Page 73 of The Witch They Crave

Let a thread of it out. Keep the rest leashed.

This is the work. This has been the work for two months: not the destroying, which I could do in my sleep, but the not destroying, the holding, the standing at the lip of the thing and choosing not to jump.

"Good. Now let me feel the edges of it."

He sets two fingers against the back of my wrist and I feel his magic come into mine.

It's supposed to feel like a hand closing over a hand. His power laid over my power, mapping it, checking the shape. That's what it felt like in September. That's what it felt like in October, even, when I'd started noticing the warmth of him and hating that I noticed.

It doesn't feel like that now.

Now his magic slides in and I can't find where his stops and mine starts. There's no seam. No edge for him to trace, because the edge isn't there anymore—it's gone soft, blurred, two colors bled into each other at the border until you couldn't say with a straight face where one became the next. His power moves through mine like it belongs there.

Like it's always been there. Like it lives here.

I go very still. So does he.

His fingers go still on my wrist. His face gives nothing—it never does—but there's a tightening at the jaw, a recalculation behind the hazel. He felt it too.

It’s almost exactly what happened when he…

A flush creeps up the back of my neck as I think about it. The way he made my body sing–the way I felt his want like it was my own.

That was the same sensation.

He pulls his hand back and clears his throat.

"Again," he says. "From the top."

"That's it? Again?" I don't move. "Aamon. That wasn't normal. I felt your magic and I couldn't tell it apart from mine, that's not—that doesn't happen. What the hell was that?"

"Try it again, Calypso."

"Don't do the thing where you answer a question with a command."

"Open the flow. Hold it—"

"You know what it was, don’t you?" I blow out a breath, incredulous. "You do. I can see it on you. Your jaw did the thing."

For a moment he says nothing. Then something in him decides against whatever door I just found, and the shutter comes down clean.

"That's enough for today," he says.

"Wait…we just started."

"We're both distracted. This isn't productive." He's turning, already reaching for the folder on the side table that he doesn't need to consult, the flat fully back in place. "We'll pick it up tomorrow."

"Aamon—"

"Miss Dellaby." A warning, gentle. The door, closed.

I glare at the back of his head. He gives me nothing to glare at, which is the most Aamon thing about him.

Seriously?

Fine.

I grab my bag off the floor and clock the time on the old brass clock over his shelves—half past eleven—and do the math. If I move now, I can catch Nellie before the lunch rush thins out. Nellie, who's spent her whole life around witches, who grew up in her mother's shop with her mother's books. Nellie might know what the hell just happened here.