"So you decided to kidnap one instead?"
"I didn't know you'd be IN the spell!"
He dragged his free hand through his wet hair, which just made it do things that were probably illegal in several states. Water droplets flew off, catching the light like tiny crystals. One landed on her arm. It was warm.
"My point, lass, is that you've accidentally performed a binding summoning with a spelledobject as an anchor." He held up the wrench that wouldn't leave his hand. "And now I can't leave your property until you release me, which you can't do because you don't know how, do you?"
"I could figure it out."
"Could you? Could you really? Tell me, what's the difference between a warding and a welcoming?"
"One... wards?"
"A banishing and a blessing?"
"They have different letters?"
"A summoning circle and a containment seal?"
"OK, that one sounds like a trick question."
He made a sound that was part laugh, part sob, part Scottish despair. It rumbled from his chest in a way that made her think inappropriate thoughts about what other sounds he could make.
"Jesus, Mary, and all the saints. I'm going to die here. In America. In a kitchen that smells like wine and artificial lemons. They'll find my body next to a singing sink and think I've gone mad."
Another hot flash hit Cassie like a freight train made of rage and hormones. The lights flickered. Actually flickered. The bulb above the sink exploded in a shower of sparks that rained down like angry fireflies.
"Did you just?—"
"Menopause," she said flatly. "Want to makesomething of it?"
He stared at her. At the broken light. At the still-floating tools. At the wrench that wouldn't leave his hand. At the spellbook that was somehow still open to the same page despite the magical chaos.
"You're telling me," he said slowly, like he was explaining something to a child or possibly a concussed person, "that I'm magically bound to an untrained witch going through the change who just summoned me half-naked into her kitchen because she couldn't fix her own sink?"
"When you put it like that, it sounds bad."
"IT IS BAD."
"Well, it's not great for me either! I have a shirtless stranger in my kitchen who can't leave! What am I supposed to do with you?"
His eyebrows went up. A smirk played at the corner of his mouth. "I could think of a few things."
"I—that's not—you know that's not what I?—"
The doorbell rang.
They both froze.
"Cassie?" Marjorie's voice sang through the door with the particular pitch that meant she'd seen something interesting and was already composing the group text. "I saw lights flickering! And was that thunder? From your house? Inside your house? That seems wrong, dear."
Cassie looked at the shirtless Scottish man in her kitchen.
He looked at her.
The floating tools continued their lazy orbit like absolutely nothing was wrong.
The pipes switched to "Somebody’s Watching Me," because apparently they had comic timing.
