CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Skye
A few months later, I step out of the library at the end of my workday to find downtown spread before me in a riot of color.
Spring has come to Ferndale Falls at last, with the rain showers of April having changed into a bright and cloud-free May.
Sunshine gleams off the fresh paint of all the adorable little shops and cafés.
Severin’s revamp of the town green makes for a glorious display of flowers splashing pinks, yellows, and purples across the grassy area. The blooming dogwoods top it off with a brilliant burst of white.
I cross the street right as Luke lands, the wind of his wings stirring the azalea bushes and making the flowers dance.
He moved me into the castle the day after our engagement, unwilling to spend a single night apart.
I now officially have the best fudging commute ever, flown back and forth in his strong arms.
That’s not the only change. With Hannah’s approval, I’m now part-time at the town library, with Bumbleboots continuing to fill in on the days I’m not there. The little brownie is officially dating Pepperpot, and he floats around the stacks humming with happiness and smelling of baked goods.
The rest of the time, I work with Luke, sorting and cataloging his library.
It’s a daunting task, and we’ve barely scratched the surface, but it’s one filled with the joy of discovery.
Now that we’re no longer searching for how to break my spell, we pause to read anything we find interesting.
We end each day curled up together on the chaise lounge in the reading room, each with a stack of books.
I’m learning so much about the history of human witches, all of it lost for centuries.
Luke’s brilliant mind, on the other hand, finds a dozen new research topics every day, his thirst for knowledge boundless.
Brainy guys have always been such a fudging turn on for me, and this lucky girl gets to marry the brainiest of them all!
“My little witch,” he growls, stalking forward to wrap an arm around me and pull me to him. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” I grin up at him. “I got everything ready for story time tomorrow.” With Luke’s financial help, I’ve been able to move ahead with my charity far faster than before, ordering all kinds of new children’s books to entice kids to read.
We’ve also started hosting story time for fae younglings at the castle, inviting all the different groups of fae in Ferndale Falls to come, along with the baby dragons Naomi brings to visit from Faerie.
We now have a solid core of little gnomes and wood nymphs and even pixies.
It turns out pixie babies are teensy weensy and too adorable for words.
Only as big as my pinkies, they’re nothing but over-sized eyes and wings at that age.
Luke comes alive as he reads to all the children, and their adoration heals his soul a little more each time.
This next fae story time will be extra special, because Luke invited his sister to visit, and she said yes.
“Shall we go home?” he asks.
“Yep! Only…” I spin within the comfort of his arms, straining my neck to take in the rest of the town green. When I don’t spot who I’m looking for, I call out, “Princess Buttercup!”
She comes racing from a clump of rhododendrons, the walking tulips and rolling pumpkins running beside her, along with Finn, Hannah’s fox familiar.
The flying hearts launch from the rhododendrons and swoop after.
When Severin took down the winter greenhouse, he constructed a special shelter inside that group of bushes for the town’s animated creatures and shielded it with magic, giving them a safe place to retreat to. The familiars like it as well.
“We’re playing!” she says, stopping several feet away. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
“We talked about this,” I remind her. “You said you’d be happy to keep to my schedule when we discussed you having town visits.”
“Luke can come back and get me later!” she says, looking up at him with huge pleading eyes.
A growl rumbles in Luke’s chest, his expression morphing into grumpy number three, mildly annoyed. Before he can grumble that a superior fae like a dragon isn’t a taxi service, I catch his eye and mouth, “I’ve got this.”
He grunts his yes grunt.
“Okay, then.” I turn away from Princess Buttercup. “He’ll come and get you after dinner. It’s too bad you’ll miss the chicken, but if—”
“Chicken!” She gallops over to us. “Why didn’t you say we were having chicken! Of course I’m coming!”
I pretend to hesitate. “Oh, but you wanted to stay.”
“No!” she wails, loud and dramatic like the little diva she is. She leaps up to set her paws on my leg, kneading my thigh. “I didn’t mean it!”
The left corner of Luke’s mouth twitches.
“Okay, we’ll go have chicken.”
“Yesss,” my familiar hisses with delight, leaping into my arms.
When Hannah steps out of Town Hall and heads for the green, Finn races off to meet her, yipping and dancing with delight.
Severin wings down from the sky, and the tulips go running toward him, flapping their long pointy leaves like arms, little flower heads bobbing.
They surround him like a group of toddlers begging to be picked up, and he leans over, his expression softening as he touches each flower, sending pulses of plant magic into them.
We don’t yet know which witch created all of our new animated friends, but the tulips are the liveliest of the three and benefit from his magic.
Luke thinks it’s because they were actually alive when animated, whereas the pumpkins had been picked and the paper hearts had never been alive in the first place.
Kayla comes out of Grounds for Celebration, coffee in hand, and heads toward the group of us.
Right as she reaches where we’re standing, Shadow steps out of thin air, towering over her in his werepanther form, seven feet of fur-covered muscle.
He’s longhaired, with black fur that turns all the shades of gray before ending in silver tips, and his face is still handsome, even in its cat-man form.
Kayla startles. “I should bell you.”
“I’d love for you to try.” He grins, showing off an impressive set of fangs.
“Why are you like that?” She flaps a hand up and down his body.
“I ran the shadow roads of Faerie in my werepanther form,” he says, holding a small bag in front of his crotch. “I could change into a man, but I’d be naked.”
Mrs. Greely yells from the sidewalk, shaking her cane. “Young man, put some clothes on this instant!”
“Oops. I forgot the protection spell already makes me look like a naked man to anyone non-magical.” Mischief dances in his green eyes. “Lucky them.”
Luke grunts, pulls a pair of pants from his invisible pocket, and slaps them to the werepanther’s chest.
Shadow pulls them on, each movement slow and graceful.
Kayla scowls at the hunky fae, but not before I see a flare of interest. Then she turns to me and Hannah. “We still on for our Witch Bitch Spicy Book Club meeting this Sunday?”
“Yep!” A smile stretches my cheeks. I’m so excited to talk about spicy books with my besties. “And we’re even going to talk about a book this time!”
“Maybe.” Hannah laughs. “We’re talking about a book, maybe. As long as there aren’t any new witchy shenanigans.”
“I hope we get to it,” I say. “The book I picked is so good.”
“Double good?” Kayla suggests, giving one of her rare smiles.
Hannah wiggles her eyebrows. “Twice the fun?”
“You know it!” We share a laugh, none of the men realizing I picked a book with a two-dicked hero this time around. Who can blame a girl? I was feeling inspired.
“Chicken!” Princess Buttercup pats my cheek with a tiny hint of claws. “I only stopped playing because you promised chicken!”
“That’s it. We’re leaving,” Luke growls, scooping me into his arms.
I call goodbye to everyone as he springs into the air, carrying us home.
Dinner centers around chicken, exactly as promised, all of us eating in our favorite spot in the sitting room while watching TV.
We moved on from dance movies and have been trying to find something Luke will love.
He glared his way through several fantasy shows, angry that the dragons were subservient to humans instead of fully sentient and able to speak.
So now we watch murder mysteries, because it turns out he enjoys figuring out who the bad guy is before the on-screen detectives do.
My spoon scrapes the bottom of my ice cream bowl as the murderer is arrested and the final credits roll.
“I told you it was Felix.” Triumph rings in Luke’s voice as he jabs a clawed finger toward the screen.
“You sure did.” I bite my lip to keep from grinning. He gets so excited to be right.
Luke turns off the TV, stands, and holds out his hand. “It’s time.”
“Really?” I set my bowl aside, and Princess Buttercup leaps on it and starts licking, having already “cleaned” Luke’s.
“Really.” He pulls me to my feet and leads me down the hall to the library. Once in the reading room, he picks up Dance of Desire, the couple eternally waltzing across the cover.
“What if we try a different book first?” I bite my lip.
He frowns down at me. “We’ve already tried other books.”
I exhale. He’s right. I’ve practiced my book magic for months now.
Taking a note from Harriet, I’ve used short stories.
If I send us into a book with intention, we stay inside for the full story instead of hopping in and out like my first messed-up spell.
I’ve also successfully used Catherine’s trick of saying “the end” to pull us out before a story is done.