• • •
This would be the seventh time I’d visited Blake’s house since he moved to Salem. He still hadn’t forgiven me for buying it for him.
I’d set them up in a white Cape Cod with a wooden fence protecting the front yard. The reddish foliage of a dogwood tree peeked around the east side of the house.
I parked on the street. In the house across the road, a pair of corgis appeared in the living room window and barked their disapproval.
Morgan met me at the front door with a gentle hug. His brown eyes grew wide. “Whoa. What happened to you?”
Thanks, kid. For a minute there, I’d almost managed to forget how nasty I looked. “Nothing,” I said. What was the excuse Jenny had used? “I had a cooking accident with the double boiler. Fudge-related explosion. Don’t worry, it looks worse than it is.”
“Good thing you heal fast.” He stepped back to let me inside. “Dad’s upstairs yelling at Ava. Do you know what’s going on?”
Before I could answer, Blake called down, “If that’s your grandmother, tell her I’ll be right down.”
Morgan rolled his eyes, then turned to me with a plastered-on smile. “My father says he’ll be right down.”
I ruffled his hair. “Thanks, smartass.”
The living room was much as it had been during my last visit, back on Christmas. The tree and decorations were gone, but the mismatched furniture and the tufts of cat fur on the carpet were just as I remembered. A photo of Blake and the kids hung over the couch. A half-folded basket of laundry sat next to the old coffee table.
Morgan followed me. In a quiet, too-casual voice, he asked, “Hey, Grandma. While we’re waiting, are any of the books about magic and witchcraft you sell in the shopreal?”
Oh, hell. Blake was going to be pissed enough about Ava calling me after he told her not to. If he learned Morgan was asking about magic again, I’d have a full nuclear meltdown on my hands.
After Morgan had learned he was one-eighth demon two years ago, he’d gotten obsessed. Every time he visited the shop, he’d followed me around, pestering me with questions about the supernatural and why some humans could do magic and others couldn’t, and how his powers worked, and how Uncle Temple did his spells. Thankfully, after an unbelievably long six weeks, he’d started soccer and—I thought—left the magic obsession behind.
“All the books are real,” I said. “We don’t sell imaginary books.”
He sighed dramatically. “Come on, Grandma.”
I sat in the loveseat. An obese tabby cat named Hobbes raced over and meowed for attention. I scratched her behind the ears. “How would your father feel about you asking?”
“I don’t want to be a wizard like Uncle Temple or anything. I just want to understand. What’s the point of studying history in school when the teachers don’t know anything about magic or whatreallyhappened at all these battles and events. Like, did a nineteen-year-old kid really assassinate Duke Ferdinand, or was it a demon trying to start World War I?”
“You know better than to equatedemonwithevil. A lot of them are, yes. Maybe even most. But it’s still lazy thinking.”
“I think I know what demons are like. I’ve seenArmy of Darknessthree times.” He grinned to make sure I knew he was joking.
“Raimi got a surprising number of details right in that movie.” I kept my expression neutral. Let him wonder if I was messing with him. “Why the sudden interest?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away. “It’s not really sudden, but that guy Ronnie who came into the shop on Saturday got me thinking about how much I don’t know. You acted like he was dangerous. You wouldn’t have been so worried if he was normal, right?”
“Normal?”
“You know what I mean. You and Dad always say you want us to be safe. How am I supposed to stay safe when there are all these dangers and threats I don’t know about?”
He had a point, but if I admitted that, I’d be driving one more wedge between myself and Blake. “What happened Saturday with Ronnie was a misunderstanding. It’s under control.”
Morgan paced the length of the living room, moving with barely contained energy. “I can’t even talk about this stuff. It’s like everyone else is living in black and white, and I’m the only one who knows the world is in color.” He glanced at the stairs again. “I want friends I don’t have to lie to. I know there must be other people like us around. I mean, it’sSalem, right?”
I wanted to help him. By his age, I’d befriended a shapeshifter and had a brief relationship with a merman whose family was spending a summer in the English Channel.
“Did Dad have nonhuman friends when he was growing up?” he asked.
He had. Including one of the Dames Blanches, a fairy who’d come close to luring him away because I wasn’t paying enough attention. “That’s a question for your father.”
Two sets of footsteps creaked down the stairs. Morgan folded his arms and sat on the arm of the sofa, clearly annoyed to have lost his chance to pry forbidden knowledge out of his grandmother.
