Spring Rain Read Free Page A

light at the window indicating someone was
waiting.
    “I’ll ask again next week,” he said with a
grin.
    Stu was a nice guy, attractive and nowhere
near as interesting to her as she was to him. Morgan checked out
the gaggle of three guys near the drive thru. Stu was apparently
reporting back his failure, and the others were laughing.
    “I don’t think their pool is funny,” said
Rosy, another coworker. “Very misogynistic to bet on a girl going
out with them.”
    “They’re idiots,” Morgan agreed. “I’m here
for the paycheck and nothing else.”
    “Out of curiosity, do you swing the other
way?”
    Startled, Morgan met Rosy’s gaze. “Um,
no.”
    “Just not interested in guys? Or friends? Or
hanging out?”
    What is wrong with these
people? She almost spoke the words out
loud before recalling how different she was from a typical
teenager. Stu, Rosy and the rest of them weren’t worrying about
protecting the world from a piece of pure evil that could easily
destroy them.
    They were concerned about … dating. Clothes.
Sports. College.
    It was a mentality Morgan
didn’t really understand, but she also knew she was the odd one out, not them.
She hadn’t fit in among the witchlings and she didn’t fit in here,
either.
    I hate my life, she thought bitterly.
    “Not right now,” she said in as pleasant of
a voice as she could manage. If she’d learned anything working
around humans, it was to be nicer, because they had no freaking
clue. “Did they ask you to ask me?”
    “No. Just curious. You’ve worked here for
over two months, and no one knows anything about you.” Rosy
shrugged. “Except that every customer on the planet loves you.” She
rolled her eyes.
    “I share my tips,” Morgan said, aware of how
awkward it was sometimes when another barista was on the machine
when one of her regular customers came in.
    “We love you for it.” Rosy grinned, her eyes
falling to someone entering the café. “I’m up!” She went to the
cash register.
    Morgan’s gaze swept out over the clientele
currently in the café. Even if she didn’t think it likely someone
had found her, she wasn’t able to shake the unease agitating her
fire magick. A spark smacked into the metal machine and fizzled
out, and she blinked, reigning in her magick.
    Whoever it was that came looking for her,
she didn’t return during Morgan’s shift. She left at nine o’clock
in the evening, an hour after closing, as she did every day. Decker
had texted twice more, and she walked down the well-lit street
towards the apartment she’d rented and read through his
responses.
    Beck is hurting.
    She sucked in a breath, her magick sparking
around her while sorrow tore a hole in her.
    There has to be another
way. Lamented the second text.
    “I want that, too,” she whispered, stopping
in the middle of the sidewalk. She tucked the phone away and spent
a long moment staring into the night sky over Las Vegas. The trees
lining her walk were budding, and the scent of winter was gone.
    Warmed by her fire magick, she didn’t notice
the chill of early spring and instead began reviewing every option
she’d ever dreamt up about how to make it back to Beck.
    In the end, it all boiled down to the stark
reality that there was no way. She couldn’t simultaneously protect
him and fulfill her familial obligation of protecting the soul
stone.
    She trudged onward to the well-kept, aging
apartment complex not far from her workplace. Morgan tugged the
scrunchie out of her hair, unleashing a puff of espresso, and
climbed the metal stairs to the second floor and her small, but
cozy apartment.
    The moment she entered, she froze. It was
all of five hundred square feet – too small for her not to notice
if something was off, even in the dark. She’d taken a large
withdrawal of cash from Decker’s credit card before leaving Idaho
and used it to buy a couch, bed, and small dining table. The rest
was stashed. She had enough for a car, but walking was cheaper.