Chapter 2 Do You Want Lies With That?
Do You Want Lies With That?
The house in Clifton is doing that thing again where it looks like it belongs in a magazine spread about people who have their lives together. Which is frankly offensive.
I stand on the pavement outside and stare up at the Georgian facade with the cornicing and the sash windows and the general air of smug architectural competence.
Adam lives here now. Adam, who used to live in a flat with a crack in the ceiling that looked like a rabbit and a shower that only worked if you hit it in exactly the right spot.
Now he lives in a house. An actual house. With a garden and everything.
I blame Hex entirely.
The front door opens before I can knock. Adam is standing there with flour on his nose and an expression that is trying very hard to be casual and failing comprehensively.
“Felix! You’re early.”
I glance at my phone. “I’m exactly on time.”
“Right. Yes. Of course you are.” He steps back to let me in. “Come in. Hex is in the kitchen doing something with vegetables that he insists is necessary but looks like performance art.”
I follow him inside. The hallway smells like garlic and rosemary and something else I can’t quite place. Something that might be magic or might just be the particular scent of a house where a shadow being lives. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
The house is warm. That’s the first thing I always notice. Not temperature warm, although it is that too, but warm in the way that means people are happy here. The kind of warmth that soaks into the walls and the furniture and makes everything feel lived in.
It makes my chest ache in a way I refuse to acknowledge.
“Wine?” Adam asks, already heading towards the kitchen.
“Obviously.”
I follow him through. The kitchen is all exposed brick, and copper pans hanging from hooks, and a range cooker that probably cost more money than I’ve ever had in my entire life.
Hex is at the counter chopping vegetables with the focused precision of someone who has been alive for several centuries and has strong opinions about knife technique.
He looks up when I come in. Those red eyes fix on me for a moment. Assessing.
“Felix,” he says. His voice is that low rumble that sounds like it’s coming from somewhere deep underground. “You’re looking well.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Liar.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Perhaps. But it seemed polite to try.”
Adam hands me a glass of wine. I take it and lean against the counter, watching Hex work. His hands move with that particular inhuman grace that he has never quite managed to hide completely. The knife flashes. Perfectly uniform pieces of courgette fall onto the chopping board.
“Shadow beings don’t need to eat… food.” I remind him.
“No,” says Hex.
“Then why are you cooking?”
“Because Adam enjoys it when I cook. And I enjoy doing things that Adam enjoys.”
He says this with absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever. Just states it as a fact. As if being utterly besotted with his human is a perfectly reasonable thing to announce while chopping vegetables.
I look at Adam. Adam has gone slightly pink and is very focused on opening a second bottle of wine.
They’re disgustingly happy. It’s genuinely appalling.
I take a long drink and try to ignore the twist in my chest that might be jealousy or might be grief or might be both at once.
“How’s the coffee shop?” Adam asks, with the careful tone of someone changing the subject.
“Functioning. I hired someone this morning.”
Adam looks up sharply. “You did? That’s great! What are they like?”
I think about Brian’s enthusiastic grin and his cult backstory and the way he made another perfect flat white while discussing the spiritual significance of Monty Python.
“Relentlessly cheerful,” I say. “Possibly deranged. Excellent with customers. I’m either going to fire him within a week, or he’s going to become the best employee you’ve ever had.”
“That sounds promising,” says Adam, in the tone of someone who is being supportive despite having no idea what I’m talking about. “I trust your judgment.”
He does trust my judgment. He bought the coffee shop and immediately handed me the keys, and told me to run it however I wanted. Which was either extremely generous or extremely trusting or possibly just Adam being Adam.
Hex scrapes the courgette into a pan. The sizzle fills the kitchen. He doesn’t look at me but I can feel his attention on me anyway, that particular weight of being observed by something that sees far too much.
“You’ve been working on something,” he says. It’s not a question.
My hand tightens on the wine glass. “I’m always working on something.”
“Something magical.”
“I’m a witch. Everything I do is magical.”
“Felix.” His tone is patient. Almost amused. “I can smell it on you.”
I freeze. Of course he can. The spell work I’ve been doing for the past three months is probably radiating off me like a beacon to anyone who knows how to look.
Adam is watching me now too. His expression has shifted from casual to concerned in the particular way that means he’s noticed something and is trying to decide whether to push.
The ring on his finger catches the light. The gold band that means he’s engaged to a shadow prince. That simple, impossible fact. Adam has a fiancé. Adam is getting married.
Adam is happy.
I take another drink. The wine is good. Hex has excellent taste in wine, which is one of the many things about him that I find profoundly irritating.
“It’s nothing dangerous,” I say.
Hex makes a small sound that might be agreement or might be skepticism. It’s hard to tell with him sometimes.
“Felix,” Adam says carefully. “If you need help with something...”
“I don’t.”
The words come out sharper than I intended. Adam flinches slightly. I immediately feel terrible, which makes me even more irritable.
“I’m fine,” I add, in a tone that is attempting to be softer and probably isn’t succeeding. “It’s just research. Expanding my skills. You know how it is.”
Adam doesn’t know how it is. Adam is not a witch. But he nods anyway because Adam is kind and worried and my best friend, and I am lying to him in his own kitchen while drinking his wine.
I’m a terrible person.
Hex turns back to the stove. He adds something else to the pan. The smell of cooking vegetables fills the kitchen, warm and ordinary and completely at odds with the tension sitting between my shoulder blades.
“The dark moon is soon,” Hex says conversationally.
I keep my expression carefully neutral. “Is it?”
“Three days.”
“How interesting.”
“Quite.” He stirs the pan with lazy precision. “Dark moons are excellent for certain types of spell work. Binding spells, for instance. Summoning rituals. Anything that requires pulling something from one place to another.”
My heart is hammering in my chest. I take a sip of wine and keep my voice level. “I wouldn’t know. That’s not really my area.”
Hex glances at me. Those red eyes are glowing slightly brighter than they were a moment ago. “Isn’t it?”
The kitchen is very quiet. Even the vegetables have stopped sizzling.
Adam is looking between us with an expression that suggests he knows something is happening but can’t quite identify what. His fingers are tight around his wine glass.
“Felix,” he says quietly. “Whatever you’re planning...”
“I’m not planning anything.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
That’s rich coming from Adam, who once tried to convince me he wasn’t in love with the shadow creature currently cooking dinner in his kitchen. But I don’t say that. I just drain my wine glass and set it down on the counter with more force than necessary.
“I appreciate the concern,” I say. “But I’m handling it.”
“Handling what?” Adam’s voice has that edge to it now. The worried edge. “Felix, seriously, if something’s wrong...”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then why won’t you tell us what you’re working on?”
Because you’ll try to stop me. Because you’ll say it’s dangerous and reckless and that I’m letting my anger make decisions for me.
Because I don’t know what Hex’s opinion will be but I do know he will look at me with those ancient knowing eyes and see exactly what I’m doing and exactly why I’m doing it and I can’t stand the thought of being that visible right now.
“It’s private,” I say instead.
Adam’s jaw tightens. Hex has gone very still in that way he has when he’s listening to something I can’t hear. The temperature in the kitchen drops slightly.
“Private,” Adam repeats.
“Yes.”
We stare at each other. The best friend standoff. I’ve won most of these over the years through sheer stubborn persistence. But Adam has learned a few things since falling in love with a shadow prince. He’s learned how to hold his ground.
Hex breaks the silence. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. Felix, would you set the table?”
It’s clearly a tactical retreat. A way to diffuse the tension before it escalates into an actual argument. I should be grateful. Instead, I’m just annoyed that he’s managing us both so competently.
“Fine,” I mutter.
I grab the cutlery from the drawer and head into the dining room. It’s a nice room. High ceilings, original cornicing, a table that seats eight comfortably. There’s a print on the wall that I gave them when they moved in, something abstract and dark that I thought would suit the space.
It does suit the space. Everything in this house suits the space. It’s all perfect and together and happy.
I set out the plates with more force than necessary. The clatter echoes in the quiet room.
The smoke ruined everything. That’s what keeps coming back to me.
The flat that burned was the first place I ever felt safe.
The first place that felt like home instead of somewhere I was just surviving until I could get out.
I grew up in places where safety was conditional and happiness was something other people had, and then I finally, finally had my own space.
My own walls. My own door that locked from the inside.
I had a record collection. Vintage clothes I saved for. A life I was making for myself, piece by careful piece. For the first time in my entire existence, I had hope. I had a taste of what it felt like to be happy.
And then one moment of chaos and destruction, and my entire life went up in flames. Literally. My flat. My belongings. My record collection. My sense of safety.
All gone.
And for what? Because I was collateral damage in someone else’s war. Because Dis needed to draw Hex out and I was convenient bait.
I didn’t ask for any of it. I didn’t consent to being pulled into shadow politics. I was just a witch minding my own business, working at a coffee shop, living my life.
And then the shadows came and took it all away.
My hands are shaking. I set down the last fork, and grip the edge of the table.
I’m not going to cry. I refuse to cry. I’ve cried enough over the past few months. I’m done with crying.
What I’m going to do is finish what I started. I’m going to summon that bastard and bind him and make him understand exactly what he took from me. I’m going to look him in the eye, and show him that humans are not convenient collateral damage.
I’m going to make him pay.
“Felix.”
I turn. Adam is standing in the doorway with two wine glasses in his hands and an expression on his face that makes my chest hurt.
“I’m fine,” I say before he can ask.
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
He crosses the room and hands me a glass. The wine sloshes slightly. His hands are steadier than mine.
“You don’t have to tell me what you’re working on,” he says quietly. “But I need you to promise me you’re being careful.”
I look at him. At my best friend who walked into another dimension to save the man he loves. Who learned to use his claws and stand up for himself, and to believe he is extraordinary. Who chose this impossible life and made it work.
I want to tell him everything. I want to explain about the summoning circle in my flat and the texts I’ve been studying and the binding spell that’s going to trap a shadow king in the human realm until I decide to let him go.
But I can’t. Because Adam will worry. And Hex will intervene. And I need to do this myself.
“I’m being careful,” I say. It’s not quite a lie.
Adam doesn’t look convinced. But he nods anyway. Because that’s what best friends do. They trust you even when they shouldn’t.
“Okay,” he says. “Just... remember that you don’t always have to do everything alone.”
My throat feels tight. I take a drink of wine to avoid having to respond.
Hex appears in the doorway, carrying a serving dish. “Dinner is ready.”
We sit. We eat. The food is excellent because of course it is. Hex might be an ancient shadow being, but he’s also apparently a natural at cooking, even though he can’t use salt, which is one of those facts about reality that I find deeply unfair.
The conversation flows around me. Adam talks about the coffee shop and the new seasonal menu he’s planning.
Hex tells a story about Dark and some dispute in the Shadow Realm that was resolved by Dark simply being his large and brooding self.
I contribute when required and laugh when appropriate and try very hard to seem normal.
But the whole time, I can feel Hex watching me. Those red eyes tracking my every movement. Assessing. Calculating.
He knows something is wrong. He just hasn’t figured out what yet.
Good. Let him wonder. By the time he works it out, it’ll be too late to stop me.