Page 16 of Everything She Does Is Magic (Fableview #1)

Darcy

I’ve always thought our supply closet was small. Now it’s too small. Smell the oils on Anya’s skin small. Hear her short, interrupted intake of breath as I readjust myself to approach her. She’s all stormy eyes and intense energy, working very hard to back away even when there’s nowhere to go.

“What are you doing in here?” I ask.

She has her lips cupped over the inside of her palm. “I cut myself.”

My worry overrides my suspicion, and I push forward. “Let me see.”

Once my hand is on her wrist, she relents without hesitation. The cut is long, stretching over the delicate skin between her thumb and finger.

“This is a tricky spot,” I say. It’s hard to focus with that heady, herbal scent that emanates off her body every time we’re this close.

I release her hand to move to the other side of the supply closet, where we keep a small first aid kit. Every movement is a dance, clumsy and urgently close, an unchoreographed tango where one of us needs to take the lead.

“Take a seat,” I tell her, letting it be me.

She follows my directions without resistance, settling down in the chair I’d placed in front of the table to work on fixing my ceramics.

I’m still not used to the pressure of her attention, the way it makes me so aware of myself, wondering what it is she thinks of my every hand movement and hair flick.

The wound isn’t deep, but the paper-thin skin in this part of her hand makes the cut look worse than it is.

I have to use up the last of the gauze to staunch the blood flow, wrapping and wrapping until there is no visible red.

My work looks excessive, like she’s a boxer getting ready for a match, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“You’re very good at taking care of things,” she says.

“Someone has to be,” I tell her, keeping my eyes on the bandages. “Now, can you explain how you got this?”

“I fell.”

“You fell?” I repeat.

“Yes.”

The silence swells. Suffocating. Close. I have no choice but to look at her. To lock into my determination to know what’s actually happening.

The longer we look at each other, the less I remember what I’m wondering about.

Her eyes, keen, focused, are such a crystallized color.

Syrup-on-pancakes brown. And her lips have this permanent quirk to them, forever skeptical.

I’d like to wipe that expression off her face.

I’d like to see who else she could become with me around.

I lean closer, possessed by a need that’s greater than all my other senses.

“Do you want to come to a dinner with my parents and me next week?” she blurts out, my mouth inches from hers.

It startles me back into my body, returning my thoughts to my brain instead of whatever distant planet they’d gone to, where I thought I was someone else.

I’m holding both her hands, bandaged and regular. Squeezing them, really. I’m kneeling between her legs.

I almost kissed her.

She repeats the question, which is good, because I’ve already forgotten it.

“My parents are coming into town next week, and they asked me to bring a friend to dinner. If you want to come,” she says. She makes a show of emphasizing “friend.” Because that’s how she sees me.

God.

She’s trying to let me down gently.

I fly upright, so embarrassed I can barely contain myself. This supply closet is packed with random things. Every move has dangerous reverberations, shaking paintings and creations.

“I’d love that,” I say, forcing myself to be as cheery about this as a friend would. We are definitely friends. I guess? I’ve never once thought of Anya as that. She’s kind of existed in her own world. But it makes sense. She’s my friend. Of course she is.

That’s great. Perfect.

We can do that.

“Really?” she asks, then she seems to think better of it. “I’ll text you more later. But I have to go. Sorry I didn’t finish my ceramic.” She sticks her unbandaged hand into her pocket and pulls out two twenty-dollar bills. “Here. Let me know if I need to give you more.”

My whole world spins. I can’t slow it down enough to stop her, still processing the almost kiss, and the dinner invite, and her slipping into the supply closet in the first place. She skirts past me, letting herself out.

I should follow her. Tell her to stay. But I’m frozen in place, confused and overwhelmed. It’s good to be in the chaos of this room, like being closed inside my own private disaster cocoon. I slump into the chair she’s vacated, needing to catch my breath.

My dad’s broken mug has been organized into a tighter pile than I left it in, with a splatter of blood beside it. This is where Anya was standing when I found her. This is what she was doing. I’m so caught up on why she’d want to fix my broken ceramics that I almost miss it. My gnome.

He has no visible cracks. Not a single piece is out of place. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d never been broken at all. He looks exactly as he did when I first made him, shiny and small and sweet.

But I know he was broken. I swept him into a dustpan myself, then spent the last week painstakingly sorting each shard, making piles to begin the tedious process of rebuilding what I’d destroyed.

In less than five minutes, Anya seems to have completely fixed him, the same way she fixed Maddie’s wings.

I throw open the supply closet door, prepared to chase Anya all the way down Fableview Boulevard. It’s time she gives me some real answers. There is no getting out of it this time.

I don’t have to do that, because she’s still here, talking to one of our other customers.

This would be weird enough on its own. I’ve never even seen Anya speak to her own aunt. But the look on Anya’s face is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced either. Her skin has turned a bluish white. Her eyes are red and watery. Those lips I wished to paint hang open in a soft O shape.

She’s talking to someone I don’t recognize. She must be one of the tourists here for the full Fableview experience.

I’m weighing my options, deciding how much I want to ask Anya in front of this person. It’s like we’re back in the supply closet again. She’s hurt, and I can’t help but insert myself into the situation to fix it.

“Hello,” I say brightly, stretching my hand out to greet the other girl. “I know we met when you came in, but I’m Darcy, Anya’s friend.” The word “friend” still feels like a weapon. At least this time I can repurpose it for a better cause.

“Oh, wow, hi.” As the girl shakes my hand, she does a full-body assessment of me. It’s quick, not meant to make a point or anything, but I still notice it. “I’m Julia.”

Julia. The person Anya brought up at the pumpkin patch, who once told Anya that she didn’t care about other people’s feelings.

“Nice to meet you,” I say, giving away nothing.

“Do you guys know each other?” I keep all my attention on Julia even as Anya gives me her most intense, focused stare.

She wants me to look over, to send me some kind of signal that this is the girl .

But I know how badly this Julia hurt her in the past. And judging by how upset Anya looked when I emerged from the supply closet, Julia’s still hurting her now.

Playing ignorant will take away some of Julia’s power.

“Anya used to live in my hometown, yeah,” Julia says.

“Cool! We love having her in Fableview. Isn’t she the best?

” This might be too far, but I’ve already decided I hate this Julia girl, and I don’t mind daring her to speak poorly of Anya to my face.

I know for certain Anya’s not a bad person.

And I also know with proof that she absolutely thinks about other people.

She came all the way to the art shop to fix my ceramics, and she didn’t even want me to know she’d done it.

She might be the most generous person I’ve ever met.

“This place is great,” Julia says, avoiding my question altogether. “I’ve been staying at the Fableview Inn with my boyfriend. We road-tripped here.” She points to the guy she came with, who is still painting his ceramic. He doesn’t look up to acknowledge us.

“I love the Fableview Inn,” I tell her.

“It’s amazing. This whole town is. I’m obsessed with witchy stuff.”

“You’re certainly in the right place for that.”

“I really have to go,” Anya blurts out, cutting off this exchange of pleasantries. “Bye, Darcy. Thanks again.” She hurries out of the shop, leaving me with Julia and her silent boyfriend.

There is no way I can follow her now. That will let Julia know that Anya and I have something to discuss, and the less Julia knows about anything, the better.

Without Anya around, Julia’s whole demeanor changes. The friendly smile she’d had plastered on her face falls. “You know, right? About Anya?”

I hate the way she says this, so full of sneering judgment, as if I’d ever be a member of whatever Anya Doyle hate club she wants to form.

“Of course I do,” I say with confidence.

“Okay, good. Just be careful, then,” she warns. “She’ll lie straight to your face, over and over, and she won’t feel bad aboutit.”

I give her a tight smile. “Got it. Let me know if you need any help with the ceramics.”

“Okay, thanks.” She sits back down, dabbing off the fine-tipped brush she’d been using to do stripes on her witch figurine’s socks.

The thing is, Anya does lie. She lied to me just now, in the supply closet.

She lied that first night she came here to the shop, and again when she fixed Maddie’s wings.

I want to know why she’s done all that, why she never seems to tell me anything fully honest, but the last person I want to learn that information from is Julia.

I’m halfway to the front desk when Julia blurts out my name. I turn back, and she’s looking at me pleadingly as she says, “Whatever you do, don’t trust her.”