20. Devlin
20
DEVLIN
F riends. Blair wants to be friends. I want to haul her over my shoulder, dump her on my bed and have my way with her, and she wants to be friends.
So I’m being a friend.
And what friends do is sit two rides away at a winter carnival in a magical town while listening in on their “friend’s” date and telling them what to say next.
Three cheers for being friends.
A wizard dressed in tight leather pants and a short-sleeved shirt stops, opens his mouth and exhales a line of fire. Using his hands, he sculpts the tendrils into a bow and arrow. Then he slingshots the arrow into the air, where it explodes into fireworks. People who’ve been watching break out into applause. I do, too. Watching him has been the highlight of this whole night.
Right now Storm and Blair are sitting in the teacup ride while I’m hanging in the background like a secret service agent, incognito and looking like a creeper all by myself at a carnival filled with parents, children and couples.
Yes, several parents have already pulled their children away from me.
If Hands were here, he would be telling me to stop the date, tell Blair how I feel and get on with it.
To that I would reply that Blair has told me how she feels. She’s been perfectly clear, in fact. She wants to be friends, so that’s what I’m being.
Good old Devlin.
Before we left the house, I cast a spell that lets me communicate with her. I can hear their conversation and also tell her what to say next.
Yes, she insisted on that. Don’t ask me why, because when she was dancing with Storm, she didn’t need any help. But she swore that it’s required now. I suppose all the pressure of marriage is getting to her.
It’s also getting to me. I think that I’m coming down with a stomach ulcer.
The teacup ride ends, and Blair rises on shaky legs. She laughs and spills onto Storm, who catches her and chuckles. He takes her hand and guides her to a row of games.
“Oh, the squirt gun game. I love that one,” she says.
“Want me to win a bear for you?” Storm jokes, clearly making fun of the fact that people do things like spend their money to win a giant bear.
But Blair doesn’t catch his sarcasm. “Yes! Would you? That would be awesome.”
He balks. “I was joking, but sure. If that’s what you want. I’ll win one so that you can put it on your bed and think of me whenever you look at it.”
Do not say anything about taking her home . If something like that comes out of his mouth, I will walk over and punch him in the face.
Lucky for Grayson, he remains quiet.
Storm is the most arrogant man I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot coming from me. Because I know arrogance. Hell, I live and breathe it.
But he takes it to a whole new level.
“So,” Storm asks, bending over in preparation to use the human squirt gun. You can’t have everything be magical at a magical carnival. I suppose some things are better done the human way. “That was some dance you and Devlin did last night. You looked cozy.”
“Cozy? Oh, we’re not cozy,” she says, her voice wobbly.
Is that hesitancy I sense?
Just to push her, I say, “Tell him the truth.” I speak into my hand like any good Secret Service agent.
Blair glances over her shoulder at me, worry in her eyes. I nod encouragingly as a group of werewolf teens, fangs and claws out with patches of fur on their faces, dash across the grass, aiming for one of the rides.
A group of witch moms are following their kids, sipping drinks from Stanley cups. Probably not water in those, I’m figuring. More like alcohol to deal with the gaggle of children they’re following. When one of the kids strays off, his mom uses magic to pull him back into the group.
Blair turns back to Storm. “I know Devlin from high school. We go back a long way. So that’s all you were seeing in that dance—just two people who’ve known each other a long time.”
“Did you ever date?” he asks, spraying water at the target. The water pushes the racing car disks up and up, but a kid sitting beside him has the lead.
“Don’t make it sound like a big deal,” I coax.
“Briefly.”
She looks back at me. Oh, I may have forgotten to mention that I glamoured myself with some subtle but important changes. Gave myself darker and longer hair. I’m taller (why would I go shorter?), and I have a handlebar mustache.
Always wanted one of those but never wanted to keep it long term.
I nod, silently telling Blair that she’s doing great.
When the kid beside them wins the water gun race, Storm looks agitated.
Blair places a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to win me the big bear.”
“No, no,” he says, pulling out his wallet. “I’m going to win it, even if I have to buy this whole carnival.”
Have I mentioned that Storm’s also one smug bastard?
The boy wins a small bear, but he wants to keep going. So does Storm.
When no one’s looking, he uses a bit of magic on the boy’s gun. It’s so subtle that no one notices, and apparently the game doesn’t have an anti-magic spell on it because the power is absorbed.
I smirk. If he can’t win it the proper way, Storm will win the underhanded way.
When the bell sounds, the water starts spurting, but the boy’s gun doesn’t deliver quite as much punch as it did before. Surprise, surprise, Storm wins.
And no one is any wiser about what happened.
No one but me, that is.
Two rounds later and Storm’s won Blair the big teddy bear of her dreams, and I want to punch a wall.
The kid walks off with his parents, his head hanging in disappointment. Before they pass me, I pull a teddy bear from the air with magic. “Hey, I won this but don’t need it. Would you like it?”
The way the boy’s face lights up makes my heart swell. “Thank you, sir.”
His parents thank me, and they walk off happier. I do, too.
After that, Storm buys Blair some sort of deep-fried ice cream thing, and they sit on a bench while she eats.
“So you like your town?” he asks.
“Castleview? I love it, but it must be so boring compared to where you’re from.”
“Well, I own three houses, so I come from many places.”
“Three? Wow. I still live with my parents.”
“Why is that, exactly?”
A trio of familiar voices grabs my attention. Glancing over, I spot Cathy, Sadie and Cherie heading this way.
They’re laughing and cackling about something. No clue that Storm Grayson’s here. Good. Maybe it will stay that way.
Blair’s voice grabs my attention. “Why do I live with my parents?”
“Yes?” he asks.
She flounders, and I take that as my cue to whisper, “You work with them, remember?”
She exhales and tells him the truth. “I haven’t found a reason to move out. I love my town. I love Castleview, and I love my job helping put people into their favorite stories. So I don’t need to move. Where would I go? Five feet away?”
She laughs. Storm smiles slightly.
“It’s not that I’m not motivated,” she explains, sounding like she’s worried he’ll think less of her. Any man who thinks less of her for that isn’t fit to kiss the ground she walks on. “I’m highly motivated. A very motivated person.”
“Breathe,” I tell her. “Storm doesn’t care if you’re motivated or not. He’s motivated enough for the two of you.”
“Not that I’m crazy motivated,” she adds, laughing slightly. “But I like having something to do.”
“A family is something to do.”
Oh, he’s going there, is he? Just jumps right in trying to secure his legacy.
She blinks, clearly not expecting a man to mention children on the first date. “I love making potions,” she tells him, talking quickly, obviously trying to figure out how to reply to his mention of family.
“Do you?” One side of his mouth ticks up into a smile. “You like playing around?”
“Well, it was more than playing around in high school. I won the state championship.”
He quirks a brow, impressed. Yeah, she’s more than what you thought she was, isn’t she? “State champion?”
“Yeah, Devlin and I went. We were fierce competitors back then. That’s probably why I pushed myself so hard—because I wanted to beat him. But anyway, I made it, beating him out. I loved potions.”
“Why’d you stop?”
She pauses, and I’m hanging on the edge of my seat. I’d like to know this, too, and I’m hoping that I’m not the reason why she gave it up.
There was nothing cuter in high school than seeing Blair with a pair of goggles on, her hair bunched up on her head and her tongue sticking out while she thought about ingredients and how to weave them together.
If I don’t stop thinking about her tongue, I’m going to need a cold shower.
Cathy’s voice pulls my attention from the talents of Blair’s tongue. “Is that Storm and Blair?”
“Oh my gosh.” Cherie flicks hair over her shoulder. “It is.”
“What do we do?” Sadie says.
“We make sure their date ends in disaster,” Cathy says.
Absolutely not. As much as I’d love for it to wind up ruinous—for Storm, that is—I can’t have anything happen to Blair.
I suspect that Cathy is the person who told everyone in high school that Blair had used her magic on me. It seems like something that she would have done.
She starts to stalk over to where Storm and Blair are sitting on the bench when I jump up. Cathy sees me. Stops.
“I’m sorry, but Storm Grayson is off-limits,” I tell her.
She scoffs. “Who are you?”
“His bodyguard.”
Cathy looks me up and down, her gaze lingering on my mustache, no doubt wondering if I’m lying or not. “I have something important to tell him about that woman he’s with. Something that could save his life,” she adds.
I rub my chin, pretending to think about it. “I’ll be sure to tell his twin brother.”
Her eyes pop wide. “Twin?”
“Oh yes. His name’s Stan , and he’s around here somewhere. Went to play mini golf, I think. But who knows? He’s got so much money that it’s impossible to keep track of him.”
She frowns, folding her arms. “I’ve never heard of a Stan Grayson. If Storm had a twin, I would know it.”
Cathy needs a push. I unleash Blair’s magic, closing my eyes so that her friends don’t see the change. “Stan Grayson is over by the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
Cathy blinks and slowly turns her head. “Yes. Stan. Tilt-A-whirl.”
She drifts off while Cherie and Sadie scramble to catch up. “What’s going on, Cathy? Where are you going? I thought we were going to ruin Blair,” they say, their words colliding and piling atop one another.
“No,” she replies, her voice flat like she’s been mesmerized. “We’re going to find Stan.”
Cherie and Sadie exchange a confused look but follow Cathy, because what else would they do?
Crisis averted.
I sit as Blair says, “I stopped working with potions when I started at the bookstore. It wasn’t supposed to be my shop, but my older sister didn’t have magic. So I was all set to inherit it. You can’t be worried about potions when you’ve got a bookstore to run. So I threw myself into the family business.” She tips her head, thinking. It’s adorable how she scrunches up her nose as she figures out what to say next. “But then Addison’s magic came in and now the bookshop’s hers, so…”
“So?” he asks.
She shrugs, smiles. I know what that look means. She doesn’t want to give him too much of herself. Yet . I consider it a win for me, even if we are friends.
Friends. I’ve officially entered the friend zone. I would’ve been happier staying in the enemies zone than being here. This is some sort of bullshit limbo, where I don’t know which way to turn. I wish I’d just told her that I didn’t regret that kiss. But then she told me that she did, so here we are—me in disguise and her on a date with a man I can’t stand.
“So,” she continues, “I guess that I just put potion making away.” She tips up her face and smiles at him. “I haven’t needed to think about it because I’ve been so busy with books.”
Storm stretches out his legs and crosses one ankle over the other. “Well, having your little books is good, too.”
Blair frowns, unsure if she should be insulted that he called the Bookshop of Magic a place of little books.
“I know what it is to be conflicted,” he explains. “Sometimes an invention calls to me, and when I get into it, I realize that it’s not the project that I’m supposed to be working on.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes.” He tosses his head back, flicking hair from his eyes. “I’ve been working on this anti-aging formula, and I’d set it aside because I wasn’t getting anywhere with it and then suddenly, voila! The answer came.”
Blair’s gaze cuts to me because we both know how voila came to Storm.
“Is that so?” she asks, licking the ice cream off her spoon in big, long strokes of her tongue.
I think I might die.
“Yes.” He crosses his arms, getting comfortable on the bench. “I was just daydreaming and bam! The answer came.”
She frowns. He doesn’t notice. “The answer just came to you?”
“Yes. That’s how inspiration can be.”
“Sure.” She sounds very unsure. “I get it.” She sticks her spoon into the rest of her ice cream and rises. “Ready to keep going?”
“Want to continue on?”
“Actually I’m getting tired.”
He stands and slides his hands into his pockets. “I’ll take you home, then.”
They walk off and I don’t follow. There’s no need, because at this point I know that Blair isn’t going to let him kiss her, not after he lied like that.
The best thing for me to do—the only thing, really—is to lean back on the bench, stretch my arms over the back of it and bask in this small victory.
That’s one point for Devlin and negative points for Storm.
Maybe, just maybe I can turn this whole thing around.
I’m beginning to relax when a message comes over my phone. It’s from Hands. He’s probably asking when I’ll be back. But when I open the message, my heart stops.
There’s a picture of Hands beside a broken kitchen window. There’s a long cut down his thumb, and blood is gushing from the wound. The words, SOMEONE TRIED TO brEAK IN, are printed below the picture.
Before I can even think, I magic myself away, praying that I reach my friend in time.