“It seemed appropriate. I couldn’t exactly threaten to sic my shadow prince on him while everyone was filming.”
“It was magnificent.” He shakes his head. “A week ago you apologised to a man for a latte having milk in it.”
“I’ve grown.”
“You have.” He sounds genuinely pleased. Then his expression shifts, the delight fading into something more thoughtful. He glances at the window, at the street outside, and that small frown appears between his brows. The one that I think means his witch senses are doing something.
“Felix,” I say.
“It’s nothing.” But he keeps looking at the window. “Just that frequency again. Stronger than before.”
I follow his gaze. The Bristol street. Ordinary Tuesday morning. Pedestrians and pigeons and a courier struggling with an enormous parcel.
Nothing in the shadows.
Nothing I can see, anyway.
“How worried should I be?” I ask quietly.
Felix is quiet for a moment. He picks up a cloth and starts wiping the counter with unnecessary thoroughness, which is his version of having thoughts he isn’t sure how to say.
“I think,” he says carefully, “that Hex being here has been like lighting a bonfire in a dark field. Brilliant if you’re trying to warm yourself up. Less brilliant if there are things out there in the dark that you don’t want to attract.”
I stare at the cloth moving in circles on the counter.
“And the things in the dark,” I say. “Are they attracted?”
Felix stops wiping. He looks up at me. His dark eyes are very serious, all the goth theatrics stripped away, just Felix being honest with me in the way he always is eventually.
“Yes,” he says simply. “I think they are.”
The fairy lights flicker above us. Just once. Brief enough that nobody else in the coffee shop notices.
But I notice.
And Felix notices me noticing.
We look at each other. Neither of us says anything else. There isn’t really anything else to say.
I pick up my cloth and go back to work. I make lattes and cappuccinos and one complicated seasonal thing with three modifications that takes considerably longer than it should. I smile at customers. I draw a leaf in the foam.
I do not think about bonfires in dark fields. I do not think about dark things being attracted to the light. Because, despite being a literal shadow, Hex is the light. I’m sure of it.
Instead of all of that, I think about going home.
Hex will be there. He always is now. I’ll walk in and the flat will be warmer than I left it and something will have been moved or reorganised without my permission and he’ll look at me with thosered eyes and say something that manages to be both infuriating and reassuring in the same breath.
It should feel like an intrusion. Honestly, it should. It is an intrusion. He is a shadow prince who has taken up residence in my uncle’s flat without asking and rearranges my possessions for fun.
But when the end of my shift comes and I untie my apron and say goodbye to Felix, who gives me a long look that means be careful in his particular language, I walk home faster than usual.
Not because I’m frightened.
Because something is paying attention to Bristol. Something is tuning in, looking for the bonfire in the dark field.
And the bonfire is currently alphabetising my books and criticising my mug collection, and I want to get home to him before the dark finds the light.
Chapter 16
