Page 7 of Two’s A Charm

Theo raised an eyebrow. ‘Mates’ rates, huh?’

Aha, a multi-syllabic response! Not all was lost.

‘It’s one of Gerald Ho’s weird New Zealand sayings,’ she explained.

‘Ah. But I’m good, thanks. I’ve got my GPS to show me around.

’ Theo tapped his watch, which wasn’t the fancy one from the night before, but a smartwatch that flashed with his vital signs.

Hmm, his heart rate was dropping instead of increasing, which meant that Bonnie was not doing her job.

But Bonnie was a problem-solver by nature.

With Theo’s attention away from her and on his watch, Bonnie covered her wrist with her hand and focused her magic, sending it streaming towards Theo’s watch. The watch grew warm – so warm that an alarmed look crossed Theo’s face and he stripped off the rubber band, hurling it to the ground.

‘Did my eyes deceive me, or did I just see sparks fly?’ joked Bonnie, as Theo stared confusedly down at his watch, which was glowing red on the yellow brick paving stones that the town stubbornly stuck with some 200 years after its founding.

The bricks were made from local clay, from a quarry that was apparently bottomless, but which had a decent swimming hollow nearby.

Poor Officer Brigsley had to escort particularly rowdy members of the town’s youth from it on a daily basis.

‘Weird. It’s like you’re some sort of bad luck charm,’ said Theo. ‘No offence. But after the fire last night, and now this...’

Bonnie forced a smile, or maybe bared her teeth.

She wasn’t close enough to a mirror to tell.

But hopefully Theo hadn’t noticed the emotion behind the expression.

In fact, he probably hadn’t, because he was busy prodding his watch with a stick.

A bad luck charm! Now that was a first – the odd snide remark from Kirsty aside.

Bonnie was the opposite of a bad luck charm: she brought wit and cookies and an elevated likelihood of ending up on the local news wherever she went!

‘At least I have Apple Care. Is there an—’

Bonnie guffawed. ‘There is absolutely not an Apple Store around here. Sure you don’t need help with that GPS?’ She scrunched her eyes at the corners in the way she’d been told was irresistible.

Until now.

Theo mopped his neck with the collar of his shirt. ‘I can definitely find my way around a place too small to have an Apple Store.’

‘Well, the town is on a grid system.’ Bonnie was doing her best to be charitable. ‘I believe in you. If you end up at the base of the mountain near the Toto Hotel, you’ve gone too far. If you end up back at the bar, you’ve gone just far enough.’

‘Noted.’ Theo grinned, flashing his astonishingly white teeth. ‘Oh hey, I wanted to ask about your sister.’

‘Effie?’ Bonnie failed to keep the disbelief from her voice.

‘Effie,’ repeated Theo, rolling it around in his mouth in a way that left Bonnie feeling as though she’d disappeared into Opposite Land. ‘I didn’t get her name last night. But if you see her, can you let her know I’m sorry? I think we got off on the wrong foot.’

‘Everyone gets off on the wrong foot with Effie.’ Bonnie waved an exasperated hand. ‘That’s just Effie. She’s not happy unless she’s miserable. But we live together, so I’m sure I’ll get a chance to tell her.’

Theo put his dead watch back on. ‘You live together, huh? Must be like living in a sitcom.’

‘Definitely not as many laughs,’ said Bonnie. ‘She needs to borrow some books on humour from that library of hers.’

Theo nodded thoughtfully, giving Bonnie the very odd feeling that the social order had somehow shifted, and that this handsome stranger might be interested in...Effie? It couldn’t be. She must be misreading the signals.

‘Not that our library has anything on the ones in the city,’ Bonnie hurriedly backtracked, suddenly worried that Theo might take it upon himself to visit the town’s library.

Was he a reader? Were bankers bookish types?

Did the library have a subscription to the Financial Times ?

‘There’s absolutely no reason to see it.

It’s just old . With these big, cracked steps, and gargoyles . And a creepy guy who lurks out back.’

‘Sure.’ Theo tapped his earphone, and the tinny sounds of his podcast crackled from his ear. ‘I’m gonna get back to it before I have to warm up all over again. These knees aren’t what they used to be.’

Ah, the self-deprecating young-person-pretending-to-be-an-old-person jokes.

Maybe Bonnie had been right about the ick.

Perhaps Theo wasn’t love interest material after all.

He probably had a 9 p.m. bedtime and dragged himself out of bed early to meditate.

Which meant he’d likely frequent Alana’s yoga studio after all, thought Bonnie, eyes narrowed.

Or, given the knotted leather strap she’d noticed around his neck, maybe Uncle Oswald’s Griftertorium, home to the town’s most sought-after, fraudulent crystals and moon-charged, possibly diphtheria-infused water.

‘Great! Well, see you at the bar some time!’ Bonnie waved uselessly as Theo jogged off through the park in a blissful state of 360-degree podcast audio.

As she stalked back across the park and towards the bar, an odd concern twisted at her stomach: something had changed, and for the first time since she’d turned fourteen, this town might no longer be wholly hers.