“What?” Grateful shook her head. “You never told me.”
“I didn’t remember at first. It was a long time ago, and in my defense, he was in bad shape when I found him. Hardly recognizable from the man he is today.”
“How did Logan find out?”
“His mother.” Polina raised her eyebrows.
Grateful snorted. “She has a way of showing up when you least expect it.”
“It’s creepy but fascinating.”
With a sigh, Grateful studied a spot on the table. “You know I love you, Polina, but I saw the way you two were laughing together. He’s attracted to you, and I think—”
Polina frowned and held up one hand. “Don’t say it.” She shook her head.
“It’s the magic. Your magic touched his soul. It happened to me too. When he was in my attic, I thought I had feelings for him, but it turned out to be the metaphysical connection from being his soul sorter. You can’t have a connection with someone’s soul and escape a certain level of attraction.”
Twirling her finger in a strand of her red hair, Polina nodded. “The connection isn’t lost on me, although the effects are stronger than I expected. And distracting.” She smoothed her dress again. “Well, I am happy with my solitary life. Do not worry yourself; your friend is safe from the likes of me.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—”
“Please.” Polina held up two fingers. “You needn’t say more.”
“Thank you for taking this seriously. Logan has already been through so much.” Grateful’s gaze darted to Rick. “You know, the best cure for soul infatuation is true love. I know from experience.” She fussed with the jacket of Lucas’s christening suit. “If it gets too bad or if you don’t want to be alone anymore, you still have the positivity potion.”
After a moment’s consideration, Polina remembered. “The one you made for Tabetha that she wouldn’t accept?”
“The Book of Light says it attracts your true love like a magnet. If you do get lonely, that’s the spell to use. It’ll break through anything temporary or artificial.”
Polina was about to protest that she was fine on her own, when a dark-haired woman sauntered to the table. “Grateful, come see the cake Logan made you. It’s in the shape of a raven.”
“Thanks, Michelle.” Grateful turned to Polina. “Would you mind holding Lucas for a second? I want to take a picture. Logan’s cakes are to die for.”
“I, uh…” Polina searched her brain for an appropriate excuse. She wasn’t fast enough. The baby was thrust into her hands, and Grateful was gone before she could say no. Arms extended, Polina inspected the tiny person who dangled from her hands by the armpits. Lucas blinked his ridiculously large blue eyes at her. The boy looked like an animated Precious Moments doll.
“You are a cute one, aren’t you?” Polina bounced him slightly, allowing his feet to press against the table. He kicked and smiled at her. “You’re not difficult at all. Just small and underdeveloped.” She crinkled her eyes as the babe made a face, pulling his knees to his chest and showing his toothless gums. “What? What are you doing now? Is this some kind of tiny warlock spell?”
Eh. Ehh. Bleeeck. A fountain of foul liquid spewed from the baby’s mouth down the front of her emerald-green gown. Grateful appeared out of nowhere, scooping Lucas into her arms. “I’m so sorry. I thought he looked a little colicky. Let me get you a rag.”
Polina blinked at her friend, lips pressed together against the onslaught of gastrointestinal emissions. “I don’t think a rag will be sufficient. A little water and magic should do the trick.”
Grateful babbled on about how sorry she was, bouncing Lucas on her hip. Polina reassured her that it was perfectly fine. Arms extended to her sides and dress dripping, she raced to the bathroom to clean up.
Chapter Ten
Cake
Cleaning up after Lucas took longer than Polina anticipated. Magic wouldn’t work on the stain. The reason why was as obvious as the day was long. The little bugger had more magic in him than his mother wanted to believe. Still, allowing the witch to come around on her own terms seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, Polina set to work cleaning her dress the old-fashioned way.
She removed the gown and plunged the fabric under the cold water of the sink. It took a fair deal of scrubbing to rid it of the enchanted spit-up. Warlocks. She rolled her eyes. Once she finally had it clean, she tried to use the hand dryer to blow out the fabric only to find the machine was out of order. With any luck, now that she was dealing with water, magic would be effective again.
“Dehydratium,” she said with a flick of her wand. Water began to run from the hem of the dress, the wetness receding from the top of the garment and winding along the floor toward the drain. The process wasn’t fast, but it was effective. Once dry, she ironed out the wrinkles with another pass of her wand.
With a turn of her shoulders, she checked her appearance in the mirror and emerged from the bathroom. Everyone was gone. The restaurant was empty, aside from Logan, who shoved paper plates into a black plastic bag. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
Logan jumped, gripping his chest. “Damn, Polina! I thought you left with everyone else. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Everyone left?”
“Yeah. After cake, Lucas started acting up.” He pointed toward the window. “Plus, storm’s moving in. The weather service issued a flash flood warning. I guess everyone wanted to make it home before it hit.”
Polina eyed the gray-green sky outside the window. It was early evening but the parking lot was dark as dusk. She sighed and approached the booth where she’d left her small purse.
The rustle of the garbage bag as Logan worked his way around the restaurant made it impossible for her to ignore the inexplicable pull she felt in his direction. Without thinking, she turned on her heel. “Would you like help with that?” Her voice sounded pinched.
He stopped, turning a surprised look in her direction. “I thought—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “You know what? Thank you. I’d appreciate your help. I gave my staff the day off. Here, I’ll get you a bag.”
“No need,” she said. Wand drawn, she circled the gem above her head. “Dezinfectat uitaria.” White fog rolled from the corners of the room, starting from behind her and working quickly over every chair and table.
Logan’s mouth popped open. “What are you doing?”
Polina bobbed her wrist, concentrating. “Where do you want the clean glasses?”
“Cabinet left of the freezer.”
She nodded. The fog thickened until she could no longer see the tables or chairs. One last circle above her head and the magic receded, leaving the tables and floor twinkling in its wake. Satisfied, she crossed her arms over her chest, and smiled in Logan’s direction.
Flabbergasted, he turned the garbage bag in his hands upside down. It was empty. “Dare I ask what you did with the garbage?”
“Dumpster out back. What else would I do with it?”
He nodded, absently turning a circle. “Right. You are quick with that wand.” His face fell.
“Say thank you, Logan.”
He lifted his eyes to hers, seeming to contemplate what she was saying. “Thank you.”
“Now,” Polina holstered her wand and dusted off her hands, “I will take a slice of your famous chocolate cake. I missed the previous serving.”
Logan frowned. “It’s gone. Grateful took the leftovers home with her.”
“Ah, well, another time.” Polina leaned into the booth to grab her purse, just as heavy rain began to pelt the windows.
“We could make one,” Logan added quickly.
There was an urgency in his tone, and when she turned from the booth, his body was only inches from her own. He smelled of baking and warm male. Goddess, his eyes were hauntingly green.
She licked her lips. “I’d like that,” she answered without thinking.
A smile broke out across his face. “Good. Bec
ause you still need to explain about your involvement after my accident.” He ran his fingers down the sleeve of her dress and took her hand in his before leading her into the well-appointed industrial kitchen.
“Witches as a species are stereotypically terrible cooks,” Polina admitted.
A stainless steel bowl landed in front of her, the bottom circling on the counter with a hollow tinny sound. “I figured that out. Grateful couldn’t make toast, and Tabetha…” Logan’s voice trailed off, his eyes shifting away.
“Are you still having nightmares?” Polina asked, remembering his confession on the balcony some months back.
He swallowed hard. “Not as often.”
“You said she used you.”
He nodded. “I dated her for a few months, you know. Thought I loved her, or so I told other people. Turns out she’d poisoned me with mind control potion. She used me. Orchestrated everything to get to Grateful. When I’m awake, the entire relationship is a blur, aside from one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She made me cook for her. A lot.” Logan flurried around the kitchen, collecting eggs, butter, flour, cocoa.
Disturbed, Polina made a confession of her own. “She clubbed me from behind two years ago. She must have had help because I would have sensed another witch enter my realm. Regardless, when I came to, I was buried in her yard. She robbed me of my realm and my element for almost a year. The potion she fed you was made from fruit fertilized with my power. I was happy to help Grateful kill her.”
“She had it coming,” Logan said through his teeth.
Polina agreed.
A heavy weight settled over the room as they both remembered Tabetha. It was Logan who broke the awkward silence.
“You admit to murder quickly on a first date.”
She chided, “This isn’t a date.”
Logan cracked three eggs into a small bowl and plunged in a whisk. “Of course not. You? Date a human?”
“Your voice holds bitterness,” Polina said. “I don’t understand. It seems you have the same prejudices against witches. You’ve made your disdain for me apparent.”
Sugar, cocoa, salt. He whisked the ingredients together with expert precision. “Disdain is a strong word,” Logan said. “It’s not you, per se. I just don’t trust magic. After Tabetha, I can’t trust my emotions around you. Are you truly as gorgeous and bright as I think you are? Or have you hoodwinked my brain into believing in something that isn’t real?”
Polina placed a hand on his arm, stopping his whisk. Her fingers caressed the soft tawny hair, registered the long lean muscle that worked to stir the bowl. A ripple of heat traveled from her fingertips to her crotch, a desire she hadn’t felt in decades. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Who wouldn’t?” he murmured, meeting her gaze. Time stretched lazily between them. The air was sweet with cocoa and vanilla. She inhaled deeply.
He cleared his throat and pulled away, breaking the tar-pit attraction that threatened to pull her under. Moving toward the cooler at the back of the restaurant, he disappeared inside. Moments ticked by, enough time that Polina thought he might have gotten lost in the large steel box. “Do you need help?” she called
He emerged, shivering, and carrying a large plastic jug. “The secret ingredient to Valentine’s chocolate cake resides in this tub.” He added a heaping scoop of a creamy ivory substance to the batter.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?”
“I can’t. It’s classified. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” He cocked one eyebrow and pointed his whisk in her direction.
“I’m immortal,” she said through a smile. “Give it your best shot.”
“If I can’t kill you, then I definitely can’t tell you.”
“Not under any circumstances?”
He stopped, raking his eyes over her from head to toe, before settling his gaze on her lips. The heat returned, her skin growing hot under his scrutiny. The bodice of her dress tightened with the swelling of her breasts. It had been a long time since a simple look from a man could make her combust from the inside out.
“Maybe one,” he said. “But I would have to trust you absolutely.”
She swallowed hard. “I see. Some secrets are worth keeping.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Abandoning the bowl, he stalked toward her, reaching for her waist. She inhaled sharply, anticipating his touch. It never happened. He reached past her.
“Excuse me.” He turned a knob on the stove behind her. “Needs to preheat.”
“Isn’t it hot enough already?” Polina whispered under her breath.
“What’s that?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I said, I am excited already.”
His eyelids grew heavy and he stepped in close, face to face, breath to breath, meeting her eyes with an expression akin to longing. “The anticipation is half the fun,” he drawled.
His lingering stare made her insides melt like butter. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you’re human?”
He laughed. “Last time I checked.” He squeezed past her to get to the bowl. “Come here, I need your help.”
She allowed him to pull her between himself and the bowl, his arms completely engulfing her, his lips aligning with her ear. He slid the handle of the whisk against her palm in a way that ignited her flesh. “You whisk. I’ll measure.” His voice sounded gritty and his breath brushed her cheek.
Focus, Polina. If she didn’t concentrate, the damn whisk would melt between her fingers. The warm caress of his breath on her ear made her miss a beat as she stirred the concoction. Heat seemed to radiate from his body behind her. Did humans run hotter than witches? It seemed so. His presence was like a small sun, and she was a thing in his galaxy, stuck in his gravitational pull.
As his arm brushed past her waist to scoop in the flour, her attraction to Logan reached epic proportions. A vicious swarm of butterflies took up residence in her stomach and her breath became embarrassingly erratic. She pretended to lose her balance to press her backside into him. He grunted softly in appreciation.
“That’s good.” He removed the bowl from her hands. “Over-beating will make the cake dense.”
“Wouldn’t want that.” Her voice cracked.
His hand drifted along the back of her thigh, up and over her hip, pulling her against him. She felt the length of him, hard and long against her lower back.
“Logan?” she croaked.
“Yes.”
“Can I have some water?”
Slowly, he backed away, disappearing into the cooler again for longer than necessary. When he emerged, he handed her a bottle of Evian. “I forget how hot it gets back here. Chefs like me get used to the heat. There’s an old joke we’re made of asbestos,” he said softly.
She guzzled the water. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched his gaze linger on the place her lips met the bottle. He shook slightly, as if he’d gotten a chill, and squatted to remove a sheet pan from under the counter. He lifted the bowl and poured the batter.
“Grateful once told me you rarely leave your realm. How did you come across my accident? I was in Vermont, but I was not in Smuggler’s Notch.”
He motioned with his chin to a rubber spatula hanging from the pot rack. Polina grabbed the tool and scraped the sides of the bowl into the pan. “You were close. Not inside my realm but close enough for me to notice. I felt your impending death. Smelled the blood. Heard the crunch of metal.”
“Why didn’t you let me die?”
Polina balked at the unexpected question. Wouldn’t most humans feel entitled to be saved? “You should have been dead already. Your injuries were extensive. But your heart called to me. It was a bass drum that said, I want to live, I want to live,with every beat. And the way you looked at me…”
“I thought you were an angel.”
“I couldn’t bear to disappoint you. I would have done more if I could. The audacity you showed, the will to liv
e, the fact that you, with your singular life, would risk the ride to begin with, it all made me remember what it was like to be human.”
Logan took a deep breath, perusing her features as if he were sifting through her words. After a moment, he snapped out of his trancelike state, tapped the cake pan on the counter to settle the batter, and swept the whole thing into the oven. “Convection oven. You are twenty minutes from heaven.” He set the timer.
“I am sorry that the results weren’t… optimal.”
“I’m over it,” he murmured, prowling toward her like a predator. “I believe you had the best of intentions.”
A splotch of batter clung to the side of his thumb. She had the strongest desire to lick it off. What are you doing, Polina? Grateful warned you the magic would lure you in. You’re playing with fire. Using all her willpower, she moved aside and took interest in Logan’s inventory of knives.
If she were smart, she’d leave posthaste. She wasn’t. Or else, it had been too long since she’d had male company, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
“What made you want to become a chef?” she asked, hoping the story would redirect her energies from the part of her that wished to lick his fingers.
“I wanted a job working with food,” he said softly. He washed his hands.
“Loved it from the beginning, did you?”
Arms crossing over his chest, he leaned against the counter, his eyes darting to hers before staring blankly at the stove. “Honestly, I was hungry all the time as a child and I swore if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be hungry again. I thought if I worked with food, I’d be guaranteed meals.”
Her jaw tensed and she moved to stand beside him, gripping the counter near her hips. Logan’s aura had taken on a gray tinge. “Why were you hungry as a child?”
“I was homeless most of my childhood.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sometimes we lived at the mission, but many times there just wasn’t enough food. Don’t get me wrong, my parents always made sure I had something to eat, even when they didn’t. It just never seemed like enough. I was always hungry.”
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