The Misadventures of Anna Cabbot

Two Step Shuffle

Carson was still out cold the next morning and didn't so much as twitch when she wandered through on her way to the kitchen. She tried to keep the noise to a minimum as she started the Keurig and fixed her breakfast, though she had the suspicion he could sleep through a literal marching band in her living room considering the events of last night.

Speaking of which, she'd had a whopping three and a half hours of sleep. Today was going to be magical.

After she ate, she rifled around her table for paper and something to write with.

Carson,
Coffee by the Keurig. Bagels in the fridge. Help yourself. I'll be back around six at the latest. If you're not here, I totally understand.
TV has Netflix.
-Anna

She paused, and as an afterthought, put both her cell phone and her work number at the bottom of the page. There wasn't a landline phone in the house, but he was a smart cookie. He'd figure something out if he got desperate.

With her keys in one hand and coffee in the other, she took a deep breath and, for the sake of her annoying as shit anxiety hindbrain, tried not to imagine all the ways life could nosedive in the span of a single day. She swallowed dryly, and eased out the front door.


She might as well have hung a literal warning sign around her neck as the guys didn't come within three feet of her for most of the morning. Not a problem for her; she sipped her coffee, reheated her samples, and booted up various pieces of equipment in a quiet calm. She kept herself steadily busy to stay awake, aided by a playlist that had originally powered her through fourteen-hour overnights.

Halfway through the afternoon she had to leave her cave (the oh so charming nickname a coworker had given her workspace) or she was going to start drooling on the bench. She needed a second cup of coffee she couldn't have, and there was no way in hell she'd be caught napping on the clock.

She crept out to the front office and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest.

Mack swiveled in his chair and gave her a small wave. "You okay? You look tired."

"A little bit. Didn't sleep well last night."

Understatement of monumental proportions.

"You can always make a pot of coffee if you want," he offered.

She rubbed her sternum lightly through her shirt. "Nah. Thanks, though."

"It's there if you change your mind." Mack pointed to the computer screen in front of him. "Did you see the news? There was a fire at a marina last night."

Anna hadn't set anything on fire, but her heart rate kicked up like she had and the police were going to show up within the next five minutes to arrest her for it.

Her eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Blew the top off a garage and took out most of the marina slips."

Which was a couple thousand dollars worth of damage. At least. Shit.

She snapped her fingers together. "That must be what all the sirens were about last night. I don't remember what time it was, but I definitely heard them."

Darren wandered out of his office right about then and leaned by the printer. "The fire in the city last night?"

"You live down by there?" Mack asked.

"Yeah." She looked between the both of them and added, "I've spent most of my life in farm country. I wanted to be where there were delivery options. Do the police think it was arson or accidental?"

"Everything I've seen says they don't know enough about it, but nobody was hurt." Mack clicked at something on the screen. "No injuries or casualties."

Anna blinked, not sure she'd heard him correctly. No casualties? There had been at least two people — the Lady of Lake Erie and whoever she'd gone to intimidate the whereabouts of her brother out of — in that building when it had gone up.

"Huh," she muttered. She wandered back into her cave to further mull that over and decidedly not panic about it.


It was a minor miracle to get from her parking space at work to her driveway at home without being a traffic hazard, and she hadn't spared any brain cells to worry whether she still had a Welshman in her living room.

"Shit." She tripped over her own feet and ran her shoulder into the wall. Nudging the door shut with her hip, and was so focused on getting her travel mug to the kitchen sink that she didn't see him until she was in the kitchen doorway.

Anna rocked up on her toes. "Are you tap dancing?"

"Eh...yes." Carson let his arms fall loosely at his sides, mindful of the bruises that had cropped up on his pale skin. "You look absolutely knackered."

"I am so tired I can't see straight," she said. Sprawling out on the floor for a snooze looked more and more enticing by the second.

He reached for her mug and she let him take it. "I can cook or do you want take away?"

Anna stared dumbly, mouth open. "Food?"

"Right." Carson set it on the counter and, as though he wasn't sure how she'd react to being manhandled, steered her gently by the shoulders back to the living room. "You need a nap."

"Just a couple hours," she slurred. "No more than three."

"Absolutely." He snapped open the blanket.

Her legs refused to hold her weight anymore, and she collapsed down to curl on her side.

"At least two, no more than three." He tucked her in.

The blanket smelled very faintly of saltwater.

Whatever she said was a mess of garbled consonants into the pillow. She wiggled around until she was truly comfortable, and promptly went under.


Either something had died in her mouth or she had the worst hangover since that time in her senior year when she'd had too much vodka and thrown up in her apartment bathroom, then army crawled from the toilet to the bed with her eyes closed because the floor was steady and everything else was a damn paint mixer.

She lifted her head off a pillow that didn't smell like a combination of her Bath and Body Works perfume and her shampoo, and pried her eyelids apart.

A slit in the living room curtains showed the sun was nearly gone for the day. Pushing herself up on her elbow, she blinked owlishly and swept the hair that had escaped her messy bun off her cheek and forehead. She flopped around a bit and managed to lean her elbows on the back of the couch.

There was music playing softly in the kitchen, and, periodically, rhythmic slapping, like bare feet against the floor. Tap dance. He could tap dance.

Anna staggered to her feet and swayed while her head dapted to the change in position. Once she was sure she wouldn't faceplant somewhere between here and there, she meandered from one room to another.

Carson evidently hadn't heard her come in, and he was between the island and the counter, his back to her. She crept forward and peeked around to watch his feet move. He looked like he'd been dancing for years.

The music she'd heard came from her own iPod plugged into a set of speakers on the counter. She recognized her favorite Broadway cast recording playlist, and the song currently playing was one within her vocal range. The big Jazz Hands moment was due up shortly; she inhaled deeply and belted it out when the time came.

It greatly pleased her when he jumped about a foot in the air and flailed.

"You cheeky little — " he started, whirling to face her.

Anna smiled tiredly. "I'm a little shit when I wanna be."

His eyebrows rose.

"You said something about food earlier?" she asked, rubbing the side of her nose.

"Oh, yeah." Carson gestured to the fridge. "I can make dinner, if you like?"

She leaned her hip against one of her lower cabinets. "You want to make me dinner?"

"Well," he said, "yeah. You let me sleep on your couch last night."

She found it fascinating his blush went from his collarbones to his hairline.

"Nothing fancy." Anna squeaked by him to settle on one of the island stools.

"Nothing fancy," Carson agreed. "Pasta. Protein. Simple sauce."

"Fantastic." She rested her elbows on the countertop and, for at least a few minutes, looked anywhere but him. Some of his bruises made her wince.

On the counter by the toaster was her tea strainer and loose leaf cannisters. "You found my tea cupboard."

He turned around and fixed her with a stink eye her mother would have been proud of. "Most of the tea in your cupboard has no caffeine. It's blasphemy."

"I have restrictions. Had a heart problem."

Carson stared.

"I'm fine now," she said hurriedly.

This was, of course, barring the occasional odd heart beat, the ache in the wires in her sternum, and how her pulse liked to still fluctuate for shits and giggles.

"I'm not just going to keel over," she added, as he still looked a little dubious.

"So you're alright?"

"Yeah." She wished she had something to occupy her hands. "I take my baby aspirin every morning and see my cardiologist once a year."

He looked at her like she wasn't being entirely truthful with him, and she calmly stared blandly back until the kettle whistled in the tense silence. She'd get up in a minute or two, and snapped upright in surprise when Carson held up her two most empty containers, clearly waiting for her to make a choice.

"The one on the left. The maple one, please." She rubbed the side of her nose again, her chest aching for a different reason.

Anna, almost by default, spent the majority of her time alone. It wasn't that she didn't have friends — she did, and she valued them highly, especially her bestie, Juliet — but she'd moved out to Buffalo without knowing a soul.

Granted, there was her landlady, Stevie Whitley, whom lived directly next door, but other than that...Anna came home every day to an empty house, and had an early dinner with Stevie on Sundays.

Nobody had ever told her how difficult it was to make friends as an adult without either going to school or having coworkers in a similar age range.

"Anna?"

His gentleness was her undoing. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she buried her face in her hands out of sheer embarrassment.

There was a click she belatedly registered as the stove burner being turned off, and then she didn't need to look to know he stood next to her. He put a cautious hand on her back between her shoulder blades, and Anna leaned into it. Carson edged clsoer, and she tipped the side of her head against his warm, bare chest.

After a few long minutes, she calmed and sniffled.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he whispered.

She wiped at her cheeks and couldn't quite bring herself to look him in the eyes yet.

"Not right now," she said. She scrubbed more salt residue from her face. "I'm okay."

He stared at her.

"It will be okay."

"Better." He gave her shoulders one last squeeze, then went back to the stove as though to give her both literal and figurative space. She appreciated it more than she could put into words.


Anna shared a backyard with Stevie. It was a good size for being in the city, and it was fenced in, providing them with some privacy. While they shared a front porch, they didn't share a back one. Stevie had a deacon's bench on hers; Anna had a wooden adirondack chair with a cushion she brought into the kitchen every night to prevent dampness from getting to it.

Later, after the sun had finally set and the first of the brightest stars appeared in the sky — Anna's favorite time of night — she sat cross-legged on the picnic table in the middle of the yard. Carson sat on the bench, his arm brushing her calf as he breathed.

"It's quite peaceful here, for a city," he said quietly.

"It is." Anna rested her elbows on her knees. "How does a selkie swim in freshwater?"

Carson, wearing her oversize U of R sweatshirt, grinned. "Same as they do in salt water."

"Ugh." She rubbed a hand over her forehead and had to laugh. "Shit, yeah, I walked right into that one."

"Yeah you did." He stretched his legs out in front of him. "Do you know what happens to magic over a sustained amount of time?"

"If it's done right, it'll strengthen." Anna let her hands hang loosely between her knees and twisted her fingers together. "There's historic sites that have layer after layer of compounded magic."

She'd been to a couple places like that when she was abroad, and it been like walking through a wall.

He spread his arms out. "Think bigger. Longer."

"Like, hundreds of years?"

"Yeah."

She drew the cuffs of her long sleeve shirt down over her knuckles, and said, "Most things usually evolve. If you look at language, the language we use today is different from the language they used in, say, the early twentieth century."

Magic, she knew — her own in particular — changed over time.

The proverbial lightbulb clicked on.

"Your magic's evolved, hasn't it?" she asked.

"It's not as pleasant or as fluid for us to change in freshwaer, but it's still possible." Carson glanced over his shoulder. "It's still welcome."

"So you swim in the Niagara River for giggles?"

"Lake Ontario. I'm from Toronto, remember?"

"Ah. Yeah. Sorry." She gestured in his general direction. "It's the - the Welsh. I think Wales instead of Canada."

He snorted.

"I do hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Anna shot to her feet and spun on the bench seat. She overbalanced and dropped hard to one knee on the tabeltop, smacking her palms together to conjure the same power ball she'd had the night before. Magic sizzled at her fingertips, and she squinted through the sudden brightness.

"Erin," she said incredulously.

"Were you expecting someone else?"

The Lady of Lake Erie looked surprisingly put together for someone who'd been blown up in a garage not even twenty-four hours prior. She stood on the grass at the bottom of the porch steps.

Anna looked a little closer and concluded yes, her pantsuit did look a bit singed around the edges.

"I wasn't really expecting anyone," Anna said, shaking her hands to disperse her magic. "Which, how did you get here?"

"Through the front door," she said slowly. "How else did you expect me to get in?"

Anna stared, and required a hand on Carson's shoulder for balance in order to get both feet back on the ground. She huffed out a laugh at her own pun, and swallowed back some hysteria.

"But, how did you get in? Aren't there wards or something?" Carson looked up at her. "There are wards or something, right?"

She threw up her free hand. Her other was still clenched in the fabric of Carson's borrowed sweatshirt.

"There are protections on the property," Erin conceded. "Quite well done for, as you say, a ditchwitch."

"And you look really good for someone who was the center of a three alarm fire call last night," she said. She glanced at Carson and added, "I was going to tell you."

"Tell me what? That we hadn't killed a Lady of the Lake?"

Anna sighed. "Yeah. Saw some news clips that said there weren't any casualties and I was going to mention it and then I took a nap." She took a breath, then another, and eyed Erin across the short expanse of grass. "How was your meeting last night, by the way?"

"A bit inflammatory and not at all as useful as I thought it would be." Erin stepped lightly across to the picnic table and produced a business card from some hidden pocket. "Which is why I think it would be beneficial to the sitution at hand if someone else were to collect and analyze the information."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "I already have a full time job."

"And so do most, if not all beginning musicians and artists," Erin snapped. "I'm never going to get anywhere without someone either running screaming for the back door or thinking they can get the better of me." She snorted, and Anna flinched at the raw power she momentarily exposed. "All I'm asking for are updates at least once a week and whenever you think you've got something substantial.

Anna took the business card with careful fingers. "I haven't agreed to anything yet. I'll ask again — why me?"

"I have the unerring ability to find the correct someone or something for the job at hand. I've yet to be wrong." Erin crossed her arms over her chest and smiled sharply, storm surge rolling over Anna's witchsense. "I don't intend to start now."

"I haven't agreed to anything," she said pointedly. "What's in it for me, anyway? I don't work for free."

She enjoyed volunteer work — she'd spent her college winter break weeknights as a volunteer librarian at her hometown library, shelving books, checking materials in and out — but this thing Erin proposed had the potential to get ugly and who knew if she'd need the extra money for hospital bills later on.

Having a high deductible health plan seriously sucked.

"Besides your continued existence this close to my lakeshore? My patronage and a hefty reward. You've student loans, don't you?" The smile turned predatory.

"A whole shit ton," Anna said. "There's other witches in Buffalo. More powerful ones, too. Why not one of them?"

"Because you were the first one I found and you're the right one," Erin said, leaning forward and placing her palms down on the rough wood of the picnic table. "Besides, you've already died once, haven't you? What else have you got to fear?"

Anna swayed on her feet. Slowly and deliberately, without dropping eye contact, she swung one leg and then the other over the bench Carson sat on, and eased herself down. The business card lay in front of her, and she sat stiffly, every muscle in her back taut.

"You can see yourself out, same way you saw yourself in," she said, fingers wrapped around the edge of the table.

Erin straightened. "I've yet to be wrong, Annabelle Elizabeth Cabbot. You remember that."

"Get off my lawn, Erin." Anna didn't dare move until she was sure Erin was not only through the house and off the property completely, but gone from the street out front, too. Once she was certain they were alone again, she rested her forehead on the tabletop and let the breeze sweep across the sweat on the back of her neck.

Carson shifted next to her, his arm brushing hers. She took the proffered support gesture and slouched miserably.

"Do you know her personally?" he asked.

"Nope. Never met her before last night."

He slid the business card over in front of him. "You want a cuppa?"

Anna freed herself from the picnic table and locked her shaky knees. "How about a beer instead?"