Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(6)

“The thing is, it’s always been taken. It has what one might call a long-standing tradition of not being free ever, so . . .”

He squinted at me, still giving me that slapdash smile, trying to determine if I might be screwing with him.

“Then why don’t I just hold on to it until its traditional owner returns—that work for you?” he proposed, leaning over conspiratorially, so close I could smell the beer and rye mingled on his breath. “Like a compromise.”

Shifting away from me in an alarming, full-body sway, he rapped his knuckles on the bar. When this failed to garner an immediate-enough response, he went ahead and snapped his fingers in Morty’s general direction, like an Entitled Drunk Shithead caricature of himself. “Hey, man, a round of Don Julio Real for the crew!”

I gaped at Gareth, appalled that the reality of him was somehow managing to be worse than even my vilest recollections. “Did you . . . did you seriously just snap your fingers at an entire living human?”

“Oh, it’s just Morty!” Gareth declared, spreading his arms wide in drunken bonhomie, abruptly enough to nearly elbow me in the face. “Morty’s my old pal. Morty doesn’t mind, right, my man?”

Morty, in fact, looked like he might choose violence tonight if Gareth said his name again in that heinously belittling tone. But he only nodded once, pressing his lips together until they paled, and turned to slide a silver-topped bottle off the highest shelf.

It was a cardinal rule in Thistle Grove, applying to the magicless and magicked communities alike: One simply did not fuck with a Blackmoore. Blackmoores were what passed for royalty in this town, and they did not take kindly to being fucked with.

I was something of an object lesson in this regard, given that literally fucking a Blackmoore had driven me into self-imposed exile nine years ago.

When I opened my mouth again to protest, Morty caught my eye and gave me a tiny shake of the head. Not even worth it, he mouthed at me as he poured tequila into six skull-shaped shot glasses, a thousand-yard stare he must reserve for just such distasteful occasions fixed on his face.

As Gareth lifted his shot and proposed some rambling toast to Camelot, the Blackmoores’ crown jewel, his attention thankfully shifted away from me. I curled both hands around my tumbler in a death grip, as though it might anchor me from spinning so far out of control that I wheeled into the mesosphere and then outer space beyond, so propelled by rage and anxiety as to actually escape the earth’s gravity well.

Just when I thought I might have gotten something approaching a grip, Gareth swung back to me. “So, anyway,” he said, as though we had been having a mutually amiable chat before he was called away. “You in town for the weekend, or what? Don’t feel like I’ve seen you in here before.”

I stared at him, confusion warring with resentment at the fact that he’d gotten even more attractive with age. He was wearing a slightly rumpled pinstriped suit that fell elegantly across his broad shoulders, and his blond hair was expensively cut, swept away from the darker eyebrows and gas-flame blue eyes my seventeen-year-old self once found so inescapably compelling. And his face was a little leaner than I remembered, both jawline and brow heavier and more defined. Being nine years older, woe and alas, actually suited him.

His personality, on the other hand, was clearly still in dire need of an overhaul.

“Gareth Blackmoore, are you fucking with me right now?” I demanded. “You don’t feel like you’ve ‘seen me in here before’? What the hell is that, some pickup artistry bullshit? Because if so, that’s a stunning new low even for you.”

“Hey, easy now,” he drawled, eyebrows lifting as he held up both palms. “Shit, I feel like we got off on, like, a real wrong foot. I’m Gareth, and—wait, but you already knew that, right? Hey, new girl, how come you know my name?”

As a slow grin began spreading over his face, I found myself struck with one of the most tragic revelations of my life. Gareth Blackmoore—my first love, my most humiliating and heart-crushing breakup, and the reason I abandoned an entire life—genuinely did not remember me.

Forget unspeakable crimes. I clearly straight up ate kittens and babies in a previous life, until a pitchforked mob drove my monstrous self out of that town, too.

To be fair, it had been nearly nine years since we really saw each other last, not counting the glimpses I’d caught of him back when I still used to come to Thistle Grove for covenstead holidays. My style had changed quite a bit since then. Instead of a wild, sun-bleached tangle that nearly whisked my waist, my hair was dark and sleek, cut in an asymmetrical bob that whispered by my chin. Small tattoos were scattered across my forearms, and these days I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of the fluttery white-witch dresses Gareth used to like so much on me.

But this man had been inside me many, many times. Our emotional history aside, shouldn’t that alone have warranted at least a flicker of recognition? I clearly had no trouble recognizing him. Yet there was nothing in his eyes, beyond the generic glaze of a drunk and horny male who wanted into my pants.

For a moment, I found myself struck speechless, so mortified I wished I could sink into the earth while a tsunami simultaneously closed over my head. Meanwhile, Morty’s wide eyes flicked rapidly between Gareth and me, like a spectator at the world’s most miserable tennis match. He couldn’t know exactly what was going down here—the list of people privy to what had happened between us was so short and sweet it didn’t even include my parents—but he must have been able to discern the gist.