Page 46 of Never Landing

“Everything okay?” Everett asked. My arm was still looped through his, his crooked with a bag of groceries in his other hand. “You seem kind of...contemplative?”

I started, blinking up at him. “Ezra said something that got me thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

“He said the fae still have part of me. Do you think that’s true?”

Everett tipped his head one way than the other. “Well, that life was all you ever knew. I don’t really have my parentsanymore, but they still helped make me. Some of the other kids had lives outside the forest, right? Like Jessie?”

I nodded. But that wasn’treallywhat bothered me. I didn’t want to go back and change what’d happened, just?—

“Do you think the magic’s going to go away?”

Everett sucked his cheeks in, watching me, giving the question due consideration. “Not that I’m an expert or anything, but...no. It’s hard to imagine you changingthatmuch. You helped me fly.”

“What if it does?” I knew that magic wasn’t what made Everett like me, but would I change again? Would I get worse? I’djustfound a thing I could do.

Everett laughed, letting my arm go to put his around me instead. “Then you’d still be wonderful, and we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

I felt a little better going home. He was right. I was Peter, damn it, and whatever magic I had wasmine. I’d earned it.

I was holding my chin a little higher when we turned back onto our street, and there, on our porch, stood two men, their arms crossed, their expressions displeased.

And beside me, Everett groaned.

29

Everett

James Warren and Tom Smith were standing on my porch.

It was kind of funny. There was some kind of too-expensive midlife-crisis-mobile sitting in my driveway. A Lamborghini or something, damned if I knew anything about cars worth more than houses.

And there were two men in suits, looking threatening and angry. It was almost like we’d just wandered into a mafia movie, and one of them was about to start complaining about how I’d come to him on the day of his daughter’s wedding to ask him to do a murder.

The only problem with that was that the two of them looked like the only ones interested in doing any murdering.

Next to me, Peter had stiffened, and his expression was even more tense than his body. He was always nervous about strangers, especially ones who looked as serious as they did. But this was more than that. He had to know already, some of what this was about.

“Are you quite finished, Everett?” Tom said, his gravelly voice making the words sound so much more important than they were.

Because I didn’t even have to think about it.

I had weeks’ worth of groceries in my arms. A check in my pocket for Peter’s work for the day. Added to the pay for Peter’s work the last few days, it...well, it wasn’t a miracle. We weren’t going to be rich. We wouldn’t be buying any Lamborghinis. But it was plenty.

We had the house already, completely paid off by my grandfather long before his death in the nineties. Property taxes in the area were ridiculously low. All we needed was enough money to pay for our expenses, and the money Peter had made was enough to cover months of that. Hell, the money I’d already had in my bank account was plenty for months of that, since I wasn’t paying for my apartment in the city anymore, or eating out repeatedly every day. I had the time to make my own food.

I’d been thinking about trying that sourdough starter thing everyone had been doing a few years earlier, since I had time to do things like make bread now.

It’d be a fun experiment.

“You know, Tom, I think I am,” I told him, smiling as I tightened my grip on Peter’s hand, leading him up the stairs. “Is there something I can do for you guys? I’m pretty sure I’ve got five days of vacation and two holidays left before I need to be back to work. Marsha said she’s going to drop a ham by for us when they close up for the evening. Apparently that’s a thing people make for holidays.”

“I like ham,” Peter said, still hesitant and nervous, but warming to the subject as he often did with food. “It’s very good on pizza.”

“Isn’t it?” I turned to him and grinned bright. That was my Peter. He had no preconceived notions about what it was “acceptable” to enjoy, so he just liked what he liked. Crackers with cheese and jam? Delicious. Pizza with pineapple? Also delicious. I hadn’t actually found much he didn’t think was delicious yet, but I wasn’t trying for that. It was more fun tointroduce him to all of my favorite things than test whether he thought liver and lima beans were nasty.

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