Witch Upon a Star (A Midnight Magic Mystery) by Jennifer Harlow Page A

not only were we bounced from a club, I had to practically carry him home. So unprofessional.
    Before the woman could slap him, I threw my arm over his shoulders and sighed. “I’m bored. Can we go now?” I asked in broken Italian. I was nowhere near fluent but the language was close enough to Spanish, I got the gist of what people were saying.
    “ Scusi ,” the woman said before hustling away.
    “No wait,” Dario called after her. His face contorted into a snarl as he turned to me. “Why the fuck did you do that?”
    “Sorry. Come on. We made five hundred. Time to go.”
    “We just got here.”
    “Well, I’m leaving. See you later.”
    As I meandered the few blocks to the squat be it the frigid air, the strolling lovebirds I passed with their inside jokes and eyes for one another, or the fact that all that waited at me at the end of the frozen trek were four water-stained walls and dirty furniture, the depression I’d attempted to keep at bay wheedled through the mortar. It was my birthday and the only gift I received was a canoli and a kiss from Dario. Dario. I thought moving in with him would alleviate my loneliness, not compound it. Another in a long line of bad choices. I’d believed it’d be an adventure breaking out on my own, tramping around Italy and surviving by my wits. Finding out who I truly was, and what I was capable of just as he’d wanted for me. Well, Asher achieved his objective, just not with the results he anticipated. Apparently I was a thief capable of nickel and dime crimes. Sven and Astrid would be proud I was carrying on the Olmstead family tradition at least. My real family would be ashamed. Or worse, as I believed that night, he wouldn’t care.
    There were a few moments through those lonely two years of exile where I hated that man. I begged, got down on my hands and knees with pleas and tears more than twice, but to no avail. Asher offered to send me to another school, but never to let me come home. He wouldn’t even entertain the idea of my attending a school in London. No matter what spin he attempted to give it, the fact was that sending me away had precious little to do with education. It was all about banishing me from his side. “For my own good.” He refused to tell me where he moved “for my own good.” He even stopped taking my phone calls on the emergency line “for my own good.” One envelope a month stuffed with cash, that was all I meant to him. He kicked me to the curb so he could play with his old friends. Left me alone to be picked on and terrorized by creatures worse than even vampires, miserable privileged teenage girls.
    Right before Christmas vacation some of the girls started a rumor that I was a Satanist, that I recruited several boys in town into my coven with sexual favors, and the whole school ran with it. They drew pentagrams and goats inside all my books and clothes. Whenever I passed someone in the hall they’d whisper “Hail Satan” or ask if I’d sacrificed any babies or virgins. It was constant from the moment I woke to even while I slept. Finally when the entire school began calling me Rosemary’s Baby and the local priest came to interrogate me, I made the decision never to return. Of course I left a few parting gifts with the ringleaders, boils and warts medicine could not cure. Far less than they deserved.
    Did he even search for me in that past month? Had he simply moved on? Forgotten me? I’d tortured myself with every heinous scenario for a year, but once I struck out on my own, my self-inflicted misery was almost constant. If he were missing I’d scour the world until I drew my last breath. For all he knew I had drawn my last breath. Did he even care? With hindsight, I realize now the reason for my liberation was so he would chase after me, and every day he didn’t ride up on a white horse to save me from myself, my depression grew. The night of my fifteenth birthday, my internal crisis reached its apex. I flopped down on