Karma's Spell (Magical Midlife in Mystic Hollow Book 1), Lacey Andersen [best book club books .txt] 📗

seatbelt with what should be my bum arm, but just as I’d thought when I got out of the car, it didn’t hurt any more. I silently rejoiced at having full functionality of both my arms once more.

"I'm not going to be able to stop you from looking into this, am I?" Daniel's voice sounded amused and exasperated at the same time.

I shook my head.

He was staring at me in a strange way. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

“How do you know?” I asked, truly curious.

He finally looked away. “I’m a shifter. I notice more than you think.”

I stiffened. Daniel was a shifter? So many things that hadn’t made sense clicked into place. “So shifters notice specific things about everyone?”

“Not everyone,” he said softly, then turned off his engine and started to climb out. “You ladies be careful out there. Not that you will.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to in order to get my brother back.” The words left my mouth before I could think, but I didn’t regret them. I meant them with every fiber of my being.

He shook his head and headed toward the guys.

No doubt he thought I was crazy. He may as well learn that I did my own thing, or at least that's who I was remembering to be, who I was before Rick. Before I was manipulated into being someone I wasn’t. Before I had to turn my personality down so I didn't overshadow my husband. The toad.

A vindictive part of me hoped he stayed like that forever.

I pushed the thought aside as I pictured Daniel sprouting hair and roaring at the moon. Or was it howling? Right now, I cared a little less about the old toad than the shifter thing.

My heart hammered as I closed my door. “I have a lot of questions.”

“About shifters or Daniel?” Deva asked, a smile in her voice.

Daniel glanced back toward us.

Darn it. Had he heard her? “About shifters, of course.”

Deva turned on the engine and pulled away. “Shoot.”

But before I started in on a subject I was sure was going to be complicated, I couldn’t help but ask, “Could we drive with the windows down?”

Deva nodded and smiled. “You always did love the windows down.”

“But somehow I forgot,” I said softly. “I forgot a lot about who I was and what I liked.”

“You’re remembering though. And soon you’ll not just remember who you were, but you’ll find out who you are now. It takes some time, but you will. It was like that with me for a while after my divorce.” Deva didn’t wait for a response, she just unrolled the windows.

Cool, crisp autumn air rushed in around us, and I closed my eyes. So much had changed, but I was happy to know not everything had. I still felt free like this. And maybe for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t just the wind that made me feel free; it was the sense that I was finding the life I was always meant to find. Of that I was certain.

I didn’t even care that it’d taken me forty-two years. I was just glad I wasn’t wasting anymore time being unhappy. Because no one was guaranteed a tomorrow.

Even with the bumpy road, that was the best drive I’d had in years.

11

Daniel

I’d always thought she was human.

As Emma, Carol, and Deva drove away, I shook my head. The woman was fascinating, and I would’ve laid down money she’d never known about this world before. What had changed in her life to give her the knowledge or some power of her own? And for that matter, what was she? What kind of powers did she have now? Or was she truly just a human in the know?

When she was human, or when I’d thought she was human, she’d been off limits. Did that mean she was within limits now? Did I want her to be an option? The thought itself was fine, but acting on it? I wasn't sure if I could do it.

Emma had always been a bit of an odd duck in high school. It didn't help that she fell in with the supernatural crowd without meaning to. Most humans could feel that we were different, that we were other, but it never bothered Emma. I'd go so far as to say that it was that otherness that made her feel connected to us. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I was so drawn to her, why I'd fallen for her so hard in high school even though we barely exchanged two words with each other.

She'd always been adorable, a little dorky, and the life of the party when she wanted to be. The woman I'd seen crash into a display of canned corn, though? That wasn't the Emma I knew in school and it tore at my heart that something had dimmed her light. I had to push the urge down to track down whoever had hurt her and pay them a visit.

The longer she was with her friends, though, the more the light seemed to be coming back, even if her brother was in trouble. I hoped Henry was okay. If he wasn't, then I was worried about what it might do to Emma. Her parents’ death had been brutal on both of them, I knew that. I also knew that he was everything to her, and I wasn't sure but I thought that he was the only family she had left.

It had taken me so long to get over her leaving for college, for me to realize that she wasn't coming back, that she had a life elsewhere, that now that she was back, I wasn't sure how to handle it. It was only meeting Sarah that had changed my outlook on life. She saw the broken-hearted side of me and didn't care. She accepted that I'd fallen in love with a girl in high school but never talked to her. All she cared about