Page 103 of Truly Madly Magically

I clear my throat. “Who, me?”

He kisses my temple. I lean into it, to him, to us, and then we both make a concentrated effort to have a normal breakfast. We talk about eccentric customers and the gloomy weather outside. We talk about people we knew in high school who buy love potions and sensual aids from the tea shop like I don’t know them. We talk about things people tell each other or say into their phones out on the low, flat ferry platforms that they think no one can hear.

The things we don’t talk about are so loud we have to lean in close, breathing each other in, to keep ignoring them.

When Frost enters, ready to head to the ferry with Zander, I give Zander a kiss and my best attempt at a smile.

We don’t say the word goodbye. We don’t talk about what will happen next.

Because the Joywood aren’t the only ones who can plan. We have Emerson for that. Tonight we’ll have so many versions of ourselves running around St. Cyprian that the Joywood won’t be able to figure out who’s us and who’s a projection until the ritual is over.

We hope.

Rebekah and I walk over to Tea & No Sympathy. I recount the flower crown story on the way, and she’s as blown away as I was. Once we’re in the shop, she settles into her usual seat with her tablet while I wait on the steady stream of customers. I play music loud enough to fill the store and spill out into the street every time the door opens. I enjoy the feel of the way my baby girl moves inside of me like she’s dancing, her movements a little more pronounced every day.

I even enjoy refereeing a fight between Zachariah and Elizabeth about those damn crows. Again.

“They’re important,” Zachariah insists.

“Maybe they are,” I say, trying to sound soothing. “But not today.”

He lets out an affronted sort of sound, but by the time I’m closing up shop, the ghost couple is back to hand-holding and warm gazes. But then, I know better than most that a tempestuous thread through a relationship isn’t the end of the world.

Rebekah and I head down Main Street in that inky fall dark that comes so early, ghosts trailing behind us, the town full to the brim with people ready and eager to start the celebrations a night early. The humans are hyped for the Halloween trick-or-treating in all the shops. There are little kids in their costumes, lining up outside stores. Tomorrow there will be a gathering of humans dressed in witch costumes, and a costumed parade.

Meanwhile, witches from all over the world come to St. Cyprian for Samhain even when it isn’t an ascension year, because the veil is so thin and magic is heightened this close to the powerful merging of the three rivers.

You can feel all this in the air, thick and complicated.

You can see it in the shadows down every alley, all a little too deep, too dark.

We walk down to Confluence Books, where Emerson is locking the door while Georgie waits patiently on the sidewalk with her face in another book. Emerson links arms with me, so I grab onto Rebekah, who takes Georgie’s book from her and magics it away. After a brief moment for Georgie to frown about it, we walk toward the ferry, arm in arm.

The ferry isn’t our destination though. Before we make it to the dock, we veer off onto the path that ambles along the riverside before delivering us to Nix, the bar that’s been in Zander’s family almost as long as the ferries have. The bar itself is a long, low, unprepossessing affair that seems eternally this close to toppling straight into the Mississippi, but the sparkling lights that are threaded all over everything make it seem magical, even to unmagical eyes. The patio closes for the season on November 1, but tonight it’s merry with Halloween revelers and Samhain celebrants alike.

When we enter the bar, it’s also packed, but my gaze finds Zander immediately. Like there’s a light that shines down on him that only I can see, and I like that idea so much that it takes me a moment to see what he’s doing. Just now he’s smiling at a human couple while making their drink. Midway through, he looks over at a human dressed as Catwoman who’s leaning very provocatively over the bar, trying to get his attention with more than her gaze.

I wait for this to bother me, to send me into a rage as it might have before, but nothing really sparks.

I realize two things at once.

Something I never realized before—and probably couldn’t when I was young and full of doubts and fears and insecurities wrapped up in armor and edges and fear—is that the flirty smile for all and sundry is different than the smile he gives me.

Only and ever me.

Because the other thing I realize, which maybe I’ve always known deep down, is that Zander is loyal. He’s a Guardian through and through. A Rivers. He might have been with more than his share of human women, but he never juggled multiple ones at the same time. Not to mention, he was dabbling in only humans because of me. Because of the hope of me.

The point being: he’s not Bill.

We’re not my parents.

I understand something else from there. The way a man chooses to betray a woman is never about the woman. That shit is theirs and theirs alone. I should have known that all along. My mother said it enough.

Maybe it takes a love of your own to heal that last, secret fear inside of you.

As if he can hear me think this, Zander looks up, and his eyes gleam, thunder and need, and all for me.

It’s better than a love letter.

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