Page 56

“I don’t think that’s how poison works,” he said. “Then again, nothing really makes sense anymore. I shouldn’t even be breathing, but here I am.”

“Here you are,” Willow marveled, then walked over toward the cash register to close it out. It had been a remarkably slow day for sales, and Dale had somewhere he wanted to be, so they closed early.

But as she went, she found her eye drawn to the corner of the room where that blasted purple velvet box sat on a low shelf.

“Very funny, Tin Man,” she said, stomping over and snatching it off the shelf. “I don’t want this on display. Stop moving it.”

Montgomery answered her with mild bewilderment. “I didn’t move that.”

“Nice try, but I know it was you,” she said with some measure of irritation. “You’ve been pranking me for weeks. I’m hiding the key this time.”

She locked it up once again in a cabinet and slipped the key in that little pocket in her jeans that has no other use other than to store a single key or maybe a coin. She told herself she’d better remember it was there before doing laundry.

“I truly do not know what you’re talking about,” said Montgomery. “I haven’t touched your box.”

“It’s not mine,” she explained. “It belongs to the—”

She gasped, cutting herself off with a lightbulb thought. Then she turned with wide eyes and slack jaw to an equally wide-eyed and slack jawed Montgomery. He must be putting it all together before she could say the words.

“Daughters of the Twilight Veil,” they both said in concert. Over the past week, they’d been calling the coven the‘Twihards’to be economical in word use, (and because Willow loved a good book to movie fandom nickname) but this moment called for the full title.

(By the way, she was Team Edward).

“You have to get rid of it,” Montgomery said urgently. “Throw it outside in the big trash bin. Or toss it in a lake.”

“If you haven’t been moving it, and Dale hasn’t been moving it, yet it keeps moving, then it’s safe to say it moves on its own.”

“It will find its way back here?” Montgomery cried. “That’s rather spooky.”

“Dude! You are a literal ghost who came back to life and is walking around without a beating heart. What exactly are you gauging your spooky meter on?”

“What is in that box, Willow?”

“A crystal ball. Astrid told me she bought it at Hobby Lobby. I get it now that she was lying.”

Willow laughed, remembering something.

“What’s so funny?”

“Astrid made a joke when she handed it to me. Like she was pretending it was some ancient relic. The Orb of Gorimaan or something. She wasn’t serious about that was she?”

“It would be a roundabout way of telling you what it really is without you believing it.”

“Maybe it’s some Twihard rule that you have to say what it is when you pass it along,” Willow wondered.

“What are you going to do with it then?”

She sighed, looking at the cabinet door as if the thing inside was mocking her.

“I don’t know. Astrid gave it to me to use as a prop for my fortune telling booth at the harvest festival. I guess I was supposed to give it back to her when I was done with it.”

Montgomery eyed the cabinet in the same way Willow did. “Hmmm. They obviously have something planned for it.”

“Maybe it’s set up to seep out dark magic all over the crowd and they needed someone—AKA me—to do their dirty work,” Willow said. It was as plausible an explanation as any.

They both stood there, staring at the cabinet in silence as if they were waiting for it to unlock on its own for the purple velvet box to come flying out. But it’s like waiting for a pot of water to boil. Nothing ever happens when you’re looking.

After a long while, they went back to the lounge area and sat down, and Montgomery said softly,