Fifteen
Sterling
"Dude. You are a first rate idiot," my brother said. I hadn't even bothered going back in to drink coffee with my friends. I headed out the back way and went straight to Copper's house. My brother opened the door without saying a word, headed straight to the cabinet and pulled a bottle of whiskey out. "You let her go, didn't you?"
"You knew?"
Copper snorted as he poured us both a generous amount. "My brother would never marry a woman named Cherry Blossom. Moira might not be familiar with her, but we've had brushes with that family in my business for years. They're crazy, the entire lot of them."
My brother was a banker downtown. He handled a lot of big accounts. Copper was good at it but he hated every second of it. Something told me if he ever fessed up about the herbalist he was seeing, he'd also be making some big career changes.
"She's anemic," I told Copper. He burst out laughing. "And she eats fish twice a week. Honestly, the entire thing is bonkers."
"Why in the hell are you so resistant to the other one. The one you really want?" Copper asked.
I tilted back the whiskey and it was gone in a single swallow. "Because she's terrifying," I admitted. "And she has red hair."
Copper groaned. "The only one weirded out by red hair is you."
"I'm not weirded out by it anymore. It suits her. In a horrible sort of way."
"I'm assuming you saw her this morning?"
I nodded. "She came asking a lot of questions. About me. Cherry. She wanted to know why I was marrying her when we had something."
"Doyou have something?" Copper asked.
"Besides mutual hatred and a five-alarm attraction?"
"Bro, that's how some of the greatest love affairs have started. Don't knock hatred. It's too close to love and is often mistaken for the other."
I poured myself another drink and headed over to the living room. "Grab the bottle," I told Copper before I sank down onto one of the recliners. I'd always loved his house. It was a comfortable, homey place.
"Tell me about your girl," I told him.
Copper paused just as he was about to sit. "What girl?" he asked, a nonchalant note in his tone that told me I'd hit the jackpot.
"I followed you a couple of times. Saw you heading into the house of that pretty herbalist. I also noticed you not coming out for several hours."
A tic started in his jaw. "I should punch you for following me."
"And yet I've kept your secret. I would think that deserves a reward."
"We aren't talking about me."
"Tell me about her, and I'll tell you about Maron."
"Maron, huh?" Copper eyed me over the rim of his glass. "Alright, screw it." He tilted his glass back and thought for a minute. "She's smart."
"Gorgeous, too," I said. And she was. Long blonde hair and pretty green eyes. Lean and in shape, but she dressed like she was from the seventies.
"Yeah, but that isn't what made me fall for her. She cares about things. People. Events. Everything. The townspeople shunned her because she isn't a true supe."
That sounded like Midnight Cove. It was a good town, but it had a lot of problems. Even people who were true supes ended up on the wrong side of the people sometimes. Helen being a classic example. I'd heard stories about the necromancer. Everyone was freaked out by her. It had calmed down since she married that gardener. People were way too scared of him to screw with her anymore. Plus, when they needed her, they had no choice but to swallow down their prejudices. She was the only one here with the power to raise the dead. Helen had mad job security.
I nodded at my brother to continue.
"There was a kid down at the bank. His family was trying to secure a loan to pay for cancer treatment in the human world. His mom is a witch and his dad is human. The poor kid got most of the human DNA and not enough of the good witch DNA to shake it off. The medical bills were up in the millions by the time I saw them. By then, there was nothing I could do for them." Copper shook his head as he thought about the story. "There was an herbalist a friend of mine had told me about. Said there wasn't much she couldn't cure. I knew it was a long shot, but I asked his parents for permission to take him there after I denied the loan. They were desperate by then. So I loaded the kid up in my truck and practically blew down the door of the herbalist's house. He was close to the end." He smiled as he remembered which made me smile. My brother had tumbled down the well of love and was stuck there, that was for sure. "She flung open the door wearing nothing but sleep shorts and a tank top and cursed me up one side and down the other." Copper chuckled. "Until she realized what I was holding. Harry opened the door, ushered me in, and spent the entire day and half the night working on him."