“I did, and I should have let her take over a long time ago.”
“Right?” Kristy laughs and starts taking the candy from the bags. “I want some of this now.”
“I might have eaten an entire bag of Swedish Fish on the way here.” I take my coat off and hang it on the chair behind the register. We have apothecary jars we’re filling with pink and red candy as part of our display. “And those conversations hearts are looking good. I don’t even like them.”
“No one does, yet you can’t stop eating them.”
“Right? Kinda like candy corn. It’s gross yet I eat it.”
“And Marshmallow Peeps,” she adds.
A customer comes up to the register, and since I’m behind the counter, I go to ring them up. “Uh, this is different,” I mumble, looking at the computer screen.
“We got a new system,” Kristy says, coming over to show me how to use the register. “This one is simpler than our old one, so instead of doing the update, I thought it would be a better idea to just upgrade altogether.”
“Yeah, that is a better idea.” It’s been a long time since I ran the register. I’ve come into the store a few times over the last month or so to help stock shelves and get things cleaned at closing time. I’ve been preoccupied with inventorying all my magical supplies and making any and all vanquishing potions and banishing charms I can find, as well as researching everything I can about the different circles of Hell, spending a lot of time in the Academy’s library.
“I’ll take the candy to the back,” I say after the customer has paid and leaves. Betty and Danielle are in the storage room, going through our boxes of decorations to find stuff for the window display. “Hey, guys.”
“Callie, hey!” Betty pulls a string of paper hearts from the box. “Ohhh, look at you! I love that dress!”
“Thanks,” I say, realizing that her eyes are lingering on my stomach. This dress is rather form-fitting, and at eighteen weeks, it’s starting to be obvious I’m pregnant. Betty is too nice to say anything, and asking if I’m pregnant is kind of like asking if I cheated on Lucas. He’s a vampire, and it’s not possible for him to father a child. “Lucas and I are going out to dinner later.”
“Must be somewhere fancy.”
“It is. He made a reservation somewhere in Chicago but won’t tell me where. It’s a surprise.”
“Are you celebrating something?” Danielle asks. She’s sifting through a pile of books, sorting them by genre.
“Making it through another month alive,” I say without thinking.
Danielle laughs and then looks at me seriously. “You’re not joking, are you?”
I shrug. “Not really, but we should all celebrate the fact that we’ve lived to see another day.”
“I like that outlook.” Betty puts the paper hearts down and gets more of our Valentine’s Day decorations out. Both Betty and Danielle know I’m a witch, and they’re both cool with it—now. After saving Danielle from a demon harvesting organs, she had a lot of questions that I avoided answering due to lack of time, which led her to have her suspicions. “And I need a boyfriend to go out to dinner with. I want to wear fancy dresses and go to fancy restaurants.”
“You don’t need a boyfriend to do any of that,” I tell her.
“True, but having someone pay for said fancy dinner would be nice,” she adds with a laugh. “Ugh, why are boys so much better in books?”
“Date a vampire,” I say with a wink. “The sex is at least as good as book-sex.”
“I went down a rabbit hole on Reddit the other night,” Betty starts. “It was a whole thread about people’s experiences in the bedroom with vampires. I’m not sure I can handle that level of aggression.”
“Aggression?”
“Like…borderline BDSM.”
“Oh.” I make a face. “Are you sure you weren’t on a thread about fetching?”
Betty laughs. “I might have been. It was interesting, to say the least.” Her cheeks flush a bit, and it reminds me how much Betty has come out of her shell in the recent months. “I think this is all the Valentine’s Day stuff.” She motions to two boxes on the ground. “This was with our summer stuff, for some reason.” She puts the strings of paper hearts on top of one of the boxes. “I think we have enough for our display.”
“I ordered more of those puffy paper things.” I hold my hands up like I’m holding a ball. “I don’t know what they’re called.”
“I think I know what you mean.” Betty stacks the boxes and tries to pick them both up.
“I got it,” I say and grab one. We take them up front so we can lay out what we need for the window. “The house is still good?” I ask, setting the box down.