Page 33 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)

Some part of her had been worried that maybe Bill wouldn’t contact her after all, especially when most of the afternoon ticked by and she hadn’t heard a single thing from him.

But then her phone pinged just a minute or so after she got home from her final music lesson for the day.

I haven’t been to the Haunted Hamburger yet. Would you mind going there for dinner?

Most of the time, Brianna avoided the restaurant — not because she didn’t like the food, but because it tended to be even more overrun with tourists than the other places to eat in Jerome. On a Tuesday evening, though, they had a chance of actually finding a place to sit down.

Sounds like fun. What time?

6:30?

Meet you there.

That was all, but it was enough to push away the unease that had been nagging her all afternoon.

She couldn’t even say why she’d been feeling so off.

It could have been simple worry that Bill really was going to ghost her after all, and yet she still thought something else was going on, even if she couldn’t yet put her finger on it.

Her students had all done well, and the one couple who’d come into the gallery had ended up walking out with almost three grand in purchases.

Pretty good for a Tuesday.

But….

She told her brain to shut up and then headed into the bathroom to refresh her lip gloss and brush her hair.

No point in changing out of the jeans and striped top she’d been wearing that day, not when the Haunted Hamburger didn’t exactly have a dress code.

All the same, she didn’t want to look like an utter mess.

It was already past five-thirty, so she didn’t have a huge amount of time to kill before she needed to walk up the hill to meet Bill at the restaurant. Just as she was about to sit down and pick up the neglected book she’d been reading, however, her phone pinged again.

Was he canceling after all?

The message on her home screen put that paranoid thought immediately to bed.

We bought a house!

Bellamy, of course. She and Marc had been house hunting for the past month, ever since she’d had that massive lottery win.

Angela and Connor hadn’t been too thrilled with her about it, mostly because being a MegaMillions winner didn’t exactly fit their idea of lying low and not attracting attention.

But Bellamy had kept her big win anonymous, so it was only the other members of the clan who knew about her windfall.

Because she’d won so much, Bellamy and Marc could have bought pretty much anything they wanted, up to and including some of those gorgeous ranch properties in Sedona that usually were the vacation homes of the rich and famous, since no one else could afford them.

Well, except for the part that nobody of witch-kind was allowed to live there, thanks to the way vortex energy affected their magic.

Where?

In Page Springs. It’s the old Rainbow Canyon winery.

Brianna couldn’t help blinking at that piece of information.

Yes, Bellamy had a degree in enology, but she’d said on more than one occasion that she wasn’t interested in making wine necessarily and would rather educate people about it.

That was why she’d been so good at working in the tasting rooms.

I thought you didn’t want a winery.

I thought I didn’t, either, but the property is gorgeous, and we’ll hire someone to manage the vines. And I got to thinking and realized it would be kind of fun to have our own private label. Not to sell, but to share with family and friends.

A teeny tiny boutique winery. Yes, that sounded more like Bellamy’s speed.

When do you get to move in?

A couple of weeks. It’s an all-cash purchase so it’ll go fast, but the current owners need time to get their stuff cleared out. After that, though, it’s all ours.

Sounds great. You’ll have to have a housewarming party when the place is ready.

Absolutely! Keep you posted!

Congrats!

Thanks!

That was the end of the convo, and Brianna put down her phone, annoyed with herself at the flare of jealousy that went through her. Here Bellamy was going to have her own winery, and she was living in an apartment above a gallery.

Shut up, Ms. Sour Grapes, she told herself, and that helped a little.

No one could deny that Bellamy had been very lucky — a lot luckier than the previous owner of the winning lottery ticket, who’d met a bad end after he tried to murder both her and Marc Trujillo — but she still deserved every speck of happiness that came her way.

Besides, it would be lots of fun to go to any parties Bellamy and Marc might want to throw.

Brianna had gone out to Rainbow Canyon once when she was back in high school, since a friend’s parents had rented the spot for Mindy’s sweet sixteen.

A small creek ran through a corner of the property, which was shaded with dozens of old oak trees, and the house was a big Craftsman-style structure with a wide porch that wrapped around the building.

The tasting room was a second, smaller structure set behind the main house and had a large patio covered by a pergola.

All in all, it was a gorgeous place, and although she guessed that Bellamy would probably have to put some money into updating the house, it wasn’t as though it wouldn’t be livable right away if they wanted to move in now and then deal with the renovations later.

Or maybe they were going to fix it up first and continue renting various high-end vacation homes until it was ready. Either way, Brianna knew her friend wouldn’t have to worry about what any of it cost.

A very brief sigh, and then she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. If she sat here brooding for much longer, she’d be late for dinner with Bill. While she was sure he would excuse her tardiness without asking any questions, she didn’t want to be that person.

The gallery had been closed for almost an hour, so she didn’t have to worry that anyone would be nearby to see her touch her index finger to the lock on her apartment door after she let herself out.

Down the stairs, then up the street and up the steps that would lead her to the level where the Haunted Hamburger was located.

As soon as she walked in, she saw Bill sitting at a table near one of the windows that overlooked the deck.

When the weather was warm enough, she preferred to sit outside, but there had been a definite bite in the air today as the sun went down, enough that she’d slid on a jean jacket before she left the apartment.

He must have gotten here a little early, because as far as she could tell, she was right on time. As soon as he caught sight of her, he smiled and stood up so he wouldn’t be seated when she got to the table.

Always the gentleman, that was for sure.

Despite the smile, though, Brianna thought she saw a certain tension in his handsome features, a tautness to his jaw that normally wasn’t there.

Had something happened today?

Was he steeling himself to tell her that he’d decided this wasn’t going to work out after all, and he was leaving tomorrow?

With all the trouble she kept borrowing, she was going to pay a serious amount of interest if she kept this up.

“Hi,” she said. “I hope I’m not late.”

“No,” he responded immediately. “I was a little early. I wanted to make sure we got a good table.”

He pulled out the chair opposite his, and she went ahead and sat down while he returned to his original seat.

Even though it was a Tuesday night, enough people were eating at the Haunted Hamburger that Brianna thought it was probably a good thing Bill had gotten here before her — especially since she noticed that a big family group, eight people in all, had just stopped at the hostess station.

Getting stuck behind them in the queue probably wouldn’t have been too much fun.

“How were your lessons?” he asked as she unfolded the napkin from her place setting and put it on her lap.

“Fine,” she replied. “Everyone seems to be making good progress. And the gallery wasn’t too busy, so I was able to get some paperwork taken care of.”

Busywork, more to the point, but Bill didn’t need to hear about that.

“How was your day?” she asked next.

There it was again — a tensing of his jaw so slight that she doubted she would have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for it.

“Fine,” he replied without hesitation. “I did some more sketches and walked out to the old Gold King mine.”

“That tourist trap?” she asked with a grin, and he only smiled in return.

“I suppose it is sort of touristy. But it was still interesting to see the old mine equipment and all the old vehicles parked everywhere. It gave me more of an idea of what Jerome must have been like back in its glory days.”

Brianna supposed she could see that, even though the Gold King technically hadn’t been part of Jerome but instead had been its own small settlement.

However, since it was only a quarter-mile or so outside Jerome’s main street, she understood why a lot of people would think they were all part of the same place.

“Did you do some sketching out there, too?”

He nodded. “Some, but not as much as I would have liked. I suppose I got too caught up in looking at everything around me.”

There was definitely a lot to look at, especially if you counted the chickens that ran free on the property, not to mention the pen full of goats and the special enclosure for a very large black and white pig named Abner.

“Sounds like you had a full day.”

“I did.”

Their waiter came by — a guy Brianna had known in high school, Harris Twohey. She’d always had the impression that he’d had a crush on her back then, but since their paths hadn’t crossed much after they’d graduated, she’d never been able to confirm that suspicion.

In fact, she’d heard through the grapevine that he’d moved to Phoenix a year or so ago, but apparently that hadn’t lasted.