“Of course there are. This is a graduation party, not one of your after-show keggers.”

“Oh, hey,” he said brightly. “There’s a bartender. Looks like this’ll be tolerably wholesome.”

Casey found us getting drinks and threw her arms around both of us in a massive double hug. “Oh! You guys came! Thanks so much.” She was aglow with excitement and energy and could barely stay still. She accepted my card with another hug, told us to let her know if we needed anything, and then dashed off when she saw her great aunt from Idaho arrive.

“Wow. All this kind of makes me wish I’d stayed in college,” Doug mused. A few of our coworkers waved at us from the far side of the yard, and we began winding our way toward them.

“Yup. You could have had all this fun waiting for you after school.”

He grimaced. “The problem is, I was having all this fun during school.”

The other bookstore staff were happy to see us, and we all fell into comfortable conversation that varied from the party itself to shop talk from work. Casey’s family had spared no expense, and waiters came around with various types of finger food. None of us had eaten dinner, so we practically devoured the trays and probably looked like savages in our corner.

I was contemplating a second drink when Beth suddenly said, “Oh, hey. Seth and Maddie are here.”

I stiffened. One of the reasons I’d answered the door when Doug came to pick me up was that he’d said Maddie was closing. Knowing I’d get a reprieve from her and Seth had made this prospect bearable, but apparently, there’d been some sort of incorrect intel afoot.

I did an immediate 180, hoping I had misheard Beth. Nope. There they were: Seth and Maddie. Worse, Seth’s little niece Kayla was with them. She was the youngest of his brother’s girls, four years old with blue eyes and a mop of blond curls. I’d recently discovered that Kayla had the makings of a psychic and was able to sense the unseen world, much as Dante or my friend Erik could. She was a long way from having their skills or having any idea what they meant yet. For now, she was just a happy little girl—albeit a very quiet one—and seeing her with Seth and Maddie jerked painfully at my heartstrings.

“I thought you said she was closing,” I hissed to Doug.

He didn’t notice the upset tone in my voice and read it as surprise. “I thought so. Maybe she got Janice to do it. I know she’s been giving her more and more responsibility. Makes me wonder about my own job security.”

The bookstore gang greeted the newcomers with cheering. Kayla broke from her guides and, to my astonishment, ran over to me. “Georgina!”

I scooped her up, and that dark, angry serpent within me settled down a little. Not only had Kayla sought me out, she’d also spoken—a rarity. I hugged her to me, and with her in my arms, it suddenly seemed as though all had to be right in the world.