that, hinting, almost promising a glimpse of the skin beneath . . .
“What?” he asked, straightening his spine and drawing his shoulders back.
“I just . . . is that habit, or do you feel like you have stiff muscles?” I mimed his stretching, like he wouldn’t know what I meant.
He thought about it for a second. “Don’t know. Feels like both, but we know I don’t have muscles.”
He followed me into the kitchen, and I bustled around, frying eggs and toasting bread because what good were fried eggs without toast? Too bad I couldn’t afford to get bacon. Instead, I heated up a couple slices of the cheap ham lunch meat I had. Perfect. Breakfast as a post-dinner, um, snack.
I looked down at my stomach, trying to reassure myself that it wasn’t growing, given how much I’d been eating of late. It didn’t seem any bigger, but maybe I should buy a scale for the bathroom just in case. It was only a couple weeks to November, and hopefully then I’d have a little more disposable income.
Then, at some point, Beez was going to buy into the company. Holy hell, I was going to have money. Was it bad that it was going to be Beez’s money? Did that make me a bad friend?
I set the plates on the table, and Fluke hopped up into his chair. He looked at his plate, then mine, then gave a pitiful whine.
“Fluke,” I said warningly. “You know you’re not supposed to eat bread. I even gave you extra ham.”
He hung his head.
Gideon snorted. “Just give him the second piece. You’re gonna give in sooner or later, might as well get it over with.”
I gave a melodramatic sigh and picked up the piece of toast. As the most minor rebellion ever, I broke it in half and only put half on Fluke’s plate. Without waiting on me to start eating, he immediately wolfed it down—foxed it down? —as though worried I would take it back.
“The animal safety people should take you away from me,” I told him. “That’s not healthy.”
Gideon waved like he was shooing my worries away. “He’s a familiar. They’re magic.”
Fluke grinned his foxy little grin and waited on me before starting the rest of his meal. Spoiled brat.
“You want to talk about why you’re pulling back?” Gideon asked when I was half finished with my eggs. “I know it’s a lot, but something’s keeping you from giving it your all, and it’s not just fear of the magic.”
I stuffed my mouth full of ham and gave him a glare as I chewed, but he was unruffled. As always. “I think being afraid of the magic is a good enough reason. It’s kind of trying to suck me in.”
“Fair enough. The convergence doesn’t understand that you can’t just dive into the magic. Is that the only thing? Because there isn’t much we can do about that. That’ll just take more time and practice.” He rested an arm across the back of his chair, and I looked at it long and hard.
“Is this kind of magic why you have such good control over your body?”
He looked where I was looking, as though maybe his arm were doing a trick and he hadn’t noticed. Then he gave me a half shrug and helpless look. “Damned if I know. I just do things.”
“Dad can’t sit on the couch. He just falls through.”
Gideon snickered at that, and I couldn’t help joining in. Then Fluke did too, panting and grinning so hard his eyes closed.
While Gideon and Fluke were still amused, the truth tumbled out of me, unbidden. “I’m afraid of knives.”
“I figured.”
“What? How? Why?” I didn’t know why, precisely, it was important that he had noticed, but I tried so hard to act normal. Sure, I spread peanut butter with a spoon and cut sandwiches with the flat edges of my silverware, but I wasn’t flamboyant about it or anything.
Gideon looked around the kitchen, then back at me. “There isn’t a knife in this room. No block, no drawer, not even one of those knives for butter.” He looked over at Fluke, then back at me. “And you told your familiar not to dig up your athame. Which means you buried it.”
“And this doesn’t bother you at all?” Dumbfounded didn’t cover it. What the hell was wrong with him, that he’d noticed all that and still not treated me like the damn weirdo I was?
Instead of agreeing and explaining that he’d simply been trying to be