Page 32 of Big Little Spells
I feel like there’s an emotional cloak that billows behind him.
“Are you here for the engagement party?” Ellowyn asks with a smirk.
And I have to admire how unfazed she is by...all that. All him.
I’m also irrationally delighted that Georgie is sitting closest to him. Because she can act as body armor, I tell myself piously. It has nothing to do with my sudden, nearly overpowering desire to put my palm on what looks like it might be the finest male abdomen of all time.
Around our table, everyone is in various states of discomfort, which makes me feel slightly better about myself. Georgie is twisting her fingers together, looking anywhere but directly beside her. Ellowyn maintains the challenging expression. Emerson studies Nicholas, clearly trying to calculate the perfect response to his arrival. Jacob settles into a disapproving look, while Zander stands up from his chair—less to be aggressive and more to keep Nicholas from towering over him, I’m pretty sure—and goes with some glowering.
I have no idea what I’m doing. I chant at myself about peace and love, but my palm itches as if the fire that burned it was him. Maybe if it was him, it would feel good.
If Nicholas notices any of this, he gives no indication. His gaze moves over all of us as though we’re inanimate objects, eventually landing on Jacob and Emerson. “Congratulations,” he says. Aridly. “What a delight it must be to pledge your forevers when you are mortal and have so little time.”
Obviously he does not sound the least bit delighted.
“Thank you,” Emerson says regally, as if that was an offering of some kind.
Jacob frowns at the insult it actually was.
It makes me wonder what amount of time would count as forever to an immortal. Or if anything but always is frothy and insubstantial. For some reason, thinking about it makes me feel sad.
I tell myself I just need another drink. Or ten.
Nicholas is eyeing Emerson as if he expects that thank you to turn into a speech, which, you know, is fair. When it doesn’t, he looks away from her.
“I need to speak to you.” His gaze finds me and pins me to the booth, all lightning and tension. “Alone.”
I smile as if I fully expected nothing else tonight but an immortal witch rolling up to me in a crowded bar, a welcome home party in himself. Something for all the girls I hated in high school to gossip about long after I’m gone, I can only hope. I lean back against the banquette. I try on an Ellowyn-style smirk.
“That’s so sweet,” I coo at him. “Did you come storming in here to see if I’m okay?”
I’m kidding. Or being provocative, anyway. I don’t expect the flash in that midnight blue gaze of his that makes me think, Wait. Is that why he came?
But I have no time to dwell on that possibility.
No matter how much I’d like to.
One moment I’m sitting in a booth sandwiched between Ellowyn and Georgie and the next I’m outside standing on a riverbank, a cold wind attacking my foolishly exposed abdomen once more.
Naturally, the wind appears to have no effect on his arms. Particularly not the biceps I can see are even better up close—
Focus, I order myself.
One of these days I’ll learn my lesson. Yeah, right. I glare up at the man who thinks he can just yank me out of my sister’s party, refusing to curl my arms protectively around myself like everything inside me wants to do. “I’m getting tired of that.”
One of his impossible brows lifts. “Then stop me.”
“I’m supposed to fight off a famed immortal witch who I had to read about in history class?”
“You could try.”
And it bothers me that he’s right. I could try. Yet never do.
I should probably think about why that is.
Nicholas’s cut-glass voice gets even more dry the more he speaks, or maybe that’s just a knock-on effect of the wind picking up over the river. Or his cold blue gaze. “Would you prefer me to give you until tomorrow morning? Make an appointment to speak with you?”
“Why not? You have all the time in the world.”