Page 50 of Samhain

“The irises,” he said, as if it was all coming together in his mind.

I nodded, a tinge of guilt burning my cheeks. I probably should have told him, and maybe it revealed something sinister about us that I hadn’t. Lex and Ivy had obviously shared their secrets. Were they closer because they lived together? Or did Carter and I share a bond only because we were bonded to them?

Carter sighed and ran his hand over the back of his hair. “Okay, my turn. You got a deck of cards?”

“Sure.” Ivy pulled a small white box out of a junk drawer next to the stove.

“Shuffle them,” Carter said. “Shuffle them really good.”

Ivy did as he asked, then held the deck out to him.

“Jack of spades,” he said. “Flip over the first card.”

She did, and it was a jack of spades.

“Two of diamonds.”

Correct.

Then she went rapid-fire.

“Four of hearts, queen of diamonds, ace of spades, seven of clubs, six of diamonds.”

Bam. Bam. Bam.

He guessed them all.

“Lucky guess,” Lex said.

“Exactly.” Carter returned his attention back to the eggs still cooking on the stove. “I’m banned from two hotels in Vegas. I won over a million dollars in under three hours.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ivy said.

“Yeah.” Carter thinned his lips, looking equally embarrassed and proud of his status.

I shifted my attention back to Ivy. “And you can read minds.”

“Telepathic mind trick,” she said, holding up a hand to wave in front of us. “Your droids are not here.”

Carter snorted a laugh at her misquote and shook his head. “Close enough, Weeds.”

“Look, for a long time, I didn’t want to believe it,” Lex said. “I thought someone was fucking with us. But this? It’s something I can do to anyone. I can’t stop it.”

“None of us can,” I added.

“What the hell is going on?” Carter asked as he put the finishing touches on breakfast.

Silence.

“I have an idea,” Ivy said, just as Carter put plates in front of us. “After Ireland, we said we would move on and forget it…but I couldn’t. I was obsessed.” She bit into a piece of toast, and starving, I dove into my eggs. “I’m still kind of obsessed. I came across a story about two couples that went into the woods on Beltane. They claimed they’d only been gone a few hours, but the townspeople said they’d been lost for a week. They said they lived with the fairies and married each other. For none could stray from the others without knowing terrible ecstasy.”

“Terrible ecstasy?” Carter whistled incredulously. “That sounds about right.”

“I think it means we can’t be apart,” she said. “We have to stay together until we can figure out how to break the curse.”

“Why would we want to break it?” Lex asked, scrutinizing Ivy with his piercing stare. “None of this sounds bad to me.”

“You don’t think having to get together to fuck or risk going rabid is a bad thing?” Ivy raised her eyebrows at her fiancé.

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