Cassie called it Pod.
She introduced it as her familiar.
“And yes, I can hear it talking,” she said. “You’ll probably find something talking to you soon, too. And you might start glowing. And find odd things happening to you, or being attracted to you, or wanting your help.”
Like a sexy demon who can’t date, she thought.
But she couldn’t say. She didn’t have to say.
Halfway through collecting the books, Cassie stopped, and assessed her so frankly it made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It made her heart flutter wildly, half in fear and half in something else.A fellow witch seeing another for the first time, she thought, and found herself reaching out a hand.
And the hand was glowing.
It was surrounded by silver, in the same way she could suddenly see gold around Cassie. “You have the same problem I did,” Cassie said. “Someone you like is suffering, and you want to help them, and you’re not sure how. Is that right?”
“Yes. Yeah. He wants to be less—”
“Monstrous. I see it. But I’ll need to see him to help him fix it.”
“He doesn’t want to come in. He’s kind of a little bit… shy.”
“And you don’t how to persuade him?”
Cassie said the words sassily, pointedly. Like she knew Nancy had it in her—and in truth, she did. The idea of how simply poppedinto her head the moment Cassie spoke.Frame it like a thing all normal, date-worthy men do, she thought. Just the next step in his education.
“How do you feel about a double date?” she said.
And Cassie grinned.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Even with the practical promise of learning about normal things reasonable boyfriends and girlfriends did, and lots ofkill two birds with one stonearguments about Cassie and her probably wonderful magic advice when it came to his other issues, it took two days to talk him into dinner.
And even after she had managed to convince him, he wanted to do everything just right. She got to his place, ready to go together from there, and found he had made twenty-seven pies. They were all over his kitchen counter and table, some of them steaming, some of them smelling heavenly, others looking very strange indeed. “Don’t go anywhere near the one that keeps squirming,” he said, as he flew past her to the suddenly smoking oven. “I accidentally gave it eyes.”
Though truthfully she felt the fact that it could see was the least of his problems. “I think the sheer volume of desserts here might be a slightly larger issue,” she said, while trying to avoid two overflowing pie tins on the floor. At which point, he stopped. He seemed to register what he’d done.
“I just panicked, okay. I mean, I like blueberry and tomato, but what if they don’t? I had to at least attempt a few other possibilities.”
“This isn’t a few other possibilities, Jack. This is a pie shop.”
“Oh, I could never open a shop with these. At least ten of them are poison.”
“Okay, but do you remember which ones? Because we need to go. And I think the most important thing is to turn up with one that won’t kill anybody,” she said, but that only deepened his clearly dawning despair. He put his hands in his hair. Chose one pie, and then put it back. Then another and put it back.
“None of them,” he said, finally. “What am I gonna do?”
“Well, you could just try taking some nice flowers.”
“Flowers arealsonecessary? This is a nightmare. I don’t know how humans do this. I’m never gonna be able to learn all the rules, and even if I do I’ll just ruin things five minutes later by becoming so immense while kissing her that my tongue turns her face into pâté.”
He blurted the words out while dumping a pie that was more legs than crust into the trash. But that just meant she didn’t guard her reaction to this idea, and then he looked up too abruptly and clocked it. She knew he had clocked it, even though she tried to make her eyes smaller before he did.
“You’re never going to let me kiss you again, are you,” he said, and she sort of wanted to say absolutely never. But he sounded so morose about it that all she could think wasHe wants to do it again. He wants to kiss you again. And maybe not just on the lips, either.
“I don’t know. You managed to not split me in two the other day.”
“Right, and I’m starting to think that was very reckless.”
