“Mother, Darius’s people will take care of guard duty,” I said. “You can stay in the house.”
“I most certainly will not. With my daughter standing out here in the rain, unprotected from anyone wandering in? No. Someone needs to oversee security.” She stalked off into the trees.
“Let her help in her own way,” Emery said quietly, touching my arm.
“Well…we’d better put up a ward, hon.” Dizzy sighed. “Kids these days just have to be different. We were the same, I suppose, we just did it with circles and demons.”
I’d opened my mouth to say a ward wasn’t needed, but his words made me change gears. “Huh?”
“Go, Callie, Dizzy.” Reagan stalked through two bushes without rain gear, Darius following close behind. “I’ll watch them. Go join Ms. Bristol.”
“Actually, if you all could clear away.” I waved my hand in an arc. “We’ll set up a concealment spell. We’ll be fine out here.”
“Also a good plan.” Reagan stopped with her hands on her hips. “Right. I’ll just meander, then, will I? Unless you guys are cool with me coming in to watch?”
I shook my head, feeling the wrongness of that suggestion. Usually it wouldn’t matter, but for this…
“Let’s go,” Darius said. “We should do a perimeter check anyway.”
When they were all gone, some of them grumbling as they went, Emery unscrewed the cap of the orange juice. “Are you okay reading out the spell? I didn’t really think about it earlier.”
“It’s probably better,” I replied. “Last time a spell was read, I just took over. I’d hate for that to happen again.”
“And you also turned everyone into zombies. I’d hate for that to happen again, too.”
“I don’t know why you think that’s so funny. It was a really terrible thing.”
“I’ll bet. Zombies are gross.”
Laughter bubbled up through me, easing a little tension. “Okay. Be serious. Time to focus.”
“We are.” He pointed around the cauldron at the swirling wisps and threads of magic—a natural occurrence whenever Emery and I shared space. Electricity rolled over my skin and infused my core. He stepped nearer and his voice softened. “We don’t need to practice at focusing, Turdswallop. We just need to keep our hands off each other. The rest comes naturally.”
I smiled and bumped my shoulder against his. “Okay. Here we go.”
Just as before, the words jumped off the page, colorful and vibrant. This time, though, a real wind kicked up, fluttering the tent. Rain fell heavier, pattering on the overhead tarp. Nature moved and swayed around us, heard through the rustling of the leaves and creak of the branches. A soft song drifted on the wind, curling and turning, playing with my senses and lending a buoyancy to the spell.
“This is new,” I said under my breath, the fates thumping around us, trying to sweep us up and take us away. “And that is new. Maybe I just shouldn’t do potions.”
“You’ll be fine, love. You’re a natural. It’s in your blood.”
“Tell that to the zombies.”
“I can’t. Reagan killed them all. But rest assured, if you turn me into something heinous, I’m sure she’ll help you kill me, too.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
I tried to wipe away my smile, but I couldn’t. His mood was infectious, and the moment just felt so right.
“Hold on to your butt.” I took a deep breath and read the first line, emphasizing the word pour, since it was glittering and waving around on the page, and feeling a deep thrum when the directions told me to choose who would stir first. I held out the spoon for Emery.
He set down the empty container of orange juice and took the spoon without a word, about to put it in the liquid. But something felt off, like a thread drifting into the breeze, unraveling the fabric of the spell as it did so. Before I could say anything, he’d stopped and stilled, closing his eyes.
“I’m on autopilot a little bit,” he said, and took a deep breath. “When I did this with my brother, I don’t think either of us was really concentrating. It’s such an easy spell that a natural can do it in his sleep. We certainly didn’t check in with the environment around us. That’s not something mages are ever taught or told to do. But…” He put out one of his hands and his fingers wiggled through the air. Magic rose around him and flirted with his moving digits. “I can feel the difference. When you say the words, I can feel the expectation of the spell. I can feel your utter conviction. It’s another lesson, one among many. It’s why I’m learning right alongside you, Penny. Even the most basic spells can have a profound effect.”
He put the spoon into the liquid, and this time the magic didn’t drift away. It rose, swirling in the air as he moved the spoon. After two times around, he pulled the spoon up just how I said, stepped back, and held it out to me.
I took it without a word, but didn’t immediately cross to the cauldron. Instead, I took my time and leaned my back against his front, relishing in the energy around us and the electricity zinging through me.
“I love you,” he said as his arms came around my middle.
“I love you.” I bent my head back so I could get a languid kiss before stepping up to the cauldron.
This time he read off the instructions, and I felt the magic tug at my middle as I moved the spoon.
“Did you feel the—”
“Tug,” he finished. “It happened so early this time. Who knows if it will matter.”
“It’ll matter.”
He continued to read, and I added the next ingredient. After that, we switched turns reading and adding ingredients, sometimes after one of us used the spoon, and sometimes in the middle of a line. We didn’t discuss it, and we never faltered. Completely immersed in our magical bubble, we worked off each other as we’d learned to do. Working this spell felt like working all the others, second nature.
Natural.
Three-quarters of the way down, the tug on my middle was so extreme that I had a hard time breathing. I gripped Emery’s forearm with one hand and the spoon with the other. The cauldron bubbled, though there was no heat. Magic spun and twisted from within, pouring over the cast iron lip and spewing onto the ground.
Emery connected gazes with me, but he didn’t ask if we should keep going. He took the spoon and stepped up, waiting until I took his place and called out the next line of instructions.
A hard yank on my ribs preceded heat seeping out and down through my stomach. A new feeling washed over me: closeness. Intense intimacy. Support.
Snippets of the most fear-filled moments in my life played through my head, starting as early as I could remember. In every single one, a new presence was felt.
Emery’s.
He was backfilling all the little holes in my life, adding support and comfort to each terrible memory still rattling around in my head. Even in sixth grade, when stupid Billy Timmons, the bully nemesis of my youth, pointed out to everyone that I was wearing a bra for the first time, Emery was right there beside me, changing my horror and embarrassment to straight-backed courage and purposeful indifference. At my father’s funeral, my mother stood on one side of me and Emery stood on the other, holding my hand and coaxing me through the pain. He was helping me take on all the little beasties of life, going back to the beginning.
Tears came to my eyes as I felt Emery’s arms wrap around me, his body heaving. His pain was like a suffocating blanket, his loss so deep that I was sucked into the well of it. In a moment he stilled, shuddering. His chest rose with a deep breath.
“Don’t tell anyone I cried,” he said with a shaking voice. “It’ll make me seem less manly.”
I laughed through my tears. “You can tell people I did. People already think chicks are weak, so crying is expected.”
He backed off and looked into my eyes. “Let them. That way, it’s easier to blindside them with your strength.”
“Or with a well-timed headbutt.”
Laughter shook him. “Yes. Exactly.” A crease formed between his brows as his smile disappeared. “It wasn’t this intense with my brother. This is… We didn’t have this.”