“How does it work?” Leo asked.
“You hold a wish in your mind. Clear and specific. Then you speak it out loud. The pool listens.” Junie squeezed his hand. “It doesn’t grant wishes. Not exactly. But it creates momentum. Like the universe takes note and starts arranging things.”
“That’s incredibly vague.”
“That’s magic for you.” She released his hand and stepped back. “Go on. Wish.”
Leo stared at the pool. At the moon reflected in its depths. At Junie, watching him with expectation and challenge in her expression.
“You first,” he said.
“Fine. Coward.” But she was smiling as she turned to face the water.
Junie closed her eyes. She had a thousand wishes she could make—her magic stabilizing, her grandmother’s book returned, Victor Sable falling into a very deep hole. But standing here, with Leo at her back and the moon silver overhead, only one wish felt right.
“I wish,” she said clearly, “to stop being afraid of wanting things I might lose.”
The pool rippled. A single pulse of light, there and gone.
She turned to Leo. “Your turn.”
He stepped forward. Stood at the water’s edge, shoulders squared like he was facing a business negotiation. Then his posture softened, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet.
“I wish,” he said, “to be worthy of what I’ve found.”
The pool flared brighter this time—gold and silver intertwined, spiraling up from the depths before fading back to stillness.
“See?” Junie slipped her hand into his. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“It was terrifying.” But he was smiling. “I never make wishes. I make strategies.”
“Strategies are wishes with spreadsheets.”
“That’s reductive.”
“That’s accurate.” She tugged him away from the pool, back toward the blanket where the remnants of their picnic waited. “Now. More pastries. And you’re going to tell me about your childhood.”
“My childhood was?—”
“Complicated, I know. So was mine. Spill.”
They talked for hours.
Not about the investigation, or Victor, or the uncertain future stretching before them. Instead, they excavated the small, intimate details that built a person: favorite foods (his: properly made risotto; hers: anything Dahlia baked), childhood memories (his: learning to shift with his grandfather; hers: making mud potions in the backyard), secret fears (his: becoming his father; hers: already covered that one).
He turned to look at her, the moonlight on his face.
His hand found hers. “I want you, Junie. Not because my lion recognized you. Because I chose to see you, and once I did, I couldn’t look away.”
She kissed him.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t calculated. One moment, she was sitting beside him, pulse pounding with the enormity of what he’d said, and the next, she was in his lap, her hands fisting in his shirt, her mouth finding his with desperate certainty.
He responded instantly. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer, and the kiss deepened into raw and urgent. She could taste coffee and chocolate on his tongue, feel the rumble of his groan against her.
“Junie.” Her name was a rough exhale against her lips. “We should?—”
“Don’t you dare say we should stop.”
