by Kathryn Moon
“Do you need more time? Do you want us to go?”
I reached past him to the counter, leaning into his side to grab the tea tin. He didn’t lean away, only brushed the tip of his nose along my jaw until I settled back and started prepping the tea pot.
“Yes,” I said. “And no. I want to talk.”
“Alright.”
He moved to go and I reached out, tugging him back by the pocket of his vest. Our lips bumped clumsily together, and I wished for a half a moment that I planned instead of acted. But then Isaac hummed a pleased little sound and pressed into the kiss for a soft, sweet moment. I was blushing and he was smiling as he pulled away, squeezing at my waist and then leaving me to the tea.
There was chalk in my pocket, the stick Isaac had given me to write on the door, and I reached in to play with it a moment, thinking of the men waiting for me in the other room. Then I pulled it out and looked down at the dark wooden countertop.
There are four…
I paused for a moment chewing at my lip before continuing.
There are four identical chairs in the dining room.
“Joanna!” Aiden shouted.
“It worked,” I said, as the tea kettle started to whistle. I tucked my grin against my shoulder as Isaac peeked his head back into the kitchen, an eyebrow raised.
“Sit,” I said.
“Glad to know you’re handling that well,” Isaac said, smiling back at me.
I had mismatched china to serve the tea in but I at least had four cups and I carried them out to the table. There was an open seat across from Callum and Aiden took two cups out of my hands and passed one to him.
Then he turned back to me and said, “Have dinner with us.”
It was somehow both more and less than what I had expected him to say. Although I didn’t think I’d have an easier time answering if he’d asked for me to join the coven as plainly.
“I…” I had spent so long trying to avoid familiarity for a reason that no longer existed and now I couldn’t think of a word to say.
“You’re a witch,” Aiden said. “So the argument against our reason to court you is void, right?”
“Don’t push,” Callum muttered, looking up from where he’d fixed his eyes to the cup of tea.
Aiden raised his eyebrows at the other man in answer and Callum turned gray and looked back down at the table. Aiden winced and he and Isaac communicated in silence for a tense moment. Here was another thing I was afraid of, not fitting into the space they shared together. Not being enough.
But there was something I could say in this moment. Something important.
“I owe you an apology,” I said and Callum looked up frowning, glancing at the others until he met my eyes and realized I was speaking to him. “I was…confused but I shouldn’t have said those things or run off.”
“It was my fault,” he said, voice tight. “I shouldn’t have…”
Kissed me. Although the twist of his face implied something much less innocent and sweet than what occurred.
“It’s alright,” I said.
I had just kissed Isaac in the kitchen. And it had been clumsy and simple and made the blood in my veins sing. If it had been Callum and his slow, smooth caress just now instead of hours ago before everything had been turned inside out…before I had been turned inside out, we wouldn’t be grimacing and apologizing to one another.
Callum swallowed and the subject died.
“Come to dinner, please,” Aiden started again, this time more gingerly. “Isaac will cook so you don’t have to worry. It’s…dinner, that’s all, I promise.”
“No,” Isaac said. He reached over the table and tangled our fingers together. He looked at Aiden and then Callum before back to me. “We should be clear. Joanna Wick, our coven wants to court you. Please come have dinner with us.”
My heart was pounding in my chest and I could feel the heat on my face and the way my feet pinned themselves to the floor, half ready to take flight. The invitation, the weight of it, and pointed intentions behind it, had felt so impossible as recently as the morning.
But I had thought about the possibility of them. Had wished for it. Imagined myself in a life where I might have expected such a thing.
“Are you sure?” I asked, barely a whisper.
Aiden was beaming, smiling too hard to speak and Isaac’s dimples were growing deeper as he joined him.
“We’re sure,” Callum said, eyes fixed to mine.
I took a shaky breath and swallowed. “Dinner would be lovely,” I said.
13. Joanna
The morning of the dinner I tried to go for a walk. Just a small break away from the campus to clear my head and gather my thoughts about the upcoming evening. But when I got to the path it shimmered a fiery orange-red and my feet stopped in place. Posted to the nearest tree was a small poster reading Paths Out Of Order; please refrain from exploring the woods at this time.
I laughed at first. How could a path be out of order? Was it a prank from the students? But it would take a serious effort to close the paths with magic. I could ask the men later.
I thought of going to the library instead but it was full of people and my coworkers would probably want an explanation for why I was pacing the stacks. Instead I headed north past Gwen and her coven’s neighborhood into the downtown of Canderfey proper.
The streets were full, the town up earlier than the campus on a Sunday, but my anonymity here was better and I could stroll and window shop in peace. I found a shop entirely filled with tea and another solely dedicated to beauty and bath tinctures. At the shop at home there had been two kinds of tea and one kind of soap. I spent a good hour sniffing jar after jar and coming up with reasons to buy new tea and a small collection of washes that probably wouldn’t even fit in my bathroom. I was walking back to the bus stop, debating between walking home for an hour or riding for ten minutes, when I stopped at a shop window full of dresses.
An evening gown stood on a mannequin, the black fabric gleaming red where the sun hit it, with the skirt pooling over the floor like blood. It looked like liquid on the frame of the body, sliding down the shoulders over the breasts and hips. There was black pearl beading at the shoulders and down the collar, and fine seams down the bodice and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. But I could only imagine myself slouching wrong, tripping over the hem, and wrinkling the skirt with the way I sat.
Hildy passed the window behind the dresses, turned away from me and talking to a woman who was considering a petal pink dress on a hanger in her hands. She had mentioned her shop while I’d had dinner with them and while I’d imagine something nice this was…well it made much more sense when it came to Hildy, I supposed. I doubted there was anything inside for me but I wanted to say hello.
And I wanted to touch.
Hildy looked away from her customer as the door bells chimed with my entrance. Her eyes lit up and her smile turned from professional to friendly for a moment. She nodded at me and I returned the greeting before she went back to work. The shop was bright and well lit, the colors of the garments hanging shining against the cream and white stripes of the satiny wallpaper. A table sat in the center with several elegant hats, feathered and topped in silk flowers, as well as a collection of gloves and their glowing pearl buttons running up the arms.
When faced with the dresses in person, each one an individual work of art formed out of decadent fabrics and lace and delicate embellishments, I found myself keeping my hands knotted up in front of me. And when faced with the price tags, handwritten on heavy card stock with the dress’s details, I found myself swallowing heavily and averting my eyes. Hildy was finishing with her customer, wrapping up the pink dress in black tissue paper when I finally found a corner better suited to me. Simple dresses and skirts with clean lines out of rich fabrics, and tidy blouses in light silks.
“That’s Gwen’s corner,” Hildy said, as the bells rang and we were alone in the shop. “I started carrying them when I realized I was
never going to trick her into lace.”
Most of the pieces were in neutrals but my fingers were wrapping around the hanger of a dress the purple-red of cherry juice. It had short sleeves and a full skirt and while it was nicer than anything I’d ever owned or worn, it was still simple by the university standards.
“At least you like color,” Hildy said.
I glanced at the tag and decided it would be safe for me to touch. It was a soft, light velvet and it felt downy under my fingers.
“Can I try it on?” I asked.
“I would’ve wrestled you into it,” Hildy said, smile bright.
I knew in the dressing room, as soon as the fabric slid over my shoulders and with the first snick of the zipper, that I was going to go home with the dress. The fit was close, just a little loose around the waist and shoulders, and the skirt swished like music around my calves as I twisted in place.
“It’s perfect for you,” Hildy said. While I knew it would be a sale for her shop I could tell the words were those of a friend.
I bit my lip and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was a mess and my boots were a little scuffed but I looked good. Pretty, maybe. Less like a book mouse and more like…
“I’ve just found out I’m a witch,” I said, staring at myself in the mirror.
“Just?” Hildy asked, and she was fussing at my waist, fitting the fabric tighter. “We’ve known since Gwen received your application.”
She was grinning to herself and I frowned at her thinking. A slow sinking weight dropped through me.
“My application,” I hissed, grimacing. My written application. Describing why I would be a good fit for the position.
“Ohh don’t fuss,” soothed Hildy before taking pins to the fabric at my shoulders. “Gwen saw it right away and it’s not as if she couldn’t have turned you down with a little de-charming. But with that talent? Who would?”
“You must all think I’m an idiot,” I said. My fingers were playing at the folds of skirt at my waist and found their way into a pocket and I twisted in happy surprise, nearly getting myself stuck with a pin.
“There are plenty of strange magical talents,” Hildy said with a shrug. “Sometimes they get overlooked, other times they get shoved into a more familiar field of study. You probably would have ended up in the arts if anyone had noticed sooner. I almost landed myself in carpentry for goodness sake. Can you imagine?” She made a disgusted face over my shoulder, nose wrinkling in annoyance. “As if carpentry has any of the subtlety of tailoring.”
“Think of the wood shavings,” I said, teasing and laughing at Hildy’s horrified expression.
“You’re better off,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Who knows if there’d be anyone to really teach you. And now here you are, likely ruining all the romantic hopes of half the students on campus.”
I blushed and stared at her as she put away her pins and began to unzip me from the dress. “Gossip travels fast,” I said.
Hildy grinned and shrugged. “I have a shop girl in the arts who had a lot to say about your picnic with her favorite professor this week.”
I ducked back into the dressing room, a smile creeping up my cheeks as I remembered Isaac rescuing me from the library for lunch in the grass together. There was a last burst of summer in the weather and the lawn had been full of students and professors. I knew we had been seen but I hadn’t imagined there being anything worth gossiping about. I didn’t think anyone else could tell the way we’d made excuses to have our fingers brushing, or the way Isaac wrapped his hand around my ankle as we sat opposite each other, eating in quiet.
“They’re very lucky men,” Hildy said from the other side of the curtain.
“You don’t think it’s unlikely? They could do…more than me.” I almost hated to put my old clothes back on after wearing the dress for only a handful of minutes.
“I’m not sure that they could, darling,” Hildy said sweetly. “And it’s not as though there haven’t been attempts before. But from what I know, which is quite a lot, they’ve never all been interested in the same person before. Callum Pike is notoriously standoffish. If he wants you in the coven then that makes you more qualified than anyone. Do you want to be?” she asked as I came back out with the dress, pins still in place.
It hadn’t even occurred to me to tell her not to fit the dress. And I couldn’t bear not to buy it now.
Hildy was watching my face, waiting on my answer, as I passed her the dress.
“I’m having dinner with them tonight,” I said. It was one thing to say it to their faces, that I wanted to be with them, that I wanted to try. It felt like a much riskier thing to share it with others. If the relationship failed, if they changed their mind, did I really want others to know I had thought it possible in the first place?
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll have this ready for your dinner tonight,” Hildy said. She ducked into an office and a billow of magic, bright and spiky like the tips of tailoring pins, trickled out for a moment.
I thought of what she had said about Callum. He had wanted me, for a moment in the library. I knew that much. What I was less sure of was if he still did after my outburst. He had said the words while we all sat around my little dining table but they didn’t take down the walls he seemed to place between us after the kiss. If I had already ruined things would he say so? Or was he going along now for the sake of his covenmates?
I wished I could have rewound the week and gone back to the moment in the library. Accepted the kiss or at least not made such a fool of myself refusing it. But it didn’t seem like the kind of problem words on paper would fix.
“Here you are,” Hildy said, returning from her office with a box wrapped gleaming cream wrapping paper. I joined her at the counter to pay and she pulled a small jar of red lip stain from her pocket. “And this is for you from me. I stash them everywhere so it won’t be missed.”
And I didn’t have any at home, but of course Hildy could already tell that.
“Thank you,” I said, as earnestly as I could. The dress and makeup would feel like a kind of armor to wear at the dinner tonight. A costume of the woman who could imagine herself with the three beautiful men.
“Oh,” Hildy waved her hand at me dismissively with a small smile on her face. “Just come back. Give me a reason to bring in some colors Gwen wouldn’t touch.”
We kissed cheeks in parting and I took the bus home. When I closed the entry door behind me and took off my boots I found an idea brewing. I had washed the countertop in the kitchen earlier in the week, erasing the words I’d written. And with them went the two chairs that had materialized. I found my rescued notebook and pen in my bag and open them to write in my boots are like new again.
They shone black by the door.
14. Joanna
Aiden was waiting for me on my steps when it was time to leave.
“I would have found the house on my own,” I said, bottle of wine in hand as his eyes raked over me.
“I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of walking with you,” he said, grinning. “You’re stunning.”
I couldn’t think fast enough to answer that and his grin grew. Hildy had thought further ahead for me than I had. I had no good coat to wear with such a beautiful dress but she’d wrapped it up in the box in a heavy black and gold wrap for me to wear. After dabbing on the lip stain and draping the wrap over my shoulders I barely recognized myself in the small bathroom mirror upstairs.
“There’s a minor security fuss in the woods outside of the campus. Callum was fretting and I was happy to take the excuse to have a little time alone with you,” he explained, sobering.
