Will swallowed his mouthful.“You can’t be serious.”
“I can’t have my coffee black.It gives me the jitters.”He reached for the spoon still stuck in the jar of jam and plopped it as well as a good-sized amount of the jam into his mug.
Will’s eyes went wide.
Sage sniffed his coffee.“I think this isn’t too bad.”And then he drank it.“Well, it’s not good either.I really need to go get sugar.”He gulped down more of his strawberry-flavored coffee.“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”Will looked away quickly.“Um, thanks for agreeing to teach me magic.I don’t think I said that before, but I’m grateful.I’ll do my best to learn.”
Sage cleared his throat.He did not put down his strawberry coffee.
“I’m going to level with you.I’ve never taught anyone.Not magic, not anything.Well, evidence would suggest I’m good at teaching shelter kittens to escape into the wild, but that’s incidental.Anyway, I’ll try.Partly because Peter will be mad if you don’t, I dunno, ride a broomstick in the next two weeks.But mostly because I want to.”
Will nodded.“How do you know Peter?You work for him?”
Sage leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.“Yeah, sometimes.I did his fancy warding.Gods, he’s so anal about every little thing.‘Ward each window separately, Sage.Make sure the conservatory is double warded, Sage.Don’t ruin the warding with your flip-flops, Sage.’He also babysat me.”
Will perked up.“He what?”
Will wasn’t sure what kind of parent would ask Peter to watch their kid, and he had trouble imagining how that had gone.Had Peter done imaginary tea parties?Had he read stories?All of that seemed highly unlikely.
“Well, Granny was dating this Wiccan,” Sage said.“They do naked shit for solstices and equinoxes, and Granny felt I wasn’t old enough for naked shit.So she dropped me at Peter’s door and informed him he was supposed to keep me alive for a weekend or a few days, depending on the date.”
Will tried to imagine it, but his brain blanked out.Peter and children seemed anathema.
“You’re shitting me, right?This is a joke?”
“Nope.”Sage shook his head, the movement grand, showing off the sides of his face.He’d shaved, and his cheekbones were even more prominent now.“He made me practice my cursive, forced me to do accounting math, and never let me have any ice cream.”
“Youarejoking.Is this, like, witch hazing?”
Sage kept sipping his berry coffee.“I so wish, but no.Granny forced Peter to sit me and me to go get babysat even when I was way old enough for naked shit.She’d’ve been good at teaching you, because she managed to teach me everything I know.Which is my long-winded way of reassuring you that I will honestly do my best here.In the teaching department.As it were.”
“Cool.”Will felt his cheeks heat.
Huh.What’s that about?
“You have a phone?”
“No.”
“And no clothes?”
“None other than these.”Will plucked at his borrowed T-shirt.
Sage nodded.“Well, I need to go buy sugar anyway, so once you’re done with those pancakes, we’re heading to the mall.Sound good?”
“I, uhm…I don’t really have money.Peter gave me some, but—”
“Don’t worry about that.Apprentices usually get paid when they aren’t part of the family.Godsdamn injustice if you ask me, but that’s the rules.”
“But I haven’t done anything yet?”
Sage shrugged.“You know how to do the dishes?”
Will nodded, stuffed the last bit of pancake into his mouth, then jumped to his feet.He collected their plates and went about piling everything into the sink, turned on the water, and added some of the eco-friendly grapefruit-scented dish soap sitting next to the sink.
“Uhm, what’re you doing?”Sage asked from back at the table.
