Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,59

they have to leave home and they don’t even have a place to call their own. My witch has basically been homeless. It’s depressing, for someone who loves homes so much, that she doesn’t feel like she can settle down anywhere. Sometimes I wish she’d call me for help a little more often than she does.”

“A good familiar is like a home,” Jenny said. “Some witches think familiars belong in the home. Not in Sinistral.”

“Ah, so your warlock just never liked you to leave?”

“No…”

“So he put you to work making pastries?”

“Something like that…”

Her dress was a ruffled plaid, old-fashioned even for a witch, and with her long brown locks and bangs, she reminded me of the old dolls some of Helena’s sisters played with. She was certainly around my own age but I wasn’t sure her warlock had given her much exposure to other women. She seemed stunted in childhood. And he didn’t let her go to Sinistral.

In a way, it made perfect sense to me now. Familiars helped their witch or warlock through thick and thin, balancing them out, helping them through all the growing pains of childhood. If some part of her warlock clung to childhood, then she would have a hard time growing up herself. Maybe she wasn’t abused physically, but trapped, forced to play house. And it seemed she would rather play house with me.

‘Play house’…could I think of a term for that without such naughty connotations? It was not a bad vision to think of her sweeping my stoop and making tarts and tortes and everything else. A garden toad would make for a good companion if I wanted a quiet life. What if children followed? Just because I didn’t need to produce children didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, and then I would be pulled away from Helena.

The way Jenny looked at me made me wonder if I was handsome, and this sort of vanity had never crossed my mind before.

I swallowed.

Helping cute girls…real dangerous games you’re playing here, Bevan…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Helena

Living room? Check! With this team, we knocked that shit out. The walls were now white and airy, and we painted the ceiling too, and added two efficient ceiling fans. The orange carpet was now a dark, warm hardwood floor. (“Do you ever put in ‘softwood’ floor?” Gaston asked me. “No? Then you could just say ‘wood floor’.” I realized whenever I talked about him when he wasn’t around I was also starting to give him an exaggerated, snooty French accent.)

Kitchen? Check! The new cabinets looked so great that no one minded that they were our second choice. The wooden countertops were harmonious with the new wooden floors. I couldn’t wait to see this whole space with some wicker peacock chairs and glass and chrome plant stands. Billie was keeping the huge sofa that fit the sunken living room and reupholstering it in a cheerful, low-key 60s yellow, just like Tom Atomic.

We were really busting out the bedrooms and bathrooms now, and Jake and Byron were framing out the guest house.

“I just heard Kiersten and Caleb’s truck go driving off. Want to go spy?” Billie asked.

“You know I want to!”

We scurried down the sidewalk and went to peek in all the windows of the other house.

We didn’t like what we saw.

“Hmm,” I said. “They tore out the wall in the living room around the fireplace. That really opened it up…”

“Oh, yeah. I like that new mantelpiece too. That’s a nice fireplace. It’s big enough you could make spells in it.”

“Yeah. It is small cauldron size…I can’t tell what they’re doing with the kitchen yet…”

Billie moved on to a side window. “Gosh, they’re putting in some really cute Italian tiles in the bathroom…”

“Where?”

“See? Most of ‘em are still in boxes but there’s a few on the floor there like samples. I really like those. I bet they weren’t cheap either.”

“Well, they live around here, I bet they have the hookup,” I said. “And maybe they’re doing something with the master…adding a walk-in closet?”

“Kiersten never does a house without leaving a walk-in closet in her wake, does she?”

We dashed back out of sight before we could get caught looking interested, since they probably just left for lunch.

“It’s a close contest,” I said. “They’re good.”

“Well, it’s not a real contest. There aren’t prizes,” Billie said.

“Oh, yes there is. Bragging rights. The best prize there is. Just think how insufferable we could be every time we see Kiersten and Caleb forever after if we bested them on profit right