Now it was Drew’s turn to chew on his bottom lip as he thought about that. “Okay, so maybe we could just not tell her the truth?” Even to his own ears, it sounded false. There was no way in hell they were going to keep the truth from Harriett. That just wasn’t the way their relationship worked. “Okay, so that’s not gonna work. Look, maybe shewon’thave a problem with it? Maybe when faced with the situation in reality, she’ll take a different viewpoint?”
“Do you really believe that?” Zach asked.
Drew sighed. “No.”
There was a long silence and then Zach admitted in a quiet voice, “I’m worried she’ll give you an ultimatum, and between me and her the choice is obvious. I’m scared I’m going to lose you.”
Drew gripped Zach’s hand tightly. “You willnotlose me. We went through too much to be together, so don’t even think that.”
“Drew, we needto be realistic.”
“Stop it,” Drew commanded. “At the end of the day, I honestly believe Harriett just wants me to be happy. It might be a bit of a shock to her, but I love you. I’m not just going to give you up because she has some ethical issue with a sparkly assed vampire from a young-adult novel. Shelikesyou, and I think the more she gets to know you, she’ll like you even more. The age thing might be a bit of a shocker at first, but I honestly think it’s not insurmountable.”
Zach sighed but then raised their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to Drew’s knuckles. “I really hope you’re right.”
Throughout his long lifetime, Zach had fought demons, evil warlocks, and a number of other supernatural and magical creatures. He’d been cast into the deepest depths of Hell as an angel and had been tortured for countless months. He’d been in more hopeless situations than he cared to admit, and he’d lost count of the number of times he was sure the true death would take him.
None of that had ever scared him as much as the diminutive woman who sat in the armchair opposite him.
Harriett Phillips was five feet tall if she was an inch. She was slight in stature, with a strength which had surprised Zach when he’d watched her drag a heavy cabinet away from the wall after she’d dropped a bottle cap and it had rolled underneath it. She had the same pale blue eyes as Drew but her hair was lighter, closer to blonde. She was currently sitting with her feet tucked under her, a cup of coffee in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face.
Drew was currently levitating his own mug about two feet above the coffee table in a demonstration of his powers to go with the long andinvolved story they’d just told her. He slowly settled the mug down and then waved his hands about as if to say “Ta-da!.”
Harriett didn’t say a word.
The silence that was stretching between them was growing more and more awkward by the second.
Drew looked over at Zach, who shrugged, at a loss for what they could do. He honestly couldn’t say what Harriett was thinking, so he didn’t know if trying to further argue their case would be a help or a hindrance. Given that Drew—who knew his aunt much better than Zach did—had no clue either, meant he had no hope of figuring it out.
“Aunt Harriett?” Drew finally asked when the silence had gone on for so long that it was almost sentient. “Will you please say something?”
Harriett sighed and leaned forward to place her coffee cup on the table. “I honestly thought it had skipped you like it had skipped your dad and me.”
Zach arched a brow. That sounded like . . .
“You already knew about magic?” Drew choked out.
She nodded. “Mom had the gift. At first, she tried to never use it because I think it scared the piss out of her, but when she was stressed or in danger it would just happen. I only saw it a few times myself. From what I’ve learned since she died, she did master control over it in her later years. I’m guessing that’s when she wrote that cookbook of hers. I didn’t realise it was a spell book or I wouldn’t have given it to you . . . sorry.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” Drew asked, sounding hurt. Zach couldn’t really blame him. “You knew Grammy had magic all along and yet you said nothing.”
Harriett sighed, and she looked sad. “Because I thought it would be cruel.”
“How so?” Zach asked.
She met his gaze, unflinching. “How fair do you think it would be to tell a small boy who had just lost his parents in a horrible caraccident that magic is real? How do you think he would have reacted, knowing there are people out there who can do magic, and yet none of them bothered to save his parents? None of them came and used their magic to put food on the table or to turn the hydro back on when I couldn’t afford the bills.”
Zach inclined his head. “You make a fair point.”
“I didn’t keep it from you out of spite, love,” she told Drew. “If you’d ever shown any inclination then I would have sat you down and told you all about Mom and her abilities, but there was nothing.”
Drew took a deep breath and let it out slowly. After a long moment, he nodded. “Okay, I understand your reasons. I guess all of our cards are on the table now.”
She gave a wry smile. “Indeed they are. So, you summoned a demon, huh? You always were a terrible cook.”
“Hey! I’m notthatbad!” Drew protested.
“Oh, sweetness,” Zach said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “You have many strengths, but sadly, cooking isnotone of them.”
