back stock finished, so, you know, I took a few days out and made him a table.”
Bartholomew sent Lachlan a shy, adoring look from under his lashes. “It’s big enough for the entire coven,” he said. “We can all sit around the table when….” His voice fell.
“But I only saw five of you,” Simon said into the silence.
“We’re waiting for Dante and Cully to come back,” Alex said, and his voice had that same hush that Bartholomew’s had. “They’re Glinda’s owners. Anyway, this is for our meetings—and to eat off of in between times,” he added with a wink at Lachlan.
“It’s wonderful,” Simon said, feeling it. A piece like this had character and originality. It would probably make his perfectly decorated house in Jackson explode because it didn’t fit in. “Where did Glinda’s owners go? You all seem sort of… unhappy about it. Did they just take off and desert their dog?”
“No!” all three of them said at exactly the same time.
“They’d never leave Glinda,” Alex said, like he was trying to explain to a child. “Not without making sure she was cared for. It’s… it’s complicated.”
“Alex, you have snakes in your apple tree and a bunch of homicidal cats in front of your friend’s yard.”
“That’s nothing,” Lachlan assured him breezily. “Have you seen the turkeys yet? They should look like they’re all going to sit there and judge you, and your whole interaction is going to be uncomfortable but passive, right? But now, those fuckers will chase you down and fuck you up if you are not careful.”
“But why?” Wasn’t that the big question? “Why are all these animals out to get you? Why is your dog traveling forty miles in five minutes? I mean, the magic is sort of”—he waved his hands—“out there. It’s out there. I don’t understand it, but I’m going to assume that it’s working. But why is your neighborhood going to hell?”
Alex and Bartholomew started doing the eyeball dance again, but the only thing Lachlan did with his eyeballs was roll them.
“Because they lied to it,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Bartholomew. Bartholomew blushed and busied himself some more in the kitchen.
“They lied about—”
“Not about,” Lachlan emphasized. “To.”
“I take it the preposition is important,” Simon said, caught by his seriousness.
“Well, I would assume so,” Lachlan said, “because that’s what I think pissed all the elements off.”
Simon looked from Alex to Bartholomew, both of whom were shamefacedly pretending this conversation wasn’t happening. “Uhm, what did they lie about? And how—how do you lie to magic?”
At that moment, Kate, Josh, and Jordan burst through the door, excitedly chatting about how glad they were that the dog had been found and how awful work was going to be because they were all exhausted, and nobody had time to answer.
But Lachlan gave Bartholomew a grim look before raising his eyebrows to Simon, and Simon got the hint.
It was a question worth answering. Why would somebody lie to magic?
The Hope in the Lie
ALEX listened gratefully to the morning chatter at the table, taking small bites of Bartholomew’s outrageously decadent cinnamon roll in order to savor it. The hubbub died down a little as everybody else did the same, and—as usually happened when the lot of them ate together—what started out as little more than people eating food in the same place became a quiet ritual of sharing and comfort.
Alex couldn’t believe it had taken them so long to figure out that Bartholomew was their second-strongest witch, because this magic happened two places in their lives: Jordan’s adventures and Bartholomew’s table. Human magic was so underestimated.
“You look awfully comfortable for someone going to work with his boss,” Kate said on a yawn.
Alex glanced up from a pillowy soft bite of cinnamon, butter, and sugar and swallowed—not too quickly. That was sacrilege.
“My boss gave me the morning off,” he said. “Which was kind of him. Apparently I looked like I couldn’t do the maths today. Untrue, but I’ll take it.”
“Oh no—not the dreaded maths!” Josh chided with a shudder. “There was a reason I majored in history, my man.”
Simon laughed, along with the rest of the table. “I was going to major in art history,” he said, and Alex turned to him sharply.
“But you’re sort of brilliant as an accountant,” he said, surprised.
Simon shrugged. “Well, yeah. So all my test scores said.” He lifted a shoulder. “I go to museums in my spare time.”
“Ever paint anything?” Jordan asked curiously.
Simon took a measured sip of coffee and shook his head. “No,”