Page 36 of Truly Madly Magically

I clear my throat and cast around—maybe a little desperately—for something else to talk about. “Here’s a weird thing, though. Elizabeth acted like they didn’t have Summoners or Diviners in her day. She said she was a Revelare. That she summoned and had premonitions.”

There’s a pause, like he’s thinking. When he finally says something, it’s, “Huh.”

“Huh, indeed.” The silence draws out between us, but all I can feel is the heat of him, even though we’re not touching. Because of course we’re not touching. I estimate there’s at least two inches between our bodies—and maybe more, given how I’m pressing myself back into the dusty shelves behind me. It’s that awful, life-ruining chemistry forever arcing between us, closing the space, making me tell myself lies like this time it will be just fine if I lean in and—I cough again. “Well, Georgie will know. Or Frost. I need to go find them.”

He sounds gruff when he speaks, so I know he feels what I do. “So go.”

“You first.”

My eyes haven’t adjusted, but I can still practically see the way he lounges back against his own dusty shelves, like he plans to move in here for the duration. “I don’t need to go find anyone. I plan to stay here until my afternoon shift at the ferry or until Zachariah finds me.”

This sounds like a better plan, all things being equal, but if I stay here...here we are.

Zander and me.

In a dark closet.

With too much body heat and electricity and magic straining toward each other because that’s what happens when we’re alone and too close. Something inside of us is wired to make the same very, very, very bad decisions.

Case in point, our impending parenthood.

“It isn’t Beltane,” he says, low and hot.

It’s the thing we say to each other. It’s not a warning, though. Not when he says it.

It’s an invitation to break our agreement.

I always say no. I take pleasure in saying it. In waiting until the last possible moment to say it, even.

Because I always put so much stock in our agreement. So certain it would save me, and yet here I am anyway. Pregnant with our child and decidedly unsaved.

What could be the harm? I ask myself when I know that even asking the question is the harm right there. Or maybe the harm is in how I didn’t magic myself right back out of this closet when I found it occupied.

We’ll never know because it’s dark, and maybe it’s so dark it doesn’t even count that I’m the one who leans in and—

“There you are!” comes the voice I least want to hear, along with a shock of light, beaming in from the hall outside.

I nearly scream.

I tell myself this humiliation almost occurs because I’m startled. Not because I’m frustrated to be caught about to kiss my ex-boyfriend and current baby daddy—a term I realize I need to start using as much as possible to horrify all our friends.

First I have Elizabeth’s ghostly head to contend with, poking through the door from the hall and letting the light in with her.

“What are you doing?” she demands, looking back and forth between the two of us like she already knows.

Maybe we all know.

In which case, there’s no need to litigate it now.

I push open the door and leave without looking back. I figure Zander understands because he’s the one who closes the door behind me—with him still inside. He’s still hiding from his ghost.

I have no such luck, so I march down the hall. Elizabeth floats right beside me. “Can’t you go occupy yourself?” I try to sound...not caring, exactly, but less salty than I feel.

“I can’t do anything,” she says, holding up her ghostly hands as proof, as if we don’t both know that ghosts can do all kinds of things. If they want to.

“Why don’t you go bother your husband?” I suggest, still going for the low-sodium version of my voice and not quite getting there. “Practice your best poltergeist? Haunt a villager?”

She floats around so she’s in front of me and holds out a hand like a stop sign. “Listen to me, child. Goods and Riverses don’t mix.”

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