“You bought a house and you bought Bunny a coffee machine.”
“Yes.”
“And you can’t make tea.”
“I am learning,” Dis says, with considerable dignity, “to make tea. The tea is a work in progress. The house is simply a practical necessity.”
“A practical necessity,” I repeat.
“We live above a coffee shop,” Dis says. “Which is charming, and I have no objection to the coffee shop. But we will benefit from more space. I certainly have been missing it. Living in a summoning circle was cramped.”
“You had a futon.”
“That is not the same as a house,” Dis says. “We deserve a house.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Think about the corner house, which I have walked past a hundred times and which has three floors and a garden and original sash windows and which has been empty for the better part of a year.
“We,” I say carefully. “You said we.”
“Of course,” says Dis. “We are a we.”
I look at him. He looks at me with those blue eyes, warm and steady and completely certain, the same eyes that looked at me across a summoning circle and found me pleasant.
“Fine,” I say. “Okay. We’re getting a house.”
Adam makes a small sound. I choose not to look at him.
The evening resumes.
I lean back in my chair and look around the table. Dark, who has eaten five bread rolls in total and is sitting with the quiet satisfaction of someone who has completed an assignment successfully. Bunny, who is telling Adam something about conveyancing with the enthusiasm he brings to everything. Hex, who is listening to Bunny with the expression of someone who finds the specific texture of human enthusiasm genuinely fascinating. Adam, who is warm and content and exactly where he should be.
Dis, beside me. His hand still in mine under the table.
This really is my life now. And it has become, without qualification, the best Tuesday I’ve ever had.
I look at Dis. “Hey,” I say. “On the way home, can you scare anyone who deserves it? It’s hilarious and never gets old.”
“That,” Dis says, with great dignity, “is precisely the kind of undignified behaviour more suited to Hex.”
Hex chuckles, not seeming the least bit offended.
I shrug. “Fair enough. Hex, fancy it? For old times’ sake?”
“No,” says Dis, immediately, with a sharpness that is entirely at odds with the dignity he was claiming thirty seconds ago.
I look at him. “No?”
He meets my eyes. Something settles in his expression, that particular quality that means he has decided something. “If my Little Witch’s heart is set on it,” he says, “it shall be done. By me.”
Across the table, Adam makes a noise that might be relief. Hex’s mouth moves in that way that might be disappointment, might be smug amusement. Could quite possibly be both.
Bunny clasps his hands together. “That,” he breathes, “is so romantic.”
Dis’s jaw tightens very slightly. He does not look at Bunny. He looks at the middle distance with the studied composure of someone who is absolutely not squirming and would like everyone to know this.
I grin. Big and warm and completely unguarded.
“You’re very cute, Disney,” I tell him.
