la belle dame sans merci | carlisle cullen

Seventy-Six

Rosalie didn't often admit she was wrong. It wasn't that she was stubborn. There just wasn't usually anything to admit. She just had a habit of being right, it was a blessing and a curse.

Admitting that she had been wrong about Minerva Amata was one of the simpler things she'd relented on. She'd kept Edward's stupid human alive and God knew that girl would have found a way to be more headache dead than alive. Her brother made that much clear when they briefly entertained the of just killing the sorry thing. What a mess that had been.

Rosalie could hold a bit more grace for the witch. She'd proved herself not to be a threat and, now that she knew anyway, they couldn't exactly be double executed for their consorting. What's done was done, Carlisle may as well be happy if they were all going to die anyway.

That's what led to Rosalie pulling into an unfamiliar storefront. She'd heard enough of the store, driven past it, had the pleasure of flowers that made a deep guilt root in her gut, but she'd never stepped foot inside.

Rosalie parked her car and waited a moment, gathering her wits. The store front was unassuming, flowers were painted on the windows, ornate shades of greenery and vines along the top. A sign hung over the door, yellow and purple sign with little leaf scrawled in cursive. It looked quite nice, given it shared a strip with a travel agency, a textiles store and a nail salon. Not exactly a bustling spot.

Her car keys jingled at her side as she climbed out of her car, stepping cautiously. It was cloudy, humid which was an unwelcome change to the usual rain. As she pulled open the door, a blast of chill air struck her. Cold, even for a human in the middle of July. A bell jingling overhead as the door opened was just a background to the cacophony of metal clanging coming from the curtain behind the counter.

"Just a—" Clang "Minute!" There was about thirty more seconds of clanking and muttered curses before something kicked out and a more pronounced thud echoed from the back.

Finally, the witch herself came through the curtain with a sheen of sweat on her face and a spot of grease on her nose. "Hi, sorry." She was a bit frazzled, her dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, wiping her hands with an old cloth. "What can I— Oh." She cut herself off when she finally brought her eyes to meet Rosalie's.

She was pretty in an ordinary kind of way, sort of a timeless look about her. Carlisle's type, that was for sure.

"Rosalie, right?" Minerva asked, tossing the rag down on the counter top.

"That's right." She smiled, finding herself more nervous than she expected to be. "You've got a little.." she pointed vaguely to her own nose.

"Oh, Jesus Christ." Minerva mumbled snatching the cloth up again to wipe at her nose, "Too hot out to leave the AC off but it's stuck on full blast." She explained, "I'm playing handyman."

"Why don't you call someone?"

Minerva shrugged, "Bored, I guess. Not doing much besides whacking the thing with a screwdriver." The witch leaned against the edge of the counter, "What can I do for you? Haven't seen you since I made a terrible first impression."

Rosalie huffed a half laugh, eyebrows lifting. Straight to the point then. "Well, that's part of why I'm here." She admitted and the witch's eyebrows lifted. "And it wasn't that bad of an impression."