“Of course I do.”
Maggie couldn’t quite take the kindness. “Oh, stop. Can we just go fortify these wards?” she asked as Dahlia gave her a knowing smile. And as they armed themselves with their vervain paint and warded charms against fantasmia, Maggie let Dahlia’s words burrow into her until she almost believed them.
There was only one ward on the Annex building, so they quickly moved on to Cedrus Hall, one of the newer buildings on campus that was used for student housing. It had been empty for weeks now, but like Ilex Hall, it butted up against the edge of the Wilds. The building’s wards were strategically placed on the wall facing the forest, standing sentinel against anything that came out of its shadow.
Maggie and Dahlia rolled up their sleeves and got to work onside-by-side wards, careful not to let the vervain paint drip and throw off the spell. “I don’t know who drew this ward last, but it was sloppy,” Dahlia complained, trying to straighten out one of the rune lines until she was satisfied. They moved down the building, chatting as they went.
Finally, Maggie asked the question she had been avoiding, if only because of the follow-up questions Dahlia was surely going to ask. “Are you busy on Saturday?”
“No, my students aren’t getting in until Monday.” She shook her paint pen, but her line was still spotty when it came out, so Maggie tossed her another.
“Arthur invited me to Atlantia. Well, I invited myself.”
Dahlia looked at Maggie over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. “What do you need me for?”
“His nephew’s last baseball game is that day, and he obviously needs to be there. I suggested we go to the beach another day, but he invited me to the baseball game instead. You, too.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Obviously,” Maggie said with a sigh. “I’m sure this is a terrible idea, but he was so nonchalant about it. Maybe it really is just a baseball game. And if both of us go, it will be less strange for me to spend the day with his family. Right?”
For some reason, Maggie had the feeling that Dahlia really wanted to say something else when she said, “Maybe.” She stood back and admired her work on the last rune before saying, “Of course I’ll go.”
Maggie sagged with relief. “Thank you. What would I do without you?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Since she had proposed a day at the beach, Arthur had been imagining what Maggie would look like in her bathing suit. When she tumbled out of her car onto the asphalt, already hot with the early summer sun, she was unfortunately covered, wearing a long, gauzy dress that only hinted at what was underneath. She had on a floppy sun hat and round sunglasses, carrying another one of her Diadhan conference tote bags with a brightly colored towel sticking out of it.
“Do you feel this, Dahlia?” Maggie shouted as Dahlia joined her. “The temperature is above sixty-five. The sun is actually shining. Gods above, I can finally defrost.” She was practically singing, and when she walked over to Arthur, there was a skip in her step he’d never seen before. He had expected her to be hesitant, tentative with her affection in front of Dahlia, but instead she fell into his arms. He held her to him, breathing in the way her shampoo mingled with the coconut sunscreen she’d covered herself in, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered. “I missed you.” He knew that sounded ridiculous. They had only been apart for half a day and one night, but that was long enough for her absence to feel like an ache.
“I missed you, too.”
When she’d gone to fortify the wards alone, he’d been so afraid that she was preparing to pull away, but that afternoon she had returned to their office and pushed him onto the couch, kissing him as if she’d been gone for days. She had practically dragged him back to her apartment without another word about needing space. He had stayed with her almost every night since, only driving out to Atlantia to gather clothing and grab the occasional coffee with Rory, who looked at him with sidelong glances like he had something to say. Yesterday afternoon, he’d returned to Atlantia for the night, to help Simon get ready for his baseball game today, which mostly involved a lot of talking through nerves and planning for the postgame ice cream cone they were going to eat.
“He’s wearing a bathing suit,” Dahlia said as they walked down the path that snaked through the dunes. “You owe me a coffee.”
Arthur glanced down at his outfit—old board shorts of Rory’s that were too short and the same Dartwood T-shirt he’d worn on their hike. “What did you think I was going to be wearing?”
“The last time we were on this beach, you were wearing a tweed jacket,” Maggie reminded him. “I wasn’t sure what you’d have on today.”
“It was cold!” When they reached the peak of the dune, he could see up and down the shore. It was still early, so the beach was empty except for people going for runs and walking their dogs. The glittering skyline of Atlantia was in the distance just across the cove and inlet north of the beach, with all of its peaking spires and shining windows.
Rory waved from the blanket and umbrella they’d arrived early to set up, walking up to meet them. He held out a hand to Dahlia. The night before, when Arthur had been trying to soothe Simon’s worries, he’d also been trying to ease his own. He was afraid he was making a mistake, bringing Maggie here to meet his brother and nephew. His father. Lane. Even with Dahlia here…But it was too late. He had reasoned with himself that even when the summer was over, he still hoped to have Maggie as a friend. Friends could meet his family. Right?
Then Rory was grasping Maggie’s hand in his, and Arthur’s worlds were colliding. “You must be Dahlia and Maggie. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“All good, I hope,” Maggie said as she dropped her stuff down on the blanket and kicked off her sandals. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”
Rory laughed, taking the beach chair Dahlia was carrying and setting it up beside his own chair, a detail that didn’t escape Arthur. “Let me guess, did he tell you some sob story about how I make too much fun of him?”
“Something like that,” she said with a grin. Arthur was stunned out of his worried thought spiral when Maggie tossed her sun hat onto the blanket and began tugging her sundress up over her head. Each inch it rose revealed another wondrous inch of Maggie and then a bathing suit that made Arthur forget he had been thinking about anything else at all. It crisscrossed her body with peeks of skin at her hip, her waist, between her breasts.
He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to walk over to the towel and lick the salty sweat off the stretchesof skin the bathing suit revealed. When he finally tore his gaze away from her breasts, Maggie looked at him with a gleam in her eye, like she knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was what she’d wanted all along.
