Savannah wasn’t quite sure what to make of this as she paced a safe distance from the restaurant, trying to leave herself an out if she needed to save face and just disappear. A sink hole might have been better, but she couldn’t conjure one at will. Running away in shame, though, she was familiar with—so she skulked three storefronts from the entrance.

They had agreed to meet at the restaurant by seven thirty and it was a few minutes to eight. A few minutes normally meant nothing in terms of the wheel of life. But right now each second felt like torture and those tortures were adding up to...