Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(54)
The seven-foot-tall unicorn next to the table only downs another long drink of hard cider.
I lift my hand holding the deck so the cards are as close to being in his face as possible. “Vance!”
He raises his hand, extends a finger, the nail paint black and chipped just a bit, and pushes the deck back down to my elevation. “I don’t do advice—I’ve been alive too long to get involved in that kind of messy bullshit.”
Ugh.
Where are the people who love to tell me exactly what to do when I need them? Oh yeah, I froze most of them, and the others are sleeping in the next train car on the way to a heist to steal the most important spell book ever so I can fix my icy fuckup. Way to go, Matilda Grace. Stellar work. Really. Amazing.
“What if I flip it and it’s the same card as before?” I ask, the deck vibrating softly in my hand as its need to finish the reading manifests into physical movement. “Does that mean that the fates have set it in stone? Is there still wiggle room? Is the magic cast already?”
Looking bored, Vance sighs. “Flip it or don’t.”
“You’re a giant pain in the ass, Vance,” I say, but there isn’t any heat in my words—how could there be, it’s not like he’s wrong.
He grins at me as if I’ve given him the biggest of compliments. Despite everything, it makes me chuckle. Unicorn shifters, what are you going to do with them?
Right now? I’m just grateful he’s here, part of this ragtag group of misfits.
Acting on impulse, I give him a quick hug, squeezing him hard to let him know how much I appreciate his gruff, grumpy self. When I let him go and step back, he’s lost some of the fuck-you scowl he always wears and his gaze is locked on the floor beneath our feet.
“Don’t worry,” I say, giving him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone we hugged.”
“You hugged me,” he says, still looking down.
Then he does the most unexpected thing and reaches out for me, pulling me into a bear—unicorn?—hug that ends with him delivering a few hearty backslaps powerful enough to have knocked some of my teeth loose.
“There,” he says with a grin. “I hugged you back so it won’t be awkward. Now, stop procrastinating and decide whether you’re going to turn the tarot card.”
I could walk away. Even if I were magic, the tarot wouldn’t be complete without the fifth card. I can walk away and laugh about how silly it was in the morning. I could tell myself I was just being paranoid. I could—
No. I can’t. I know myself better than that.
I have to know. Do I have any kind of future with Gil?
Letting out a deep breath, I sit back down at the table, clutching the tarot deck. I flip over the fifth card and I swear my heart stops, my lungs quit, and everything disappears except that damn decorative globe card.
Completion.
Celebration.
Power.
It’s Leona’s card again—or at least the one that represents the most powerful Sherwood sibling, which she is.
My throat is stuffed with emotion that makes it hard to breathe, my eyes are all watery, and I must make some kind of squeaky, distressed sound, because Vance’s heavy hand comes down on my shoulder.
“I’ve been around for six hundred years and I can tell you one thing for sure—there are things in this universe that are more powerful than magic. Put your faith in those.”
He punctuates that exceedingly rare bit of advice with a belch that smells like Lucky Charms cereal and hard cider. Whew, whatever the unicorn PR machine is doing to make everyone think unicorns fart rainbows and are nothing but polite sweetness is its own kind of magic.
“Whatever you do though,” he continues, “don’t let this fuck up tomorrow. Head in the game, Tilda. Whether or not you get to keep it attached to your neck might just be riding on snagging that spell book.”
And yet, it is my heart that has me most worried.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gil . . .
Tilda’s pillow is cold, her clothes are gone, and her glasses have disappeared from the nightstand. She’s probably down in the lounge car, but I’m still sitting here buck-ass naked in bed trying to figure out what to do next.
The smart move would be to get the hell out of here. Thanks to the protective dome around the Sherwood house, I doubt Cassius has realized I’m not in Wrightsville anymore. I know my parents are safe. It might take time, but I’ll be able to track them down, and we could disappear forever on some small, unnamed island in the South Pacific where we could live our best lives without the threat of returning to exile hanging over our heads. You protect yours, and everyone else can fuck off. The only problem? Tilda is mine, so I can’t walk away from her. And her circle includes her family and Birdie and Eli and Vance and probably a million other people who she looks kindly at—including, no doubt, the troll from the woods and the boar that led us to the mushrooms. That means I can’t walk away from them either.
I grab her pillow and slam it down over my face to muffle my frustrated groan. That goes according to plan, but then I inhale, and the smell of Tilda’s shampoo clinging to the pillowcase fills my nostrils, and it’s pure fucking torture because all I want is to be with her again. Now. Later. Forever.
Fuck me. I never would have thought that life in The Beyond would be less complicated than falling in love with Tilda Sherwood.