Epilogue
“Stop fidgeting,” Drew chastised, putting his hand on Zach’s knee in an effort to get it to stop bouncing.
They were on the bus heading to Victoria and were currently winding their way over the Malahat. Zach had been antsy the entire way and it was starting to drive Drew crazy.
“Sorry,” Zach muttered and stilled his knee.
Drew started to count but he didn’t even get to eighteen before the squirming began once more. “Honestly, what’s got into you?” he asked. He couldn’t fathom what would make someone as powerful as Zach so nervous.
“What if she doesn’t like me?” Zach asked, chewing on his bottom lip.
Trying to be reassuring, Drew said, “She already likes you. You’ve spoken on the phone heaps of times. I think Harriett likes you better than she does me at this point.”
“Only because she’s not met me in person yet,” Zach disagreed.
It was true they’d not had a chance to go and visit his aunt in the two months since the fight against Oberon.
Between her shifts and Zach’s assignments, their schedules hadn’t aligned until now.
Drew had told her about Zach, of course, and she’d demanded to speak to him on the phone.
The one time they’d tried to have a FaceTime call, there had been “technical difficulties.” Drew was well aware that Zach had used his magic to sabotage the call, but he’d not been able to wrangle an explanation from him as yet.
No time like the present.
“I thought you couldn’t wait to meet Harriett? What’s happened to make you so skittish?”
“I am not skittish!” Zach protested, giving Drew a petulant glare.
Drew just looked at him steadily—he’d been practising trying to raise just one eyebrow but the muscles in his face refused to cooperate and he just looked like he was having a stroke.
Even without the sophisticated eyebrow acrobatics, the look must have done something, because the fight went out of Zach in a rush and he sank down into his seat. “Urgh, fine. I might be a tad . . . nervous.”
Drew frowned. “But why? She honestly thinks you’re great.”
Although they had plans to explain to Harriett about their family heritage and the magical world, they’d held off, as that was a conversation best had in person.
Instead, they’d told her the story they’d originally given to Dom and Gwen—that they’d met when Zach moved into the apartment next door and Drew had helped him move some furniture.
“She made a comment,” Zach said with a wince.
“What comment? About us?” No matter how hard he tried, Drew honestly couldn’t see his aunt doing such a thing. She was very upfront, and if she had a problem with Zach, she would have told Drew outright.
“No, it wasn’t about us, but it was about us,” Zach said.
Huffing, Drew crossed his arms over his chest. “Gee, thanks. That’s really cleared things up for me. I feel so informed right now.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “No need to get snippy, sweetness.”
“No need to be so fucking vague,” Drew countered. “Just spit it out. What did Aunt Harriett say?”
“We’d been chatting about something . . .
I honestly can’t even remember what. Anyway, I made that stupid joke.
You know the one—still a better love story than Twilight—and she started on this rant about what a terrible romance story that book was and how it was impossible to believe a man who was over a hundred years old could have anything in common with a teenager. ”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. She made it very clear she thought Edward Cullen was a creepy old man who was taking advantage of a gormless teen girl simply because he stopped physically ageing at seventeen.” Zach rolled his head over the headrest of the seat so he could look at Drew properly.
“So yes, I’m nervous. Even before we tell her the truth about me, she’ll probably already have an issue with me as I look like I’m twenty years older than you.
When she finds out I’m actually closer to two thousand years older than you, I honestly think she’ll kick me out on my ass. ”
Now it was Drew’s turn to chew on his bottom lip as he thought about that.
“Okay, so maybe we could just not tell her the truth?” Even to his own ears, it sounded false.
There was no way in hell they were going to keep the truth from Harriett.
That just wasn’t the way their relationship worked.
“Okay, so that’s not gonna work. Look, maybe she won’t have a problem with it?
Maybe when faced with the situation in reality, she’ll take a different viewpoint? ”
“Do you really believe that?” Zach asked.
Drew sighed. “No.”
There was a long silence and then Zach admitted in a quiet voice, “I’m worried she’ll give you an ultimatum, and between me and her the choice is obvious. I’m scared I’m going to lose you.”
Drew gripped Zach’s hand tightly. “You will not lose me. We went through too much to be together, so don’t even think that.”
“Drew, we need to be realistic.”
“Stop it,” Drew commanded. “At the end of the day, I honestly believe Harriett just wants me to be happy. It might be a bit of a shock to her, but I love you. I’m not just going to give you up because she has some ethical issue with a sparkly assed vampire from a young-adult novel.
She likes you, and I think the more she gets to know you, she’ll like you even more.
The age thing might be a bit of a shocker at first, but I honestly think it’s not insurmountable. ”
Zach sighed but then raised their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to Drew’s knuckles. “I really hope you’re right.”
Throughout his long lifetime, Zach had fought demons, evil warlocks, and a number of other supernatural and magical creatures.
He’d been cast into the deepest depths of Hell as an angel and had been tortured for countless months.
He’d been in more hopeless situations than he cared to admit, and he’d lost count of the number of times he was sure the true death would take him.
None of that had ever scared him as much as the diminutive woman who sat in the armchair opposite him.
Harriett Phillips was five feet tall if she was an inch.
She was slight in stature, with a strength which had surprised Zach when he’d watched her drag a heavy cabinet away from the wall after she’d dropped a bottle cap and it had rolled underneath it.
She had the same pale blue eyes as Drew but her hair was lighter, closer to blonde.
She was currently sitting with her feet tucked under her, a cup of coffee in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face.
Drew was currently levitating his own mug about two feet above the coffee table in a demonstration of his powers to go with the long and involved story they’d just told her. He slowly settled the mug down and then waved his hands about as if to say “Ta-da!.”
Harriett didn’t say a word.
The silence that was stretching between them was growing more and more awkward by the second.
Drew looked over at Zach, who shrugged, at a loss for what they could do.
He honestly couldn’t say what Harriett was thinking, so he didn’t know if trying to further argue their case would be a help or a hindrance.
Given that Drew—who knew his aunt much better than Zach did—had no clue either, meant he had no hope of figuring it out.
“Aunt Harriett?” Drew finally asked when the silence had gone on for so long that it was almost sentient. “Will you please say something?”
Harriett sighed and leaned forward to place her coffee cup on the table. “I honestly thought it had skipped you like it had skipped your dad and me.”
Zach arched a brow. That sounded like . . .
“You already knew about magic?” Drew choked out.
She nodded. “Mom had the gift. At first, she tried to never use it because I think it scared the piss out of her, but when she was stressed or in danger it would just happen. I only saw it a few times myself. From what I’ve learned since she died, she did master control over it in her later years.
I’m guessing that’s when she wrote that cookbook of hers.
I didn’t realise it was a spell book or I wouldn’t have given it to you . . . sorry.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” Drew asked, sounding hurt. Zach couldn’t really blame him. “You knew Grammy had magic all along and yet you said nothing.”
Harriett sighed, and she looked sad. “Because I thought it would be cruel.”
“How so?” Zach asked.
She met his gaze, unflinching. “How fair do you think it would be to tell a small boy who had just lost his parents in a horrible car accident that magic is real? How do you think he would have reacted, knowing there are people out there who can do magic, and yet none of them bothered to save his parents? None of them came and used their magic to put food on the table or to turn the hydro back on when I couldn’t afford the bills. ”
Zach inclined his head. “You make a fair point.”
“I didn’t keep it from you out of spite, love,” she told Drew. “If you’d ever shown any inclination then I would have sat you down and told you all about Mom and her abilities, but there was nothing.”
Drew took a deep breath and let it out slowly. After a long moment, he nodded. “Okay, I understand your reasons. I guess all of our cards are on the table now.”
She gave a wry smile. “Indeed they are. So, you summoned a demon, huh? You always were a terrible cook.”
“Hey! I’m not that bad!” Drew protested.
“Oh, sweetness,” Zach said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “You have many strengths, but sadly, cooking is not one of them.”
“Betrayed!” Drew cried, poking out his tongue. “Besides, it’s not like you were a real demon.”
Zach faked-coughed into his hand. “Beelzebub.”
Turning wide eyes on Zach, Drew held a hand to his heart. “You wound me.”
“To be fair, you wound yourself more than I ever could.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you tripped over your own feet this morning and hit your head on the bathroom cabinet.”
“It wasn’t my feet!” Drew protested. “I tripped over your catnip toy, thank you very little.”
“And why was it out in the first place, hmm?” Zach challenged. “Maybe because you were being a little shit and got me high last night so you could have a big laugh.”
“Hey! You make it sound like you hated it but you pounced on it as soon as I brought it out.”
“Because it smells so damn good,” Zach growled.
Drew patted his shoulder. “There, there. If you’re struggling with it, there are places and professionals who can help with addiction.”
“I don’t have an addiction,” Zach shot back. “I just have an enabler for a boyfriend.”
“Is it so wrong to do things that make you happy?”
“I’m pretty sure it makes you happier.”
“Only because you’re so cute in your cat form when you’re on the nip. Your little bottom sways so much as you stalk across the kitchen.”
Harriett snorted. “You two are precious.”
They both flinched and turned to look at her. Zach had almost forgotten she was there, and by the guilty look on Drew’s face, so had he. “Sorry,” Drew told his aunt.
“Don’t be. I’m glad to see you’ve found someone who complements you so well.”
“Really?”
She smiled. “Really. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t realise quite how big the age gap was between the two of you, but you seem to be making it work.”
“We are,” Zach assured her, feeling some of his anxiety fade.
“So, Zach, tell me about yourself. What have you been doing since my nephew broke your bonds to that horrible man?”
“Oh, well, I’ve been keeping busy, especially since Drew has had so many assignments he’s had to work on.
I’ve been helping Kensington with a few projects, including writing up a strategy in case there’s ever another incursion.
I’ve also been taking some driving lessons,” he admitted, and he was amazed at how bashful he felt over that.
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I thought if we had a car we could come and visit you more often. Drew does miss you terribly.”
Harriett’s eyes softened. “Oh, you are sweet.”
“I know, right?” Drew exclaimed. “Can you see why I questioned what sort of demon he could be?”
“You never questioned it,” Zach argued.
“Well, maybe not questioned it, but I did think you were a really shitty demon.”
“You flatter me,” Zach drawled, but couldn’t help but lean in and give him a soft kiss on the lips.
“You really are very sweet together,” Harriett said, then stood up from the armchair. “Right, how about I see about dinner? Then afterward, I have a few things I want to dig out that I think you might find interesting.”
The interesting items turned out to be a stack of old notebooks that were bound together by twine.
Drew blew a layer of dust off the top of them and then undid the bow which held them together.
Zach looked over his shoulder and saw there was loopy handwriting scrawled across the cover of the top book.
The Diary of Winifred E Phillips
1952
“There’s a handful of diaries from when she was younger,” Harriett explained. “And a couple of other notebooks and stuff. I thought that sorcerer who’s training you might be able to tell if they’re more spell books or just run-of-the-mill diaries.”
“Wow, this is amazing,” Drew said as he started to sort through the books. He stopped at one close to the bottom of the pile and began to flip through it.
Zach caught sight of what was written inside and he snatched the book from his hands. “No,” he said fiercely. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” Drew asked with a pout.
Zach held up the book. “This is another cookbook, and not just any cookbook, but it has cakes in it.”
“And?”
“And it was bad enough when you tried to cook soup. I don’t even want to fathom what sort of creature from the beyond you’d summon if you tried to bake a cake!”
Drew huffed. “Honestly, I don’t really see the difference.”
“And that’s why it’s so dangerous,” Zach told him. “Baking is a very precise art. The measurements need to be exact. It’s not like cooking where you can change out ingredients and eyeball how much garlic you’re using.”
His little shit of a boyfriend actually rolled his eyes at him. “Honestly, Zach. I really think you’re overreacting. What could possibly go wrong?”
As Drew looked up from the smashed bowl on his kitchen floor, where flour and egg were mixed in with shards of glass, he decided that next time he got hungry, perhaps he should just eat his words.
Picking up Favourite Cakes and Cookies of Winifred E Phillips, he held the book out in front of himself as a shield as the zombie advanced on him . . .