Page 30 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Twenty

DUKE

Who the fuck is he calling love?

Cordie is still panting, slumped over her much smaller body. It takes every ounce of my effort to keep her from hitting the ground.

I’m not all that surprised when she grits out, “What did you do to me?”

I glance up, but she’s not looking at me.

She’s looking at him.

Wallace. The owner of The Flame. The guy who I can’t figure out.

He smiles. There’s something sharp about his expression that raises the hair on Cordie’s arms. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want to burn something down,” she snarls.

I sound like a rabid dog. I half expect her to bite me for touching her again. She peels my body away from hers, breath by breath, until she’s free and clear. Then, she takes slow, measured steps toward the table he’s set up outside his bar for the festival.

Their silent standoff bleeds tension, like she wants to kill him but knows she can’t get away with it .

I step closer to her in case I need to stop her from making a mistake that we’ll both regret.

“It was the wine,” she says like an accusation.

He nods.

“Give me another,” she demands.

Wallace’s grin falters. “You don’t really mean that.” His creepy gaze slides to me. “But perhaps you could use a taste.”

“Don’t look at her,” Cordie snaps. “Look at me. I said I’ll take another.” My jaw ticks the way it does when I’m seconds from exploding.

“For someone who is so deeply in denial, more wine would be unwise for your mental state.” Wallace tips his head, just a little. The challenge is damn clear.

Ah, hell.

If Cordie decides to jump over the table and put my hands around his neck, I won’t be able to stop her. In my body, she’s twice my size.

Not gonna lie, I kind of want to see her try.

Like he knows where my thoughts are, Wallace turns his attention to me again. “You’re being awfully quiet. That’s rather unlike you.”

I narrow Cordie’s eyes. It’s not unlike her at all.

Does he know? Can he fucking tell that we’re not who we look like?

“Since you are unwilling to use my gift in the way that it was intended,” he says suddenly, his expression sobering. “I strongly suggest that you make a visit to the fortune teller’s tent. She’s new to the festival this year, and Utopia is always welcoming to outsiders.”

I snort. Utopia isn’t even welcoming to all of its insiders.

Cordie might finally have had enough of that. Without warning, she snaps my hand toward Wallace.

He steps back out of reach. “Ah, ah. You break it, you buy it.”

I thread two of Cordie’s fingers through one of my belt loops and use all her strength to tug my body toward hers.

Wallace has to be the richest man in town. I can’t afford to pay his medical bills if he decides to sue, no matter how much I’m itching to see Cordie fight back .

She sidesteps until I’m forced to let go, then murmurs, “Don’t touch me.”

I raise her hands in a gesture of no harm. The last thing I want is to keep being the version of me that I can’t even remember.

Wallace’s eyes darken. “When you’re ready to face the truth, you know where I am. Until then, there is nothing further I can offer you.”

She sighs, but my shoulders fall. With one last glare at Wallace, she stomps away.

I follow.

Feels like the story of my life.

It takes her shorter legs a few minutes to catch up to my longer stride. When I’m beside her again, I keep a healthy distance. My body looks like that old adage of an angry bull, and I’m not about to poke Cordie when she’s so clearly on edge.

“Think this is a good idea?” she mutters.

I almost trip over her feet from shock. She’s asking me ?

Assuming that she’s heading toward the tent Wallace directed us to, I answer, “We don’t have any better ones. Do you think he’s setting us up?”

I don’t get the feeling we’re walking into a trap. What’s a fortune teller gonna do to us in the middle of town with so many people around? Whoever Wallace really is, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to cause a public scene.

Would he?

My gut says no. If Neveah had suggested we visit the fortune teller, though, I would be dragging Cordie in the opposite direction.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she admits. “Even though I outgrew this kind of fairy tale stuff, I’m walking around in your skin. Science can’t explain that.”

She’s right. All the shit I used to believe was a scam or scary stories suddenly have weight to them.

Since we’ve had to switch houses to match our bodies, I’ve been going through the random stuff that’s in boxes at her Granny’s place.

I still can’t figure out what kind of animal those skulls are.

That sword is definitely not a toy. Every time I try to practice with it, I only last five or so minutes.

I can’t figure out why it’s so damn heavy.

Cordie’s surprisingly strong arms should be able to wield it easier than I have so far.

“Everyone in town believes in the powers of the wishing well and Miss Nell’s seer abilities, so it’s not like we’ve never heard this kind of stuff before,” I point out.

There might be some truth to all of it, but it’s nothing good.

Cordie shrugs my shoulders. “Sure, but that’s just mountain folklore, like Bigfoot and Mothman and the warnings parents give their kids about not going in the woods during a full moon. Even with all the books I used to read, I never believed any of those things could be real.”

It’s more than that. Stories can’t explain the way everyone’s acting. Hell, I can’t trust my own memories. Something happened when Cordie touched Staci Jo. And what the hell is the deal with Wallace’s wine?

Out of the corner of Cordie’s eye, I spy a flash of black fur weaving through the people who are in line for the fortune teller. The cat, Cornelius—such a stupid name—darts inside through a small opening in the tent flaps.

Cornelius said he’d been under a spell for twenty-nine years. He also said he was assigned to be her protector. What happened between Cordie’s birth and her first birthday? Did Granny tell the cat to protect her only living family member, or was she the one who froze him in time?

The cat also said the witches are corrupt, and I’m more and more sure that there’s not just one Witch of the Appalachians.

“Hey, Cordie?”

“Will you stop calling me that?” she grits out. “Gingersnap was bad enough, but only one person ever called me Cordie. You have no right to take Granny’s nickname for me and turn it into a curse just because you’re stuck in my body.”

I didn’t even realize I was doing it. How would I even know that only her Granny called her that? The few townsfolk who talk to her call her Delia.

When the people ahead of us finally leave the tent, they’re wearing bright smiles and laughing like whoever’s inside just gave them the winning lotto numbers.

The cat slips out with them. Cornelius makes direct eye contact with me and nods. He gestures with his paw for us to go in.

I guess it’s safe enough then. He seems like he wants to protect Cordie, even if that means fucking me up inside her body.

I hold the tent flap open for her.

She rolls my eyes. “Of course you want me to go first, since I’m in your bigger, stronger body. Do you really expect me to protect you if the fires of hell are waiting for us in here?”

She talks a big game, but it’s not anger I see in my eyes.

“Wouldn’t dream of ever asking you to protect me,” I answer in all seriousness. “I’ll keep protecting your body, though. After you.”

She ducks inside, but I pause.

Her heart is suddenly racing, and a prickling awareness spreads over her skin that feels like a static charge. It’s almost like her body is warning me that whatever I’m about to walk into is going to cause pain.

“What are you doing?” Cornelius hisses at her ankles. “Get in there.”

I slip into the tent before the damn cat decides to bite me.

It darts to a dark corner where no one else seems to notice it, probably because its mostly black fur blends with the shadows.

Cordie’s eyes take a few minutes to adjust to the dim light in the tent after being outside in the bright sunshine.

The space looks about how I expected. A round card table in the center of the tent, draped in a white tablecloth with a round glass the size of a bowling ball in the center.

No books or other random occult shit to buy, though.

There are rugs hung up on the inside of the tent walls. One has a giant eye in the middle. Another looks like a Ouija board. A third shows a white stag that no mountain man would ever kill, even if his family was starving to death.

I stare at the way its antlers twist and curl to the top of the rug. It’s a twenty-one-point. An impossible number.

“Improbable is not the same as impossible,” an alluring voice says.

I don’t typically notice voices, but it’s the only word I can think of to describe hers. Smoky and velvety, gravelly but smooth. She sounds the way I always imagined sex would feel.

I turn and stare at the lady seated behind the table. She doesn’t look possible either. I expected a turban with a big jewel and a feather on her head. I thought I’d see a wrinkled face, weathered hands, and stringy, white hair, a fringed shawl around her shoulders and a hippie, ankle-length dress.

Someone who looks more like Miss Nell.

This woman doesn’t look like a witch or a seer or any other childhood bedtime story about women to avoid.

She doesn’t look a day past twenty, and she’s wearing a tank top that barely covers her big tits.

No jewelry. Red-painted lips and eyes lined with black makeup.

Tight jeans cling to every curve of her legs that are propped on the edge of the table.

She frowns as her gaze flicks between me and Cordie.

Cordie aims my most charming smile at the fortune teller. It’s scary to watch her use my best weapon on someone else. “How much for a fortune?”