The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ix chocolate bars, three speed spells, and thirty minutes later, they stopped in the woods again. Jamie didn’t pretend to understand why theS Winter Solstice was more powerful than the days before or after it, but he did know that it mattered to Mika. So when he saw the sign for the woods,

he followed it.

“Jamie, we really don’t have to—”

“You can either sit here or you can come look for rosehips and chestnuts and whatever else,” Jamie said, opening his door. “I’d suggest coming, though, because I wouldn’t know a rosehip if it bit me, so I probably shouldn’t go alone. Unless you want all your potions to become poisons, which is a perfectly reasonable choice no one would blame you for making.”

Mika almost fell right out of the car laughing, and gamely followed him off the winding country lane and into the tree line.

They talked as they worked, or at least Mika did most of the talking (about plant lore, why Northanger Abbey was a valid contender for Austen’s second-best work, and how to brew the perfect cup of tea) while Jamie did most of the listening, which suited him just fine because in spite of the dwindling light and the fact that even his eyelashes had gone numb from the cold, he could have stood out here and listened to her all day.

There was a recklessness in him, one that was partly down to the adrenaline of putting his past to rest at last and partly down to the novelty of being out here alone with her in the middle of fuck-off nowhere. And he knew it was utterly, catastrophically, fucking foolish, but right then, in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Do you ever think about going back to Belfast?” Mika asked him, and he was so used to her habit of saying whatever popped into her mind no matter what they’d been talking about before, he didn’t even blink.

“Sometimes. I’d like to visit. My father loved it, and I sometimes miss the sound of Irish voices.” The space between them had all but vanished, and he was very, very conscious of the fact that they were standing so close, he could see every freckle scattered across her nose. “But I’m not sorry I

left. It got me to Nowhere House.”

She smiled. “Where you found a family.”

“I did.”

And now I’ve found you, his mind added silently. And entirely without his permission.

It was a stupid, reckless thought. He knew that this couldn’t end well.

Their eyes held a long, long moment. There was doubt and hope and wanting in her eyes, and it matched his so perfectly, his breath caught.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

Her smile broke the little willpower he had left. “Hi.”

He could feel himself coming undone, a shattering between the pieces holding him together. He searched the glossy, inky dark of her eyes, watched the golden afternoon light dance on her brown skin.

He took a shaky step forward. One hand tangled in her hair. She closed the rest of the distance between them and he ran his thumb over her lower lip. Her breath hitched. His heart stuttered.

For one moment they were suspended, like they were both bracing themselves for a cataclysmic shift in the ground beneath their feet, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, his mouth was on hers and her palms were flat on his chest and his thumb was on the wild flutter at the base of her throat.

They were wild, ravenous, untethered.

She tasted like sea salt and sugar, and lightning, too, if lightning had a taste. The cold wind, the past and the future, the terrible secrets he had been guarding—none of it mattered. Christ, he was drowning, and he didn’t ever want to come back to the surface. She was pressed so hard against him that he could feel her heart racing right beside his.

When they broke the kiss, he dropped his head and leaned his forehead in the crook of her neck, breathing hard. One of her hands played with the hair at the back of his neck, sending electricity shuddering across his body with each stroke of her fingers.

“I refuse to have sex in the woods,” she said, startling a laugh out of him. “Even I’m not magical enough to keep dirt out of places dirt should never be.”

He felt something like awe. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make me laugh.”

“I work very hard at it.”

“Well, as it happens, I wasn’t assuming we would have sex.”

“You should assume that,” she said firmly. “You should absolutely, definitely assume that.”

“Come here,” he said, and kissed her again. By the time he was done, she was trembling, her soft, impossibly warm body pressed right against the hard, aching ridge in his jeans. He was so dizzy with desire and longing that he could barely think straight.

And that, of course, was the moment it began to rain.

Mika looked up at the sky, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “Fucking typical.”

The sandpapery rasp of Jamie’s own laughter vibrated right through her body, which was frankly incandescent with desire and frustration. She glanced up at the gold dust dancing mischievously in the air around them, like a hundred unhelpful fireflies, and felt, unjustly, that the least it could have done was keep the storm at bay for a few more minutes.

“Let’s go.” His eyes silver with humour, Jamie took her hand. They were both soaked through already.

They had to watch their step on the wet, slippery path, so it was slow going getting back to the car, but Mika didn’t usually mind the rain and, in

any case, the cold was helping to dampen her very earnest desire to jump Jamie’s bones. She did, however, cast her recently perfected keep-warm spell and let it seep from her fingers to his.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” she said, the end of the statement curling up like a question.

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think there’s been a single moment since the day you told me we’re all made up of stardust that I haven’t wanted you.”

Her heart gave an astonished, delighted thump, but she shook her head.

“You turned me down in the car just two days ago.”

He raised an eyebrow. “When you were delirious with a fever? That

time?”

“That is an annoyingly good point.”

The sound of their shoes sloshed in the wet undergrowth. Jamie closed his eyes. “God, Ian can never find out about this.”

“Can you imagine?” Mika didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “The smugness might kill us on the spot.”

The rain had quieted down by the time they got back to the car. Inside, Mika scrabbled in the box of snacks until she found a thermos of hot water and two teabags. She let the bags steep in the water while Jamie got the car back on the road, and then cast her last speed spell of the day.

“Here.” She handed him the thermos. “Drink that.”

He obeyed and looked down at himself in astonishment as, with each sip, his clothes grew drier and drier until it was as if he’d never been caught in the rain at all.

She grinned and took the thermos so that she could polish off the rest of the tea. “I looked up the weather forecast last night. I thought this particular brew might come in handy.”

“You know you’re really good at what you do, don’t you?”

The words, and the wonder in his voice as he said them, found their way deep into Mika’s heart and warmed a part of that that even the tea hadn’t been able to reach.

“There’s this tiny town about fifteen minutes away,” Jamie commented, pointing out the window. They were quite close to Nowhere House now.

“The gardens all have flower borders. Every lamppost is decorated with two basket planters overflowing with flowers. There’s a red telephone box, which is out of order these days and stuffed with flowers. There’s a statue of a horse pulling a cart loaded up with flowers, and the cart’s been artistically tipped over so that it looks like the flowers are spilling out.

Basically, you can’t take a step without tripping over a fucking flower.”

Mika laughed. “That sounds like my kind of place.”

“Exactly.” His voice was more serious now, and she glanced sideways at him, confused and curious about where this was going. “Someone in that town loves flowers the way you love magic. They went all in, and you should, too. You should open that enchanted tea and potion shop.”

“It just isn’t possible,” Mika objected. “I don’t know of a single place in the world where I could do that.”

Perfectly on cue, the car turned in at a pair of iron gates. The storm had blown over and the air had that wonderful, earthy scent of wet grass and new possibilities. The low, golden sun gleamed over the gables and chimneys of Nowhere House. A sense of complete rightness filled Mika.

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong,” Jamie said, his eyes on the house ahead. “Sometimes we need to make that place.”

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