Julia had followed her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Molly rounded on her. “What was on your hands?”

“What do you mean?” Julia’s expression was pinched. “You’re starting to scare me.”

“Your hands!” she snapped. “You had something on your hands!”

Looking completely mystified and more than half-panicked, Julia stared at her own hands. “I used a hand lotion from a toiletry basket the firm gave the partners’ families at the Memorial Day picnic. That was before I left Philip. I was impressed. It’s high-end stuff, and they gave us a lot of different things. There’s face cream, and body and hand lotion, and shampoo and conditioner. They even had hair spray. Why, are you allergic?”

If the spell had been hidden in the unguents Julia was using, why hadn’t it activated before, when they’d hugged?

But Julia hadn’t actually made contact with her skin earlier. They both wore sweaters, and Julia had worn a jacket.

And the searchers were local, very close. They had never gone searching for Molly. Instead, they had planted traps and waited. Julia and Molly had done the rest.

Julia, who apologized to Molly at the insistence of her therapist, whom she had found through people who worked at Sherman & Associates. Maybe Julia’s therapist wasn’t really a therapist. At that point, Molly was willing to believe anything.

“You fool,” she whispered to herself. She needed to leave, now, as fast as she could. She told Julia, “We’re done, but I need your car. Go home.”

“What do you mean, you need my car?” Julia followed her. “We can’t leave things like this. We need to work through our feelings.”

“Fuck your feelings!” She didn’t have time to waste. The spotlight of attention was traveling closer.

She needed her phone, her purse, and her kit of magic items from her suitcase. And she already had Julia’s keys. Grabbing everything, she raced out the door, unlocked the Volvo with the key fob, and jumped in.

The parked police cruiser was visible in the rearview mirror. As she glanced at it, the doors opened and both officers began to climb out.

She didn’t have time to deal with them, and if they followed her, they would be sitting ducks in a magical confrontation. Whispering a sleep spell into her fingers, she flung it at the cruiser. Both officers collapsed back into their seats.

Julia had followed her out. She yanked the driver’s door open. “You can’t just leave like this—”

Molly shoved her away, slammed the door and locked it. Then she started the car, reversed, and accelerated out of the parking lot. In the few minutes it had taken to extricate herself, the searchers had gotten even closer.