Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

She shook her head. “Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings.”

I should’ve known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost’s poems or twisted them into one of her own?

We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we’d made—Mrs. Ipswich (Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow (Classic Pinups of World War II), which we had given to his wife because he wasn’t home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.

“I can’t believe it.” I wadded up my napkin. “Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?” I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.

“Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It’s a wonderful combination, so—”

“Hypocritical?”

“Not at all. I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?”

“I thought that was a cookbook.”

“Not unless Delilah’s cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips.” She waved a fry in the air.

“Fries.”

“Exactly.”

I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn’t point out to Liv that Delilah’s devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.

“So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?” I changed the subject.

“I’m mad about it.” Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I’d already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketball player at lunch. She didn’t seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especially since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.

“So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?”

“I don’t know.” I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn’t about to share any of them.

“Come on. Everyone has secrets.”

“Not everyone,” I lied.

“There’s nothing at all beneath your paper?”

“Nope. Just more paper, I guess.” In a way, I wished it was true.

“So you’re rather like an onion?”

“More like a regular old potato.”

She picked up a fry and examined it. “Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry.” She popped it into her mouth, smiling.

I laughed and conceded. “Fine. I’m a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tell.”

Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. “That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah.”

“You caught me.”

“I can’t promise anything, but I will tell you that I know the librarian. Rather well, it turns out.”

“So you’ll hook me up?”

“I will hook you up, dude.” Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I’d known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.

She returned to her fries. “I find all the secrecy sort of romantic, don’t you?” I didn’t know how to answer that, considering how deep the secrets went around here.