The Inner Circle, Book 3 of the Glass Wall ( A YA Urban Fantasy Romance ) by Carmen Caine, Madison Adler Page B

dangling from the
phone.
    And then he glanced up at me. He looked
sick.
    “It’s ok,” I said in a feeble attempt to
cheer him up. “We’ll find out what she was doing and—”
    But he cut me off with a chopping motion and
abruptly stood up. “It’s far from ok , Sydney.”
    “Wait,” I said, holding onto his arm. “We
aren’t going to get anywhere like this. You have to quit walking
off. We’ve got to get organized—”
    “I am ,” he said darkly. And then
shaking me off, he pushed his way through the throng of girls and
left the coffee shop.
    “I’m really getting tired of this,” I
muttered, picking up my phone where he’d tossed it. It buzzed in my
hands.
    Glancing down, I saw the words, “We should
talk, Sydney.”
    I looked up and saw Rafael sitting in the
corner near the Christmas tree. My stomach dropped as our eyes
locked for a moment, but then I turned away. I couldn’t talk to him
right now. It hurt too much.
    And even though I knew I should pretend to
be, at the very least, friends, so I could gather information, I
just couldn’t.
    With a frown, I texted, “Leave me alone.”
    My new phone was annoying. I wasn’t used to
autocorrect. It kept wanting to change “alone” to “along”, but at
last I succeeded and headed to the backroom to put my things away
and collect my apron.
    I was going to have to find a different way
to get information about the mutant tulpa and the Inner Circle. I
just couldn’t use Rafael for that. I was discovering that my heart
wouldn’t let me play games with him.
    Rafael took so long to respond that I thought
he wasn’t going to. I’d just tossed my phone into my locker when it
buzzed his reply. “Of course!”
    I raised a brow. It was kind of a snippy
response. But then, I guess my message had been a tad sharp too.
Putting my phone away, I went to work.
    I stayed in the storeroom, unpacking boxes
and mentally complaining to the universe how unfair and difficult
life was getting, until Ellison arrived with a mischievous look on
this face.
    “You’re going Christmas shopping with me and
Grace tonight,” he announced, giving me a playful punch on the
shoulder. “We’ll wait for you after work.”
    “Oh?” I asked with a fake smile. I wasn’t in
a shopping mood. I had Al to push and tulpas to research. And
Rafael to be depressed about.
    “You don’t have a choice,” he said
cheerfully. “And you better get up front. Samantha wants foamy
butterflies out of you. Ten of them.”
    Reluctantly, I followed him to the front
counter. To my relief, Rafael was gone. I folded my arms on the
granite countertop and buried my head a moment, illogically upset
that he really was leaving me alone.
    And then a fellow barista named Denise
whacked me on the top of the head with a rolled up newspaper and
ordered me to get to work on the espresso machine.
    I tried to listen to her instructions. But I
was just too distracted. I couldn’t shake Rafael from my thoughts,
and it only got worse by the minute.
    “Let me taste it,” Denise ordered in her best
Samantha imitation.
    Shaken from my thoughts, I blinked a little
and handed her the drink.
    She wrinkled her nose as if the smell
offended her.
    I guess it did.
    “What is this?” she asked in a disdainful
tone. “Some kind of science experiment?” Slamming the cup onto the
counter, she turned away.
    I squinted at the cup. I didn’t care for
coffee. Or at least the concoction that I had made. I took a sip
and gagged. It tasted like a mixture of chocolate and canker sore
medicine.
    Denise set me to practicing for an hour,
twirling hearts and ferns into the frothy, silky foam and placing
marshmallows “just so” in the cups. It was hard, especially when
she watched my every move with a critical eye. She was actually
much worse than Samantha.
    Samantha herself wandered by at times to
watch. And every time she left, she told me, “Remember, Sydney.
Everything we do is about flavor!”
    As the afternoon progressed,