Page 750 of Love Bites

She told it, “And if I loved him, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you guys. I mean, you’re great. You’ve been my little buddies since I first summoned you when I was four. But if I were in love with Math, I’d go to him. I’d jump in with both feet. I’d run to him, and I’d tell him that I love him and that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, that I wanted to make a home with him and have a hearth with him. If I were in love with a man, it wouldn’t matter that we’ve only known each other a few weeks and that he was in the grip of some biological imperative. I wouldn’t let him go because home-and-hearth witches know that magic springs from love.”

The violet meerkat stared up at her, its black eyes large and solemn.

“I would,” she told the apparition. “I would go to him and tell him yes, and I’d stay with him, if I were in love with him.”

The violet meerkat’s nose twitched.

The gold and teal meerkats in her lap watched her from where they lay on their backs, tummies up, blinking.

The rest of them were watching her, too. The ones in back were standing up on their hind legs, staring.

Fifty sets of large, dark eyes silently watched her and waited.

Behind her eyes, an idea snapped into being.

Bethany said, “I’m in love with him.”

The meerkats didn’t move except for blinking eyes and twitching noses.

Her heart was flipping around in her chest, and she said, “I’m in love with Math Draco.”

They stared at her, alert, unmoving.

She shoveled the apparitions off her lap and shoulders and stumbled to her feet. “Oh, my God. I have to tell him. I have to go to him and tell him. Um, meet back here tomorrow morning?”

The meerkat apparitions popped back to the ether, filling the vast expanse of the ballroom with the scent of lavender and a hint of glitter that swirled in the air and disappeared after them.

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