Whereas I…well, I couldn’t even do the one thing that was expected of me, and get a consort in place before my next birthday.
I must have let out a sigh, because she stopped abruptly and laid an encouraging hand on my arm. “It will be fine,” she said. “I know you’re bummed because it didn’t work out with this last guy. But you know, I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe you guys have been going about this all wrong.”
“How so?”
“Well, your aunt is doing all this work finding guys from other clans or whatever, but maybe that’s not where you should be looking. Maybe the answer has been under your nose all this time.”
“If you’re suggesting Adam — ” I began in warning tones, and she shook her head at once.
“I’m not stupid. Of course I know he isn’t the one, or the guy, or whatever you call him.”
“The consort,” I said wearily. Stupid name, really. Made me sound like the Queen of England or something instead of some girl from Jerome, Arizona. Anyway, Adam McAllister was my third cousin once removed. Or maybe it was twice removed. I could never keep that stuff straight. He was two years older than I, and had been convinced from the time he was seventeen and I was fifteen that we should be together, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That is, I wasn’t attracted to him, and even if I were, it didn’t matter, because he’d goaded me into a “test kiss” not long after my eighteenth birthday, and absolutely nothing happened. Definitely not consort material.
“Right, the consort.” Sydney finished off the rest of the tempranillo in her glass and looked wistful for a second or two, then perked up, as if realizing more would be on the way once we got to Main Street. “Anyway, you’ve been hiding yourself away…barely even talked to a guy during high school…just because you thought this mythical person was going to show up and put the glass slipper on your foot or something. But maybe he’s actually right here in Cottonwood!”
“I doubt it,” I replied. “The prima almost always marries someone from her own clan, or at least a clan her own is connected to by marriage or treaty. They don’t go around marrying….” I trailed off; I didn’t want to insult her by calling anyone not in one of the witch clans a “civilian.”
“Normal people?” she finished for me. “But you said ‘almost always.’ So there’ve been exceptions, right?”
“A few. But it doesn’t happen very often.”
“It doesn’t have to happen often, just now. So maybe that’s why you haven’t met him, because you’ve been looking in all the wrong places.”
It didn’t sound right, but I didn’t know for sure that she was wrong, either. And at this point I was willing to try just about anything. The regular process sure wasn’t working for me.
“Okay,” I said, and finished my wine as well. “I’ll give it a try. Let’s go to Main Stage and see if we can find my Prince Charming.”
* * *
At first glance, Main Stage seemed about the last place where I would bump into the man of my dreams. Not that there was anything wrong with the club itself; it was actually pretty classy inside, with its dark walls and low couches and tall vases filled with tree branches accented with white fairy lights. It was definitely not a crummy cowboy honky-tonk or anything like that. But face it, with a population of barely 12,000 people, Cottonwood didn’t exactly boast a large pool of possible candidates.
Even so, I couldn’t help scanning the crowd there, trying to see if there was anyone who remotely fit the bill of prospective future consort. Not anything too promising at the moment; I saw a few hipster-looking guys nursing cheap beers, and the requisite number of barflies sitting at the counter. You’d think they were too old for a place like this, but I supposed Main Stage was just another stop on their tour of the local watering holes.
I let out a sigh, and Sydney poked me in the arm. “Oh, come on — the band doesn’t start for another twenty minutes, and I bet that’s when people will really start showing up. Let me buy you a drink.”
“You don’t have to do that — ”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. You can buy the next round if you want.”
“All right,” I replied, and followed her over to the bar.
Of course the men sitting there gave her the hairy eyeball, despite most of them being old enough to be her father. She ignored them, and asked the bartender for a couple of glasses of wine. Usually when we went out, Sydney stuck to mixed drinks, but since we’d already had wine with dinner, she appeared to be playing it safe. I had a feeling she didn’t want to repeat the experience of her own twenty-first birthday, when she’d mixed everything but the kitchen sink and then spent half the night throwing up all those mojitos and martinis and beers and tequila shots.