Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It had been Felix’s idea, which meant nobody had been given a choice.
“Last night before the ritual,” he’d announced, appearing in Ramona’s doorway at seven with his coat already on and Gerald on his shoulder looking equally resolved. “We’re going to The Grimalkin. All of us. Don’t argue with me.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Zara, tell her not to argue with me.”
Zara, who had been reading among the plant forest at the desk with the focused stillness of someone who had spent multiple centuries getting very good at ignoring chaos, looked up. “Don’t argue with him.”
Ramona had argued anyway, briefly, and lost.
The Grimalkin was busy for a weeknight, which meant it was full of people who probably didn’t exist during daylight hours.
The jukebox in the corner was deep in some kind of old soul phase — playing something that sounded like it was being performed live in 1962 by musicians who were definitely ghosts.
Odette moved behind the bar with her usual uncanny efficiency, setting drinks down in front of people slightly before they ordered them.
They’d pushed two tables together near the back.
Felix had claimed the chair closest to the fire with Gerald tucked against his collar.
Kashvi was already two drinks in, small golden sparks drifting from her fingertips whenever she laughed, which was often.
Posey had a glass of something green that smelled like a garden and was absentmindedly growing a small vine up the leg of her chair.
Cammie had arrived last, still in her café uniform, took one look at the table and said, “Okay, yeah, I need one of whatever that is,” pointing at Kashvi’s drink, and sat down.
Ramona and Zara were wedged together on the bench along the wall. Not by design, exactly. Just by the geometry of the table and the fact that nobody had left them much room, which Ramona suspected was entirely deliberate.
Odette appeared at Ramona’s elbow. Set down two glasses without being asked.
Ramona looked at hers. It was dark, deep red, with a single dried rose petal resting on the surface. “What is this?”
“The Occasion,” Odette said and walked away.
Zara examined hers with the careful attention she brought to things she didn’t entirely trust, then took a sip. Something shifted slightly in her expression. “It tastes like—” She stopped.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Zara looked at the glass. “Something I haven’t felt before. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Ramona took a sip of hers. It tasted like the first day of spring, like something was about to happen.
She didn’t say that out loud.
The night moved the way good nights at The Grimalkin always moved — slowly at first, then in a flurry of excitement.
Felix got emotional telling a story about the time Ramona had helped Posey move in two years ago, and how she’d carried an entire bookshelf up four flights of stairs and not complained once, and that he’d known then she was a keeper.
Ramona told him he was being embarrassing.
He said embarrassing was his love language and ordered another round.
Kashvi explained to Zara, at length and with significant hand gestures, the entire taxonomy of Thornwood Academy’s most insufferable faculty in the department where she’d studied history in her first witching years.
Zara listened, asking clarifying questions, filing things away.
“Professor Aldric sounds structurally unsound,” she said at one point. “Both as a scholar and as a person.”
“Oh, completely,” Kashvi said. “Ooh, my sparks just went gold.”
“Delight?” Zara clarified.
Kashvi beamed, nodding while finishing her third drink.
“I’ve noticed the correlation,” Zara said. “Green tends to be frustration. Blue is surprise.”
Kashvi stared at her. “I’ve been doing this my whole life and I didn’t know blue was surprise.”
“It’s very brief. You’d have to be watching closely.”
There was a pause. Ramona watched the interaction, an invisible hand inside her chest squeezing her heart. She looked up at the ceiling.
Posey, who had said relatively little all evening, leaned over at some point while Felix was at the bar and put her hand over Ramona’s. “Hey. How are you doing? Actually.”
“I’m fine.”
Posey gave her a look.
“I’m terrified,” Ramona said quietly.
“Of the ritual?”
Ramona made a choked noise she hoped signaled affirmation.
“Of everything going wrong?” Posey asked.
“Of everything going right,” Ramona clarified.
Posey nodded, understanding Ramona’s meaning. Didn’t push. Squeezed her hand once and let go. “You know we’re going to be there, right? Whatever happens after. We’re not going anywhere.”
Ramona’s throat tightened. “I know.”
“Good.” Posey sat back, picked up her drink. “Just wanted to say it.”
The jukebox shifted without warning into something slow and slightly mournful, the kind of song that made everyone’s conversations pause for just a second. Felix looked at it suspiciously. “That’s pointed.”
“The jukebox has opinions,” Cammie said. She’d been watching Zara all evening with the quiet, evaluating attention of someone building a file. “Zara. Can I ask you something?”
Zara’s eyes slid to Cammie, but her body leaned away, as if involuntarily.
“Why don’t you like me?” Cammie asked.
Ramona interjected. “Cammie—”
Zara studied Cammie for a long moment. “I don’t dislike you,” she said quietly.
“Then why are you so weird to me?” Cammie asked, her words slurred.
Ramona huffed. “Cammie, you can’t just pounce on people like that.”
Zara pushed her foot to touch Ramona’s. “It’s not a matter or like or dislike. I simply feel nervous around…” She looked up to the ceiling as if searching for the word. “Non-witches.”
Ramona tried to keep her face neutral, even though she knew Zara was lying. Zara was fine with the non-mages that came into the shop, polite and helpful.
Cammie was fully pouting now. “But I’m nice.”
“You are nice,” Zara repeated back, her voice soft as if coaxing a child out of a tantrum.
The table went a little quiet. Even the jukebox seemed to hold.
Zara didn’t offer any more explanation. Cammie seemed satisfied with Zara’s answer, turning her head as a pair of nymphs with green-tinged skin walked by. “Do they have to be so hot?” she said loudly.
One of the nymphs glanced over her shoulder with surprise, then laughed as the pair found a booth toward the back of the room.
Sometime past midnight, Felix announced he was going to get one more round and promptly got into a conversation at the bar that showed no signs of concluding.
Kashvi and Posey had migrated to the other end of the table, heads together, talking about something that was making Kashvi’s sparks fly.
Cammie was on her phone, tilted away, giving them space with the subtlety of someone who was absolutely doing it on purpose.
Ramona and Zara sat with their shoulders pressed together in the particular way they’d stopped noticing and couldn’t stop doing.
The enchanted candelabra chandelier cast warm, low light over the table. The jukebox had gone soft again — something instrumental now, no words, just the shape of a feeling.
“Are you scared?” Ramona asked.
“Yes,” Zara said.
“Me too.”
Zara’s hand found hers under the table. Her thumb traced the same slow circles it always did. Like she’d been doing it for years. Like it was habit.
“I keep thinking about the things I want to say to you,” Ramona said. “And then I can’t figure out how to say any of them.”
Zara turned to look at her. Her eyes in the flickering candlelight were dark and certain. “I already know.”
“You can’t know, I haven’t—”
“Ramona.” Zara’s voice was quiet, steady, the voice that meant she was being very precise on purpose. “We’ve been tethered together for nearly seven weeks. I know.”
Ramona’s chest did something complicated. “That’s an unfair advantage.”
“Yes.” The corner of Zara’s mouth moved. “It is, Mortal.”
The jukebox shifted again, into something that had no business being this tender. Felix was still at the bar, gesturing broadly at someone. Cammie was not looking at them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ramona said.
Zara looked at her. “Where do you want to go?”
“Home.” Ramona held her gaze. “I want to go home.”
Something moved through Zara’s expression, quiet and certain and wanting. She set down her glass. “Then let’s go home.”
They said their goodbyes, which took longer than it should have because Felix got tearful and needed a hug, and Gerald had to be formally bade good night with a lot of bowing on Zara’s part, and Posey held Ramona’s hands for just a moment too long, and Cammie said “see you tomorrow” in a voice that meant have fun and I’ll mind my own business and I’m glad she has you all at once.
They walked out through the bar, and Ramona tried not to grow nostalgic, thinking that this could be the last time they walked home together.
Outside, the night was cold and clear, Fernwick quiet around them. The door to The Grimalkin swung shut behind them.
Zara took her hand properly this time, fingers interlaced.
They walked.
They didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything left to say that words were the right size for.
The apartment building came into view. The front door. The stairs.
Ramona unlocked the apartment. The lights were off. The fox lifted his head from the couch, saw them, and resettled. The whole apartment was quiet and theirs.
She turned around. Zara was right there, close, watching her with that particular dark-eyed attention that had stopped feeling like being studied and started feeling like being known.
“We should sleep,” Ramona said. “We need to be sharp tomorrow.”
“Mmm,” Zara agreed. Neither of them moved.
Ramona reached up and took the lapel of Zara’s jacket in her hand. Just held it. “Unless you’re not tired just yet.”
“Not yet,” Zara said softly. Her hand came up to Ramona’s jaw.