Page 47 of All's Fair in Love and Magic

“No. Just like… two people talking.”

Wow.

Maybe he was even less interested in romance than I thought. Or even worse at it.

Or my perspective was just really freaking screwy after spending so much time watching human TV shows and movies. Itwouldmake sense if most relationships weren’t like romcoms or dramas.

“Okay. We can do that,” I said.

Liam ordered food—he convinced them to make me pancakes for dinner—and led me out onto the bungalow’s back porch to wait for it.

I’d known it existed and seen a little of it on our way in and out of the place, but I had never been out there before. The front of the bungalow faced the resort, and the back faced the ocean. My runes worked just fine on the front of the house, so we hadn’t bothered walking around.

My jaw nearly dropped at the sight of the large patio that was almost as big as the building itself. There was a nice firepit, a gorgeous outdoor sectional, and a stunning view of the sun setting over the ocean. A wooden pergola was built over all of it and wrapped in twinkling lights.

“Damn. I can understand why you picked this place,” I said, staring at the waves. “Did you sit out here a lot?”

“Yeah. With my mom, sometimes. She would sit on the beach just to think for hours every morning. I always wondered what she was thinking,” he said. “Guess I should’ve tried to crack her.”

“She was probably thinking about spells, at least a lot of the time. Spell magic is really complex, and you can’t learn it through trial and error in a lot of situations.”

“Why not?”

“Did she ever tell you about the differences between the types of magic?” I asked.

He shook his head.

That was a lot to keep from her own son.

I couldn’t help but wonder why. He might not have magic in the way witches did, but the man was a powerhouse, and witch magic was his heritage too. A simple explanation wouldn’t hurt anything, or anyone.

I took a seat on the sectional, and Liam sat across from me.

He was definitely uninterested in romance.

“Do you want me to explain it?” I checked.

“If you’re comfortable.”

I rolled my eyes. “If we’re going to be mates, you’re going to need to understand witches.”

“Alright.”

“So, you know the four types of magic. Potions are pretty self-explanatory. You add the ingredients in specific ways, at specific temperatures. It’s a science. Runes are a simplified version of that, though they’re complicated in their own way. The tiniest change of a symbol can result in an entirely different effect, or no effect at all.”

Liam nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Well, spells and charms are entirely different. Creating a spell is like building a wall. You have to put everything in the right place, and you have to know exactly how you’re going to do it before you start or the whole thing will fall apart. It’s an art, and one most people fail at. If I had to create your mom’s spells from scratch rather than just repair them, we would’ve been screwed,” I said matter-of-factly.

“But you could achieve a similar effect with runes?”

“Yes, and no.”

His forehead creased.

“There’s no rune to create a bubble spell like the one around this place.” I gestured to the sky. “I would need to build one of those in spell form if I was making my own wards, but it would be doable. Using the bubble as the base, I could achieve similar effects to your mother’s wards with my own runes.”

“What about charms?” Liam asked, his forehead creased.

---