Page 16 of Wishing for a Werewolf (Ferndale Falls Forever #2)

Autumn

“Waffles or pastries?” I ask as I meet Skye in front of the library. “You choose.”

“Do I have to?” Skye pouts a little. “You know I like both.”

“Yep, you have to.” I bump my hip with hers.

My bestie is one of the sweetest people I know, but that also means she can be a little too sweet.

Since I can be a bit forceful, I try to be careful to make sure Skye gets a say in what we do.

“After all the work you’ve done for me, we’re totally eating what you want. ”

“But I didn’t find you any answers.” A gust of wind brings the crisp cool of fall racing over us, and she pulls on a cute shrug cardigan to cover her arms and shoulders. She’s rocking a 50s-style pinup dress in fire-engine red decorated with white polka dots. Her heels and lipstick match the color.

“You found lots.” I push a lock of hair off my face, the skirt of my dark-cranberry dress fluttering in the breeze. “Way more than I would have if I’d tried to search on my own.”

“I found myths and old-wives’ tales. All about how to wish for things.” She waves a hand in dismissal. “Nothing about wishes being swapped.”

“Come on.” My bracelets chime gently as I hook an arm through hers and head towards Town Hall. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve done something unique.”

She laughs. “Too true. Remember that time in high school you dared Matt to be the first person to jump off the top of the waterfall to show everyone what a blowhard he was?”

“Matt was an asshat.” My eyes roll at the very thought of him. “He was nice whenever Naomi was around and a bully whenever she wasn’t.”

“When he wouldn’t do it, you made him look even worse by doing it yourself!”

“I still stand by my decision.” I grin. “He never quite recaptured his Prom King shine after that.”

“You’re evil.”

“Only in the very best of ways,” I say.

We share a glance and burst out laughing.

Hannah walks out of Town Hall and trots over to us. “Where are we eating?”

“Skye’s picking,” I say.

“Then I say waffles.”

“Waffles for lunch? I’m so in.” Hannah glances back and forth, taking in our smiles. “Did you find a way to break the wish swap spell?”

“Nope.” I shake my head.

Hannah’s brow creases. “But you were laughing…”

“About Matt and the waterfall.”

“That was epic!”

“Sure was.” I link arms with both of them, and we chat the whole way to Slice of Life.

Hannah’s right, though. Normally, I’d be a lot more upset at having failed to figure out what’s going on with this whole wish swap mix-up. So what’s changed?

When we enter the pizza place, the pixies chorus hellos and Kayla waves from the table in front of the biggest window.

“Hi!” I say. “Can we join you?”

“Sure thing.”

We sit and order coffee and one of the special silencing candles that will allow us to talk about witchy stuff without any regular humans overhearing.

When our pixie returns to take our orders, Kayla slips and asks for a cinnamon waffle and gets a five-minute lecture on why all the best foods are called pizza.

“We only serve pizza!” The tiny imp winds up her argument by pointing to items on the menu, which now have pictures, to help everyone use the “correct” terms. “There’s pizza, sweet pizza, egg pizza, meat pizza, and potato pizza.

” Which means they serve pizza, waffles, omelets, bunless burgers, and round hashbrowns, but waffles and pizza are the stars of the menu.

“Okay, okay.” Kayla holds up her hands in defeat, showing off today’s slogan tee: Yes, I really am this fabulous. Don’t make it weird. “I’ll have a cinnamon sweet pizza.”

Four groups of pixies fly our waffles to the table in a coordinated effort, and when they all shout “Pizza!” at the same time, it’s so loud my ears ring. But we join in with everyone else in the restaurant, echoing the joyful cry. It’s become something of a town ritual by now.

Once we light the silencing candle, I tell everyone how Rune and I accomplished one of the swapped wishes. “As soon as we finalized his new security business, we felt the magic release us—or partially release us, I guess.”

“This is such good news!” Hannah points at me with her fork. “It means even if we can’t break the wish swap spell, all you have to do is complete the tasks.”

“We still need to break it,” I say, remembering my third wish. Who knows how long it’ll take me to find true love? I can’t be tangled up with Rune for years!

“I couldn’t find anything in the palace library,” Hannah says. “There’s not much about wish magic in the fae histories. It seems to be a human thing.”

“Maybe so, but I haven’t found much of anything yet in the books I already have at the town library.” Skye gives a disappointed pout. “Everything’s about granting wishes, usually a morality tale about the whole ‘be careful what you wish for’ concept.”

“Or in your case—” Kayla toasts me with her coffee cup. “—be careful what the werewolf wishes for.”

“Yeah, me as a bodyguard!” I snort and shake my head. “Though I gotta admit it’s pretty funny to see people ask him for homemade PSL soap.”

I douse my waffles in the new seasonal pumpkin spice maple syrup and dig in, the crispy waffle dripping with melted butter and sugary goodness. “Oh, god. This is perfect!”

Everyone agrees, and we spend lunch eating great food in the company of great friends.

I look up to find Kayla giving one of her rare large grins, while Skye and Hannah laugh. And this is, right here, the reason I’m not more upset we haven’t figured out how to fix my magic yet—I know no matter what, my besties will have my back, and with their help, everything’s going to be alright.

With the silencing candle still lit, we sit and chat until the food’s long gone and we’re all too caffeinated for even a single drop more coffee.

Hannah’s phone chimes. “I’ve got a meeting in ten! Got to run!”

“Yeah, that game isn’t going to write itself,” Kayla says.

In no time at all, it’s only me and Skye left. When we stand, she trails her fingers across the top of the table and gives a wistful sigh. “We don’t do this enough. I wish we could have lunch together all over again.”

Magic swirls through me, buzzing like electricity along my nerves before exploding outward.

Hannah and Kayla march backward down the sidewalk past the window.

My butt hits the chair hard right as Skye collapses into hers.

The restaurant door opens, and my friends walk backward across the room with jerky high steps, like stop-motion animation gone wrong.

When they reach the table, they spin and plonk into their seats as if maneuvered by a giant invisible hand playing a little too roughly with dolls.

Pixies streak from the kitchen, carrying another round of waffles, which they set in front of us. Their joyful cries of “Pizza!” reverberate within the bubble created by the silencing candle.

But the four of us don’t echo it back, staring at each other in wide-eyed shock.

“Okay. What. The. Goddamned. Hell?” Kayla asks as soon as the pixies leave, shoving a lock of purple hair out of her eyes.

“Magic,” Hannah says.

“My magic.” I wince. “Sorry!”

“No, I’m the one who caused it. I made a wish.” Skye’s frown breaks into a big smile. “But this is great! This means your magic isn’t about swapping wishes—it’s about granting them!”

I try to stand, and a ripple of magic plops me right back down onto my chair, making me let out an indignant squawk. “Are you certain wish magic is so great?”

Kayla leans forward. “Skye, what exactly did you wi—”

Hannah slaps a hand over the other woman’s mouth. “No w-word! You guys have got to stop saying the w-word around Autumn. We don’t know what it will do!”

Kayla mutters a muffled curse and nods. As soon as her mouth is free, she repeats, “What did you w-word for?”

“I said I wi—I mean, I w-worded that we could have lunch together again.”

I palm the tabletop and push upright with all of my might. Magic tingles over my skin, and a giant hand shoves me back into my seat. “Looks like you got your… w-word.”

It’s my magic doing this, so I need to effing fix it. But how?