Simon gave him a grateful look. “Sounds amazing,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
“Yeah,” Lachlan continued as he set about prepping two mugs. “We stopped by Starbucks, but I’m one of those guys who can drink a pot before breakfast and then one for lunch. I know Alex here usually drinks tea, but he’s looking pretty ragged, right?”
“I’m back to tea this morning,” Alex said. “Simon gave me the day off.”
“Good,” Bartholomew said, getting out small plates. “Jordan needs to call in too. I don’t think he’s sleeping well in Helen’s cottage, and it’s starting to show.”
Alex grunted. “Would you sleep well in there all by yourself?”
Lachlan shuddered. “I wouldn’t sleep well in there surrounded by romance book heroes and heroines with a solid padding of fluffy bunnies. It’s getting… like, purple. There’s this stain we put on wood that looks like alien blood—dark and almost black, but purple. It looks like that stain is gradually seeping all over the damned cottage. We need to fix that.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the first item on our list,” Alex said grimly. Next to his feet, Glinda whined, and he scooped her up, allowing the little dog to lick his face. Simon—already sort of invested in his crush as it was—felt his heart twist just a little more. Alex didn’t look like that kind of guy, the guy who would take dog licks on the chin. He looked perfectly reasonable and organized and very dedicated to “there’s a time and place,” and Simon had been sort of attracted to that.
So different from the flash and sparkle he was usually searching for.
But the truth was Simon was a mess who wore the same clothes every day so he didn’t have to risk being told his tie was out of date or that red made him look like a Republican. And this Alex, with the hair sticking up in places and the stubble sprouting patchily on his chin, dressed in sweats like he could curl up in a ball and go to sleep—this Alex was a far cry from the organized, perfectly reasonable man Simon was used to.
And Simon thought—a little wretchedly, it was true—that this Alex might forgive him for being the complete and total idiot asshole git that he became sometimes when he wasn’t paying attention.
Maybe, just maybe, Alex was like Simon too. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Simon thought longingly of those clever green eyes gazing into Simon’s face, staring at him like the next touch of Simon’s fingertips on his skin would be the best thing to ever happen to him.
Yeah. He wanted that again.
“What is the first item on your list?” he asked, trying to pull his brain out of the muddle of longing and hope Alex’s warmth had instilled inside him during their walk.
He glanced around, waiting for an answer, and realized that Alex, Bartholomew, and Lachlan were all doing a synchronized eyeball dance around him, and his hope abruptly faded.
He really wasn’t in this little club, was he?
“Never mind,” he said on a sigh. “Above my paygrade. I hear you. I’ll just stick to coffee and cinnamon rolls.”
“Lucky you,” Lachlan said kindly, setting a mug of coffee on the table and gesturing for him to sit. “We have both.”
Simon followed directions listlessly, only cheered a little when Alex came to sit next to him. The table wasn’t huge, but as Simon looked around, he realized it was oddly proportioned.
“Does this table seat seven?” he asked, and Lachlan chuckled.
“It does indeed! My own design. What do you think?”
Simon ran his hands over the handsome piece. It was raw pine, finely sanded and stained, so while it didn’t exactly fit in with the suburban home décor, it was beautiful enough that nobody was going to complain that it didn’t match.
“You did this? Nice work!”
“It’s a living,” Lachlan said happily. “Barty does such great work baking. He made these cookies for my mom on Saturday, and now she wants to commission him to make them for her clients. She works with kids who’ve had the worst days of their lives, right? Anyway, these cookies are like a little bit of sunshine. It’s gorgeous. They make those kids so happy. And I had quite a bit of back stock finished, so, you know, I took a few days out and made him a table.”
Bartholomew sent Lachlan a shy, adoring look from under his lashes. “It’s big enough for the entire coven,” he said. “We can all sit around the table when….” His voice fell.
“But I only saw five of you,” Simon said into the silence.
“We’re waiting for Dante and Cully to come back,” Alex said, and his voice had that same hush that Bartholomew’s had. “They’re Glinda’s owners. Anyway, this is for our meetings—and to eat off of in between times,” he added with a wink at Lachlan.
“It’s wonderful,” Simon said, feeling it. A piece like this had character and originality. It would probably make his perfectly decorated house in Jackson explode because it didn’t fit in. “Where did Glinda’s owners go? You all seem sort of… unhappy about it. Did they just take off and desert their dog?”
“No!” all three of them said at exactly the same time.
“They’d never leave Glinda,” Alex said, like he was trying to explain to a child. “Not without making sure she was cared for. It’s… it’s complicated.”
“Alex, you have snakes in your apple tree and a bunch of homicidal cats in front of your friend’s yard.”
“That’s nothing,” Lachlan assured him breezily. “Have you seen the turkeys yet? They should look like they’re all going to sit there and judge you, and your whole interaction is going to be uncomfortable but passive, right? But now, those fuckers will chase you down and fuck you up if you are not careful.”
“But why?” Wasn’t that the big question? “Why are all these animals out to get you? Why is your dog traveling forty miles in five minutes? I mean, the magic is sort of”—he waved his hands—“out there. It’s out there. I don’t understand it, but I’m going to assume that it’s working. But why is your neighborhood going to hell?”
Alex and Bartholomew started doing the eyeball dance again, but the only thing Lachlan did with his eyeballs was roll them.
“Because they lied to it,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Bartholomew. Bartholomew blushed and busied himself some more in the kitchen.
“They lied about—”
“Not about,” Lachlan emphasized. “To.”
“I take it the preposition is important,” Simon said, caught by his seriousness.
“Well, I would assume so,” Lachlan said, “because that’s what I think pissed all the elements off.”
Simon looked from Alex to Bartholomew, both of whom were shamefacedly pretending this conversation wasn’t happening. “Uhm, what did they lie about? And how—how do you lie to magic?”
At that moment, Kate, Josh, and Jordan burst through the door, excitedly chatting about how glad they were that the dog had been found and how awful work was going to be because they were all exhausted, and nobody had time to answer.
But Lachlan gave Bartholomew a grim look before raising his eyebrows to Simon, and Simon got the hint.