“So?”
“No, look. You’re a witch, and I don’t think we know the half of what you can do. The Rev, Diederik, Quinn—weretigers. Chuy and Joe—angels. Lemuel—vampire. Manfred is a psychic. The new guy at the gas station, he seems pretty . . . something, I don’t know.”
Fiji couldn’t figure out why Olivia was making such a point of her own ordinariness. Fiji didn’t think Olivia was ordinary at all. She thought Olivia was a sociopath, but one she could get along with. And she felt a little sorry for Olivia sometimes, while in the same moment she understood that Olivia had lethal skills and no qualms about using them.
“Olivia, you’re complex,” Fiji said. “It’s what you are.”
Olivia laughed again. It was already a red-letter day.
When they reached Killeen, they stopped briefly at a gas station to top off the tank and hit the ladies’ room. With the aid of Olivia’s phone, it wasn’t hard to find San Jacinto Street, which was in the older part of downtown, the part with sidewalks and storefronts and angled parking. Olivia found a space a few doors down from Handyman Hardware. The front door of the store had a cartoon of a very muscular man with his arms crossed over his chest, a hammer in one hand and a drill in the other.
“Cute,” Olivia said. But she wasn’t laughing now.
Fiji pushed open the door. The store was old, too, and the tile floor rose and fell a bit. It was dim in the store’s interior past the plate-glass windows, and no one was in sight, even though the bell over the door had issued an electronic bing-bong.
“Be right there!” called a male voice.
Olivia walked over to a display of mailboxes and open and shut several in an experimental way. Fiji was distracted by an array of planters; she wanted to put one on the cement balustrade on her porch. Geraniums or petunias, she thought, and wished she’d brought a tape measure to determine if the longest planter would fit the space. She was actually surprised when the man appeared.
“Hi, can I help you ladies?” he said. He directed his attention to Fiji, who was closest, but naturally, he glanced at Olivia.
Olivia turned around, and Fiji saw him literally twitch, though his face stayed pleasantly expectant. There was no doubt in Fiji’s mind that this man had recognized Olivia. However, Olivia ignored the twitch and followed the cue of the bland expression. Fiji followed her lead.
“My friend brought me over,” Fiji said, designating herself the main shopper.
“So what are you shopping for today?” he asked. The fingers of his right hand flexed and clenched in a fist.
Fiji glanced around, hoping she was making the scan casual. “Two things,” Fiji said. “I need a hammer that’s not too heavy for me to swing. Also, I’m interested in measuring this sort of window box, to see if it’ll fit on my porch.” Behind the man, she could see Olivia nodding vehemently. Yes, she knew him, too. She was just better at hiding it.
“Let’s take care of the hammer first,” he said.
Good. She wanted to get Olivia close to some usable weapons. “By the way, I’m Fiji Cavanaugh,” she said, as she followed him down the aisle to the left.
“Oh. Lucas Evans,” he said.
“Have you lived here long, Lucas?” She strove to sound just interested, not flirtatious. In her own opinion, she hit the sweet spot.
“A few years,” he said casually. “You ladies from around here?”
“Oh, no, we live in Midnight. Little bitty town, you’ve probably never heard of it.”
“And this is the closest hardware store to Midnight?”
“No, there’s one in Davy, and there are two or three in Marthasville,” she said, managing to sound surprised. “But we’re in town to visit a friend, and rather than get there too early, we thought we’d explore greater downtown Killeen before we went to her house.”
“Who are you visiting?”
“Agnes Orta,” Olivia said, not missing a beat. “We know her daughter.”
They stopped in front of a display of hammers that would have delighted Thor himself. Fiji genuinely needed a hammer, and she took her time hefting a few. One of them pleased her, and Lucas Evans assured her it was top-of-the-line. After a glance at the price, Fiji believed him.
When they returned to the front of the store to measure the window box, she handed the hammer to Olivia very naturally before she lifted a trough to feel its weight. After that she relaxed.
The hardware store owner was about forty-five, and he had a little gut and a soft brown mustache. He blended in perfectly; he was wearing a western shirt, plaid with snap buttons, and a rodeo belt, and Levi’s. Even cowboy boots. He was relaxing, too. Fiji could tell he was sure that Olivia was ignorant of his true identity.