Page 58 of Truly Madly Magically

I don’t know if that’s why Zander takes mine as we walk. I don’t know if that’s why I let him. I only know we walk the rest of the way to my mother’s house hand in hand, like that’s not a revolution in and of itself.

My mother looks back at us, Mina’s head close to hers. She smiles at me, and there’s something in her eyes I don’t understand.

Because in the strange starlight of this long, long night, it looks weirdly like relief.

15

WE END UP at my mother and Mina’s rambling house. It was owned by humans before them and thus fell into disrepair because the humans were convinced it was haunted when it’s simply enchanted.

Mina loves a fixer-upper. I once mentioned this to my mother as a joke. Mina laughed. My mother did not.

Mom leads us inside, then directs Zander to his room for the night. She offers him one of the small, cramped rooms on the main floor. He blinks at the peeling paint, the caving ceiling, and the window with duct tape over a spiderweb crack, but doesn’t say a word.

These are all things he can magic away easily enough. And no doubt he will, no matter how much of a guy he can be when it’s his own place, but he’s going to give my mother the illusion that he will be uncomfortable. In turn, my mother will uphold the illusion he can’t solve all these issues with the snap of his magic. Or she couldn’t, as his host.

I cannot fathom why this silent interchange makes me want to weep.

Though I don’t.

“I imagine everyone needs to get to sleep after all that,” Tanith says brightly. When she usually doesn’t do bright, except to mess with someone.

I assume that someone is Zander, but Mina’s hand is on my mother’s arm—and I don’t know what they’re communicating to each other, but it’s something that seems to smooth out Tanith’s considerable edges.

“We’ll have breakfast in the morning, kids,” Mina says with a kind smile. “Good night.” Then she gives my mother a tug, and they’re headed off without showing me to the—refurbished and comfortable—room they keep for me here. They know I know the way.

What I’m focusing on is Mina calling us kids. I’m almost thirty, but I think I’ll always feel like a kid here, even when I bring my own.

Our own.

I look at Zander. I’m not sure Mina was precisely giving us the go-ahead to do something stupid—the kind of stupid that got us here—but she’s giving us the privacy to have a discussion. And my mother is letting that happen.

So, really, the Undine isn’t the only wildly unforeseen and impossible thing that’s happened tonight.

“I think I will find elsewhere to retire,” Zachariah says with an injured sniff before wafting away. I’m only a little surprised when Elizabeth doesn’t follow him and stays by my side instead.

“Enjoy the accommodations,” I offer Zander, but I’m smirking.

He returns the favor. “She’s going to send mice, isn’t she?”

“Mice?” I blow out a breath. “Don’t think small. Try rats. Snakes. Rabid flying monkeys?”

He glares at me, and I find myself grinning happily as I leave him to figure out how he’s going to magic himself a bed big enough for his oversized frame in the tiny room.

If being a mature adult means you can’t ever laugh at a man’s misfortune, particularly when he’s your ex, then I want no part of it.

I go up the beautifully renovated staircase to a hallway that looks like a war zone. I think my mother might have tried to wallpaper recently, but she very clearly gave up. I’ll never understand witches who like to do this sort of thing without the magic we have at our disposal.

I head into my bedroom. Not a guest room, as they always remind me. My room is always here for me and always has been, even though the two of them bought this place when I had already moved into my apartment over the tea shop.

Elizabeth is wafting hot on my heels, so I turn to face her. Despite what I’ve been through tonight, I feel great. Better than great. My magic still isn’t quite right, but the Healing or the Undine or maybe a little truth-telling with Zander has me amped.

It’s like witch steroids. I’m sure I’ll crash eventually, but until then, why not enjoy myself?

“What were you and Zachariah up to?” I demand of my ghostly shadow.

“I beg your pardon?”

“After the meeting. You disappeared, and when you reappeared, you looked a little...rumpled. So what were you doing? Banging it out?”

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