by Kathryn Moon
“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.
“Did he want to cancel the dinner?” I asked, hunting for a clue about Callum’s changed feelings.
Aiden barked out a laugh. “He wanted all three of us to come get you,” he said.
I locked my door and came down the steps and Aiden took the wine from me. He tucked it inside of his jacket and it disappeared.
“I can’t do that,” I said, frowning at the place where the wine had vanished.
“Callum could teach you,” Aiden said.
“Callum?”
“He taught me,” Aiden said, taking my hand and leading us down the block. “He said he found it in a dusty old book but I think he made it up. I’ve never seen anyone else do it.”
“How does it work?”
“Something to do with making a very small space bigger,” he said with a shrug. He patted at his ribs and said, “It’s still here. I can feel it against me, like it’s in a pocket I can’t see. I lose things this way occasionally because I can’t find the pocket again. I just don’t tell Callum that or he’ll repeat the whole lesson all over again and he’s a beast when he’s lecturing.”
I tried to fight my laugh and failed. In all my interactions with Callum he had been gentle and direct. Even while we’d been hissing at each other in the library. ‘Beast’ was not the word I would ever choose for him.
Aiden smirked at me out of the corner of his mouth. “Oh just wait. You’ll see. He’s chomping at the bit to learn more about what you can do.”
I chewed at my lip and he watched me. I could make doors, chairs, shiny shoes. I could influence a job application.
“Are you nervous about the magic or the dinner?” Aiden murmured, bending his head to mine as we passed students on the common lawns.
“Both,” I answered just as quiet.
“We’ll follow your pace,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Tonight is only dinner. A significant one, for us certainly, but just dinner. Conversation. Isaac will show off his cooking and I’ll probably corner you into listening to more music.” I smiled at that and Aiden’s brow furrowed as he continued, “And Callum…well he’s more scared of you than you are of him.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” I said, looking up at him. “I think he’s upset with me, about the way I spoke in the library.”
“He’s upset with himself,” Aiden said, without any doubt. “He’s out of his element. Isaac and I are inclined to find it amusing because it’s so rare. But he’s sincere.”
“You don’t think he’s just going along? For the sake of keeping peace?” I asked.
Aiden’s grin stretched, wicked and excited. “Not at all. And if you worry you should talk to him. He’ll make himself clear.”
It was a slightly cryptic thing to say but we’d just reached the neighborhood, passing Gwen and Hildy’s house, so I let the subject drop.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked, as Aiden pointed out the house, the red brick I had seen before.
“Since I got my position,” Aiden said. “About eight years before Isaac and Callum started at Canderfey.”
“You lived alone that long?”
Aiden’s usual smile faded as he nodded, staring up at the house. “I didn’t think it would be so long,” he said. “I thought I’d start working and meet my coven and we would have a house ready.” He looked down at me and said, “That was twenty years ago.”
He looked up at the house as it seemed to grow larger the closer we stepped. I tried not to sink under the weight of the declaration. Twenty years of waiting, considering the possibilities. Twelve for Isaac and Callum. I didn’t know a lot about covens, not expecting to ever find myself in one, but it was common knowledge that most people found theirs not long after coming of age. Aiden’s expectations had been realistic if not a little eager. Twenty years was a long time.
His fingers were stroking the back of my hand and I knew he had said the words with good intentions but they left me wondering again. Was I here because the wait was too long and I appeared at the right time, strange and unfamiliar?
“You’re fretting, Joanna,” Aiden said as we turned to the red brick tower house at the end of the street. It was at least four stories tall with something strange and unfamiliar in every window. Every window but the one at the center front.
“I am,” I admitted, staring at Callum Pike stretched out in a window bench with a book in his lap. He looked up and jumped from his spot, the book landing with a flutter of pages on the cushion.
“Tonight is only dinner,” He repeated, lifting my hand up to kiss at the knuckles. “And there’s no majority vote on this. We’ll respect any decision you make. But I may try to influence it for my own interests,” he added, grin returning.
The front door swung in—an enormous, elaborate door with a stained glass window depicting a rich sunset landing with the stars and moon winking out at the top of the door frame—and Callum stood waiting for us on the step. He was dressed tidily in cool grays and blues, but his reddish hair was sticking out at odd angles like he’d be mussing and pulling at the strands.
“I…Isaac’s been waiting,” Callum said and then he winced. Aiden snorted and gestured me ahead of him.
Callum moved out of the way at the last moment, busy blinking at me as I approached, but it was me that held us up at the head of the hallway as I stared down the length of it. Someone, probably Aiden, plucked the wrap off my shoulders and I let it slide away as I soaked in the vibrant jewel blue walls covered almost top to bottom in paintings and photographs.
“You’ll have plenty of time to explore,” Aiden said behind me.
“Don’t lose my wine,” I volleyed back and he laughed. I started at the closest painting, as small as my hand and covered in bright red raspberries that sparkled sweetly on my tongue. I studied another of a small gray house surrounded by pine trees that eased away the tension in my shoulders. I made it as far as a thunderstorm, snapping wind and wet cooling my cheeks, ignoring Callum and Aiden behind me all the while, when Isaac appeared at the end of the hall. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he had a towel thrown over his shoulder. His long hair was pulled back and trying to escape.
“Hello love,” he said, as I met him halfway. “I like your dress,” he murmured in my ear as he leaned in to kiss me, brief and gentle. The heat returned to my cheeks.
“These aren’t all yours,” I said looking up at a portrait of a sour old man that, incongruously, made me want to laugh.
“No, only a few,” he said.
“He likes to give his paintings better light to be seen by,” Aiden said, passing us in the hall.
“It’s part of my collection,” Isaac said. “Will you help me in the kitchen?”
“Yes please,” I said. I looked behind us but Callum had already disappeared, probably back to his book in the window.
The kitchen was at the back of the house and it also left me stunned. I had never seen a kitchen this large. Tall, multi-paned windows let in all the evening sun. The stove was at the far side taking up most of the wall aside from a door leading to a greenhouse. There were pots hissing and steaming on the top of it and something glowing in the belly and someone had opened a window nearby to let the cool fall air in as relief against the heat.
“I mostly wanted some company,” Isaac admitted as I stopped at a wall where racks of herbs hung to dry.
“Make me useful so I don’t fidget,” I said. He laughed and dug a spoon out of a pitcher full of utensils, passing it to me.
Dinner was easier than I expected. Isaac’s cooking was too good to ignore with lots of talking and when my words did dry up Aiden had plenty to say. The word ‘coven’ was never uttered. Callum disappeared after the dishes were cleared from the table and my gut twisted as I realized. He’d been across from me again during the meal and I’d caught him smil
ing and felt him watching. I’d wanted to believe that the stiffness was fading but the avoidance was as clear as ever.
I was standing at the kitchen counter, tracing my finger around the rim of a wine glass when Aiden’s hand landed on mine, still damp from washing dishes in the sink.
“Go find him,” he said.
“He’s supposed to be drying,” Isaac said, glaring down at the plate he was toweling off.
“I don’t want to force this,” I said.
“Just nudge a little,” Aiden said. “He’ll be holed up in his office on the third floor, ‘researching,’” and he said the last word with a sarcastic wiggle of his eyebrows.
“Tell him to quit being an ass,” Isaac added.
Aiden took advantage of the distraction and my laughter to duck down and press a kiss below my ear that brought goosebumps out along my neck. “Go on, you’ll both feel better. Second door on the left.”
The stairs were at the heart of the house, a round flight that twisted up with dark wood steps and glossy sage green paper and yellowy lamps glowing. I hurried up to the third story to a harvest yellow hallway. There were two closed doors on the right end and three open doors on the left.
The first was a bathroom with bright green and sparkling white tiles that looked cleaner than my own and had a tub big enough for me to go swimming in. The second doorway revealed a bright room with a massive bed, unmade with white sheets printed with charcoal smudges. Isaac’s room.The last was an office that looked more like a library. Callum had his back to me, bent over a desk at the far end of the room in front of a window, but I was busy staring at the full walls of bookshelves, bursting with pages. They were stuffed into every available inch, stacked in front of and top of each other like it was a puzzle to see all the different ways they might fit together.
I forgot about knocking completely and walked in without invitation. “How do you keep track of them all?” I asked going to a bursting shelf and seeing no rhyme or reason to the arrangement.
There was a clatter at the window and when I looked over Callum was half out of his chair, it tilted dangerously on the back two legs.
“I’m sorry,” we said together at the same time. But at least he smiled at me in the pause that followed.
“I don’t,” he said. “But I usually…I have a charm for getting the book I need to pop out.”
“Do you have a charm for making the shelves bigger too?” I asked counting the shelves up to the ceiling and realizing that they didn’t make sense in terms of the size of the room.
“Sort of,” he admitted, standing and putting the chair back to rights. “Don’t tell Aiden, he’s fussy about not stretching the house.”
“He hasn’t noticed?”
Callum shook his head. He took small steps to approach, as if he was afraid of making me run. Maybe Aiden had been right.
“He has his own office and…you’re very observant with magic,” he added.
We stared at each other for a quiet moment until I’d managed to steel my nerves.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.
He looked around the room, brow furrowing and half shrugged. “I don’t mind you being here.”
I bit my lip and debated leaving it at that. But I needed to know, before I enjoyed the evening anymore than I had, before I found any more beautiful places in the house that made me crave time spent here.
“Do you want me to leave the house, now?” I said. “I can tell Aiden and Isaac that this isn’t-”
“What? No!” He rushed forward, eyes wide and nervous.
“If I am here for them and you really aren’t…you don’t want me…” I tried to dig the words out but they jammed in my throat.
“Joanna, it isn’t that at all,” he said, and his own voice was tight. “I sent you running in the library, I don’t want to make another mistake like that. Aiden would have my head.”
I looked down at the floor at the reminder of what my being here meant to Aiden and what that must mean to Callum.
“It isn’t about him either,” Callum said, quiet and close.
“The library wasn’t your fault,” I said, looking up. “I had spent so much time trying not to think of any of you this way and I had a very strict list of why it was impossible.”
“It’s not,” he said firmly.
But I could see the battle in him, the strain in his muscles. Only this time I knew what he was resisting. And maybe I could fix it by telling him that he wasn’t going to scare me off or set me running again, but there was an easier solution than that too.
I rose up on my toes, hands braced behind me on the edge of a bookshelf. I brushed my cheek against his beard, kissing at the bare jaw just past the coarse hair while his head ducked lower. A sigh stroked along the skin of my neck and we held still for a breath together. His hands wrapped around my waist as my mouth searched out his and with the first stroke of the kiss he pulled me tight against him. I gasped, lips parting and Callum was there filling in the spaces.
I released the bookshelf behind me to hold onto his shoulders as my toes scraped against the floor. He groaned as my fingers tightened and the sound vibrated against me, under my hands and into the kiss. Teeth dragged over lips and tongues followed to soothe and with every quick clamor for breath we wrapped up tighter in each other’s arms. My heart was pounding and the beat was echoing in my blood and down into my stomach and sinking lower still until I was twisting in his hold trying to find friction.
My back hit the bookshelf behind us and Callum’s fingers dug into my hips as I stepped wider to make room for him against me. I was surrounded by him, my head tipped back and eyes squeezed shut as his mouth pressed wet kisses down to my jaw, nipping at my throat. I whimpered and his thumbs circled over my hip bones as he shifted closer. I could feel him against me, stirring hard and as restless as every inch of my skin was feeling.
“Glad you two talked.”
I jumped at the intrusion and tried to scramble away but Callum just straightened slowly and soothed his hands up my spine.
Aiden was grinning at us from the doorway, eyes sparkling as he bit his lip. He looked as if he hadn’t just dined on a beautiful meal but was now staring at one. Callum was still stroking at my back, settling my surprise and embarrassment. I looked up and found his face relaxed, with a small smile nearly hidden at the corners. But I didn’t doubt that Aiden could spot it as well as I could.
“Are we expected downstairs?” Callum asked as I tucked my heated face against his chest.
“Well you were, but I can make excuses,” Aiden hedged, a laugh at the back of his voice.
“Give us a few minutes, Aide,” Callum murmured, fingertips drumming softly at my back.
I heard the floorboards creak—and why couldn’t I have heard them before being caught—and Callum pulled back slightly so he could look down at my face.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to joke and then swallowed the words, not wanting to interrupt the tenuous affection of the moment.
“Not used to being caught by anyone other than the town gossip,” I said after a beat.
Callum’s smile stretched wide for the first time I had seen in a week. “You still haven’t,” he said.
I laughed, head falling back and he took advantage. Ducking down and kissing at my throat, by my ear, his nose nuzzling until my laughter skidded away. I ended up back against the bookshelf again but the kisses were slow and sweetly lazy instead of building. Callum’s hair was rumpled from my fingers when we eased apart, and I left it that way to make Aiden and Isaac smile.
