Free Darkangel (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill) by Christine Pope

friend of the guy Sydney was with. That’s all.”
    “‘All’ doesn’t usually end up with someone in the hospital and the Cottonwood P.D. paying you a visit.”
    “He got a little handsy, okay? Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
    “I guess so.” He grinned, and I really wished it was permissible for the future prima to sock someone in the jaw.
    That wouldn’t be dignified, though — and would definitely bring down Aunt Rachel’s wrath — so I settled for asking in acid tones, “Is that the only reason you’ve invaded my space, or did you have some other reason for dropping in without an invitation?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a public place.”
    “The restaurant, yeah. Not the booth I just happen to be sitting in.”
    “Okay, you got me.” He opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something else, but Tina arrived with his Corona and set it down in front of him.
    “Ready to order?” she asked.
    “Prosciutto and mozzarella for me,” I told her.
    “Italian meat,” Adam said with a grin.
    She shook her head slightly and headed back to the kitchen. I would have been even more annoyed by him ordering something besides just the beer, but I’d known I was doomed from the minute he sat down in my booth.
    “So you were saying,” I prompted.
    He was in the middle of taking a swig from his Corona, and so I had to wait until he swallowed the beer. “I went by the shop first, but you’d already closed up.”
    “You did?” Despite my better instincts, I couldn’t help asking. “Did you…notice…anything?”
    “What was I supposed to notice? You weren’t there. I’d already thought about getting a pizza to go, so I came up here and saw you through the window. And here we are.”
    Yes…unfortunately. In a way it was funny, because a lot of girls back in high school had had their crushes on Adam, and yet all he cared about was pursuing me, even though it was hopeless. We had no connection. It didn’t matter that he was good-looking, with his thick brown hair and gray-blue eyes and nice strong chin. He wasn’t my match, my soulmate, my other half. And I really wished he would figure that out once and for all, and leave me the heck alone.
    More importantly, though, he’d gone by the shop and hadn’t sensed anything, seen anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t an overly strong warlock, but normally he was sensitive to places, air currents, weather. If a weather spell needed to be cast, he was often the one to do it. Wouldn’t he have been able to feel something terribly not right about the store if there really was some malignant presence lurking around the place?
    I couldn’t think of the right way to ask him, though. If I told him what had really happened, then he’d probably try to get all manly and protective, and that would almost be worse than the ghostly figure I’d seen.
    No, scratch that. A guy trying to protect you when you really didn’t want to be protected wasn’t exactly on a par with some vaporous apparition reaching toward you and saying that it wanted you.
    Maybe I shivered. Adam set down his beer and stared at me, eyes narrowing. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen — ” He broke off, but I knew what he’d meant to say.
    You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
    Well, hey, that was nothing new. That was just something Angela McAllister did. I wished that was all I had seen. A ghost was fine. But this?
    Not fine at all.
    I took a few more swallows of wine. “It’s nothing.”
    Adam was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. His gaze sharpened. “You don’t look like it’s nothing. What’s going on?”
    It would probably get out sooner or later anyway. We McAllisters didn’t keep a lot from one another. “I saw…something.”
    “Saw what?”
    “I don’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen my share of strange things.”
    “True.” He shifted in his seat, and for a second or two I was worried he would try to reach