Page 70 of Samhain

Ivy exhaled and sat opposite me, taking a piece of turkey and putting it on her plate. “Until the end, right?”

Carter and I nodded.

Lex flicked his hazel stare between us, inhaling his cigarette down to the butt before stabbing it out and walking over to the table. He resigned himself to the spot next to Ivy. “In for a penny.”

Then, like a screwed-up family, we ate a Samhain dinner together surrounded by the fae. The turkey melted in my mouth, cooked to perfection and somehow still warm and juicy despite sitting out the entire time we’d been here. The wine wasn’t the sweet floral decadence I remembered, but cinnamon flavored and spicy, like a warm, fluffy blanket for my veins.

As soon as it settled in my gut, the worries from my day disappeared. The taste may have been different, but the high was the same—like I floated above my body, a part of this world, but not at the same time.

“Did you guys hear voices in the woods, too?” I asked, my prior anxiety about the trees dissipating.

“My pop,” Carter said, nodding. His eyes shimmered as he blinked back tears and cleared his throat.

Ivy nodded and met Lex’s stare. “Marcus.”

“Same.” Lex gave Ivy one of his rare looks of genuine affection before nodding.

“I heard my parents,” I admitted.

We fell quiet, a simple peace laced with the grief of our departed loved ones. Wasn’t that what Samhain was about? Wasn’t that when the veil between the realms was the thinnest? If there were an afterlife, I hoped our beloveds were watching us. I hoped they knew how much we missed them, how much we still carried them in our hearts. The thought twisted in my chest, making my eyes burn, and I clenched them shut as tears trickled over my cheeks before I could wipe them away.

“What’s your favorite memory of them?” Ivy asked, reaching across the table to grab my hand.

I smiled, the visual coming from somewhere deep in the back of my brain. “My mother used to take me walking in the gardens at Windsor. We liked to pick roses.” That was where my love for plants came from. “She told me the reason flowers were so magical was because no two are the same. They may look alike, and they may come from the same roots, but a closer look always revealed that each one was an individual.”

Ivy smiled and looked at Carter. “What about you? Tell us about Pop.”

“He took me to the Bears first home game every year—just me and Pop,” Carter started, wiping at his own wet eyes while he talked. “My sisters weren’t allowed to come. He’s the one who always told me to stay optimistic. To keep the faith and the rest will come.”

“He sounds like he was fantastic,” I said. “I bet I would have liked him.”

“He was.” Carter grabbed my other hand. “And you would have. He would have liked all of you, too. He would have liked our strange marriage.”

“Lex?” Ivy said. “What about Marcus?”

Lex blew out a breath. “Marcus was…” He couldn’t finish without clearing his throat. “Marcus was so much better at this than me.”

“At what?” Carter asked.

“The show. The game. Being the Fairfax.” Lex shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as waves of emotion seemed to overwhelm him.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Ivy said.

I agreed. “I would say there are few in the game better than you.”

“You guys are sweet,” Lex said. “But you don’t have to inflate my ego just because you’re married to me.”

I chuckled, and Carter patted the side of Lex’s face. “I wouldn’t do that. Your ego’s big enough whether we’re married or not.”

Lex cracked up and leaned across the table to kiss Carter, grabbing him firmly by the neck to hold him in place. Perhaps I should have been jealous of the affection so freely given to my Romeo, but I loved their love. I loved to watch Lex love Carter.

“What about you, Ivy?” I asked. “What do you remember about Marcus?”

Ivy sighed and intertwined her fingers, bringing them up to her mouth while she contemplated. “He was my friend at a time when I didn’t have many. He held my hand at big events, and I was braver because of it.”

Lex pulled one side of his mouth into a grin, wrapping an arm around Ivy’s shoulders to tug her closer so he could give her a gentle peck on the temple.

“You were brave on your own,” Lex muttered, probably thinking it was too low for me and Carter to hear. But I did. “You didn’t need my idiot brother.”

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