a bleak look and relaxed a little into his body. “You have no idea,” he murmured. “But to answer your question, I have no idea how she went from next to the recycle bin to your house in Jackson. I wish I did. We were up half the night. I had to call Bartholomew, and he was on a date, poor guy. He and Lachlan wanted to drive out from, well, Jackson—which is weird because nobody lives in Jackson, and now I know two people—but they wanted to drive out, and I didn’t want to let them. But Jordan, Kate, and I cast, like, six divination spells, and then Kate was tired, so Josh came out and we tried to cast another one.”
He shuddered, and Simon consciously blanked out the part about spells.
“That was bad?” he asked, feeling foolish and hating that feeling.
“We conjured a pastrami sandwich,” Alex muttered. “Right out of thin air. A pastrami sandwich, on a plate. I mean, with Kate, we kept getting… well, an arrow. We tried following the arrow, but after about two miles of fumbling around other people’s yards in the dark and probably almost getting shot, we had to give it up. I guess if we’d kept going, we would have gotten to the road to Jackson, and that would have been easier, but we didn’t know that! Anyway, after that try where we almost got shot, we came back and tried again, but this time Josh helped, and… pastrami sandwich.”
Simon had no words. “He was, uh, hungry?”
Alex nodded, as though this had occurred to all of them. “He said it was the best midnight snack he’d ever had. Even the pickles were perfect. Anyway, that was around two a.m., and we were beat. And then we had to be up this morning for the sunrise ritual, and….” He yawned. “And it’s probably just as well you’re driving me to work.”
“Well, maybe you should take a sick day,” Simon said, concerned. “It’s not like you’ve taken a lot of them in the last three years.”
“None,” Alex confirmed. “I… it feels dishonest. I’m just….” He yawned.
“Exhausted,” Simon said. “Don’t worry about it. Take a nap. Work from home.”
Alex let out a little laugh. “But I was going out to lunch with my boss today.”
Simon’s heart became a warm spot in his chest, which was nice because at this point, it was so cold he could see his breath. “Your boss could bring you lunch,” he said hopefully. “I don’t think he’d mind.”
“That’s really nice of him,” Alex said softly. “Considering he already brought back my friend’s dog.”
“Well, maybe he’s really a decent guy, even though he seemed like sort of a sociopath yesterday at lunch.”
“Not a sociopath,” Alex said and then abandoned the third-person conceit. “And for someone who thought witchcraft was weird yesterday, you certainly are doing well now.”
“Forty miles,” Simon said simply. “I think I’d have to see the pastrami sandwich and the floating arrow to believe it, but… forty miles. And not one of you wouldn’t have conjured that dog out of thin air if you could have only found a way. So, yeah. Don’t know how you opened a portal to my house in Jackson—or even why—but the dog showed up at eight o’clock last night, which was apparently when you were taking out your trash. I’ve, uh, got to take some things on faith.”
Alex practically melted into him, liquid and trusting, and suddenly Simon could believe in the pastrami sandwich too, because it was something he’d yearned to have in his life for so long. Alex, that was. Pastrami wasn’t really his thing.
Glinda did her business eventually, and they turned around and went back. Alex unselfconsciously took his hand and pulled him up their driveway, warning him to be careful of the squirrels and not to get too close to the apple tree.
Simon took a good look at the tree as they were passing and wished urgently for a bathroom. “Snakes?” he rasped. “I thought….” Because he’d seen this, hadn’t he? “I thought the snakes turned around and left.”
“Some of them,” Alex said, shuddering. “You know, Jordan likes snakes and insects, and this freaks even him out. The sunrise and sunset rituals do their bit, but….”
Simon paused at the doorway to the little stucco suburban house and realized that the squirrels—doing a single-file shuffle in a large figure eight across three driveways and adjoining yards—weren’t the only odd thing in the neighborhood, and neither were the snakes.
As he