A Wish Upon the Stars (Tales From Verania 4)

“Brava!” Kevin cried. “Brava! A star is born! We are witnessing the beginning of a legend.”

Mom and Dad clapped. After a moment, Justin joined in, and I’d never seen such begrudging applause. It was quite the sight to behold.

I went to Tiggy and tapped him on the arm. He looked down at me and smiled, a fragile thing.

I reached up and squished his face. “I love you, dude. Like, so much. You don’t even know.”

He reached down and gave me a one-armed hug. “Tiggy knows.” He put his face in my hair and took a deep breath. “You don’t leave us again. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He held me tighter.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned, expecting it to be Ryan wanting to do sexy things to my entire body, but it turned out to be Justin.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I told him before he could speak. “We were a little rusty, but it was still amazing. Thank you for that. It’s truly wonderful of you to say.”

“I wasn’t going to say that, Sam.”

“Rude.”

He reached out and tugged on my beard. “This is real? How?”

I shoved his hand off me, because it actually hurt. “Shaping magic. I can modify the way I look.”

“Like a disguise?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this new? Because you’re a wizard?”

“Nah. I could do it before.”

He scowled at me. “Then why the hell haven’t you done it? You always wore fake beards!”

I shrugged and averted my gaze. “Uh. Morgan, he—well. He called it frivolous magic. He didn’t like it when I did stuff like that. Said it was a waste of time.”

Justin sighed. “I don’t—okay. Look. Maybe that was the case then. And maybe he might have been right. The gods only know what kind of trouble you would have gotten into had he allowed you to do whatever you wanted when you were younger.”

“So many noses would have been turned into dicks,” I agreed.

“Right. Because you were a perpetually horny teenager lusting after my boyfriend.”

“In secret. And look how it all turned out! It pays to be creepy sometimes, I guess. Who would have thunk?”

He rolled his eyes. “How far can this go?”

“What? The modifications?”

He nodded, eyeing me curiously.

“Pretty far,” I said slowly, not sure where he was going with this. “Eye color. Facial hair. Beer guts. But reconfiguring someone can hurt. It’s not just the magic. You’re shifting the way they look.”

“But it’ll be enough,” he muttered, reaching up to pull on the beard again. “We can—”

“Sam,” Gary said, pushing a squawking Justin out of the way. “I have notes on your performance.”

“Oh boy.”