Chapter 1 #3
She and I share an eye roll before she disappears down the long hall behind the dining room.
She’ll be gone a solid half hour, I’d bet, missing the first part of dinner like usual.
I wish I could help, but I don’t know how the Tuckers do their invoicing for Tucker Greens, their green witch services business.
Jasper and Jack sit at their usual seats. Jace comes in from the kitchen with a tray of lasagna balanced in each hand. Elena and Bill follow him, Elena carrying an enormous salad bowl and Bill with two pitchers of beer.
Stalking back into the kitchen, I grab three pitchers of ice water and follow them back into the tall, round dining room.
“Where’s Bluebell?” Elena asks, glancing at Jack.
He shrugs, snagging a piece of bread from the tray in front of him. “Doing some shit we said we’d do but haven’t gotten around to doing yet, I imagine.”
Bill groans. “Your sister doesn’t even work for Tucker Greens, Jack Clinton Tucker. She ain’t even a green witch!”
Jack shrugs again. “And yet she does a better job than I’d ever do. I’d probably fuck up the invoices and—”
“Language!” shout Bill and Elena at the same time.
Snickering, I dip into the back hall and trail Bluebell’s scent again until I find her in the cramped under-stair office she’s claimed as her working area. A laptop illuminates her upturned nose and the current bright blue of her freckles.
“I’m comin’,” she barks, waving me away. “Just get started without me, Alk. If I don’t get this done now, it’ll never get done ‘cause I’ll forget.”
“Lies.” I poke her in the side with one of my pointed wing tips. “We both know you got a to-do list in your back pocket right this second.”
She shoots me a harsh look. “And I’d like to check something off it today. Sooner you give me a second, the sooner I can get this done.”
Laughing, I poke her again, loving how she squirms away from me. Her citrusy scent fills the small space, soaking into my senses. I always try to ignore how it starts a heat burning low in my core, but that’s harder since I’m around her so much more often these days.
“You take more than two minutes, and I’ll show back up with a plate for you.”
“Mhm ‘kay,” she says, absorbed in her work and paying me no mind.
Turning, I head back up the hallway and find my place at the table. The lasagna trays are going around, and I wait for my turn to pile my plate high. At a demanding look from Elena, I put a second piece of lasagna on top of the first.
“Good boy,” she says. “You need plenty of calories to power those wings.”
I cut a piece of lasagna and put it on Bluebell’s plate. As the rest of the food makes its way around, I make a whole plate for her so it’s ready when she reappears. If I don’t, Jasper’ll eat all the lasagna and totally forget she hasn’t even sat down yet.
I’m just about to grab tin foil to cover it when she stomps down the hallway and joins us, flopping into the seat next to mine. “Thanks, Alk,” she says as she shovels the lasagna into her mouth, rolling her eyes and moaning. “Damn, this is good. Ma, what’d you add this time?”
“Pesto,” Bill says with a grin. “Was my idea. Your ma didn’t want to do it.”
Elena laughs. “He says it’s the human way to make lasagna, as if we aren’t all human. Minus you, Alk.” She waves her fork at me.
Bill snorts. “Yeah, but I’m, like, fully human. You’re all witches, so I know more about regular humans, plus I lived in the human world for twenty-two years, I’ll have you remember.”
Ma Tucker drags her knuckles along Bill’s angular jawline and into his salt-and-pepper chocolate hair. “But ain’t you glad I summoned you here all those decades ago? You could be wasting away in Cincinnati, but instead you get to live in a little hidden monster town with me.”
“Cincinnati’s got nothin’ on you, honey.” He leans forward to peck the tip of her nose.
Jack makes a barfing sound, Jace looks away, and Jasper covers Bluebell’s eyes with his free hand, shoveling lasagna with the other.
“Get your hand away from my face,” Bluebell snaps, swatting at him. “I’m twenty-nine, for gods’ sake, and you’re almost thirty-five. Our parents had sex. Here we are. You should be so lucky to have what they have. On top of which I’m not a virgin, so…”
A chorus of groans rises from the boys again, but all I can do is choke down a bite of food.
The Tuckers don’t do anything quietly. There’s not a poker face to be had in this entire household.
But they love fiercely, they use their green magic for good, and they’re diehard Gulchers, not to mention diehard Punishers fanatics.
That comment about her not being a virgin, though…
“Hey!” Bill shouts. “We need to toast Bluebell for signing the Bodice paperwork, right? Blue, that happened this morning, if I remember correctly?”
She keeps eating without looking up from her plate. “Tomorrow,” she mutters. “It got rescheduled for tomorrow.”
I turn to look at her. “Hey, that’s a huge deal, right? Are you excited?”
She looks up at me, and a range of emotions flits across her delicate features. I can’t say “excited” seems to be one of them, though.
“Yeah,” she says in a neutral tone, dark lashes fluttering against her heart-shaped cheeks.
“Yeah! I mean, big day. I’ve been wanting this for a while.
” She finally smiles, and the rest of the Tuckers burst into raucous cheering and clapping.
They’re so loud, I resist the urge to flatten my hands over my ears.
It wouldn’t help. The Tucker family has one volume, and that’s all the way up.
Glancing around the love-filled room, I smile as I spear another bite of lasagna and shove it into my mouth. It’s good to be home.