Cool, blessedly cool air enveloped me, and I shivered, not sweating, but suddenly too cold.
“Sit.” Lu pushed me down into a chair. “Drink slowly.” She placed a glass, wet, cold, in my hand.
I lifted it, drank. The water was sweet shade and soft rain. I wanted to gulp, but she squeezed my shoulder. “Slowly, Brogan. We have time.”
So, I took small sips and closed my eyes. Just for a moment, just until the hammering faded.
Soon her hand was gone, and a cool cloth draped across the back of my neck, leeching away the heat there.
I must have made a sound, because the cloth lifted and came down again, the other side cooler.
She pressed on the cloth, then dragged it over my shoulder and down my arm. I would know that touch anywhere, had spent a hundred years craving it.
There wasn’t a song playing, just the distant pleasant chatter of people caught in conversation. I couldn’t say how many of the witches were here. At the moment, I didn’t care.
The chair next to me pulled outward.
I opened my eyes and watched Lula sit, a glass of lemonade in her hand. She placed it on the table in front of me, the box with the witch’s diary that Ricky had wanted us to give to Cassia in the center of the table. Lu opened her other hand and offered me two small pills.
“Aspirin. For your head.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Her eyebrows rose, then the corner of her mouth lifted, bringing with it a full smile. “Ricky thinks we are the two most stubborn mules on the earth.”
“Has she met every mule on earth?” I plucked the pills from her hand, popped them in my mouth, and washed them down with lemonade.
“She says she can prove it with statistics.”
I grunted and set the glass back down.
She placed her hand over mine. I matched our palms, catching her fingers. “Lula…”
“No, me first,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been…” She pressed her lips into a thin line, then took a breath and met my gaze.
“I’ve been afraid,” she said. “About a lot of things. How to keep you safe—us safe. I know, I know.”
She shifted in the chair, and I distantly registered music was playing now. The smell of hops and an orange-scented cleaner filled the air.
But right now, always, the only person I could see, the only person in the world for me, was Lula.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, squeezing her fingers gently. “I don’t like arguing. Thank you for coming back to me. For being with me. All these years, my love.”
She huffed and looked away. When she turned back, tears glittered in her eyes.
“I have been right next to you,” she said. “I haven’t left you. Haven’t gone anywhere.”
I just held her gaze. She glanced away again and dashed a hand across her eyes.
“I know,” I said, finding the exit off this stage. “We’ve both done the best we could. We both worry about the other. But we trust each other to make good decisions. To be strong and safe.” I waited a moment. “Right?”
“Of course we trust,” she said. “But I worry. Your wrist…”
“What about my wrist?”
“It could have been so much worse.”
“It could have. But it wasn’t. We’ll take that as a win and go forward. But,” I said, “if going forward means we’re alone or apart, then you and I will walk away from all of this—gods, witches, demons, and devils be damned.”
