Bunny tells us about his studies with the particular enthusiasm he brings to everything he finds interesting, which is everything. Dark listens to Bunny the way he always listens to Bunny, with the complete, focused attention of someone who has decided that whatever Bunny says is worth hearing. It is, if I’m honest, very sweet. I’m choosing not to think about how sweet I find it.
Dis and Adam talk about the coffee shop and the repairs and what needs doing, because Dis has developed opinions about the coffee shop that he did not previously have and is apparently not shy about sharing them, and Adam is nodding along in the way he does when he’s both listening and quietly delighted.
It occurs to me, not for the first time, that this is my life. This specific configuration of people around this specific table. A former shadow king, and an ex-shadow prince, and a shadow guardian who is learning to eat bread rolls, and my best friend, and Bunny in his ears, all of us eating lamb and drinking wine in Clifton on a Tuesday.
I’ve had worse Tuesdays.
At the end of the evening, when the plates have been pushed to the side, and the wine is being finished and we’re at the comfortable stage of a dinner party where nobody quite wants to be the first to leave, Dis sets down his glass and looks at Adam.
“Thank you,” he says, with the gravity he brings to everything. “This has been a genuinely lovely evening.”
“You’re always welcome,” Adam says, and means it, because he is Adam.
“Felix and I must return the favour,” Dis says. “Once we are settled.”
I look at him. “Once we’re settled where?”
“In the house,” Dis says.
I look at him more.
“The house on the corner of this street,” Dis says, with the mild patience of someone clarifying something they assumed was already understood. “I have purchased it.”
A silence falls over the table.
Hex’s eyes narrow very slightly. He looks in the direction of the corner of the street, which is not visible from where he is sitting but which he can presumably sense in whatever way ancient shadow beings sense property boundaries, or see through walls.
“That house,” he says, “is significantly larger than this one.”
“Indeed,” Dis agrees, pleasantly.
I stare at Dis. “How?” I say.
“I am incredibly wealthy, Little Witch,” Dis says, with the serenity of someone stating an obvious fact.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant you’ve been free for less than a month. You can barely make tea. How did you handle buying a house?”
Dis is quiet for a moment that is slightly too dignified to be called a pause. “I ordered the cheerful human to assist me,” he says.
Everyone looks at Bunny.
Bunny looks up from the last of his dessert, registers that he is the subject of attention, and smiles the enormous smile. “It was brilliant!” he says. “Dis came to me with the property details and I handled the conveyancing and actually I think I might want to specialise in property law now, it’s terribly exciting. The searches alone…”
“Bunny,” I say.
“Sorry, Felix.”
“I’m so sorry he made you do that,” I say. “He absolutely should not have...”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Bunny says, waving this off with the easy generosity of someone who genuinely doesn’t. “It was good practice. And Dis was very clearabout exactly what he wanted, and by the time we’d finished all the paperwork I felt quite confident about the whole process.” He pauses. “Also, he’s buying me a coffee machine as a thank you. A proper one.”
I look at Dis.
“The cheerful human worked very hard,” Dis says, without a trace of guilt.
“You bought him a coffee machine.”
“It seemed appropriate.”
