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you’re worried about me now that we’re together. My timing apparently sucks.”
    I reached across the table and took his hands in mine. “Mom has been on edge. She hasn’t been right since she got out of the hospital.” I said softly. “She’s always been a worrier and it drives me nuts, but she is generally bang-on and half the time it makes me crazy because I should be figuring things out for myself.”
    â€œWell your mom has reasons for that, right?” Marcus replied. “Nearly getting killed is probably at the top of the list.”
    â€œAnd she’s worried about me – about us.”
    He took a bite of his hash brown and wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. “I have a feeling I know where this is going. After the attack at the school and her winding up comatose in the hospital she’s worried about what will happen now that we’re seeing each other… If something happens to me…”
    I raised a finger. “And how that might impact me.”
    He snorted. “Um… I got stomped by a poltergeist in Mrs Gilbert’s house, remember? This was after I got a beat down from the old lady’s Siamese cat. I wound up on the receiving end of Marla Lavik’s death curse and I’m still alive and kicking, the last time I looked.”
    We said nothing to each other for the next few minutes as we nibbled away at our breakfast. I wanted to tell him that we should just head back to my house and inform my mother that we were taking her recommendations under advisement, but that wouldn’t have done any good. As much as it got under my skin, Mom was right. The only problem was that I didn’t know what to do about it.
    Marcus exhaled heavily and then took a sip of his coffee. I gazed around the restaurant and noticed a couple of people from school working behind the counter. In the far corner seated next to a window was Willard Schubert. He sat alone chewing on a breakfast burrito. No, scratch that. He was inserting the entire sausage shaped concoction into his mouth… whole. He gazed out through the window onto McLeod Trail, his eyes set behind a thin pair of wire-framed glasses that were too small for his pudgy face. His ruddy cheeks glowed across the span of the entire restaurant as he squeezed a packet of hot sauce on another burrito
    â€œYour mom has a point, Julie,” said Marcus, snapping me out of my gaze. “But she isn’t one hundred percent right on this, either.”
    I blinked. “Go on.”
    He shrugged. “Well, she lost your dad and he was like a magic badass, right? I mean he was a Shadowcull – he was the target, not your mother. If someone was really twisted, there were worse things than killing your dad. They could have gone after your mother – or you.”
    â€œYeah, but they didn’t.”
    He leaned in toward me. “Look, you can’t discount stuff like fate because it’s intangible, you know? There isn’t a single person alive today who knows what fate has in store for us – it doesn’t matter if that person is a witch like you or just a civilian like me. Your mother is freaked about my getting killed because we’re seeing each other, but I could wind up choking on a chunk of my hash brown and keel over right now or I could get leukemia and die a miserable death. The fact is, the risk to me from a jillion things that have absolutely nothing to do with our relationship is probably greater than my getting killed by some evil warlock dude. If your mom disagrees with me, I’ll put together a Powerpoint presentation so that she’ll get it.”
    True, there was any number of terrible fates that awaited every person alive. Marcus had already experienced firsthand the kind of dangers that I faced by simply being a witch, but there were thousands upon thousands of potential fates that could hit any one of us at any time, day or night. Mom