The cousins began chatting with their partners, allowing Joe to return his attention to Uriel. “You aren’t really going to hold my books hostage, are you?”
“No.”
Joe let out a sigh of relief. “And you’re still going to read one with me, right?”
Uriel sighed. “I promised, didn’t I? Although I’m still uncertain why we couldn’t choose a classic.”
“Because our holiday book club was my idea, so it was only fair for me to pick. You can pick next year.”
Uriel’s eyes sparkled with a strange red light. Joe looked around to see where the reflection could be coming from. All the lights in the dining room were a warm golden color. Honestly, Joe preferred bright, colorful lights. He wanted a tree in the carriage house that twinkled with green, red, blue, and yellow lights.
“What are you looking at?” Uriel asked.
“Trying to see where the red sparkle is coming from.”
Uriel tensed again. Joe began to regret his decision to wake up Uriel in the middle of the night. He’d obviously underestimated Uriel’s need for sleep. He’d never seen his friend so tense and jumpy. Well, not jumpy. Tightly-wound? No, that wasn’t the right description either.
Hmm. Maybe neither one of them did well without enough sleep.
“Anyway, I was also thinking about how I like colored lights better than clear ones. I think it’s funny how people draw such clear lines about their holiday light choices, don’t you?”
Uriel gave him another one of his strange looks.
“And you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“There are lines drawn over lights?”
“Yeah. You should see the opinions about blue only. Whoa. Intense. I mean, it’s not for me, but as a solid member of Team Colored Lights, I see the appeal. I just like tons of color.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Yeah, you know me—”
“Joseph!”
Joe froze. His heart sank into his stomach. It couldn’t be. Nope. It was his lack of sleep. He was hallucinating.
He turned his head, and there he stood.
Javier McLeod.
A million emotions flooded Joe’s senses. He lost his mind, because the only thing he could think to do to save himself was to turn to Uriel and kiss him like his life depended on it.
3
URIEL
“What are you looking at?” Uriel asked.
Joe tended to ramble in his conversations on the best of days, but he rarely stopped talking about books.This time he did and began looking around the room.
“Trying to see where the red sparkle is coming from.”
Red sparkle.
Uriel tensed and glanced down at his hands, only to find them displaying a telltale glow. He concentrated on containing his magic. The last thing he needed was to cause havoc inside the home of one of the sprites. His cousins would never let him live it down.
“Anyway,” Joe continued, “I was also thinking about how I like colored lights better than clear ones. I think it’s funny how people draw such clear lines about their holiday light choices, don’t you?”
