She didn't have an answer for that. Or rather,she had several answers, and none of them were appropriate given their circumstances.
He stepped closer. The petals caught in his hair now too, pink against the dark strands threaded with silver. He reached out and brushed one from her cheek, and the touch sent sparks down her spine—not magical sparks, just the regular kind that came from being touched by someone who looked at you like you were a problem he was increasingly interested in solving.
"Liam—"
"You're impossible," he said quietly. "Reckless. Stubborn. You don't listen. You cast spells while I'm in the shower like a teenager sneaking out after curfew."
"I'm not a teenager."
"No. You're worse. You're a grown woman who should know better and does it anyway." His thumb traced her cheekbone where the petal had been. "Why is that so?—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
The space between them had shrunk to nothing. She could feel his breath. Could count his eyelashes if she'd wanted to. The binding was warm between them, not pulling them together, just... present. Aware.
The roses released another cascade of petals.
Somewhere behind them, a three-foot gnome shifted its weight with a sound like grinding stone.
And Liam's mouth wasright there, and she was tilting up toward him, and for one perfect suspended moment, Cassie forgot about the chaos and the magic and the complete insanity of her life. All she could think about was the way his eyes had gone dark, the way his hand had moved to cup the back of her neck, the way her whole body felt like it was leaning into something inevitable?—
"CASSIE MORGAN!"
They sprang apart like teenagers caught by parents.
Marjorie stood on the sidewalk, phone already raised, capturing what was undoubtedly an extremely incriminating image of Cassie and Liam surrounded by rose petals in a garden that looked like a fairy tale had exploded.
"Your gnomes are blocking the sidewalk!" Marjorie called out, delighted horror in her voice. "And I think one of them growled at me!"
Cassie looked at Liam. He looked back at her. Both of them breathing harder than they should have been, cheeks flushed, the almost-kiss hanging in the air between them like an unfinished sentence.
"We should..." she started.
"Aye." He stepped back, running a hand through his petal-strewn hair. "We should."
But neither of them specified what they should do.
And in the distance, Cassie heard Marjorie's phone camera click three more times.
They retreatedinside like survivors of a very floral war.
Cassie's hair was full of petals. Liam had shed the apron but still looked like he'd been in a fight with a garden and lost. The gnomes watched them go with expressions that seemed smug, if ceramic lawn ornaments could be smug.
(They could. Cassie was certain of it now.)
"We need to figure out how to undo this," she said, grabbing the grimoire from where it sat innocently on the coffee table. "There has to be a counter-spell. A reversal. Something."
"Should be on the same page as the original, or the one after."
She flipped to the glamour spell, scanning the ornate script for anything that looked like instructions for un-glamouring oneself and one's entire property.
Nothing.
"It just ends. 'Let all who see you know the radiance you show,' and then it's done. There's no—wait."
The bottom corner of the page was stuck. Folded over and adhered to itself, like someone had spilled something on it decades ago and never noticed. Or had noticed, and left it that way on purpose.
