“Them hours too tough for you?”
She shook her head. She’d worked longer and later hours in restaurants, though admittedly not in the middle of a swamp. She would definitely be driving to and from work.
“I’ll be here tonight.” She stepped forward to shake his hand, making note of the calluses on his palm, the flame snaking up his arms from the muscle car tattoo on his wrist.
She thought about asking if she could refill her water bottle, but she could make it home and drink water from her own fridge, if it was still working.
Her first instinct was not to acknowledge Samson before she left, but she felt him watching her. Her pride warred with her curiosity, and damn it, the curiosity won.
She glanced toward Samson and his friend, who was bent over the pool table, and gave him a nod before she stepped out into the sunlight, which burned his image from her brain, at least for the moment.
The hike home was miserable. The sun was overhead, not blocked by any of the tall trees that lined the road on one side and the bayou on the other.
She wondered how many bodies had ended up in the bayou from the biker bar. She didn’t want to know.
As she trudged down toward Main Street, she wondered at the wisdom of going to work in a place like that, when she didn’t even know who law enforcement was around here. Did they have a sheriff? A constable?
She’d cursed Dylan to hell so many times, it no longer felt like it had meaning, but she did it again anyway, since it was his fault she was in this mess.
No, time to stop blaming him.She had jumped in with both feet, because she believed in him, in his vision. Idiot. She would never make that mistake again.
Because the door to Allison’s shop was open, she wandered over. The cool air conditioning was welcome after her trek, and she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the ornate mirrors on the wall. Her face was tomato-red, her hair a frazzled mess. She started to lift a hand to it, but decided to let it go. Better for the customers at the bar—whose name she didn’t even know—to think she was a swamp witch.
Speaking of swamp witch, what was some of this stuff? The crystals and sage bundles she knew, dream catchers and incense, but those bundles of twigs were weird, and those jars looked like they held tiny bones. And were those locks of hair?
Allison stepped out from the curtained-off stairs, and gave Erielle a jolt, which was weird because of course she expected Allison to be here. But the other woman moved so quietly, her sudden appearance gave Erielle a start.
“Hey, Allison. I just thought I’d come in and look around.”
The other woman’s brow lowered, her lips turned down. Was she suspicious of Erielle? Or did she act this way with all her customers?
All her customers—how many could she have? How many people in this tiny town bought crystals or…bones?
“You look terrible,”Allison said finally.
“Forgot this humidity,” Erielle said with a wave toward the street. “I thought the town would be more walkable, but turns out I’m a wimp. I must not have noticed it as much when I was here as a kid, or else I didn’t care.”
Allison’s expression relaxed as Erielle rambled. “Does your house have air conditioning?”
“That remains to be seen,” Erielle said with a sigh. So much did. She had never been bothered by uncertainty before, which was why she had been willing to take risks, with the show, with Dylan, with the restaurant. Yeah, now uncertainty was no fun—no idea what her income would be, no idea if her appliances worked, if her roof leaked, if she would get murdered at her new job, if, if, if. “Do you have something I can use to bless the appliances or something?”
Allison gave Erielle a look that said she didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. So, was this her salesmanship? Needed work. Erielle tried again.
“How did you get into all this?” she asked, because surely one had to believe in witchy things in order to sell them, right?
“I was raised in a religious household, so all this was forbidden.” She spread her hands to encompass the shop. “Which only made me curious about it. And when it felt like God turned his back on me, I turned to it.”
Okay, that sales pitch needed a lot of work. Erielle wanted to know more, but the way the woman was watching her with dark eyes, she just really wanted to get out of here.
She scanned the store for something cheap she could buy so she could make her escape, landed on a calming stone with an indentation for her thumb, paid cash and beat it out of there.
Hey, maybe the sales pitch worked after all.
Erielle walked in the front door of her grandparents’ house and shuddered. She didn’t know why, just a reaction.
And then she heard something tapping in the back of the house. Great. Just what she needed. Rodents..
Then another noise, louder, followed by a swear.
