‘And don’t worry. Whatever happens here stays here,’ addedAlana, meaningfully. This was true, since gossipy though she was, she never left town long enough to share said gossip beyond the hills that bordered it.
‘Sorry, can I get through? Don’t mind me...’ Bobby, the Chalmers sisters’ floppy-haired, soft-eyed next-door neighbour, awkwardly wheeled a keg through the front door, despite the fact that Bonnie had requested multiple times that he go around the back.
‘Hey, Bonnie! Where do you want this?’ he asked, mopping his brow with the back of his wrist, around which he wore the friendship bracelet his little brother Kevvie had made several months back.
‘Ugh,’ muttered Kirsty, as she did every time Bobby made an appearance.
Bonnie felt a pang of sympathy. Yes, Bobby was far from the coolest guy in town, and he was way too interested in tabletop gaming and birdwatching. But he was kind, and he always brought over cookies when his dad, who owned The Golden Hour Bakery, was testing out a new recipe. And, most importantly of all, he did Bonnie’s bidding without complaint and without expectation of payment, which was a decent asset when you were trying to get a new business off the ground.
‘Behind the bar. Can you hook it up?’
‘Can do, boss.’ He smiled affably, flashing a chipped tooth that had been a teenage Bonnie’s fault – she’d dared him to climb the largest tree at the Botanic Gardens on a particularly rainy day. ‘Anything else while I’m there?’
‘I’ll take a top-up,’ said Kirsty, waving her glass at him.
‘Same,’ droned Hannah, squeezing her half-empty glass into the crook of his elbow.
‘Cucumber water, with extra ice, but only if it’s distilled,’ said Alana, who was constantly detoxing from one thing or another. Although, for someone who made a point of not drinking, she was quite helpful behind the bar.
Hannah tapped Bonnie’s shoulder with a glimmering nail. ‘Babe, you’d better get your claws in before Winston does.’
Theo had strolled over to the darts board and was now affably shaking hands with the darts team, who were merrily recounting the time they’d won a rotisserie chicken package after beating out The Chairmen of the Board, their competitors from the neighbouring town of Emerald.
Oh goddess, they were going to scare him right back to the city.
‘Do you need rescuing there?’ she whispered in his ear.
‘Sorry, what was that?’ Theo turned, his brows furrowed over his emerald eyes. Jensen Ackles’ eyes, thought Bonnie, who’d watchedSupernaturalan unhealthy number of times. But that was something that would forever remain in the diary she kept under her mattress.
‘How about a tour?’
Theo looked suspiciously as though this was the last thing in the world he wanted. ‘Um, sure.’
Bonnie shot him an irresistible grin, then invoked her murder weapon. A curl of hair twisted around her perfectly manicured finger.
Theo seemed to falter. Success.
With a well-practised Marilyn Monroe sway to her hips, Bonnie walked Theo through her tour of The Silver Slipper.
‘Downstairs is pretty self-explanatory,’ she said, also evoking Marilyn’s breathy way of speaking for good measure. ‘Amazing cocktails, a solid beer and wine list, darts – not my choice, but it was a contingency when I bought the place. Through this door we have the pool table and pinball machines. You should see the lines for those after about 10 p.m. They single-handedly pay the staff.’
‘You pay your staff in quarters?’
‘Sure, it’s how we do things here.’
Theo frowned, as though he wasn’t sure if she was serious. This, thought Bonnie, was one of the hardest parts of lookinga certain way. Guys never expected you to be funny. In fact, they never expected you to be anything else, really. Personally, Bonnie thought that her sense of humour was one of the best things she had going for her. She’d spent a lot of time cultivating it to survive life with Effie.
‘Ready for some stairs?’ She gave him an assessing up-and-down look. He passed with buff, flying colours. ‘You look like you can handle them.’
Bonnie grabbed the banister, a glorious knot of antique wood studded with a brass sculpture of a griffin, and led Theo upstairs.
‘Interesting art,’ he mused, taking in the framed paintings that covered the walls in an explosion of abstract colour – mostly greens, golds and purples, the colours of their family magic, their auras.
‘My mom painted them,’ said Bonnie, trying to suppress the hesitation in her voice that always threatened to arise every time she brought up her mother. She rubbed at her tattooed wrist, where a floral explosion of lilies and tulips hid the purple marks that flared beneath her skin when she drew upon her magic. She’d raced out to Clock Heart Tattoos the day she turned eighteen, desperate to hide the thing that made her different from everyone else. And not even in a good way; not like Effie’s magic, which actually did what her sister asked. Bonnie, meanwhile, was lucky if she could charm the wrinkles out of a shirt or bespell that thing on the top shelf within reaching range. More often than not, this would result in scorch marks on said shirt or that thing on the top shelf smashing on the floor. Magic was an imprecise art.
‘This one’s my favourite,’ she said, pausing before a small canvas where swirls of green, gold and purple all melded together in a gorgeous, calming swirl. Lyra, Effie and Bonnie’s magic, all together as equals. It made Bonnie think of better times, when the three of them had been inseparable, an arm-in-arm gang of joy and daisy crowns and pizza sodeep-dish it might as well be lasagne, and black-and-white movie marathons that they’d talked over, inventing their own terrible dialogue. Of before Effie had abruptly distanced herself when Bonnie had turned fourteen, shutting her out like there was something wrong with her, like she was...unserious. Of before Mom’s death had ripped their lives in two, leaving something too painful to even consider in its wake. Something that Bonnie had done her best to plaster over with endless activities and events and Boss Babe goals.
Theo folded his muscular arms, contemplating. He’d clearly realized that the vibes were suddenly off and was trying to get things back on track. ‘Not this weird brownish one over here?’
