Free The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) by Cal Matthews

cows,” I pointed out. “We have to, you know, plan this.”
    “Okay,” Leo grumbled.
    “How about Saturday night?” I offered. “When I get back from hunting, we’ll head out and do whatever. Drink blood. Tip cows. Whatever you want.”
    “Fine,” he said, but his shoulders were still hunched up around his ears.
    I took a breath and stretched out one hand, letting my fingers brush against the back of his neck.
    “Anyway, I was thinking we could stay in tonight.” I waggled my eyebrows a bit, to add emphasis but he just stared blankly at me, and a tendril of nerves uncoiled in my belly.
    He stood up abruptly, fast and fluid, and looked down at me. His eyes were dark, his mouth a tight line. “Not tonight,” he said. “I don’t feel like it.”
    I exhaled in the breath I’d been holding and gave a jerky nod. “Sure,” I said and at least my voice sounded steady. At least I could look him in the eye without flinching away. I’d learned a lot over the years.
    “I’ll see you later,” he said, and turned on his heel. He grabbed his coat off the recliner and shrugged it on. When he got to the front door, he glanced back at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “By the way, you should take a shower,” he said. “You smell weird.”
    The door slammed behind him as he left and I sat there in the empty room, willing the hurt and rejection to compact down into the tight little space I kept under my heart. I set the notebooks carefully back on the coffee table, tapping the edges to line them into a neat pile. As I carried my empty dishes back into the kitchen, I realized that I hadn’t told Leo about the witches. My bruised pride was pleased about that. He didn’t need to know everything. I wasn’t obligated to tell him anything.
    I did get in the shower, but I thought about Marcus during and after, as I lay in my bed. If Leo came back that night, he did so long after I’d fallen asleep.

Chapter Seven
     
    The next day, Friday, felt weirdly like a movie set into repeat. I got up, went to work, and visited Dahlia and Brittany. My usual customers came in. My least favorite patron, Misty, stayed for an hour and yelled at me for scalding her Maharaja chai. Wordlessly, I tossed the offending tea into the sink, brewed her a new cup, and shoved it across the counter hard enough to make the liquid slosh over the rim of the mug. Her furious eyes flew up to mine, but something in my expression must have cowed her, because she accepted the mug far more meekly than I’d expected.
    I waited for her to begin berating me, but instead she just went back to telling me what an incredibly successfully IT specialist her son was. Apparently he didn’t have the best luck with the ladies, but according to her, he was a special snowflake and didn’t need to waste time with those harpies anyway. When she moved on to complain how her private driveway up Blacktail Road never got plowed, I blocked out her droning and settled onto my stool, staring out the window. The occasional gust of wind rocked the sign above the door. Passersby ran for their cars with their collars pulled up. The gray day fit my mood.
    Around noon, the door swung open and I glanced up as Dahlia blew in, a scarf tied over her hair like an old Hollywood starlet.
    “Hey, you,” she said. “Lock it up for an hour and let me buy you lunch.”
    “Uh-” I said, about to decline, and changed my mind mid-protest. “Okay,” I said, and she smiled, all white teeth and pretty red lips.
    “You look fantastic, by the way,” I told her as we walked down the sidewalk. She had her arm twined through mine and her head tucked into my shoulder. I did my best to shield her from the wind.
    “Thanks,” she said, but the way her eyes stayed down made me pause.
    “Hey, you all right?” I asked, squeezing her arm into my chest.
    “Yeah, fine,” she said, glancing up and giving me a small smile. “Just a bad night. I wanted to make myself feel better, so Brittany