Page 12 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Nine

CORDELIA

Duke barges into my childhood home a few hours later and throws a bag at me. “You forgot you don’t have any clothes that fit me, you insufferable genius.”

He leans against the front door with an insufferably smug expression on my face. “Find anything you like, Gingersnap?”

I uncurl his muscled arms from around his even more muscled chest to flip him a middle finger.

Ever since I emerged from a shower that did not, in fact, wash me back to normal, I’ve been sitting here in Granny’s old recliner with only a towel wrapped around the unfairly delectable V of this horrid man’s waist.

“Your body is a personal crime against me,” I seethe.

Damn it. I should not have said that.

A coy smile toys with my lips. After several moments of silent gloating, he plops onto the couch with far less grace than I would. “Goddammit, why are you so small? I feel like a ragdoll every time I move.”

I shoot him a smug smile of my own as I gaze at a particularly spectacular rack that I’ve never seen from this view. “I’m not small everywhere.”

“Oh, God.” He swallows thickly. “I’m not going to be able to shower for however long this lasts. I’ll never survive seeing you naked.”

I cock his head back, deeply offended. “My body might not be sculpted from marble the way yours is, but I’m not grotesque either.”

Duke actually whimpers. He scrubs my face like he’s trying to physically wipe away his disgust, and he lets out a long, slow breath.

“I don’t want you to see me naked either,” I hiss quickly, to cover up that I’ve just admitted his body is a work of art. “How are we going to fix this?”

We stare at each other over the leaning, rickety coffee table.

This is a decidedly different staring match than the kind we engaged in during our shared time in this town. I can’t think of a single instance in the past however many years that Duke and I ever shared a common goal.

“What if we need to get the original penny you wished with out of the well?” he asks in all seriousness. A bead of sweat rolls down my temple. He’s practically shaking with stress at the prospect of having to witness me in all my nude glory.

I’m tempted to laugh, but all I want to do is cry.

“We could be that detailed, sure,” I agree as I fantasize about him sobbing uncontrollably.

I’m not really agreeing, though. Even if we managed to fish out every coin that’s been dropped into that well, I’d never know which one I threw in.

It’s not like I memorized the date stamp on it or the exact shade of oxidation.

“Just to be really thorough, we should recreate a full forty-eight hours leading up to the wish. I’m sure I could get the undertaker to exhume Granny’s body then rebury it.

Do you have a way to contact the woman you boned in The Flame’s bathroom the night of the wake? ”

I expect a glare or at least a salty retort for my sarcasm. Instead, Duke says plainly, “Glad to see you’re taking this seriously.”

Crap. He’s right. This is no time for an attitude.

“Unwishing the wish didn’t work,” I remind him. “A reenactment of the time leading up to my wish is our next logical step. What if we did something accidentally that tripped this? Something we wouldn’t have realized when it was happening. You’ll need to retrace your steps exactly, too.”

Duke puckers my lips. Eww, that duck face looks horrid on me. “There’s just one little problem with that idea.”

Oh, shit. I should’ve known. Half the town likely bowed down and kissed his feet as he went about his usual daily routine. He must have a parade of customers at his mechanic shop, maybe even a traditional, nightly family dinner with his father and four brothers.

He meets my gaze directly. “How will we know which way to redo everything that happened on Monday? I’m in your body, but it’s my mind. What’s more important? The body or the mind?”

I open and close my mouth multiple times.

I have no words for this moment. Never in my life would I have guessed that Duke Castellaw was capable of thinking about such a valid question.

It’s so philosophical, too, such a far cry from his usual repertoire of which prank to play on me, or which woman he wants to bed and then discard.

I might be turned on if I wasn’t so intimately acquainted with the deadly wolf beneath the intellectually stimulating sheep’s wool.

“Uh, well…” I can’t pretend I know the answer. If I did, we’d be doing that already. “We can try it with my mind in your body first, then reverse it. If neither of those works, then we do it together.”

“If the first two options don’t work, and we have to try it together, then it’s not a real redo at all,” he points out, shocking me with his impeccable logic once again. My face pales as he states the obvious conclusion. “We can’t ever pull off a true do-over, not like this.”

“Nope,” I agree.

He frowns. “There’s another problem with your do-over idea.

We can’t just go up to the people we talked with and tell them the truth.

No one will believe us. We barely believed it this morning, and we were the ones who woke up like this.

If we breathe a word of this to anyone, they’ll lock us up and throw away the key. ”

Again, he makes a fair point. Walking into Flaky and explaining to Miss Ada that I’m really Cordelia trapped inside Duke’s body is likely to result in worse than a swat with her broom.

Neveah will think it’s all some big joke, that I’m method acting our comedy skit about Duke being the worst. Or she’ll think he’s leveling up his revenge plot.

Any of those scenarios is more likely than a single person believing us.

“Remember what you said about the rumors of Granny being the Witch of the Appalachians?” If these weren’t dire circumstances, I wouldn’t bring up that gossip at all.

My expression perks up. “You mentioned something about animal skulls that were missing teeth. Where are they?”

Clutching the towel at his waist, I rise from the armchair and make my way through the multiple cardboard boxes of junk to the corner of the room where I stashed the skulls. I lift one then hold it out to him.

“Cordelia.” He blows out a long breath. “I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen an animal like this before anywhere in the woods.”

“It’s not a dog? Or a wolf?” At least I think it looks like a canine-type of skull.

He shakes my head. “It’s way too big to be either of those. This is bigger than a cow’s skull, even.”

There goes my final hope that they were souvenirs from a trip that Granny took to the Southwest before I was born. Duke sets the first skull down, then studies the other four.

“They’re all the same animal.” He confirms what I can see even with his eyes. “It’s odd that only their canine teeth are missing. If it was from natural decay, other teeth would be gone, too.”

I sigh instead of snapping, No shit, Sherlock .

He turns in a circle, looking at all the other stuff that Granny had sorted. My eyes widen before he picks up an item so mired in other junk that it takes him a few tries to pry it out of the box. “Why the hell did she have a sword? Shit, this thing is real.”

“What do you mean, it’s real? I thought maybe it was a random Halloween costume piece from Granny’s younger, wilder days.”

“Hell, no.” He tries, but he can’t lift it more than a few feet off the ground.

“The edges are dull, but this isn’t plastic.

It shouldn’t even be this heavy. Most swords weigh a few pounds.

They only feel heavy after fighting with them for hours.

It’s almost as tall as you are. I’m pretty sure it’s a broadsword, but there’s no way it’s made out of steel. ”

This should be the last thing on my mind right now, but… “Why do you know so much about swords?”

He drops it to the ground with a clatter like my arms literally gave out. My eyes are way too wide for whatever comes out of his mouth next not to be a lie. “Why do you look so pissed that I do?”

That wasn’t the denial or redirection I expected. If we’re airing out truths about our hobbies, then fine. Maybe that’s one of the accidental things that got us into this mess.

I gesture at the junk. “Look around you, Duke. Granny was certifiably weird. People loved her anyway. My worst sin was reading books, and everyone treated me like a leper for it. Now I find out you’re some kind of secret nerd who studies swordplay? This is some serious bullshit!”

He rolls my eyes. “Focus, Gingersnap. This is proof that Granny was into…something. Do you think one of these objects might be the reason? Did she…” He swallows thickly.

I rub Duke’s throbbing forehead with his fingertips. “Oh, she cursed you often, but she wasn’t really a witch. Besides, she would never do this to me. She loved me.”

“I guess you’re right. Seems like she gifted you and cursed me.” He crosses my arms over my chest.

I stare at him curiously. I’m not even going to ask aloud why he would think such a thing.

The corner of my lip kicks up before he gestures at his body, still only wearing a towel. “What woman in her right mind wouldn’t want a chance to experience all that?”

“Get out,” I whisper hoarsely, pointing at the front door. “If you’re not going to do anything to help me solve this problem, then at least stay out of my hair.”

“Can’t.” He swallows like he’s going to be sick. “I’m kind of attached to it at the moment. What I will do is talk to some of the old biddies in town.” He gestures toward the leaning tower of books in the corner of the room. “In the meantime, you stay hidden here and do what you do best.”

I choke down a lump of anxiety. “Why don’t you stay here and read, since you’re in my body, and I’ll go talk to the town biddies? Everyone loves you more than me anyway.”

His expression turns as skittish as I feel. “Too much of a risk. I didn’t leave town for a decade, so people know me well. I have friends and?—”

I curl his hand into a fist as tears well in his stupid eyes. If he makes one snide remark about the fact that I have no family left, I’ll punch my own face.

He shakes my head then glances away. “People don’t know you as well, but they expect you to be grieving. It won’t raise any red flags if you’re not acting like they remember.”

My temper lowers to a slow simmer, despite being thrown even more off-kilter from Duke’s tact. I don’t bother telling him that they won’t remember me. They’d have had to know me in the first place to be able to forget me.

“I’ll keep sorting. If Granny really was into witchcraft, then maybe she has something that could help us. While you’re interrogating the elderly population, maybe try to find out who else in town has similar rumors about them being involved in the occult,” I suggest, “beyond the obvious suspects.”

He squints. “You want me to ask Miss Nell if she’s got Mothman man’s phone number?”

The memory of all Granny’s stories about Mothman punches me in the face.

What if…?

A sense of foreboding settles into my bones. Duke’s bones.

“Cordelia.”

I jump then realize that Duke’s across the room, my hand on the doorknob.

“Yeah?” I croak.

“People didn’t ignore you because you read so many books,” he mutters. “They were jealous. You loved reading, and you didn’t hide it to fit in. Now’s your chance to make being a nerd worth something. If anyone can find a way out of this in a book, it’s you.”

I blink at the closed door. Then, I shift my gaze to Granny’s home library.

I quit reading to actually try and build my own happily ever after.

It didn’t work then. I don’t have much hope that reading will solve my problems now.