Ruby looks at him without blinking. “You did hear the part where I said it was half a million dollars, right?”
“Yes,” Lucas tells her. “If the book is as old and as rare as I assume, then damage or not, it’s a hell of a deal.”
“He’s lived a long time,” I say. “And he’s good with investing and buys and sells a lot of properties. He just sold an apartment complex in Miami for fifteen million.” I feel weird saying it but feel compelled to offer some sort of explanation to why Lucas can easily drop five hundred thousand dollars without blinking an eye.
“That’s the real reason she married him,” Kristy jokes, and we all laugh.
“So once you have the book,” Ruby starts, “we can figure out who this demon is…and how to kill it.”
“I like this plan.” My lips pull into a smile. “Are you sure you want in?”
“Yeah,” Ruby assures me. “I do. Like you said, we make one hell of a team.”
“We do.” I dip my breadstick into my pasta sauce again. “This is really good, Abby.”
“Thanks.” Abby picks up Penny’s water cup for the millionth time. Each time she puts it on the table, the kid knocks it right off. “Remember Demi?”
I think back, trying to figure out why the name sounds so familiar. “Oh, yeah! She was our cook for a few years, wasn’t she?”
Abby nods. “Yeah. You would have been eight, I think, when she got hired. So you wouldn’t…you know.”
“Right.” I wouldn’t have been in the house long after that. I was sold off to a research lab. “This was her ‘famous pasta,’ wasn’t it?”
“It was. She works at a restaurant in Lincoln Park now, and Phil and I saw her not that long ago. I mentioned how much I missed her pasta, and she gave me the recipe.”
I take another bite, getting hit with a memory of the last time I ate this. It was a few days before Halloween, and I was seeing spirits like crazy. It scared me, which made my powers flare up. The man I thought was my dad locked me in my room for an entire week, telling everyone I had chicken pox. I missed trick-or-treating and my class Halloween party, which I was really excited for.
Everyone is quiet again, with only Penny’s playful babbling and the sounds of forks against plates filling the room.
“Gotten any new cars lately?” Phil asks Lucas.
“No,” he replies. “Though once the garage is up at the new house, I’ll have the room for something new.” He looks at me, a playful smile on his face. I nudge his foot under the table, and he gives me the slightest look of protest but relents. “We could go to a car show. Together,” he says, almost able to sell it as his own idea.
“I go to those every year!” Phil says excitedly, and he and Lucas start talking about some new car that was just unveiled.
“How is the house coming?” Abby asks. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“A lot has been done,” I tell her. “And we’ve already done some furniture shopping.”
“You’re building a house?” Ruby asks.
“Restoring one,” I say. “There’s a big white house a mile or so down the road. It’ll be at least a month until we can move in and even longer until it’s fully renovated.”
“Why not stay here until it’s done?” Kristy asks.
“I’m impatient,” I laugh and get up to get my phone to show everyone the latest photos. There’s a definite heaviness hanging above us all, but we enjoy the rest of dinner.
Ruby helps clear the table once we’re done, and I invite her to stay for cake. Then Abby says she has a surprise for me, but it’s in her car. She hesitates when she gets to the front door.
“I’ll walk with you,” Lucas tells her, holding out his arm.
“Thank you.” Abby loops her arm through his, going out to the car together.
“Is he as bad as you thought?” I ask Ruby, settling on the couch.
Ruby’s face tenses, having a hard time letting go of the hate we’ve been taught. Lucas is a vampire. Witches hate vampires. Therefore she should hate Lucas.
“He’s rather charming. If he wasn’t sipping blood out of a wine glass at dinner, he could almost pass for human.”
“The blood does take a while to get used to,” I admit. The front door opens, and Abby walks back in, carrying a box wrapped in green-and-red paper.
“All I have is Christmas wrapping paper,” she says, handing me the box. “And this is half your present. The other half is a spa day with me. Because I really need it, but I think you need it even more. I already bought gift certificates, so we just need to find a day when I don’t work and you’re not busy saving the world from being overrun with, um, tree demons?”