Her light brown hair had blond highlights, and I couldn’t resist pushing a loose strand away from her flushed cheek and tucking it behind her ear.
She shot me a shy smile. “I have so many feelings right now, Calli. Figuring out my connection to baking and cooking and how that works, talking with your friends—with you. It all makes sense, in a weird but comforting way. I want to trust that whatever is happening is what’s supposed to happen. Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded. “I agree it’s weird. And I agree it all feels exactly…right. Well, except for the things I don’t understand.” I sipped at the tea, grateful for its caffeinated warmth even as heated summer air wavered at the open window before sliding into the room. “Is there magic in your family, beyond your fathers’?”
“I have an aunt named Busy. We’ve always called her Busy Bee because she’s a beekeeper, and she loves…”
“I met her this weekend,” I said, squeezing her forearm. How serendipitous. “She’s incredibly sweet. And she’s definitely a witch.”
Leilani’s face wavered from delight to concern, with two deep lines appearing between her eyebrows. “How come she never told me?”
“I have no idea. Which of your fathers is she related to?”
“Busy is James’s sister. Mal is an only child. Like me.” Leilani dropped her gaze to her lap and her straightened legs and then circled her ankles.
After two cups of tea, I was ready to use the bathroom and face the start of a new week. “I see no reason why you can’t approach your aunt and let her know we’ve met and that your baking has some very special, some would say magical, qualities to it.”
Lei-li smiled and giggled. “I’ll call her today. She lives on Vancouver Island, in the Comox Valley. It’s good farmland, and she’s in charge of lots of bees.”
“Please tell her I say hello.”
“I will.”
We stood. Leilani gave me a quick hug.
“I’ll wash these,” she said, taking both our mugs, “and make some muffins. If that’s okay?”
How could I say no to those big, brown, hopeful eyes? “My kitchen is your kitchen.”
She left, and my chest deflated. I wanted to deny it was the morning after a very intense night, ignore the fact I had a job to show up to, and spend the day thumbing through my mother’s books, looking for other bits of her writing I might have missed.
But I did the adult thing: mixed my second dose of tinctures, showered, and tiptoed across the hall to get clothes for work.
The door to my bedroom wasn’t latched, and Tanner’s back was to me. Getting clean underwear and a T-shirt from my chest of drawers and onto my body went smoothly. I pulled on a laundered pair of cargo pants and reached for the bag of melted ice that had slipped off the bed. Rabbit-sized dust bunnies huddled in the dark below the bedsprings, just beyond my reach.
Ugh.
PMS had been my monthly motivator behind cleaning the house, and because I hadn’t bled for two months, my house was suffering. I could ask the witches if there was a motivational spell for household help.
Resolving to do better, I rose to my knees and came face to face with the glory of Tanner’s morning light-lit brown skin and a partial tattoo.
Fanning over his lower back, inked in sepia, was the rounded top of a tree. I held my breath, pinched the edge of the sheet, and peered closer at the exposed V of his sacrum. Scattered amongst the tree’s outermost branches were small, seed-shaped lumps. Whitish in color and uniform in size, they resembled the bumps on Harper’s back.
“That you, Calli?”
Startled, I covered his butt and stood quickly. “How’s your knee?”
Tanner rolled onto his back. He slept naked. Of course. He’s a Druid.
And the sheet covering him hid nothing, absolutely nothing.
Not his lean belly, the long muscles of his thighs, or his semi-erection. The pouch he never removed rested right below his sternum, and for the first time I noticed the cord that kept it on his body looped around the back of his neck and his ribs.
He bent the knee closest to me and winced. I stopped staring at his body long enough to drop my clothes and the empty plastic bag and place my hands around his injury.
“Still painful?” Through the sheet, I could feel the heat generated by muscle tissue repairing itself. I sent an image of cool water flowing from my palms, penetrating underneath his skin and circling through the knee joint.
“Mm…” He turned his head to face me, eyes half open, and tugged the sheet higher. “That feels nice.”
“Let me get you a fresh ice pack. I’ll be right back.” Lifting my hands, I noticed my palms were bright pink and warmer than usual. I showed them to him. “You’ve got a lot going on under that sheet.”
My cheeks went as heated as my hands.
At least my patient laughed. “Calli, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
In the blessedly neutral space of my kitchen, Leilani was peeking into the oven. She’d wound a printed cotton scarf around her head and was humming.
“Smells good in here! What kind of muffins are you baking?”
“Oatmeal, bran, walnuts, and raspberries from the canes in your garden,” she said, beaming. “They need another couple of minutes.”
I refilled the emptied Ziploc bag with ice, grabbed a worn linen dish towel, and gestured to the hallway. “I’m bringing this to Tanner. Save us at least two or three, would you?”
“There’s enough for everyone to have three.” Leilani lowered her voice. “I’ll hide a few. I know how much Thatch likes my baking. Harper always snitches extra for him when he’s at my house.”
“There should be enough eggs for breakfast. Make a list if you think of anything I should pick up in town.”
Her eyes went wide. “Am I staying here all day?”
“I’m about to
