Chapter 3
As it turned out, we weren’t awkward at all. Awkward would have required too much effort on his part.
“Hey, Simone.” Ethan entered the room like we were at court, not in our cozy meeting space. He hefted his briefcase onto the table, then took his normal seat next to mine with a distracted smile. “Are the Twins nearing a final plan yet?”
“Not even close.” Cecelia materialized a plate of blueberry muffins between us.
I leapt at them like a starving woman. I wasn’t hungry, and I’d likely have dinner upstairs after the meeting, but none of that mattered.
If you’ll pardon the expression, food was filling a hole.
Plus, picking at them gave me something to do with my hands that didn’t involve his tree-trunk thighs or the knee brushing against my—
“Simone?” Ethan slid a napkin across the table. “You’re drooling a bit.”
“Really good muffins,” I answered, my mouth full of blueberry goodness.
Not that it was why I was drooling, but Ethan didn’t need to know where my thoughts had strayed.
Especially since he’d already lost interest in our conversation.
He turned to Lauren when she walked in, and they went into small talk mode. I may as well have been invisible.
I didn’t worry over it for long. Brianne was the last to enter the room, which was unusual for her.
But when she did, we all fell silent with expectation.
My girl was the PEARL, and when it came to making this place run like a well-oiled machine, we all deferred to her.
I’m not sure if she even noticed, and oddly that made my heart swell.
She’d become such an efficient little badass over the past few months, really embracing her position and the responsibilities.
It probably didn’t hurt that she was frustrated at home, and channeling some of that restlessness into running the business.
But I was still gonna take some of the credit.
I’d empowered her to do the things she was doing anyway.
That small amount of recognition opened a door to her inner confidence.
Even her brother-in-law Ezekiel’s decision to stay “just a bit longer” after the boobicane wasn’t keeping her down for long.
He was still here, keeping to the Wanderer’s Woods and maintaining the No Biting Humans agreement we’d set in place for him.
I’d placed a ward that protected everyone in Treater’s Way, just in case.
Months of the animal-blood diet had made him a less terrifying version of himself, but he still lurked like some sleazy predator and always seemed to be in Illusion Square when I was.
We would all breathe easier when he tired of our small town and headed to a people-laden big city.
She moved around the table, placing the still-blank bound reports in front of each of us.
I watched her, a little choked up, as she greeted us as if she hadn’t seen us all day.
In her cute little lavender dress and sensible heels, Brianne was her own version of a boss babe. And I loved that for her.
To prove the point, I rose and went to the drink cart, passing out the rest of the refreshments that Cecelia already had prepared. It included, sadly, another bowl of cream for Gumbo. After a silent plea, Cecelia shrunk it to a less gas-inducing size.
“Oh, great, I’m starving,” Gumbo said when I set it in front of him. “I haven’t eaten since this morning’s snack break.” I barely managed to hold back my snort of disbelief.
Once we were all settled, Brianne clasped her hands and looked at me.
No matter how much power I gave Brianne on the business-front, I was still the Supreme.
And the Supreme had to be the one to start the meetings.
So I gave her my nod of assent and sat back as everyone walked through their paces until it was my turn.
I watched the text on the report materialize, fascinated as always by the way it seemed to float up from some void. Speaking of voids, the skylight overhead, which had quickly become my favorite new fixture, glowed and swirled as we were transported beyond space and time.
I took a deep breath. I’m not sure when I’d first noticed it, but the air was different here.
Since we’d solidified the coven, it was even more potent.
Like a purely magical, clean breath of oxygen with every inhale.
Board meetings had been a source of angst when I’d first gotten here.
Between my own imposter syndrome, a lack of understanding of magic in general, and our barely cohesive coven, the monthly meetings had always felt like the place where shit went down.
But now they were actually productive and useful. A lot of that was Bri. She had an innate ability to cut through crap. And the rest was my own sense of being settled and a part of it all, rather than on the outside looking in.
“So.” Brianne put on her most chipper tone.
“Let’s start with the merger of our spa and salon divisions.
How’s it going?” Her smile was devious as hell.
The Twins put on a lot of brave fronts and acted like they were above us, but when it came to doing what was right for the Magnolia, they shouldered their responsibility well.
And the identical looks of chagrin on their identical faces told us a lot.
“We’re still hammering out a few details.” Lydia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Probably because she’d used ridiculous corporate speak. “But we expect the merger to be complete by our next quarterly.”
“What’s holding you up?” Despite my initial reaction, I was actually glad Ethan was here for this. He hadn’t heard all the day-to-day bickering or petty nonsense, and as the company attorney, he could help them figure out a clearer path forward.
But I didn't want to listen to any of it. There was a reason I’d put Brianne in charge of all the administrative whatnot. I was more of an emotional leader than an actual corporate one. And we were both okay with that.
I blissfully zoned out.
Until I heard the name of my least-favorite client.
“What was that about Cupid?” I sat up straight and pretended I’d been listening the whole time.
“I was reiterating our concerns.” Lyra blushed straight down to her golden-haired roots.
“Concerns?” I pressed.
“Well, it’s about the holiday.” Lyra was being unusually evasive.
“Which holiday?” I knew. Of course I knew. And while I’d gotten better about opening up to the coven, part of me held back. But poor Lyra looked like she wanted to melt into her chair. “Go ahead and spit it out, Lyra. I promise I won’t bite.”
“It’s about Valentine’s Day.” Lyra tugged at her sleeves, pressing the edges against her palms like tiny security blankets.
An uncomfortable chill ran across my shoulders. I already knew where this was headed. “Okay?”
“You weren’t here for it last year. It’s one of our most successful seasons. We’ve already seen a decline in some of our services over the past few months. And the problem is, well …” She turned pleading eyes to Lydia, who heaved yet another dramatic sigh and took over for her sister.
“How are we supposed to sell sex packages when Cupid’s got the entire supernatural world in a cock block?”