mud almost up to my knees.
Wait, why was I wearing my interview suit?
It came back to me in a rush. Looking for a job online, borrowing Earl, getting stranded on Firefly Lane. The truck dying and my cell being dead.
How much of it had been real? I studied my ruined suit. So okay, I had obviously gone up to Firefly Lane and Earl had pooped out. And then…?
Magic. A house carved out of a tree. Robin Goodfellow—where did I know that name from—offering me a chance to be my own faery godmother.
But how had I gotten home?
The whirr of the blender pulled me out of my recollections and I stumbled into the kitchen.
Darcy paused the blender. “Salt?”