Then she had to watch him try to avoid saying yes.
Even though there was no way out of it now.
“A little, yeah. It’s kind of golden. Shifts in and out when you move,” he finally said.
Kind of sheepishly, but unavoidable all the same.
“So like I’m surrounded by holographic glitter of some description.”
“More like a mist. That sometimes sort of hums.”
“And what exactly am I humming? Show tunes?”
He smothered a laugh. “It’s not a song. It’s just a soft single note.”
“Jesus, that sounds like adial tone. I’m an ancient phone, awesome.”
“You’re not an ancient phone. You’re just you, with magic.”
“And you’re sure about that. You’re sure I’m a witch.”
She hadn’t meant to ask it. She wasn’t even sure why she did.
It was too obvious, too undeniable, too clear even to her.
Yet still, when he nodded and said, “I am,” she felt every inch of her body bristle and prickle. And for just a second, she thought she could see what he’d described.
That glow, around all the bits of herself that she could see. All the bits she had spent a lot of time learning to love, and about which she now found herself wondering—why had it taken so long? Because when her rounded shoulders and plump cheeks and the curve of her cleavage were touched by that light, they looked unbelievable. Glorious.
No matter what anyone has ever said, you are beautiful, she thought, as she turned this way and that. Then as she did, she heard it. Faint, but still unmistakable: a sound, low and sweet andsomehow intense all at the same time.Like the song at the start of the universe, she thought, weirdly. And then had to think about something else, quick.
“Do you think my grandmother was sure about what I was too?” she asked, eyes still on her fingers and the faint trails they made in the air. Though she looked up when he answered.
“You know she must have been.”
“But she never told you about me.”
“No. She just said she understood what I was, and that she would help me.”
One of his shoulders lifted. No big deal.
Even though it kind of was. Or at the very least, it was missing a lot of details.
“But why?” she had to know. “How? How did she figure it out?”
“Well, finding me naked in her garden might have been a clue.”
“After you were mauled by something, you mean.”
He hesitated. Went to answer, visibly, then stopped.
Like he was thinking really hard about what to say. Like doing so was causing him some difficulty. And when he finally spoke, he was strangely halting about it. “No, no it was later. Kind of a while after I first… got turned. Because after I did I didn’t really know. I didn’t realize what had actually been done to me,” he said, finally. And then it made sense. There was trauma from whatever had done this, obviously. Maybe even amnesia, if his blank, vaguely disturbed expression was anything to go by. But then it cleared, and he looked back at her. And he added, “I mean, nothing at all really happened to me for a long time. And then boom. My bare ass is in her face.”
So instead of pressing him on it, she kept things as light as he’d tried to make them. “You’re really not beating those sleeping-with-her allegations, Seth.”
“Yeah, as soon as I said it like that, I regretted it.” He shook his head ruefully. “I should have gone with the fact that my butt at the time was still 90 percent massively hairy, muscular werewolf.”
“Honestly, I don’t think that helps you.”
