23. Pippi
“Ooooh! Mushroom ravioli?” At first, I thought my gritty and sleep-heavy eyes were deceiving me. I blinked once. Twice. But the chafing dish was still filled with creamy mushroom sauce and the freshest raviolis I’d ever seen.
It was real food, not deep-fried, grease-saturated bar fare. And it was my favorite dish. Mushrooms were an obsession, and my mom had transplanted the pasta-equals-comfort-food belief into me. So, mushrooms and pasta, after the last couple of days I’d had, were like gifts sent from the stars.
“They’re really good. I’m actually here for seconds.” The woman behind me shouted in my ear as I ladled the steaming raviolis onto my plate.
Shouted, only because the jarring noise inside the Brew & Bites didn’t allow for civil volumes. You either screamed above it, or you drowned in it.
It was the noise from the people—all one hundred or so folks currently on the island were stuffed into the restaurant, so dozens of lines of conversation overlapped each other, creating a big, puffy talk wave. And even that had to fight to rise above the tide of bagpipe music.
The woman next to me, burly and middle-aged, with a handsome face and sweet green eyes, was thoroughly jangled by all the commotion, and trying her best to hide it.
“The bagpipes are a little much, aren’t they?” I asked her in the lowest conspiratorial whisper I could manage, with those jaunty strings of music billowing in the air.
She offered me a relieved smile—grateful that she had someone to commiserate with. “They’re a lot much. And not very good.”
I tucked my chin toward the windows on the far side of the room, where the bagpipes hovered in the air, blowing themselves hoarse.
Who needed musicians when you had magic, right?
Except humans might’ve read the room a little better and chosen not to blast a bold Scottish war soundtrack over people stuffing their faces. It wasn’t terrible music, but the heavy, dramatic notes gave the impression that we were about to be attacked.
I understood the woman’s discomfort.
Some of it was my discomfort as well. The pinpricks of an overexertion headache had poked into the back of my head when Jackson and I first arrived ten minutes ago, and I knew I’d have a full-blown wallop of a headache by the end of the night.
So my plan? Stuff myself with as much mushroom ravioli and wine as I could, before the headache turned my stomach against me.
“I wonder if they think war music is good for digestion?” I yelled to the woman over the last wailing chord of the song. “Maybe they’ll switch to some zen tunes for dessert.”
Her shoulders scrunched with tension. “I hope so.”
I gave her arm a light nudge, a silent beckon for her to hang in there, and to seek solitude if she couldn’t hang any longer. And she seemed a little calmer when I turned away from the buffet and headed back to my table, so I hoped some of my messaging had gotten through.
Jackson and I had picked a table in the center of the room, thankfully some distance from the bouncing bagpipes (although the space did nothing to dampen the noise), and Jackson had manned the fort (and guarded my glass of wine) while I’d perused the buffet.
“Ugh,” Jackson groaned lightly when I slid into my chair with my packed plate. “There’s a fungus among us.” He flashed me one of his handsome, boyish grins as he took a pull from his beer.
And then…
I squinted, sure the hazy fatigue over my eyes was playing tricks on me. “Jackson…are you smoking ?”
He winked as he raised the chunky cigar to his lips again and inhaled. “Kian was handing these out.”
“Kian?”
“Yeah. Kian Reed.” At my blank face, Jackson waved the cigar. “He works logistics at Magix.”
“Ah.” I tucked my napkin into my lap, fighting the squirm of irritation in my chest.
I didn’t particularly care if he smoked, especially since it was just a cigar—not much harm was going to come from it. But there was a dark thought burrowing into my brain, one that said he looked ridiculous, puffing on the end of that cigar, with his chin popped up in the air.
It turned my insides sour with shame to have my brain wander that way, but I couldn’t not think it now.
My eyes burned as I turned the long edge of my fork into the ravioli, cutting a bite-sized sliver. And I hoped, as Jackson swiveled his head around to give me a loose, loving smile, that he couldn’t see those thoughts on my face, or feel them assaulting his own emotions.
“There’s prime rib up there,” I said, my voice turning to my customer service chipmunk style. Thankfully, the headbanging battle anthem circulating around the room softened the chirp.
“Is there?” Jackson’s eyes brightened. “And someone was walking around with lobster.”
“Oh, yeah. I saw that up there too and thought about grabbing some, but the mushrooms won.”
Jackson pulled an ick face. He hated mushrooms with the same fervor I loved them with.
“Everything looked delicious, though,” I added. “ Everything. You might need to roll me out of here at the end of the night.”
“We’ll probably be rolling each other.” Jackson went a little cross-eyed as a woman sauntered by the table clutching two plates, one stacked high with oysters, the other weighed down by the biggest, juiciest steak I’d ever seen. “Oh shit, that does look good! Here, hold this!”
“Jackson, wha—” I grunted when he plonked the cigar out of his mouth and shoved it into my left hand. It was gross—all slimy and hot where he’d had his mouth around it—and lazy tendrils of smoke tickled my nostrils. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just hold it. So I can go get food.”
A few fat ash flakes tumbled off the end of the cigar and fluttered over my plate. “Don’t they have places you can put these? Ashtrays or something?”
Jackson gulped the last half of his beer and motioned to our black-clothed table. “Do you see an ashtray here?”
“They probably have some at the bar.”
“Yeah, and it’ll take me as long to get an ashtray as it will to get my food. Just hold it for a few minutes. Please.”
“Maybe you should’ve waited until after dinner to light this.”
The bitterness in my voice shook me to my very core.
That was mean . The snappish way I’d hissed that. Mean.
It was the way my mom used to throw words at my dad when she was mad and hankering for a fight.
Jackson, thankfully, had already started walking toward the buffet line. If he heard me over the rallying music, it would’ve only been snippets.
But I’d heard the words. And had felt the heat behind them.
My lip quivered as I dropped my fork and used my free hand to pluck up my wine glass.
And I pulled a Jackson, downing the whole glass in three gulping swallows.
It didn’t help the headache situation, but it soothed my blistered emotions.
So much so, that I grinned from ear to ear when Jackson came back to the table, and then I gave him a big, noisy kiss on the cheek when he reached over to take his cigar back.
His eyes brightened, and an impish grin cocked up one side of his mouth as he bent and kissed me. Deeply. Obscenely. Suckling and nibbling until I strained against him, seeking more.
“You seem to be in a better mood, huh?” He drew away, caressing my bottom lip with his thumb. “Were those magical ‘shrooms?”
“Might’ve been.”
More like magical wine, chugged on a mostly empty stomach.
I nibbled on his thumb, sighing when he laughed and popped another warm kiss to my temple.
This is what it should’ve been, with us on vacation: happy and playful and mischievous and enjoying each other’s company.
So why didn’t I feel any of that?
Why didn’t he?
Because when I reached for him, trying to find a ribbon of his warmth or affection to cling to, there was nothing.
Excitement, sure. For the food and the party and the presence of the Sorcerers who were seated at the round pub tables by the windows—all of whom he knew by name and happily rattled those names off to me as he scooched his chair into the table and dug into his steak.
But it was all superficial stuff. I couldn’t find anything deeper.
Maybe this island was breaking him as much as it was breaking me, and we were both doing our best to hold ourselves together.
Vacation of a lifetime , I thought bitterly.
The music screeched to a halt—as though offended by my despondence.
As silence swaddled the room—with people sputtering out in mid-conversation and peering around, trying to figure out why the music had stopped—Rune Bloodworth sauntered past the buffet bar and clapped his hands.
“I know, I know.” He rocked on the balls of his feet.
“That was incredibly rude of me to kill that lovely music. It’s only temporary, I promise.
I just wanted to take a moment of your time to thank you, sincerely, for being here.
When Onyx—I’m sure you all know my business partner, Onyx.
” He swept his hand out, gesturing to the windows behind me.
I twisted in my seat.
Onyx sat by herself on a stool at a round pub table at the end of the row.
And while the other Sorcerers were sitting a little sloppy, with most shifted sideways or swinging their legs or leaning, Onyx was as straight as an arrow.
No slouch curved her back, and she had her legs elegantly crossed at the ankle, with her feet resting on the lower rung of the stool.
She wore a deep ocean-blue gown that sparkled beneath the candlelight and spilled to the floor like a glistering waterfall.
She stared out the window, a glass of red wine sitting untouched in front of her. When Rune called her name, she didn’t look at him. Didn’t react when all heads in the restaurant turned toward her.