He dished the breakfast sandwich up onto a chipped plate and slid it over to Jonah. It looked good. So did Luke. His hair was damp and slicked back from his face, his smile crooked but determinedly genuine, and he had a tattoo inked over his ribs: an unfinished bird that was half gray-scale and half sketchy linework.
“Thanks,” Jonah said. “I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
“I can tell,” Luke said. “You know it’s the most important meal of the day, right?”
“Well, then it hasn’t missed me.”
Luke shrugged as he put his fingers on the edge of the plate and pulled it back toward him. “If you don’t want it—“
“I didn’t say that,” Jonah said. “I’ll just pretend it’s lunch. You seem—“
“What?” Luke asked. He leaned on the counter, muscles taut all the way up to his shoulders. “Sane? Sober? Yeah, last night was… I think someone spiked the coffee or something. I must have sounded crazy, huh?“
“You said a witch attacked you and puked booze in your mouth.”
“Yeah, I mean, thank god you were there. I might have ended up in the psych ward or—”
“It was a ghost,” Jonah said. “Otherwise, you had a good handle on what happened.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and waited. For something cobbled together from the barren shelves of his fridge, it was pretty good. The crunch of the toast covered the faint stale taste of the bread.
“That’s not funny,” Luke said, his voice small.
“No,” Jonah agreed. “And you probably didn’t deserve it, but that doesn’t undo it.”
Luke shook his head, grimaced, and turned to check the stove. He picked up one of the pans and put it back down. The other half of the breakfast sandwich had started to char.
“Probably?” Luke said.
“Someone deserved it,” Jonah said. “I don’t think it was you, but sometimes people have a dark side.”
“I don’t,” Luke said.
“We left innocent in Eden, Luke,” Jonah said. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and his hands on his jeans. “If you want to edit last night, you can. Just not yet.”
Luke rubbed the back of his neck and finally turned around. He gave Jonah a pleading look.
“It won’t come back,” he said. “Right? We got away.”
“Do you still taste liquor?” Jonah asked.
Luke looked queasy as he licked his lips. “A bit,” he admitted. “But it’s faded.”
“It’s daylight,” Jonah said. “She won’t be back until tonight. Can you call in sick, stay here?”
Luke’s mouth tilted up. “Asking me to move in?” he asked. “After one date?”
Jonah tapped the edge of the plate to make it rattle. “I think this counts as date two,” he said. “The hag won’t be back until it’s dark, but it’ll be an… odd day. People will be… off.”
There was a reluctant pause, and then Luke nodded.
“I can tell them I fell,” he said and touched his head with a wince as his fingers must have found the sore spot. “It’s not even a lie.”
Jonah glanced at his watch. It had been his dad’s. That’s what his granny had said anyhow. The only inheritance Jonah had ever gotten was the watch and the crushing guilt over his mom’s death. Everything else he’d left back in Babylon, but he’d not quite been able to let go of this. In the end, he’d just changed the band and kept it. It wasn’t a Carrow thing, after all.
“I need to get to work,” he said as he got up and untangled his T-shirt to pull it on. It definitely smelled clean. “There’s clothes in the laundry if you want to grab something, and the password to the wireless is under the router. I’ll be back before dark.”
Luke crossed his arms. “You’re going to work. After what happened. How do you know all this stuff? Who are you, Frank?”
