Portals and Puppy Dogs - Amy Lane Page 0,16

hadn’t had sex—other than the self-stimulated kind—with anyone in his nearly twenty-six years.

But still, it hadn’t been an auspicious beginning.

Alex’s natural pessimism began to take over his thoughts, and the garter snake stopped its quest for the hydrangea bushes and began to follow them around the block again.

FIFTEEN minutes later they were back at the cul-de-sac, dropping Kate and Josh off at their house first. “Coven Friday?” Kate said to make sure.

“Absolutely,” Jordan said. “Barty and Lachlan will be here too.”

“I think Lachlan gets more excited than you do,” Josh said, half laughing. “And he’s not half bad.”

It was actually a little disheartening. On the few times Lachlan had been called into service to do the morning or evening rituals, he’d been able to call up his portion of the cone of power, something it had taken Alex months to do. Well, Lachlan was like a big kid—maybe that kind of optimism and excitement just lent itself naturally to magic.

“I think Lachlan and Dante would get along really well,” Jordan said, and they all fell silent, casting furtive, half-hidden looks to the house next door. There were lights on in the living room, flickering, as the two residents of the house crisscrossed in and out of time doing what seemed to them to be ordinary, average, everyday sorts of things. It was only to people outside the house that their world looked haunted by two men who were very much alive but not fixed in space and time.

“Maybe this weekend we should all go in,” Alex said, reluctant to make a suggestion without clearing it with Jordan but feeling like they needed to go try to ground their friends for the dozenth time.

“Good idea,” Jordan said on a sigh. He grimaced. “I wish I could make us go in tonight, but… God. Not without Bartholomew.”

Bartholomew, for all his shyness, was such a comforting soul. It hadn’t been until the last two weeks when he’d started having sleepovers that Alex really realized how much they’d all depended on him for that comforting butter/sugar/vanilla presence in their lives.

“Yeah,” Kate said. “I can’t do that again—not without him.”

“Okay, then, it’s a plan.” Jordan gave a little wave. “Night, guys. Go make a baby!”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Josh laughed, and they disappeared into their home.

Alex and Jordan kept walking, and Alex’s heart sank a little as he saw Jordan’s shoulders droop.

“We’ll figure it out,” Alex said softly. “C’mon, J, it’s not like you did that all by yourself. You had a lot of help from people who—apparently—have plenty of experience lying to themselves. Including Dante and Cully, because I’m pretty sure whatever is going on in that house has more to do with the two of them than it does with any of us.”

“What do you mean?” Jordan asked, watching as the lights flickered on and off again. There was a person standing in front of the window, and each time light flickered on, the silhouette of the person changed. Dante’s big, broad shoulders and bold nose were very distinguishable from Cully’s slighter silhouette with his delicate features and fly-away hair.

“What do you think their word was?” Alex asked, because he’d been thinking about this for the two weeks since the spell had gone awry. “Because I would bet…. I would place actual money on it being—”

Jordan held up his hand. “Don’t say it,” he told Alex, sudden authority in his voice. “I think it’s better that we don’t say the words. If we define it for them, they can’t define it for themselves.”

Alex paused and nodded. “Fair enough,” he said as they passed Dante and Cully’s house and yard and came to a stop in front of Alex and Bartholomew’s.

Alex sighed and looked next door to the little witch’s cottage that Jordan had occupied since the witch had pretty much willed it to him. “I wish you could stay here,” he told Jordan baldly.

Jordan nodded. “Yeah, I know. Damned cats.”

There were nine feline familiars. Nine. And one large sand pit in the backyard that—when spelled properly once a day—self-cleaned. As long as someone slept in the cottage itself, claiming ownership.

If Jordan so much as skipped a night of sleeping in the damned cottage, the self-cleaning sandpit cleaned itself into the neighbors’ yards. The few times it had happened, the neighbors had been… unamused.

And Jordan claimed that after those nights he’d slept at one of the other houses, he’d noticed random things being moved in the cottage—books, vials of essential oils, thread, candles.