“Sunset?” Simon asked, remembering Alex’s fixation with the time from their conversation the afternoon before. “What’s so big about sunse—”
“Just get him here!” all of the people said at the same time.
“Okay.” Simon knew his eyes were bigger than dinner plates. “Sunset.”
Jordan gave him one of those looks that said, “Fine, think we’re crazy, just do what we say,” which was, come to think about it, sort of a bank robber’s expression, wasn’t it? “Good. Come in, get coffee. The rest of us will go get dressed.”
“Did you make cinnamon rolls, Barty?” asked Kate, the dish.
“I have some dough rising. Should be done by the time you’re ready to go. But don’t forget, Lachlan’s got coffee.”
The young man with auburn hair gestured with his two trays.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Kate said. “C’mon, Josh. You and me and coffee.”
The enormous muscular young man next to her yawned. “Good idea, babe. Thanks, Barty. We will come by to steal the cinnamon rolls. See you all in fifteen.”
Jordan nodded and said, “Lachlan, save me some coffee. Meet you there,” before surprising the hell out of Simon and taking a direct turn past a big group of yawning, stretching cats and up the walk to the dilapidated little house that did not seem to fit into the cul-de-sac at all.
That left Simon and Alex, looking at each other rather awkwardly as Bartholomew ran across the cul-de-sac to kiss the cheek of young Lachlan, who was apparently the man with all the coffee.
“His name is Bartholomew,” Simon said, watching the way Lachlan slung a protective arm around the smaller man’s shoulder. “That’s unusual.”
“Yeah, Simon, that’s the weird thing about all of this.”
Simon grimaced. “What… what are all those squirrels doing in that yard?”
“We have no idea,” Alex said. He gave Glinda a gentle squeeze. “Here, let me go get her leash and take her for a trot and dump. You got her here just in time.”
Alex ran inside the house with all the cars and the catering van—vaulting the squirrels on his way—and then ran out and clipped a slim black leash with rhinestone studs to the charming Miss Glinda. “Here you go, sweetheart,” he muttered, spilling her down on the ground. “Let’s stay out of the shadows and away from walls, okay?”
Glinda smiled—which seemed to be her default expression—at him and began trotting toward the exit of the cul-de-sac, Alex striding at her heels. He turned toward Simon with an exasperated expression.
“Well, come on. She needs a ten-minute walk before we leave her at home, and I know you’re the boss, but even you have to get to work eventually.”
Some of Alex’s impatience seemed to fade as they set off at a brisk trot, and Simon had a chance to take in details. Alex looked exhausted and unkempt, neither of which were the norm for him. He had just the littlest bit of ginger-blond stubble along his bony jaw and dark circles under his eyes. His mouth seemed pulled down at the corners too, when normally, Simon had noticed, he had a faint near-smile going as his default expression.
Alex always seemed dryly amused at the world.
“Rough night?” he asked, compassion tinging his voice. That entire group of people had been so delighted to see the little dog.
“Awful night,” Alex confirmed. “God, she just… disappeared. Walked into a hole in the world, and the leash went slack, and….” He shook his head. “Dante and Cully are… gone right now, and God, I can’t lose their fuckin’ dog, you know?”
He took a long shaky breath, and his shoulders trembled the faintest bit. For the first time in two days, Simon remembered what it was like to be master of his own destiny and captain of his own ship.
He slung a comforting arm around Alex’s shoulder and slowed down their walk enough to accommodate their two strides. “I get it,” he said softly. “I mean, I’ve known her for a whole night and I’d be worried too.”
Alex cast him a grateful look and—it wasn’t Simon’s imagination—leaned into his warmth a little.
“I just… we all love her. And it was on my watch.”
“So, uh”—because Jackson—“where were you really when she disappeared?”
Alex stiffened, and Simon hated himself.
“No, no, this was nice!” he said. “Don’t, you know, get mad. Just…. I returned your friends’ dog here, but I don’t understand!”
Alex didn’t shake his arm off, but he didn’t relax either. “I had the recycle bin in one hand and the dog leash around the other wrist. The dog wandered into a dark spot next to the house and disappeared. The leash went slack, and the dog was gone. There was nowhere for her to go. We all have escape-proof gates, you know, because she’s spent time in everybody’s backyards!”
“Even, uh, the falling-apart house with peeling paint and a crooked roof?”
Alex sucked air in through his teeth. “No, but Glinda doesn’t so much as piddle in the garden there. The cats would gut her.”
“Wow. Those cats on the lawn? That’s aggressive!”
Alex gave him a bleak look and relaxed a little into his body. “You have no idea,” he murmured. “But to answer your question, I have no idea how she went from next to the recycle bin to your house in Jackson. I wish I did. We were up half the night. I had to call Bartholomew, and he was on a date, poor guy. He and Lachlan wanted to drive out from, well, Jackson—which is weird because nobody lives in Jackson, and now I know two people—but they wanted to drive out, and I didn’t want to let them. But Jordan, Kate, and I cast, like, six divination spells, and then Kate was tired, so Josh came out and we tried to cast another one.”
He shuddered, and Simon consciously blanked out the part about spells.
“That was bad?” he asked, feeling foolish and hating that feeling.
“We conjured a pastrami sandwich,” Alex muttered. “Right out of thin air. A pastrami sandwich, on a plate. I mean, with Kate, we kept getting… well, an arrow. We tried following the arrow, but after about two miles of fumbling around other people’s yards in the dark and probably almost getting shot, we had to give it up. I guess if we’d kept going, we would have gotten to the road to Jackson, and that would have been easier, but we didn’t know that! Anyway, after that try where we almost got shot, we came back and tried again, but this time Josh helped, and… pastrami sandwich.”
Simon had no words. “He was, uh, hungry?”
Alex nodded, as though this had occurred to all of them. “He said it was the best midnight snack he’d ever had. Even the pickles were perfect. Anyway, that was around two a.m., and we were beat. And then we had to be up this morning for the sunrise ritual, and….” He yawned. “And it’s probably just as well you’re driving me to work.”
“Well, maybe you should take a sick day,” Simon said, concerned. “It’s not like you’ve taken a lot of them in the last three years.”
“None,” Alex confirmed. “I… it feels dishonest. I’m just….” He yawned.