Page 10 of How to Flirt with a Witch

I humor him with a breath of laughter. His casual brag about being too much of a party guy to study checks out. The folders on his desktop—PHYS, CALC, BIOL, CHEM—tell me he was definitely a brainy kid in high school. He’s probably on a several-week bender now that he’s free from parents and teachers.

“Hey, did you happen to get notes last Wednesday?” I whisper. “I missed class that day.”

He brightens. “Yeah, I can send them to you. What’s your email?”

A party inviteandthe notes I missed! Look at me go!

As I reach over to type my email address into his laptop, he doesn’t lean back, which means my arm brushes his chest. This feels akin to giving him my number, and I hope he’s not getting the wrong idea.

“Katie.” He tips the screen back toward him. “I’m Clayton.”

I return his smile.

My phone rings, and I reach for it so fast that I nearly send my laptop crashing to the floor.

The name on the display infuses me with hope. It’s Helping Paws. I’m finally going to get answers about Lucy.

After class, when Doctor Zacharias meets me at the front desk of Helping Paws with Lucy’s kennel, my heart skips for two reasons.

First, obviously, Lucy.

Second… Doctor Zacharias is even more striking than I remember. Even in the harsh lighting of the vet’s office, her jawline and cheekbones are so sculpted that she could be at the top of a Google image search for the perfect facial structure. She stands with a cool confidence, and seriously, she should publish her leg-day gym routine for the benefit of humanity. Her commanding presence seems to take up all the space in the waiting room—and all the air.

“I’m glad to see the boils went away,” she says in that low purr of hers.

Though she’s looking at me clinically,notchecking me out, the way her gaze travels up and down my body weakens my knees.

“Same,” I stammer, tugging my knit sweater straight. “How is she?”

A little meow comes from inside the kennel, nothing like the angry yowling from a week ago.

Doctor Zacharias tilts her head, a lock of hair fluttering across her eyes. “Restored to health.”

“Thank you.” My shoulders sag in relief. She’s coming home with me! Before I lose my nerve, I add sternly, “You took a long time to get back to me.”

“It took a long time to cure her,” she says, unfazed by my tone.

I feel a lot of gazes on us. Doctor Zacharias seems to have caught the attention of everyone else in the waiting room, including the vet tech, whose gaze keeps flicking away from the computer.

I do my best to ignore them. “I would have appreciated a call. I tried to find your contact info, but you’re not online anywhere.”

She arches an eyebrow, which makes my indignance turn into a flutter. This woman is infuriating. “I keep my business information private. Sensitive nature of the work.”

“Am I allowed to know which disease she had now?” I ask, dreading the answer.

She shakes her head once. “Classified.”

Irritation swells inside me. “I have a right to know what happened to my cat.”

“And certain organizations have a right to withhold information from the public.”

I roll my eyes. “I didn’t realize I was talking to a Secret Service agent.”

Doctor Zacharias’s lips twitch as if she’s about to smile. “Infectious diseases like this need to remain classified until they’re better understood. We don’t want to cause panic.”

I scowl. Fine, that sort of makes sense.

But I still think she’s full of shit. What kind of infectious disease involves the ability to summon a crow through a window? I know what I saw, and if she expects me to move on without asking questions, she’s mistaken. After all, I’m getting a degree in psychology, and my job one day will be to ask people a lot of questions—to uncover the truth beneath all the lies people tell themselves and others.