by Ashlyn Kane
“Magically cockblocked.” Kate raised an eyebrow. “Ready?”
Cole’s stomach twisted. “No, but do it anyway.”
The Wheel of Fortune.
Roaring filled Cole’s ears, and his heart beat triple time. It could mean so many things. Time. The solution to a problem. “Destiny,” he whispered, reaching out to trace a shaking finger down the side of the card.
Kate frowned at the deck and gathered the cards. “I thought you weren’t going to break the curse the old-fashioned way,” she grumbled, shuffling before fanning the cards on the table.
“I’m not!” Cole protested. “That card could mean anything.”
Pursing her lips, Kate gestured to the table. “I should’ve made you ask a better question. We need information about who cursed Leo and what they want. What else he might be in danger from.”
Cole sighed. “Yeah.” This time he thought a moment before phrasing the question. “What do I need to do to protect him?”
He reached across the table and pulled a card from the fan: the Chariot. Conflict. Turbulence. Searching for the truth. Exactly what Cole might have expected of a card describing the situation. “Not exactly anything new there either.”
“Shut up and draw again.”
Past influences turned up the Hanged Man. “He really hurt that vampire’s pride,” Kate murmured, setting the card below and to the left of the Chariot.
“Yikes.”
The Devil, inverted, took the place of the Future card. Cole stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded. “Divorce?” he guessed. Inverting the card changed the meaning. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Release from the ties that bind,” Kate corrected, watching him with calculating eyes.
Cole squirmed. “I don’t think that’s—”
“I’m sorry, which of us is the clairvoyant, here?” she said sharply. He flinched. Kate went on more gently, “I know it’s scary. I know it’s new territory for you. Okay? But even if it weren’t for this, even if Leo didn’t need you, I know you. And you have wanted to fall in love your whole life.”
Damn it. Closing his eyes, Cole concentrated on breathing in and out. His throat felt thick. Most days he put it out of his mind or made light of it as he had with Leo.
But sometimes he remembered he wasn’t allowed to have what others took for granted. The universe wouldn’t allow it.
“Cole, I’m sorry. I….”
He shook his head. “You didn’t say anything that’s not true.” He opened his eyes again and met Kate’s. “Come on. Two more cards. Next one’s Reason, right?”
For a second he thought Kate would protest, try to comfort him further. But instead she gestured at the fanned-out cards and waited for Cole to select one.
Kate turned it over.
The High Priestess’s eyes seemed to stare out from the card, impassive and judgmental. Cold. Superior. Cole had been on the receiving end of that stare enough times. Even the tarot card seemed to ooze power.
“That’s the least surprising card we’ve turned over all session.”
Having his suspicions confirmed didn’t make Cole feel any better either. He slid the final card out from the fan and flipped it, done with the ritual of the thing. The Sun shone up at him, bright with promise of love, happiness, fulfillment, health, all if he did what the cards asked. If he broke the curse the old-fashioned way.
“Well,” Kate said awkwardly. “No pressure.” Then she made a face at herself as she started gathering up the cards. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed. I—”
“It’s fine,” Cole cut her off. “At least we learned something.” That their suspicions were well-founded. That Leo’s ex was a piece of work. And that if he wanted to keep Leo safe, one way or another, he had to break the curse.
“Still, I could’ve been—”
And then a weird thing happened: Kate fumbled the deck.
In all the years Cole had known her—which amounted to his entire life—he’d never once seen her mishandle the cards. Now, though, as she was putting them together in a pile, one slipped out from the bundle, teetered on the edge of the desk, and finally fell to the floor.
Cole didn’t dare look. “If you had to guess, what does that card represent, do you think?”
“If I had to guess?” she repeated. Her skin had taken on an unusual pallor. “Consequences. What happens if you don’t release Leo from the curse.”
“You know what card it is, don’t you.”
“There’s really only one it could be.”
Cole nodded. Then, steeling himself, he peered over the edge of the desk.
On the floor, half-hidden under the desk, lay the Tower, cracked down the middle, burning, its former occupants crashing to their deaths.
Destiny, Cole thought grimly. Okay.
Chapter Eleven
LEO felt more normal once he’d put on his own clothes. A little snooping led him to the laundry room, and he left the sweats and T-shirt he’d borrowed there, conscious of his tendency to leave things on the floor.
“I guess I’m your new roommate,” he told Niamh, who was preening a wing on her perch.
“As long as you don’t leave the toilet seat up.”
“I’ll try to remember, I—” A squawk of laughter interrupted him. I’m talking to a bird. And she’s making fun of me. Surreal.
He didn’t want to know whether she used the toilet. Instead, he set about looking for something useful to do. He’d had a roommate in Toronto, but they’d mostly worked opposite shifts. Leo rarely saw her; they accomplished most of their communication via Post-it notes stuck to the fridge, largely about which food was up for grabs and which was not.
Speaking of food—“Do you think Cole will be back for lunch?”
Niamh finished preening and cocked her head. It was a disconcertingly human mannerism. “Hard to say. Any other day he’d probably go to work after visiting Kate, but I think he’s worried about you.”
Just what Leo needed. His stomach squirmed with guilt. He wanted to protest that he could take care of himself, except both he and the bird knew he couldn’t. Not in this strange new world.
He can always heat it up if he’s not home in time. Making lunch would give Leo something productive to do and hopefully serve as a preliminary thank-you. As he strode toward the kitchen, he called over his shoulder, “So does this happen a lot? People needing to crash here because of whatever curse Cole’s supposed to break?”
Niamh flapped over and alit on the back of a kitchen chair. “No. You’re the first.”
That probably meant he was super fucked. Not a great feeling. Leo opened the fridge to take inventory. “Really? I would have thought….” He hadn’t thought his case was special. Hell, he hadn’t wanted it to be.
“Cole’s good at what he does. He doesn’t brag, but witches talk. People know him.”
“Yeah, makes sense.” After all, Victoria had known where to send him. He wondered if she was still doing that thing in Thailand. Maybe he should try to FaceTime her. “So then what?” he asked, riffling through the deli drawer. Promising.
“What do you mean, then what? He breaks the curse and they go home.”
Leo paused with his hand around a package of cheese. “Like, right away?”
When he turned around, Niamh had frozen with her right foot halfway to her beak. Had she frozen because grooming in the kitchen was objectively disgusting or because she’d given away more about Leo’s curse than she intended? “Sometimes they go home while Cole gathers ingredients to break the spell.”
“Guess I’m just special.” But pouting about it wouldn’t improve his situation. Lunch, on the other hand—well, at least his stomach would stop grumbling. He pulled out a package of bacon and a jar of mayo. “Where did Cole go, anyway?”
“His cousin Kate runs a magic shop in town.”
Leo frowned, pulling open random kitchen drawers. Surely even a witch needed kitchen scissors—there, in the wooden cylinder with all the spatulas. “There’s
no magic shop in town.”
“Magic shop slash yarn store,” Niamh corrected.
Of course. Leo took a heavy-bottomed frying pan from the rack hanging above the stove. “I guess a town this small wouldn’t be able to support a magic shop.”
Niamh squawked sharply. “Shows what you know.”
Leo wished he hadn’t said anything. Now he was torn between curiosity and terror. He put the bacon in the pan, wondering if asking for clarification would make the situation worse.
Niamh didn’t give him the option. She sighed. “It’s the land here, and the water. Look, do you know much about water? Energy?”
“Not in the way I think you mean.” He paused. He hadn’t brought that many clothes, and bacon grease tended to spatter. Then he remembered what Cole had said at the festival. “Is there an apron somewhere?”
Niamh indicated the pantry. “There, back of the door.”
“Thanks.”
As he put it on, Niamh continued, “Water, fresh water, is something almost everything on the planet needs to survive. Because of that, fresh water contains a sort of energy. And the Great Lakes contain 21 percent of the world’s supply.”
Leo turned the knob to medium heat. “Okay. That much I think I remember from elementary school geography class. But Lake Erie’s the smallest lake, right? Or almost.”
Niamh fluttered her wings. “Gold star. Lake Erie’s the second-smallest by surface area but the shallowest by far.”
“So why not camp out around Lake Superior?”
“Oh, we do. Those of us who don’t mind the cold, that is.” Fair point. “But think of it as a giant funnel. Superior, Huron, Michigan—all that water, all that power is heading to the Atlantic.”
“And Lake Erie is the bottom of the funnel. Well, Niagara Falls. I guess that makes sense.” The bacon started to pop, and Leo remembered he still hadn’t found a suitable utensil. “What about Lake Ontario, though?” Before she could answer, it came to him. “I guess it’s deep enough that it’s more like a second funnel.”
“In the thing with the spatula,” Niamh suggested. “Right of the stove. And yes, that’s the basic idea.”
Leo snagged the tongs and prodded at the pan. “So if I wanted to avoid vampires and witches and—I don’t know what other creatures of the night are out there, don’t tell me—I should move to the desert.”
“Ha! Deserts have their own power.” She rustled again, audible above the ever-more-frequent cracks of bacon fat. “Why are you so afraid, anyway?”
Sharply, Leo raised his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t know, maybe because my ex-boyfriend cursed me? Sorry if that doesn’t exactly endear the—the community to me.”
Niamh twitched, ruffling her feathers and then smoothing them. “Okay, that’s reasonable. But we’re not more criminal than anyone else, you know.”
An icy chill washed down Leo’s back. The idea that Cole might think Leo was afraid of him made his gut twist. “I’m not…. I’m adjusting to this world where all of a sudden people have abilities I didn’t think were possible, and some of them are dangerous and I’m helpless to defend myself. I’m not used to that.” If someone pointed a gun at him, at least he could duck. He didn’t have the first idea how to avoid being cursed, other than not to touch strange objects without cotton gloves.
At a loss for what else to say, he flipped over a piece of bacon. A drop of grease spattered on his wrist, and he hissed.
“Hmm.” Niamh’s talons click-scritched on the back of the chair as she hopped closer. “Maybe I could help you.”
“What?”
She jumped to the next chair, the one closest to Leo. “You can’t identify obscures on sight. You don’t know how to protect yourself. But if you have a suspicion, I could give you a signal. People don’t notice birds.”
“They do if they’re indoors,” Leo pointed out, but it was a weak protest. “That’s really kind of you. Thanks.”
“Well.” Niamh craned her neck around and preened the feathers on her back. “Any friend of Cole’s.” Then she swiveled and cocked her head again. “Are you going to eat all that bacon?”
COLE opened his front door to the mouthwatering scent of frying bacon. For a second he stood in the entryway, overcome with longing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d come home to a cooked meal, but it must have been before he moved out of Gran’s house. He let himself have one short, involved moment of self-pity, because today had sucked and he’d earned it.
Then he told himself getting emotional over pork was extra even for him. “Honey, I’m home,” he called, surprised when the words came out without issue. “And you cooked!” He toed off his shoes and made his way to the kitchen.
“I fried bacon,” Leo corrected, smiling from behind the counter. He had changed into his own clothes—not that the tight T-shirt and jeans concealed his body any more than Cole’s had—and put on Cole’s apron over them so his chest read I’m Kind of a Big Dill. Cole’s heart tried to beat its way out of his chest. “I figured we could have BLTs on the bagels left over from this morning. What’s another six hundred calories when you’re breaking curses, right?”
Cole’s mouth watered. “Right,” he agreed, taking deep breaths through his nose. “What is that smell?” Beneath the bacon lurked something sweet and earthy.
“Oh! You only had cherry tomatoes for the BLTs. Kind of awkward to put on sandwiches—they tend to slip out. So I candied them in the oven. Now they’re soft.”
Even without the curse holding him back, Cole couldn’t have articulated a response to that. Leo had turned healthy food into candy—for him. “Can I help?” he offered after a too-long pause.
“Nah, they’re done. But you can eat.”
They sat across from each other at the kitchen table, Cole thankful he had food to distract him. After everything Kate had said—after what the cards had said—he wanted to hide upstairs and lick his wounds. Or at least he had thought he’d want that. But now, actually sitting across from Leo, their feet almost touching under the table, he could almost forget.
The sandwich didn’t hurt.
“Oh my God,” Cole accidentally exclaimed around a mouthful of bacon and tomato. He closed his eyes, chewed, swallowed, savoring the smoky salt of the bacon and the warm juicy pop of sweet cherry tomato. He pulled the bagel away from his mouth and licked his lips before raising his eyes to meet Leo’s. “Are you sure you’re not magic?”
“Pretty sure.” Leo licked a drop of tomato juice off his thumb. Cole’s mouth watered, and it had nothing to do with the food. “But I can google with the best of them.”
“Clearly.”
They didn’t talk much until they’d finished eating the sandwiches—and then polished off the extra tomatoes as well. Cole was wiping his fingers on a napkin when Leo asked, “So what were you doing at your cousin’s?”
Cole blinked.
“Niamh told me where you went.” She must have gone out for a flight afterward, because the kitchen window was open and her perch was empty. Trying to give them some privacy, maybe. All the women in Cole’s family were nosy meddlers. “Did you get what you needed at your cousin’s shop?”
He huffed out a laugh. Funny you should ask that. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Do you have a big family?” Leo asked, standing to put the plates in the dishwasher. “You mentioned your cousin Kate and your cousin Julie and your grandmother and your mother….”
Cole rose too and grabbed the frying pan and baking sheet to wash by hand. “You seem to have hit on the theme of the family, at least.”
“Not a lot of boys in the family tree?”
“I’m the Alpin black sheep.” He paused and frowned at the idiom. “More of a light brown, I guess, but all my mom’s siblings are women, and all my cousins, and all their kids. Well, except my stepnephew, but his bio mom’s not an Alpin.”
Leo closed the dishwasher and cocked his hip against the counter, smiling. “How’s that work, then?”
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With all of that to look at, Cole found it a little difficult to concentrate. “Magic, probably. We’re a strong matriarchy, of course. My grandmother’s grandmother settled here in the 1800s. Never would take a man’s name. Insisted he take hers.”
“In the 1800s?” Leo said, raising his eyebrows. “I would have liked to meet her.”
“Me too,” Cole admitted, plugging the sink to fill it with hot water. “I might’ve, if she’d lived much longer. I think she was 114 when she died.”
Leo cocked his head and studied Cole carefully. “I bet you take after her.”
Cole blushed and turned back to the pan. “Anyway. She settled here because of the strong magic in the water. Family legend has it she appointed herself one of the lake’s guardians—typical white person, right? Appoint yourself the guardian after you forced the land’s real caretakers out of the best areas? But anyway, now nobody ever dares leave.” He paused in picking up the sponge. “Well, almost nobody.”
Leo pulled the dish towel from the front of the oven and stood waiting with it while Cole scrubbed the bacon from the bottom of the pan. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“My mom,” Cole admitted. “If I’m the black sheep of the Alpin family, I guess she’s the red one. I didn’t meet my dad till I was nine, but Gran’s house was plenty full when I was growing up, and Mom, well.” He smiled fondly and rinsed the pan before handing it over. “She was an Alpin, and nobody was going to tell her what to do. Not even Gran.”
“Why do I feel like those words lead to trouble?”
“I would think it’s probably obvious.” Cole shook his head thinking of different times—the Samhains and Solstices, the backyard gatherings. Monarch butterflies flocking as he and his mother danced barefoot in the autumn sunshine. “Mom met a man. American. Of course she did, she was beautiful—still is.”
Leo finished drying the pot and set it down on the counter as Cole washed the baking sheet. “Let me guess: Gran didn’t approve.”
“Gran didn’t approve,” Cole confirmed, rinsing the suds away. “I never heard the full argument, so I can only guess what hurtful things were said. At the end of it, Mom told me to pack my bags, and we were going to go live in Florida with Geoff, and didn’t I want to go to Disney World?”