“And everything else . . . I’ll figure out. I didn’t have much of a home before I came here. I mean, I had Mel and Sonja, who are the closest things I’ve ever had to family.” Jillian paused to tap a picture frame showing herself with her arms around a short, balding Japanese man and a lovely dark-haired woman in a slick red power suit and matching lipstick. “But no place where I felt like I absolutely knew I belonged, where I wasn’t the weird girl obsessed with monsters. I’ve found that here. And even after the League is no longer interested in Mystic Bayou, I’ll still be here.”

“You’d give up your job for a man and good pie?”

Jillian smiled. “I don’t like to think of it as ‘giving up’ so much as changing what I think of as a fulfilled life. Plus, you’ve never tried Siobhan’s pies. They’re life-changing.”

“You could let me try that pie that I happened to carry in here for you.”

Jillian took the plate and scooted it across her desk, cradling it like a newborn against her chest. “Oh, no. This is my pie. You should go get your own.”

“That’s not nice.”

“I wasn’t trying to be nice,” Jillian said, taking a big bite of pie.

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “You’re diabolical.”

Jillian grinned broadly. “Just do yourself a favor, when Siobhan says it’s better to let her choose, believe her.”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to choose my own pie?”

“Just let Siobhan choose. Trust me, it saves time. If you choose your own pie, you’ll only be disappointed.”

“That’s cryptic.”

Jillian smacked her lips. “Yep.”

Dani accepted her pie-denial with a modicum of grace, she thought, and carried her new books down the street to the Boone Mercantile and Grocery. She’d expected some little bodega-style market, but to her surprise, the store offered a pretty impressive range of ethnic foods, from lutefisk to guava soda. She imagined that was due to the wide spectrum of cultures and tastes represented in the Bayou. Cultures that she was apparently going to have to figure out on her own, without asking a lot of direct questions.

Dani had to be careful about how she ate. She wasn’t so much worried about weight management, but the fewer processed foods and chemicals in her system, the better she was able to perform. So as much as it pained her, she’d given up her beloved diet soda and Sno-balls. She rarely drank coffee anymore. But she was going to eat as much pie as she damn well pleased, because as far as she was concerned, sugar was a natural substance that kept people around her from getting injured.