CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO #2
Then I shoot an email to Hannah and Autumn, explaining why I’m currently out of contact and that I’ll see them at the town meeting.
I close my laptop and look up only to find Aunt Irene standing in the doorway, studying me, her brown face scrunched in concentration. “You still haven’t said what’s wrong.”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?” I chirp, giving her my best smile.
“No. You don’t do that with me.” She shakes her head, setting her curls bouncing. “I’ve lived with you Summers women for decades now. I know when your squishy jelly hearts are hurt. You can’t fool me with your happy-happy.”
“Funny that it works so well on Aunt Betty,” I mutter.
“It works because you two are a lot alike, and Betty wants to see only the happy.” She sits beside me on the couch. “But sometimes you have to deal with the less-pleasant stuff to find your way back to true happiness.”
“That’s why I’m so lucky to have you.” Aunt Betty bustles into the room and plops down on my other side, her light face flushed pink from the heat of the oven. She reaches across me to squeeze her wife’s knee. “You keep me truly happy.” Then she looks at me. “So talk.”
“It’s… it’s complicated.” I play with the hem of my structured skirt, fingers tracing across the bright purple fabric. I paired it with a brilliant teal top and matching pumps, needing the extra armor of pretty clothes today.
“So it’s a man?” Aunt Irene asks.
Aunt Betty adds, “Just because we don’t do dick doesn’t mean we don’t understand relationships.”
Her words startle a laugh out of me, exactly as she wanted.
“Women can be just as bad.” Aunt Irene snorts in amusement and shakes her head. “Remember that girl I went out with right before we met, Betty?”
“Or my non-binary partner from college?” Aunt Betty chuckles. “Let’s just say humans in general can be a real pain in the butt to date.”
It’s my turn to laugh. If they think humans are hard, what would they say about super-grumpy, three-hundred-year-old, I’m-clearly-superior-to-everyone fae dragons?
“It’s Luke. I really like him.” Understatement much? “And I can’t tell what he thinks of me. He’s really hard to read.” I might be able to rate his various grumpy faces, but I don’t have any idea what love or affection would look like on him.
One minute he seems to want me, the next he’s cool and aloof.
It’s enough to make a girl’s head spin. Added onto that, all of our spicy encounters either happened inside the book or were instigated by sexiness in the book.
Does he actually want me here in the real world?
Can I ever be more than a research project to him?
“Is it because he’s a demon?” Aunt Irene asks.
Aunt Betty nods. “I imagine those are tricky.”
“Whuh?” Shock ripples through me, my mouth hanging open as my head swivels back and forth between them like I’m watching a tennis match.
“Oh, no. Did I use the wrong term?” Aunt Irene winces. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I just assumed demon because of the horns and wings.”
“Yeah, are they called ‘people no longer of heavenly origin’ or something?” Aunt Betty frowns. “Though I must say that’s quite a mouthful, so it’s probably not that.”
“Dragon,” I choke out. “Luke’s not a demon. He’s a dragon.”
“Ohhh.” Aunt Betty smacks her palm to her forehead.
“You can both see the fae for what they truly are? Why didn’t you say something?” I yell that last bit.
“What could we say, dear? That little blue faeries serve us pizza? People would think we’ve gone mad.”
“They’re called pixies, and you’re not mad. You’re witches! Like me!”
“Witches?” Aunt Irene leans closer. “Does that mean you can do spells? Is that why your buttercream frosting is always so fluffy?”
“I don’t have that kind of magic. I’m a book witch.
” I tell them all about how I sucked myself and Luke into a book without any way to get out and how we’re researching my type of magic using his library without any success yet.
“I didn’t do the spell on purpose, so it’s kind of messed up.
We keep popping in and out of the book, only doing certain scenes.
It’s good, because it gives us time for research, but I never know when we’ll disappear from the real world. ”
“You haven’t told them about the best part of being a witch!” Princess Buttercup bounds onto my lap. “You haven’t told them about me!”
“Princess Buttercup wants you both to know that she’s my familiar—”
“Ah hem.” She taps a floofy paw to my cheek. “I think you mean that you’re my witch.”
“Correction.” I grin. “I’m her witch, and we really can talk to each other.”
The aunts ask a bunch of questions about witches and magic, which I answer as best I can. I finish up with, “I hope to keep visiting Luke’s library once we’re done with my big mix-up of a spell, so I can learn more.”
“This is fascinating,” Aunt Irene says. “But I don’t think I have magic. I certainly haven’t done anything magical.”
“Same.” Aunt Betty nods. “I feel like I would have known by now. We’re not young like you.”
“But magic only returned to Earth a few months ago, and I only just figured out my power. It could still happen for you.”
The timer goes off, pulling us back into the kitchen, where we take the cupcakes from the oven. The aunts’ batch fills the room with the scent of vanilla, and my Valentine’s batch adds the spicy note of cinnamon candy.
While they cool, we whip up our different frostings, mine embedded with crushed cinnamon candies.
By the time we’ve iced our cupcakes, and I’ve decorated mine by adding a few whole cinnamon hearts to each, it’s time for one of our family traditions.
Every time there’s a town meeting, we have linner dunch: a big meal at four pm that takes the place of lunch and dinner.
We can never agree on whether this late-in-the-day equivalent to brunch should be called dunch or linner, so we call it both: linner dunch.
All those casserole dishes the aunts put in my fridge when they first arrived get popped into the oven. The delicious aromas of pot roast, twice-baked mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole fill the air, and I throw my arms around my aunts. “You brought my favorites. Thank you.”
“We thought you could use a treat.” Aunt Irene presses a kiss to the top of my head. “And we were right.”
“See,” I say. “Your witch powers could be that you’re psychic.”
“Nah, we used good-old Mom intuition.” Aunt Betty squeezes me extra tight. “We know when our girl needs an emotional pick-me-up.”
Tears prickle my eyes as I hug them to me, the best mothers anyone could ever want. Even if I can’t have Luke, I’ll have this. It’s a comfort, I tell my squishy jelly heart.
It doesn’t listen.