“Besides… dinner?” Embry asked, mostly because she didn’t want Daddy to be the one to follow up by spelling out what he meant bysomething.
He did anyway.
“Em, you know what I mean. You look suspicious. Both of you.” Lazarus turned his attention to an easier mark. “Rye? Because you just claimed to know better, I’d love to hear your thoughts on why I feel like you’re about to rob me.”
Rye swallowed his mouthful of curry and managed the most honest face possible thanks to four glorious years in the Raven’s Head drama department.
“Nothing suspicious except that this one said she was going to share this with me and she’s already on seconds.” This was all an obvious lie, especially if Lazarus took the initiative to peer in the containers, but Rye smacked Embry on the arm and played it up. “I think she’s got a hollow leg.”
Embry pretended to swipe at him with a triangle of naan, playing along, even though she’d only scarfed half her plate, tops. “Hey, you were trying to get me to eat, remember?”
Rye was always good at improv. “I was but now I’m regretting loading you down with carbs. Should’ve gone for a sleeping draught.”
Embry scrunched her nose. “I mean, I don’t appreciate either, but the morning after a sleeping draught is rough. So thanks for the bread and rice, I guess.”
Rye stole the naan from her hand, tore it in two, and offered her half. “You’re very welcome.”
Though Embry was quite sure their lifetime of bickering made their banter quite believable, Lazarus spent a much longer time than usual reading the situation. So long, in fact, that Embry nearly cracked, sure that Daddy knew they’d planned to review what they not-so-legally found that day the minute they were alone.
But then, like the smallest of miracles, Lazarus Woodcross nodded.
On cue, Rye beamed, and Embry rolled her eyes, and Lazarus decamped with his water glass. “Good night, kids.”
CHAPTER 28
THE LIES OF OAKLEY RIDDLE
IT TOOK SOME TIME FOR THEM TO FINALLY BE ALONE WITH THEday’s findings.
Embry didn’t want to let Lazarus take himself and his water upstairs without a chaperone (her), so she chased him up the stairs, and then texted Dr. Goldman to confirm the next round of medications and tinctures he’d need before falling asleep.
By the time she’d returned downstairs, Rye had cleaned up the remains of their dinner and, in compliance with the tale he’d spun for Lazarus, popped a bag of popcorn, grabbed a couple of cold seltzers, and met Embry on the living room couch, the opening sequence ofHome Alonepaused on the screen.
Embry raised an eyebrow at him. She’d expectedPretty in PinkorThe Breakfast Clubwhen he’d mentioned John Hughes. Rye patted the seat next to him, pulled out his phone, and waved it at her. “I thoughtHome Alone’s hijinks might be loud enough that Lazarus wouldn’t be able to overhear us.”
“Good point.”
She sat down, but not where he was patting. Instead, she planted herself a whole extra cushion away from him. Embry wasn’t going to admit it to Rye because, well, she could barely admit it to herself, but she’d used way too much brainpower in the last several hours memorizing the parts of her body that had been in contact with his while they hid in the drama closet. And the way Rye’s skin felt under hers when she kissed his palm.
The mental and physical space allowed by their afternoon of rest was helpful, but even the strongest of cleansing spells topped with a vat of bleach wasn’t going to scrub any of this from her mind.
Rye inspected the distance she’d carved between them. He hit Play on the remote, picked up the bowl of popcorn, and plopped into the seat immediately next to her. As if this were any of their previous movie nights. “I don’t smell any more of curry than you do,” he said, “and we both need to see the evidenceandhear each other over the on-screen chaos. Don’t be a brat.”
A hot flash of embarrassment rolled over Embry as she met Rye’s familiar green eyes.
Shewasa brat. This was information they’d collected together. That they needed to dissect together. Now wasn’t the time to deflect all their hard work simply because of what? The weird sparkly feeling that fizzed in her chest. The patches of skin with new memories of Rye. That sudden, almost involuntary urge to press her lips to the healed palm cupped in her hands.
Embry couldn’t deny this new, strange, physiological response. But she could ignore it. At least for a little while—thank Goddess for all that theater training. Not that her training undid the fact that Rye had been a participant in all those new moments, too. No matter how good of an actress Embry was, she couldn’t control that. She’d just make the best of it.
So, she swallowed her response, drew her knees to her chest, and leaned Rye’s way until her shoulder bumped his. He did smell of curry, but also of soap, laundry detergent, and that bedeviled rosemary oil.
Embry carefully tilted her head up so, if Lazarus reappeared at the base of the stairs behind them, it would seem as if she were watching the movie, not glancing to the space between her left knee and his thigh, where his phone was propped, hidden. Theplan was for him to transfer everything from the retired device she’d used for her pics to a cloud he could access on his phone so they could review their handiwork together.
He tapped at it and his lock screen flashed to life—a professional snap of last year’s eight-man boat in action. It was totally Rye to highlight a team sport in his phone’s personalization, and it also very much reminded her that her own lock screen was the last thing she wanted to see right now. It was a snapshot from what was now a very different time: Embry and her senior Witch crew, goofing on the steps of the theater—Amethyst, Fairfax, Alistair, Balthazar, and Oakley, clustered around her like petals on a sunflower.
That was totally her. Or at least it used to be.
Cold, flat sadness flared in her half-full gut, discordant against the prickly flush of thoseignored, runaway thoughts her brain started cooking up about the boy next door over the past several hours. Her body in a tug-of-war, Embry grasped for the only shred of control in this situation. “I want to start with the paperwork, if that’s okay with you.”
