Page 18 of Big Little Spells

But I speak this language. Fluently.

What wouldn’t you do to get what you want? I demand where only he can hear me, and it’s surprisingly easy to slide past ten years’ worth of walls I put up to keep myself from slipping like this. We both know you don’t care about what’s right. Or little, piddling things like common decency, friendship, or the truth.

His gaze meets mine again, and I know it’s pointless to hide physical reactions to someone this powerful, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing that every last atom of me reacts. Just to his intense attention.

And not with the awe and fear and horror that a normal witch would feel for him. All I feel around him, all I’ve ever felt around him, is this heat.

He flicks his gaze back to Emerson. “There is nothing either of you could offer that would entice me to be involved in this little farce. It will inevitably end with both of you turned into stones to mark the cemetery, as a warning to all.”

Why not just turn us to stones yourself? I ask him, hoping I sound as nonchalant as he looks. Why drag it all out into a drama?

He looks amused, and inside my head, I hear his laughter.

I feel it. Everywhere.

I promised you long ago that I would take my time with you, Rebekah. Did you forget?

I haven’t forgotten a single thing about him, and I tried my hardest.

I don’t tell him that, but he knows. Of course he knows.

It will take as long as it takes, he intones grandly.

“There’s a variation of a theme here. You say no. You help anyway,” Emerson is saying. “Do you need a direct invitation? Fun fact—it’s already official. You’re part of our coven. No need to hide yourself away, alone.”

For once he actually looks interested. Mildly. “Are you accusing me of being lonely?”

Emerson beams.

“You need a soul to be lonely, Emerson,” I say.

This is a mistake, because his gaze is on me again, then. Dark blue and dangerous. So dangerous. And something deep within, somewhere in all that magic chaotically rambling around inside of me, sparks to life.

I have missed this. And worse, him.

This realization is absolutely mortifying.

“I wonder what you, of all people, know about souls,” Nicholas says silkily, like he knows my deepest secrets. Because, of course, he does. “Should we find out?”

I feel certain that we should not. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut—a common wish I never manage to grant myself. I work instead at building those walls around me, brick by brick, made up of memories he can’t access.

Witches call it shielding. I call it boundaries.

“I think you know that I won’t stop.” Emerson manages to make her voice sound both tired and indefatigable at once as she gazes at him. “You know I’m happy to make two months feel like a thousand immortal forevers.”

And then she smiles again. Merrily.

I am beginning to understand how she ended up running the St. Cyprian chamber of commerce.

“Finally a compelling argument,” Nicholas murmurs. “To get rid of you.”

He doesn’t move. He’s just standing there with the cloak and the drama like he plans to stay like that forever. Like he already has. But he’s considering this, I can tell. He’s here. He’s still not smiting us where we stand.

Or throwing us off his property, which I also know he can do. With a literal snap of his fingers.

He can feign indifference—I know all the signs—but he is not indifferent, no matter how he wants to be.

Join the club, immortal.

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